PRI-De: A Detroit Story
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Economics, Education Centers, Urban Projects — by Killian OBrien
 Detroit: time to turn the problem into the solution |
Permaculture in Detroit seems like a bit of an oxymoron, but urban agriculture is blooming all over the city. From the city-wide efforts of The Greening of Detroit in educating people on gardening techniques to the smaller-scale efforts of individuals such as Kate Devlin and her Spirit of Hope garden to groups such as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and their 2-acre D-Town Farm and the Georgia Street Community Gardens/Collective, community gardens are being sown on vacant lots dotting this city of nearly a million, filling the holes left by the loss of nearly half its peak auto industry-driven population. Photos of the streets of Detroit from eras long past and rusted nearly away show tightly packed, neat homes. Today, half those homes have devolved into ruins or grassy, often debris-filled, lots. Estimates on the number of lots range from 60,000 to 80,000. Those numbers don’t include the many parks now being left largely untended by the city government.
Comments (1)Posted on: January 28, 2010
U.S. Feeds One Quarter of its Grain to Cars While Hunger is on the Rise
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Peak Oil — by Earth Policy Institute
by the Earth Policy Institute
The 107 million tons of grain that went to U.S. ethanol distilleries in 2009 was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels. More than a quarter of the total U.S. grain crop was turned into ethanol to fuel cars last year. With 200 ethanol distilleries in the country set up to transform food into fuel, the amount of grain processed has tripled since 2004.
The United States looms large in the world food economy: it is far and away the world’s leading grain exporter, exporting more than Argentina, Australia, Canada, and Russia combined. In a globalized food economy, increased demand for food to fuel American vehicles puts additional pressure on world food supplies.
Comments (0)Posted on: January 21, 2010
Money Literacy – Part V
Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organizations, Consumerism, Development & Property Trusts, Eco-Villages, Economics, Ethical Investment, Financial Management, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Thomas Fischbacher
Editor’s Note: This Part V of a series. Before continuing, please read Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV if you haven’t already.
"Money" is nothing but a social construct that comes with a number of "rules of the game". In one way, "money" has much in common with computer operating systems: most users are completely unaware of the degree to which these rules are flexible, malleable, and allow very different designs. So, before we ask ourselves: in what way could a different design of rules lead to a different role of money, it is worthwhile taking a look at what sort of phenomena the present arrangement gives rise to. A telling passage can be found in Bill Mollison’s autobiography:
Posted on: January 20, 2010
Jeff Rubin – $225 p/barrel Oil in 18 Months and the End of Globalisation
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Peak Oil — by Craig Mackintosh
Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at CIBC World Markets and author of the book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, was the keynote speaker at the Business of Climate Change conference in Toronto a few months ago. The clip below is the excellent presentation he gave, one that bleats the same message I’ve been sharing for a few years (see some of the links in ‘Further Reading’ section below, for example). Mr. Rubin predicts $225 p/barrel oil within months, and with it a forced relocalisation as long distance globalised trade becomes an economic impossibility. In it he talks about the insignificant scale of new oil finds in comparison with increasing demand from developing countries in tandem with the annual declines we see with our older fields. He talks about the absurdity of saddling our grandchildren with debts they can never afford to repay, just to bail out automotive industries that have no future in a world without oil anyway. He goes on to talk about the failures of Kyoto and the need for financial mechanisms that could speed a transition to a low carbon, relocalised platform.
Have a watch, and let us know your thoughts.
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Posted on: January 18, 2010
Money Literacy – Part IV
Alternatives to Political Systems, Economics, Financial Management, People Systems — by Thomas Fischbacher
Editor’s Note: This Part IV of a series. Before continuing, please read Part I, Part II and Part III if you haven’t already.
Patterns are amazing things. Maybe, their fascination comes from the human mind being very good at spotting them, while at the same time also being very bad at spotting them. It is sometimes claimed that "a genius is someone who sees something that is patently obvious for the first time" and, very often, patterns are fascinatingly obvious – in hindsight.
By what process precisely does a culture lose its indigenous money as it gets connected to a more powerful economy? One might of course guess that "bait" is an important factor: Look at all these shiny new gadgets that the new money can buy. There’s even television screens! Still, some may not be that easily seduced, and as, unfortunately, we all feel better about major life decisions if we can avoid permanent confrontation with observations that force us to re-evaluate whether they might have been a major mistake, the question arises how to "connect" those to the new money economy who value their independence of it very highly.
Comments (4)Posted on: January 14, 2010
Money Literacy – Part III
Alternatives to Political Systems, Economics, Financial Management, People Systems, Village Development — by Thomas Fischbacher
Editor’s Note: This Part III of a series. Before continuing, please read Part I and Part II, if you haven’t already.
A small economy joins the big economy
In the last part of this series, we saw that linking a big economy to a small economy is by no means an innocent act: naively, this might be regarded as just ‘giving everybody more choice’, i.e. more options for trade, hence more ‘freedom’. But everything works in two ways: one cannot link a big economy to a small economy without linking the small economy to the big economy. So, this will simultaneously give the big economy a strong handle on the small economy. What would in principle prevent a small population of economically powerful participants in the big economy from using their sheer weight to e.g. buy up key resources such as land in the small economy? This is not a purely theoretical issue – we see such processes all around us. Note that this is practically bound to happen if the big economy keeps on generating major internal pressure to "grow". And, as one cannot separate a culture from its economy, this effectively means that the largest aggressive-expansive economy, that of the culture called "western civilization", keeps on re-programming other cultures’ economies, and eventually these cultures themselves. Might that even be called ethnocide?
Comments (0)Posted on: January 12, 2010
Money Literacy – Part II
Alternatives to Political Systems, Economics, Ethical Investment, Financial Management, People Systems — by Thomas Fischbacher
Editor’s Note: This Part II of a series. Before continuing, please read Part I, if you haven’t already.
Any society practices division of labour to some extent, and hence, needs some way to keep track of who is pulling their weight, and who is not. The fundamental idea is, of course, that someone who contributes to society’s well-being acquires some form of credit that gives him permission to ask society to do him some favour in turn. It is entirely conceivable that in some small societies – such as some close-knit families, or maybe some abbeys, all this bookkeeping on who owes whom how big a favour is done only mentally, without any form of written record or specific token. Usually, however, this keeping track of favours easily gets out of hand and becomes so confusing that societies soon start to rely on some sort of additional device – not for all processes, but at least for a considerable share of them. Let us for now call any such socially agreed upon way of keeping track "a currency". It is perfectly normal in any society to see multiple quite different currencies being in circulation simultaneously, from bank notes to invitations to a barbeque. This is important to note, for we normally associate only one concept with the term "currency": some sort of "formal money" (where we usually think of coins, or bank notes, etc.). Hence, it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves that this might be overly narrow-minded.
Comments (0)Posted on: January 10, 2010
The Looming Food Crisis and the ‘Food 2030′ Report
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Deforestation, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Peak Oil, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contamination — by Craig Mackintosh
It can’t go on like this….
Not long ago I was standing in a bookshop, minding my own business, when a book title leapt out in front of me. The book was "History’s Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them". It documents the sorry tales of dozens of people throughout history who, with the best of intentions, made some fascinatingly terrible choices.
Comments (1)Posted on: January 6, 2010
Consumer Hell
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by George Monbiot
How do we break a system which now permeates every aspect of our lives?
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
Who said this?
“All the evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into human welfare and happiness.”
Was it a. the boss of Greenpeace, b. the director of the New Economics Foundation, or c. an anarchist planning the next climate camp? None of the above: d. the former head of the Confederation of British Industry, who currently runs the Financial Services Authority. In an interview broadcast last Friday, Lord Turner brought the consumer society’s most subversive observation into the mainstream(1).
Comments (0)Posted on: January 5, 2010
Move Your Money
Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organizations, Consumerism, Development & Property Trusts, Eco-Villages, Economics, Ethical Investment, Financial Management, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh
I want to wish all our readers a very happy new year. May the next year, the next decade, become a major step forward for all of us in finding ways to build a better future. I personally see the next decade as being rife with problems that need addressing at their most root levels. Challenges are afoot, but we live in exciting times, to be sure.
The last decade was quite an eye opener to the world. Multiple converging events collided to shake many awake out of their apathy, and the proliferation of the internet helped spread the word like never before. Environmentalism went from a concept that was scoffed at to being the overriding concern of the majority. Today you’ll find sandal wearing tree huggers side by side with briefcase wielding wannabes. The tanked economy woke people up, worldwide, with the startling realisation that free market capitalism has completely failed them. Celebrations for the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism were half-hearted and filled with cynicism, with the realisation that the greed that forms the basis capitalism brings very real consequences. We watched in horror, while the ‘invisible hand‘ (see also) went AWOL when we needed it most and governments worldwide took trillions of taxpayer dollars and spent us all into the next century to salvage the largest industries from their own stupidity and lack of foresight. By now we were so punch drunk we could only stare as the Wall Street bankers who orchestrated the collapse made off with golden parachutes and bonuses that defied belief. And, although the economic slowback reduced oil prices from the through-the-roof highs of 2008, thus muting alarm over this for too many with short attention spans, we now have millions more people the world over conscious of the outright vulnerability of our present situation as we ride the crest of peak oil. The unjust wars fought with a veiled but obvious motive disgusted and infuriated all but the most callous or ignorant, and the decade was peppered with annual, high level international talks about climate change that were doomed to fail from the outset.
With these thoughts in mind, I share the video clip below. Despite only being uploaded onto YouTube three days ago (Dec 29), it’s already been watched 173,000 times.
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Posted on: January 1, 2010
Serco – the “Biggest Company You’ve Never Heard Of”
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Population, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh
One of our readers provided a link to the following video in a recent comment. I thought it was worth putting it up as a post itself. A perfect example of why I spend time examining options for a ‘third way’, that doesn’t allow centralisation to occur.
It these kind of trends don’t wake us up, what will?
Comments (0)Posted on: December 31, 2009
Amazing Speech by War Veteran
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
I see a world ripe and ready, even braced, for change. This gem of a speech by a soldier confessing his shame for his occupation, the occupation, and the system that finances it all for profit is a very fine example of this. In similar fashion to yesterday’s clip, the thoughts are appropriate for this time of year – when we contemplate the meaning of our little lives and the direction they’re heading in.
A world based on privatised competition and profit will always destroy itself. It creates ‘health systems’ that incentivise and feed on illness, it creates prisons that depend on crime for their survival, it creates bombs that must be detonated to keep the armament industry afloat and private armies that need war to remain profitable.
The question is, will the massively powerful and centralised profit-based systems – that we’re bankrolling with our labour and consumer involvement – fortify their positions as modern-day feudal lords while society teeters on the edge of the abyss? Or, will we find the way, challenging though it may be, to dismantle them wholesale through a broadscale shift to relocalised self-sufficiency?
Comments (0)Posted on: December 26, 2009
The Price of ‘Development’ in China
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
Christmas is supposed to be a time where we give some thought to people less fortunate. It is also a time of major consumeristic excess. The incongruity of these two thoughts is starkly demonstrated by the clip below. This is China, factory for the world. Here, to make room for industries and infrastructure that China needs to supply the world with barbies, bicycles and toy berettas, the common people are forcibly evicted from their homes before seeing them demolished.
It’s sobering to think, as we stand at the checkout – with our trolley overflowing with crap for little Tommy and Britney – that we are financing a tyrannical allegiance between governments and Big Industry.
Further Reading:
- Food Miles, or Fair Miles?
- The Peasants are Revolting
- Rich Nations Buying Up Land in Poor Countries at Escalating Rate
Posted on: December 25, 2009
Pinky’s Scary School Nightmare – and Deschooling Society
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh
From looking at site stats, I see that significant numbers of people have read my recent ‘Carbon Trading – and What Should Be on the Negotiating Table at Copenhagen‘ post. The climate talks are over now, and appear to have achieved little more than add to a global atmosphere of discouragement, and so it’s left to us, the average guy on the street, to do what they should have done – that being to deeply consider what the world we want to develop should look like and to then consider how we can get from where we are now to that destination.
One of the key points I raised in the aforesaid article is the need to educate, educate, educate. The kind of education I’m referring to is not your contemporary, institutionalised, factory-type schooling that churns out faithful drones of consumption – but rather more practical-based education that enables individuals to take on the very real social, ecologic, resource challenges we now face.
The clip below, I think, is a good way to get one thinking about the topic in an outside-the-box fashion:
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Posted on: December 21, 2009
In Transition – the Movie
Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organizations, Community Projects, Consumerism, DVDs/Books, Eco-Villages, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Peak Oil, People Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh
In Transition 1.0: from oil dependence to local resilience, available now!
The title says it all. Sit back and enjoy the latest work from the Transition Towns movement. You can watch in parts via YouTube below, or if you prefer, catch the whole thing in one hit on Vimeo.
‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun. – TransitionCulture.org
Part I
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