Community
The Growing Movement for Publicly Owned Banks
“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”
Changing the Conversation by Making it Safe to Have the Conversation
One of the foundational challenges of any social movement is “changing the conversation.” That is, transforming an existing paradigm (say, some people are less than human and can be enslaved) to a new paradigm (all people have an inherent right to liberty).
A Conversation About Energy with Howard Lindzon
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to do a freewheeling, videotaped chat with StockTwits founder Howard Lindzon on the present and future realities of energy...Topics included peak oil, the end of economic growth, reversing globalization, oil prices, alternatives, and lots of other topics.
Transition Network website unleashed
Rob Hopkins writes: "The new absolutely brilliant Transition Network website is here!!" The site’s goal is to support the Transition Towns movement with reliable community-owned information about the most important elements of the movement: the initiatives, projects and people.
Whither our cities - can Cleveland lead the way?
-Outer Ring Suburbs and the Permanent Foreclosure
-Designing Cities for People: Farming in the City
-Cleveland’s Comeback
-The secret mall gardens of Cleveland
-10 Land-Use Strategies to Create Socially Just, Multiracial Cities
The Emergence of an Unlikely Eco-Hero: Frank Luntz’ “Manifesto for a Sturdy, Stable and Robust New America” (humor)
In January of this year, American political consultant Dr. Frank Luntz released a 17-page talking points memo titled “The Language of Financial Reform,” in which he urges opponents of bank reform to reframe the effort as a mishmash of bailouts, loopholes and bureaucracy. In short order, Luntz-listening legislators lined up to shout “BLACK” at the kettle, before returning to their work crafting endless loopholes to bail out campaign contributors in their home states. I read the memo upon its release and promptly tossed it in my compost bin (I’m always short on browns).
Where Dark Green Meets Cleantech (Or, Beyond Shades of Green)
A little while ago, Alex Steffen of World Changing offered a critique of the permaculture-inspired Transition Towns initiative--a grass-roots, peak oil/climate change adaptation movement that has gone viral around the world in the past three years . . . Steffen would describe these people as “dark greens,” a brand of environmentalist who emphasizes local community action but can tend toward collapse-thinking or doomerism.
If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble
There’s some fascinating new research about “CO2 domes,” invisible clouds of carbon pollution that hover above urban areas.
An Interview with David Orr, author of ‘Down to the Wire’. Part One
David Orr was in the UK recently, and the two of us were part of a panel at an event organised by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment. After the event, we retired to the bar of a rather grand London hotel, and chatted for an hour about energy, climate change, the Precautionary Principle, Transition and whether or not we are beyond talk of ’solutions’. Part 2 included. Part 3 will follow shortly.
Little City Gardens: Growing an Urban Micro-Farm
A year ago, my business partner, Caitlyn Galloway, and I started Little City Gardens. We grow salad greens, braising greens, and culinary herbs in the heart of San Francisco, which we sell to a restaurant, caterers, and individual subscribers. Little City Gardens is a lot of things: a market-garden, a small business struggling to succeed, and an experiment in the viability of urban micro-farming. We started the business with a desire to apply ourselves to the redesign of our local foodshed.
Where Have We Been; Where Are We Going?
Driving down the broad avenues of Cleveland, Ohio, was like flipping through the pages of a picture book about the rise and fall of our industrial empire. Where demolitions had not removed things -- a lot was gone -- stood the residue of a society so different from ours that you felt momentarily transported to another planet where a different race of beings had gone about their business.
Americans Increasingly Unworried About the Environment
People grasp what their drinking water has to do with them. Overwhelmingly, I think they do not fully grasp what global warming has to do with them - and that's a rhetorical failure...At the same time that highly effective movements are arranging million person demonstrations in the streets, most of the people who will actually tell their congressfolk whether to vote for change were watching Law and Order SVU.
The Festival of Life in the Cracks
Weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement is a fractal assertion of life revealing itself through the cracks of civilization. My neighborhood is indicative of that, and this year’s Festival of Life in the Cracks (March 10) coincided with a meteorologically beautiful day, one of the first of spring’s blessings of warmth and sunshine.
Peak Moment 165: Finding Excitement Creating a Life-Sustaining Society
Lavendar farmer Dana Illo and her partner Catherine Johnson will infect you with enthusiasm. They’ve turned their initial response to resource declines from “it’s horrible and overwhelming” into “we can create new ways of doing.” Dana is bringing Dragon Dreaming to her community. This organizing model starts by having a group totally buy into a specific dream, like being locally food self-sufficient. Then in every cycle of implementation, members Dream, Plan, Do and — just as importantly — Celebrate! Why not have fun while we build community and security?
Responses & Resilience - Mar 15
-After Smart Grids, Smart Sewage?
-A real bottler
-Lexicon of Change: The Rise of Transition Culture





