The Banality of the Anthropocene
There are plenty of troubling things about the Anthropocene. But to my mind, one of its most troubling dimensions is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble.
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Economists as Priesthood – a Religion Based on Assumptions
The ideas of the economists are important because they frame the way we understand the world, sometimes distracting us from understanding and living in the world in other ways. The economists claim that they describe the world as it is, rather than describing it as it should be, but there is an entire value system implicit in economics.
The Ecological Land Co-operative – Funding Future Farms
The ELC is the only organisation in England to offer affordable residential smallholdings for ecological land users. Their approach aims to overcome two key barriers to accessing land: high land prices and the planning system.
This Revolution Will Not Be Centralized: Mid-Atlantic Hub Creates ‘Egalitarian Spokescouncil’
We demand egalitarian treatment of others, and for others. Yet, do our own daily actions indicate that we value each other’s humanity equally? How does the Transition movement square with egalitarian, non-hierarchical practice?
Make the Anthill Great Again: The Ant Colony and the Human One
In history, we see the widespread attempt to place a single human being – that is, a single brain – in charge of the activity of the state. That sometimes leads to attempts of planning for the future of the whole colony, but it often backfires creating disasters. A single human brain cannot manage the immense complexity of a human state.
Storage is the ‘Holy Grail’ of the Energy Transition – or is it?
However, determining whether storage can indeed solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar requires assessing the ‘energetic productivity’ of using energy storage in combination with variable renewables.
Hummus and Mindfulness: Skills, Resilience and Relaxation beyond Consumerism
We all have to consume; it’s a necessary reality of existence. However, in the ‘consumer society’ the most radical thing you can do is not to consume ‘as directed’ – by finding alternative options that meets your needs while enacting a set of principles in opposition to that overbearing and exploitative economic paradigm.
Sexy Farmers
Local is the obverse of global. It’s not just a good soundbite to say that we cannot have both a dominant global economy and a thriving local economy. For one is the master and the other the servant.
A House on Shaky Ground: Eight Structural Flaws of the Western Worldview
Our global civilization is facing the threat of its own Big One in the form of climate change, resource depletion, and species extinction. If our worldview is built on shaky foundations, we need to know about it: we need to find the cracks and repair them before it’s too late.
Setting Free the Urban Tomatoes
For the past five years, ProSpecieRara, in collaboration with the cities of Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich, has been producing tomato starter kits – seeds and a tutorial –, which can be ordered on their website and via social media.
Stock hedges, home insurance, and our misunderstanding of risk
There is no insurance policy that will protect us against catastrophic climate change. We cannot get our habitable climate back on any time scale that matters to humans once it’s gone. The insurance policy is us, that is, changes in our behavior and our technology done quickly enough to matter. There is no other hedge that will help us.
Resilience, Community Action and Societal Transformation: Christopher Lyon
For me, resilience is much more complicated than the capacity to ‘bounce back’ from or respond to changes or ‘disturbances’ or other similar definitions. To be useful, resilience must be about what people are doing with the idea, how they know it and apply it, and what happens when they do.