Energy Bulletin

There is another story of Mesoamerica that is emerging through the work of biologists, botanists, and ethno-agronomists exploring and attempting to replicate the ancient systems that produced traditional foods. One example now familiar to permaculturists can be seen the chinampas of Xochlimilco, near modern-day Mexico City, which combined urban waste-disposal, canal dredging, and plant and animal production from both aquatic and terrestrial horticultural complexes.

Most folks in Washington and on Wall Street are desperate to avoid the fiscal cliff. That's because the automatic spending cuts and tax increases that would take effect if we go over the edge would mean an end to recovery and a resumption of economic contraction.

Last Friday was, as I'm sure most of my readers noticed, an ordinary day. Here in the north central Appalachians, it was chilly but not unseasonably so, with high gray clouds overhead and a lively wind setting the dead leaves aswirl; wrens and sparrows hopped here and there in my garden, poking among the recently turned soil of the beds. No cataclysmic earth changes, alien landings, returning messiahs, or vast leaps of consciousness disturbed their foraging. They neither knew nor cared that one of the great apocalyptic delusions of modern times was reaching its inevitable end around them.

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) has been the leading organization in advancing the steady state economy as a policy goal for nearly ten years. Maybe that's not saying much, because CASSE has been the only organization focused on advancing the steady state economy. But times, they are a-changin'.

‘Basic income’ or BI is shorthand for a regular, sufficient and unconditional income, administered by the state and issued to every member of society. BI replaces social welfare payments, child benefit and the state pension as we currently know them.

It is a measure that could be implemented during the current crisis in Ireland. By itself, it will not achieve all that we need, but it has a crucial role to play in the transition to an economy and society based on the well being of all and the sharing of resources for the prosperity of all.

How many times a day do we say or think "I'm comfortable with this" or "I'm not comfortable with that"? How often is it a way to avoid looking at what's going on and our part in it, as much as a valid expression of something really being not quite right?

Energy Hub, WUD Society and Politics Committee, and Madison Peak Oil Group host energy/finance expert Nate Hagens for a presentation that weaves together economics, anthropology, psychology, finance, trade, energy and human behavior into a coherent story about our human social system.

These days, people are maxed out on every level trying to get through life as everything gets more tedious, expensive, and uncertain. The onslaught of “glittering generalities” and opinionated political rhetoric coming from popular media and paid advertising on “both” sides is enough to make many shut off and tune out – their philosophical bandwidth running at full capacity until it is choked off entirely

2012: is it really the end of the world? Are the tectonic plates going to tilt, like in the movie, and dump us off? Will the earth crack open and the seas split? Unlikely. You can breathe a qualified sigh of relief. Mayan shamans and scholars tell us that the close of this great cycle of the Mayan calendar is not the cue for apocalypse but rather a new beginning, another turn of the wheel.

Transition groups aim ultimately to catalyse the localisation of their local economy. They strive to move from running small community projects to thinking and acting much bigger. New skills and ways of thinking will lead Transition initiatives to become social enterprises, such as becoming developers, banks, energy companies and so on.

Today is the last day on Earth, according to some New Age interpretation of the Mayan calendar. This belief has caused endless suffering and useless expensive purchases by people trying to “beat the clock” and find somewhere safe to spend their last few hours. Cheap places have suddenly become outrageously expensive, because someone said “Hang out there!” during your final hours. However, saying “Goodbye to Tomorrow” has a long history that goes beyond this moment in time. Humans are famous for planning the end of not only their own anticipated deaths, but because that is just too commonplace, they have to anticipate the death of everyone and everything around them...So for those who believe that Today is the last day on Earth I say: ”So long, it’s been good to know you.” For the rest of us, let’s continue to work for change, with the utmost of care, and always anticipate that Tomorrow MIGHT come.

Abstract: The political-economic limits to system innovation are explored through the Polanyian concepts of disembedding and the ‘double movement’. The Keynesian Welfare State is examined as the final outcome of a much broader ‘counter movement for societal protection.’ In place of reciprocity and autarchy, the Keynesian social compact involved the establishment of new, top-down circuits of redistribution, designed to facilitate continuing processes of capitalist modernization. Where social innovation is directed at the broad dynamics of marketization and the commodification of goods and services, this growth imperative continues to present an insuperable obstacle to system-level change. But as ecological capital at the level of the biosphere becomes a critical focus for a new protective ‘counter-movement’ and ‘degrowth’ becomes the de facto context for social innovation, systemic transformation becomes more thinkable. Hodgson’s ‘evotopia’ is recommended as a heuristic for a provisional, experimental and incremental exploration of the ‘adjacent possible.’

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times for the American public over the past month, as it was treated to two high-profile, but deeply conflicting, economic forecasts.

-"Peak farmland" is here, crop area to diminish: study
-A Grocery Store For The People Planned For West Oakland Food Desert
-Blackpool to give free breakfasts to all primary school pupils
-How the Food Movement Is Gaining Strength

Introducing my post-electric washing machine, which I call the Deindustrial 2020. It's of the future, not the past -- although it does look rather like the old-style, Medieval 1450. It was made for only $2.

If groups seeking to make the post-carbon transition go more smoothly and equitably are to have much hope of success, they need a sound strategy grounded in a realistic theory of change. Here, briefly, is a theory of change that makes sense to me.

A spontaneous, largely under-the-radar blue revolution is gaining steam in sub-Saharan Africa and has the potential to boost food security and incomes for tens of millions of the region's poorest inhabitants.

I have a hunch that the following scene happens only on one farm in the whole wide world so pay attention. You are driving down a two lane highway in Ohio when you pass a farmstead with a chicken coop in easy view through your windshield. In front of the coop stands a middle-aged woman with a kind of vacant air about her, cracking an egg on a fencepost and gingerly letting the white stuff ooze off onto the ground to separate it from the yolk. She tosses the shell back to the hens to eat. By now you probably have slowed almost to a stop because surely the poor woman has lost her mind from the hectic pressures of modern farming. She seems to be rubbing the yolk between the palms of her hand. A dog laps at the egg white drooling to the ground. By the way, she is also barefoot.

Sometimes you come across a piece of information that just blows you away. Robert Putnam, in his book, Bowling Alone, says that if you are not in a group now, and you join one, you will cut your chance of dying this year by fifty percent!