Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What do we economists have to learn from Wendell Berry? Many things, but here I will mention only two. First is a definitional correction regarding the basic nature of our subject matter—exactly what reality matters most to our economic life and why? Second, what mode of thinking does this reality require of us in order to understand it as well as possible, without seducing us into spurious substitutes for honest ignorance?
– 350.org: Implementing local solutions, one neighborhood at a time.
– Totnes: Britain’s town of the future
– One on One: Jane McGonigal, (Peak Oil) Game Designe
– Will Carbon Nation succeed where An Inconvenient Truth failed?
– Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (RSA video)
This then represents the end of the historical epoch I have chosen to call the Age of Frontiers, which we can date from 1492 to 2006. Although there are still other, smaller frontiers that will continue to be exploited, none is large enough or expanding quickly enough to offset the effects of the closing of the oil frontier. We are in a new age now, one for which we don’t have a map or blueprint, and for which the assumptions about how the world works that we have taken for granted all our lives will be inadequate.
Local communities that depend on Darjeeling’s delicate but rich natural environment will either benefit from its preservation or suffer from its degradation. Conservation efforts that ignore economic realities and the role of community institutions miss opportunities to provide incentives for environmental preservation.
As unrest continues to spread across the Middle East, the possibility that the price of oil — already around ten times what it was in 1998, when the peak oil movement first began to shake off its post-1970s hibernation — might spike to unprecedented and economically disastrous levels is hard to ignore. The end of the age of cheap abundant oil calls for pragmatic steps. With the help of a roll of insulation, the Archdruid explains.
For decades, deadly outbreaks of cholera were attributed to the spread of disease through poor sanitation. But recent research demonstrates how closely cholera is tied to environmental and hydrological factors and to weather patterns — all of which may lead to more frequent cholera outbreaks as the world warms.
We should shoot for health and wellness rather than wealth and “hellness,” and agree to move, together, away from a lifestyle of deadlines and dying species and toward lifelines and living wealth…The big picture is that production and consumption will no longer be the defining characteristics of the emerging era – cultural richness, efficiency, cooperation, expression, ecological design, and biological restoration will be.
“We demand that before the hard-working, tax-paying families of this country are once again forced to sacrifice, the corporations who have so richly profited from our labor, our patronage, and our bailouts be compelled to pay their taxes and contribute their fair share to the continued prosperity of our nation. We will organize, we will mobilize, and we will NOT be quiet!”
The point here is not to say “we were right” but simply to underline the central observation with which we launched this project: the world we live in is being turned upside down by a series of converging crises. This process has not finished: it has only just begun, and it’s likely to get faster, deeper, harder. We can choose how to react to it, but there’s no going back.
Our stories of awakenings — whether moral, intellectual, religious, artistic, or sexual — are tricky. Honest self-reflection doesn’t come easy, and self-satisfied accounts are the norm; we love to be the heroes of our own epics. … The longstanding discomfort in telling my story is further complicated by new concerns in the past few years. More than ever I’m aware that no matter how high anyone’s consciousness in the United States is raised, there may be very little we can do to reverse the consequences of modern industrial society’s assault on the living world.
Riots and toppling governments in the Middle East, states taking drastic measures to balance their budgets, oil and food prices rising. The implications of all this turmoil are enough to make me start breathing into a paper sack. I can’t affect what happens in Libya or Wisconsin, but I can take action where I am, not only on my (semi-) urban homestead but also in my neighborhood and city.
-Mexico goes back to the land
-Corn’s Domino Effect
-Stop the global land grab
-From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: The Challenge of Social Movements
