Disengage from the Spectacle
Work to build community resilience. If and when national governance breaks down, your local community’s degree of social and biophysical resilience will make all the difference for you and your family.
Richard Heinberg
Memory, Fire and Hope: Five Lessons from Standing Rock
Of course, the ongoing struggle will not go down in the flames at Oceti Sakowin. We should take this opportunity to remember the enduring lessons of this movement, and prepare ourselves for what is to come next.
What is Transition?
The Transition movement comprises communities around the world and is dedicated to moving away from dependence on fossil fuels and resilience: personal, political and ecological preparedness.
The Sheer Wall
How do we get areas the size of India planted in mixed-aged, mixed-species, soil-regenerative, storm- and drought resilient agroforest, grassland and wetland with well-trained and motivated, self-financed productive cooperative management?
Scorn Wars: Rural White People and Us
Katherine Cramer’s book, The Politics of Resentment, argues that part of the reason rural whites resent urban elites is that they think that we know nothing about them—that they and their hard work and intelligence are invisible to us and that we scorn them anyway.
An English Wendell Berry?
There’s a new collection of Wendell Berry’s essays available, edited by Paul Kingsnorth of Dark Mountain fame, which was reviewed by premier league literary hack DJ Taylor in last week’s Guardian Review. Taylor’s review entertained me, because his reaction was quite similar to mine when I first read Berry in the 1990s…
Final Notice
A Final Notice from the Earth to the residents of Washington, DC: “Do whatever is needed to become a carbon-neutral species as quickly as possible, or you can kiss your city, and your whole civilization, goodbye.”
Peak Oil – Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture: Review
In 2011, while working toward a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson began a study into the peak oil community. His book Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture is the result of this research.
Agrowth – Should we Better be Agnostic about Growth?
In a recently published article in Nature Climate Change, Jeroen van den Bergh argues that neither degrowth nor green-growth strategies might lead to sufficient climate action and hence makes the case for a third option which he calls “agrowth”.
The Mythos We Live By: Riding the Back of the Bear-King
For a long time now I’ve been obsessed with the idea of belonging. Of what it might look like to let a place, a landscape, claim you.
Against Cheap Food: An Aide Memoir
Either we accept cheap food at the grocery store, and have people – invariably poor people – pay for environmental damage in health, social and economic costs incurred elsewhere. Or we have more expensive food that reflects the full costs of its production.
Peak Oil Review: March 13 2017
Last week was the most active in many months as oil prices, widely believed to be stuck in a narrow trading range for the foreseeable future, plunged some 8 percent in the last three days of trading.