Culture of Dying
In Extraenvironmentalist #51 we speak with Stephen Jenkinson about our cultural difficulty with death. Stephen draws on lessons learned from decades of working with death to describe how we can frame our civilization’s trajectory.
Culture & Behavior
The price of protest: whither civil rights in America?
-Keystone XL: Texas Farmer Battles TransCanada’s “Tainted Money”
-Nonviolent Protester of Drone Wars Sentenced to Federal Prison
-Third anarchist jailed for refusing to testify before secret grand jury
Swedish eco-village hosts role-play of life after peak oil
In early October, the eco-village, Änggärdet, Sweden, hosted two days of Live Action Role-Play (LARP) along the theme of life 2016-2027, post peak oil and post economic collapse. Players got the opportunity to explore what various scenarios would be like, including being commaned into a work detail bu the military to harvest the last remaining potatoes by hand, and by joining a self-organised, worked-by-hand co-housing combi-farm.
Make Me!
No, that’s not the cry of a spoiled child. It’s food, calling to you! Anyone can grow, gather, or make a lot of their own food. We do it on four fronts – we garden, we catch a lot of fish, we raise chickens, and we make some of our favorite foods from scratch. What have we learned along the way?
De-Partisaned: What would you sacrifice to save the world?
Would you compromise anything in your political beliefs, particularly on hot-button issues that keep us apart? If so, where would you place the halfway mark, if it were possible to work together?
Peak Moment 220: Simplicity, Joy and Social Change
When Cecile Andrews asked herself, “What matters?” the answer popped up: “Having time to do the things you want to do.” She simplified her life, quit her full-time job, and started simplicity circles to support others in savoring life.
Hens Are Changing The Meaning of “Profit”
The most amazing cultural event of the 21st century, at least so far, may be the rise of the hen. And Henny Penny is not squawking that the sky is falling, like humans are, but how locally produced eggs and fried chicken are a main part of the pot of gold at in the end of the food revolution rainbow.
Goodbye Columbus
Forest gardening is about as close as any strategy comes to addressing all of the most pressing needs of humans in one great sweep. Climate change, peak oil, poverty, extinction, and civil strife — all are rooted in the ground, and in most cases, those roots belong to trees.
In Praise of Anarchy, Part II
When confronted with an increasingly despotic régime, the good people of almost any nation will cower in their homes and, once they are flushed out, will allow themselves to be herded like domesticated animals. They will gladly take orders from whoever gives them, because their worst fear is not despotism–it is anarchy. Anarchy! Are you afraid of anarchy? Or are you more afraid of hierarchy? Color me strange, but I am much more afraid of being subjected to a chain of command than of anarchy (which is a lack of hierarchy).
Flying blind
These thoughts are prompted by the latest wave of lobbying by British business interests for a third runway at Heathrow. I get weary writing about this: I went through the relevant trends at length a couple of years ago and found that in terms of air transport in the richer world almost all the trends were headwinds.
Green infrastructure and food
A late-summer conference that brought city gardeners and construction developers from around the world to Toronto has just issued a declaration. The statement calls for a new generation of living infrastructure that’s built in partnership with what’s conventionally thought of as urban agriculture.
A school of apples
At Green Drinks we are looking at a map. It’s no ordinary map of roads and houses and municipal buildings. It’s a map of a community orchard, showing 100 fruit trees – apple, pear, quince, plum, cherry, damson, medlar – that were planted two years ago in the village of St James in Suffolk. Rob Parfitt who helped create the orchard is describing how a group rented the land (originally an over-grazed part of the common) and planted the trees, set around a restored shepherd hut which serves as an information centre and informal gathering space. The hardest thing, he said, was not the thistles in the ground, or raising the funds, but persuading the village to agree.