Stories archived in Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Occupy movement is beginning to discover the commons, and the result could be a rich and productive collaboration. This was the lesson that I took from a three-day conference, “Making Worlds: A Forum on the Commons,” hosted by Occupy Wall Street in Brooklyn this past weekend. Rarely have I seen so many ordinary people from diverse backgrounds embrace the commons idea with such ease and enthusiasm.

Coal seemed to have peaked in 1990, but it was an illusion. The growth of coal production during the first decade of the 21st century has been impressive; never seen before in history. So, King Coal is coming back and he may soon reclaim the title of ruler of the energy world that it had lost to crude oil in the 1960s.

- Interview with ex-Shell CEO Hofmeister: changes tune after debate with peak oil researcher?(video and transcript)
- The Achilles' Heel of Algal Biofuels - Peak Phosphate
- What EROI tells us about ROI
- Prix de l'essence record : le pouvoir en place n'anticipe rien, c'est consternant

- Transition: Unlocking Sonoma’s collective genius
- Standing on Your Own Two Feet: Young Adults Surviving 2012 and Beyond (free online book)
- Building Sustainable Future Needs More Than Science, Experts Say
- Toward Global (Environ)Mental Change

When you fall in love, it's all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them -- or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.

Windrush Farm in Chileno Valley, California stands as one of our communities most endearing fiber and farming hubs. Founded in 1995 by Mimi Luebbermann, the farm grew from an intention of living simply, farming fiber, and functioning as a quiet space for Luebbermann's longstanding writing career. The farm has since become a destination for Bay Area spinning and knitting groups, seasonal craft fairs, and during the summer the place is transformed by Luebbermann and her son Arann Harris, into the "best home-grown, grass-fed, tree-climbing, organically-run, farm camp around"… for a host of children from the surrounding area.

The second part of Fleeing Vesuvius is entitled "Innovation in business, money and finance." It draws on the main theme of Part I, describing how the current economic crisis is a direct result of fossil fuel scarcity and spiking energy costs. The second section focuses on the link between energy availability and money.

In addition to Wall Street speculators, the other dominant forces of the U.S. economy over the past three decades have been global firms like General Electric, Exxon Mobil, and Apple. These firms spread their global assembly lines and resource extraction to countries like Mexico, China, and the Philippines where, in a quest for cheaper costs, they can more easily evade worker rights and environmental regulations. This global corporate economy pits U.S. workers and communities against poorly enforced Third World worker rights and environmental rules in a “race to the bottom” in terms of rights and standards. These global firms simply say to governments and workers: lower your wages and standards or we will move our operations elsewhere. They either get what they want or they move.

Where once American plowmen had merely to contend with unpredictable weather, infertile soil, inaccessible water supplies, poverty, accidents and disease, today’s food producers face a further cornucopia of sophisticated and bewildering attacks from all sides. That fewer than one percent of Americans want to wrestle a crop from abused soil, while attempting to anticipate how global warming or ailing honeybees may thwart them, should surprise no one.

Bottom Line: In the world we must strive to achieve, however difficult or implausible it may seem today, expanded extraction of the tar sands has no place.