Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Let’s get one thing straight: ecological microeconomics — deriving the value of ecosystem services — does have an important role to play in the quest for sustainability. But performed out of its macroeconomic context, all the talk of ecosystem service values is like the din of drums without the melody of a guitar. You can’t really get the point of it (and you’re likely to get very bored).
This is a medicine story. And if I could tell you all the medicine stories I heard in my travelling days I would. Because those stories are about how life turns around just as you think it’s about to end. We need more than anything now these stories of restoration and regeneration because they hold an opportunity. If there is one theme that unites them all it is this: the transformation moment comes when you realise it’s not just about you.
(Article based on the keynote speech at the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards in New York on 8 June.)
We will not transition successfully to a restorative economy until systems thinking becomes as natural, for millions of people, as riding a bike. That’s a big ask. How do we get from here, to there? …
Outside the business-as-usual tent, gradualism is on the retreat. A new kind of economy – a restorative economy – is emerging in a million grassroots projects all over the world. The better-known examples have names like Post-Carbon Cities, or Transition Towns. But examples also include dam removers, seed bankers, and iPhone doctors.
A restorative economy is emerging wherever people are growing food in cities, or turning school backyards into edible gardens. The movement includes people who are restoring ecosystems and watersheds; their number includes dam removers, wetland restorers, and rainwater rescuers. Many people in this movement are recycling buildings in downtowns and suburbs, favelas and slums.
We’re not talking about slamming the brakes on fossil fuels. Even as our contribution to creating Peak Oil awareness begins to see a little light (at least in some circles), I am concerned that we will be so worried about saving our own bacon or appearing to be rational that we will fail to take posterity into account. If we are to save just a little oil for our children, we need to just plain stop using oil (gas, coal).
Dubbed French version of Dubbed French version of the PCI video ‘300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds’. L’histoire humaine des 300 dernières années dont le développement repose sur les énergies fossiles.
In this interview with Voice of America, Nourishing the Planet project director, Danielle Nierenberg, discusses her journey to sub-Saharan Africa, where she unearthed agricultural innovations that can help cope with environmental challenges, while also reducing poverty.
This timeless book from Christopher Alexander was released back in the seventies, and it’s just as much a book on philosophy as on architecture. Still, the main purpose of the book is as an introduction to A Pattern Language. Alexander’s architectural writings at the same time develop a philosophy of nature and life. He proposes a more profound connection between nature and the human mind than is presently allowed either in science, or in architecture.
Neither an economist nor a formally trained scholar, Dmitry Orlov is perhaps best described in his own words, as “more of an eyewitness” to the phenomenon on which he writes. He’s a Russian émigré who saw the Soviet Union fall firsthand and has been drawing on this experience in warning of the coming U.S. collapse. He came to fame five years ago with a smash-hit Internet article that won him a loyal following and a subsequent book deal. The book, Reinventing Collapse, is now in its second edition—and regardless of how well it holds up to scholarly scrutiny, it’s admirable in its wit and prodigious street smarts.
A couple of months ago I did a talk at the Tagore Festival at Dartington which eschewed Powerpoint and used objects sent in by Transition groups to tell the story of how Transition unfolds. I really enjoyed it. Here it is!
So let’s ask another question. Why do we need banks – what are they for? This is less about what banks get up to, than about money. How should we think about the institutions that deal with our and other people’s money? What does it mean for you or me to have money?
-Greece strikes: ‘The atmosphere is toxic’
-Beijing worries as sense of injustice deepens
-Kuwait ruler warns against unrest, security threats
There are many lessons about Human Nature to be learned from the aquacalypse—human-caused destruction of animal life in the world’s oceans. I shall pinpoint several of them today.
