Human ecology & behaviour

Review: The KunstlerCast by Duncan Crary

Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press

Outrageous, snarky, “madly engaging,” bileful—these are a few of the terms that have been used to describe author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. But he’s actually a great deal more than these things, as anyone who's really come to know him, even if only through his books and Internet postings, can tell you. His most personal writings reveal a human, vulnerable, wonderfully versatile, cheerful side that few people know exists.

archived February 12, 2012

Planning for the Rio+20 Conference: Enter the Commons?

David Bollier, David Bollier blog

There is a realization that it is no longer enough to denounce globalization or rail against capitalism. Realistic alternatives must be set forth. For many, it would appear that the commons can provide a useful framework and vocabulary for starting a very different conversation – one that at once addresses politics, economics, culture and our individual aspirations and energies.

archived February 10, 2012

A different way to spend – CSA style

Tim Lawrence, Sims Hill Shared Harvest blog

Even if we buy certified organic or fair trade marked products it is still very hard to avoid long and large retail chains which contribute to the pressure to industrialise and exploit human and non-human alike somewhere along the line.

How can we combine local, fair or ethical, and organic together in a way that at least has half a chance of caring more for human and non-human alike?

archived February 10, 2012

Seeing Berry’s Wilderness again

Chris Chaney, Transition Voice

Wendell Berry’s powerful book was the first stepping stone in the path that eventually brought me to the Transition Movement. It spoke of the places I visited almost every day, and the book itself had provided protection to those places against development.

It was powerful to me then because it spoke to my loneliness and feelings of failure in society. And it’s powerful to me now because it offers a scathing criticism of the things I’ve come to criticize myself.

archived February 8, 2012

A day in the life of a Transitioner

Charlotte Du Cann, Transition Norwich Blog

How does Transition change your life? Utterly, completely, forever. Because if you embrace what it does, in the way my fellow reporter Jo Homan wrote about so beautifully last week, it will turn your life upside down - like a love affair. It will satisfy you in a way no consumer dream can ever do. It will broaden your intellect, it will engage you with the physical world, the earth and your own body, it will break you out of a tyranny of isolation as Mark wrote on Monday, and all the self-pity and antagonism that goes with that state. It will make you empathic with your fellows, connect you with the spirit of the times. And most of all it will give you back yourself.

archived February 8, 2012

The history of carpooling, from jitneys to ridesharing

Jef Cozza, Shareable

The word "carpooling" usually conjures images from the 1970s: service stations warning "No Gas", lines at the pump, and bell-bottom pants. For many people, carpooling brings to mind quaint notions of penny-pinching habits that went out of style along with turning the thermostat down.

But the history of carpooling goes back almost as far as the invention of the automobile itself, and has endured well-beyond its heyday in the late 70s, according to a publication by MIT's Rideshare Research.

archived February 8, 2012

The great carbon bubble: Why the fossil fuel industry fights so hard

Bill McKibben, TomDispatch

If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it's unfortunately largely invisible to us.

archived February 7, 2012

Will peak oil spell the end of capitalism? (review of Fleeing Vesuvius)

Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, Dissident Voice

The basic theme of Fleeing Vesuvius, which is aimed at the growing sustainability movement, is TEOTWAWI (The End of the World as We Know It). The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent. For more than a decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that the planet is on the verge of economic and ecological collapse. Yet the vast majority of us do absolutely nothing to prepare for the stark conditions ahead.

archived February 7, 2012

Let us be Human: Christianity for a collapsing culture

Sam Norton, Book

I've written the sort of book that someone conversant with Peak Oil etc. could give to a friend who is a committed Christian, and explains, not just the basic problems but *why* Christians should be concerned about it, how the real problems arose, and what in Christian terms should now be done.

It isn't about addressing Peak Oil etc directly (e.g. prepare to use less fuel, advice about growing your own vegetables etc), it's more about generating the required virtues that will enable those steps to then be taken.

archived February 7, 2012

Deep thought - Feb 7

Staff, Energy Bulletin

- Dr. Colin J. Campbell: Mapping The Past & The Future
- John Michael Greer on The Visionary Activist (audio)
- The Future of American Colleges May Lie, Literally, in Students' Hands
- Kunstler on the Superbowl: All Screaming Id, No Brains, No Honor

archived February 7, 2012

Ending "Farmer's Wife" Syndrome

Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book

We have used language to write women out of agriculture - out of its history, out of its present, engaging in the "housewifization" of real agricultural work. The implication that the farmer's wife is not a farmer, and is thus knowledgeable about only kitchens and babies (as important as those things are) is a diminuation, an act of linguistic violence that erases the multiple competences of farm women, partnered or not.

archived February 6, 2012

Skill sharing as a way of life

Mark Watson, Transition Network

Engaging in the reskilling/skillsharing aspect of transition has revolutionised my whole attitude towards life. As I say, I didn't really notice it at first. It's been cumulative and all-pervasive. Paying attention to my own skills and those of fellows-in-transition, which are dismissed or ignored in the mainstream discourse: the ability to hold a meeting where everyone's included; communicating the experience of downshifting; learning to cook and eat differently; making space so solutions can emerge in the face of energy and financial constraints, using a chainsaw, making a rocket stove at the Transition Camp!

archived February 6, 2012

How do we build local social capital?

Dave Pollard, how to save the world

If I am right in saying "the key to resilience in the coming decades will be our ability, in the moment, to imagine ways around the crises we cannot prevent, predict or plan for", then how can we increase the imaginative capacity of our fellow citizens so they/we will be ready, in the moment?

archived February 6, 2012

Is there such a thing as ethical capitalism?

Kerry-anne Mendoza, OpenDemocracy

In response to a growing realisation that neo-liberal capitalism is morally and literally bankrupt, Britain’s political leadership have provided three visions of ethical capitalism for us to aspire to. So, is there such a thing as ethical capitalism? And why is this question being asked now?

archived February 3, 2012

Poor Mitt

Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book

Mitt seems to believe what most Americans believe, which is that those on social welfare programs are doing just awesome, while the real victims are middle class Americans. This is a pretty funny idea, but it isn't just Mitt's. The notion that lower and middle class Americans are struggling more than the truly poor is not an uncommon one by people who look on social welfare programs with hostility. If there's anything really different about his assumptions it is the very funny classing of the desperately poor with the extremely rich as having a lot in common.

archived February 3, 2012