In December of 2019, my best friend Kit took me and my partner to the place where she grew up, in the remote Thora Valley, in the pristine forested foothills of Eastern Australia’s Great Dividing Range. As we drove down Darkwood, the single road into the Thora, Kit told us stories of floods and mouldy […]
What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics
The crises of the modern world verify what indigenous cultures have always known: that all phenomena are inextricably interconnected. As the Amazon – one of the most vital organs of the Earth – is razed to fuel the global economy, a virus borne of disrupted ecosystems assaults the lungs of human beings. And as economic […]
Convenience, Community, and Late-Stage Capitalism
Yesterday I went to the post office to mail a package to my daughter overseas. She’s been in the military for years, so I’m familiar with the process. Hauling the big box on my hip, I greeted the post mistress and asked her for a customs form. “Oh, you have to do that online now,” […]
Origin of Covid-19: industrial livestock?
Let’s be clear: there is no solid evidence that the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is the cause of the current Covid-19 disease pandemic, is an open seafood market in Wuhan that also trades in domestic and wild animals. All that we know is that several early cases of people diagnosed with Covid-19 either […]
Comparative Resilience: 8 Principles for Post-COVID Reconstruction
This past weekend, a bright Georgetown undergraduate asked me how I squared my passion for localization with the theory of comparative advantage. For economics newbies, he was referring to David Ricardo’s argument that every community should find one product to specialize in and trade for everything else. I gave my usual response that the theory […]
5 ways coronavirus could help humanity survive the ecological crisis
The human tragedy of the coronavirus is immense. Thousands have died, hundreds of thousands have been infected globally, and millions more have been affected. Whilst infectious disease has always been a part of the human experience, the expansion of industrial civilization has inexorably amplified the risk of new diseases. Uncontrolled industrial expansion also dangerously heats […]
My Year Without Industrial Food
For the last year I grew and foraged 100% of my food. No grocery stores, no restaurants, not even a drink at a bar. Nature was my garden, my pantry and my pharmacy. Most people would imagine I live in the countryside on a farm, but actually I live in a city – Orlando, Florida, […]
Dammed Good Questions about the Green New Deal
Hydroelectric power from dams might be the thorniest issue that proponents of the Green New Deal (GND) have to grapple with. Providing more energy than solar and wind combined, dams could well become the key backup “renewable” if it otherwise proves impossible to get off of fossil fuels fast enough. Rivers and lakes are an […]
Thinking Outside the Grid
Thirty years ago, a friend of mine published a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth. It described the huge environmental benefits that would result if everyone made some simple adjustments to their way of life. Six hundred thousand gallons of gas could be saved every day, for example, if […]
Step Aside Agribusiness: It’s Time for Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis
The recent UN Climate Action Summit was tricky for agribusiness CEOs. With forest fires raging in the Amazon, a damning new report about the food system by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and millions of young people out in streets clamoring to shut down fossil fuels and factory farming, it wasn’t easy for […]