Across the United States, telecom providers have begun mapping their plans to deploy 5G “small,” microwave-emitting cellular sites throughout neighborhoods. Every person deserves to be informed about what’s happening and what’s within every household’s ability to control. Already the largest thing that humanity has built, we double the Internet’s size every two years. The Internet […]
Connecting the Dots: Insane Trade and Climate Chaos
This blog is also available in Dutch, Greek, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Imagine a world where food routinely gets shipped thousands of miles away to be processed, then shipped back to be sold right where it started. Imagine cows from Mexico being fed corn imported from the United States, then being exported to the United […]
Is 5G Worth the Risks?
In recent months there’s been a lot of talk about 5G – the next generation of wireless technology. 5G is being touted as a necessary step to the ‘internet of things’ – a world in which our refrigerators alert us when we’re low on milk, our baby’s diapers tell us when they need to be […]
Growthism: its ecological, economic and ethical limits
We have many problems – poverty, unemployment, environmental destruction, climate change, financial instability, etc. – but only one solution for everything, namely economic growth. We believe that growth is the costless, win-win solution to all problems, or at least the necessary precondition for any solution. This is growthism. It now creates more problems than it […]
Saving Japan’s Seed Heritage from “Free Trade”
This blog is also available in Greek, Russian and Spanish. I recently had the opportunity to interview Masahiko Yamada, formerly Japan´s Minister of Agriculture and now one of the country´s foremost food sovereignty activists. We met at an international Economics of Happiness Conference in Prato, Italy, where Yamada delivered a keynote speech about the birth […]
Tosepan: Resistance and Renewal in Mexico
This blog is also available in Russian and Spanish. Since the mid-1980s, Mexico has been a poster child for globalization. Through free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions, the country has been “liberalized” – opened up to unfettered corporate investment and imports – to an extent matched by few other countries. […]
Groomed to Consume
This blog is also available in Russian and Spanish. With Christmas coming up, household consumption will soon hit its yearly peak in many countries. Despite homely pictures of tranquility on mass-produced greeting cards, Christmas is more about frenzied shopping and overspending than peace on earth or quality time with family and friends. As with so […]
Unlike a Globalized Food System, Local Food Won’t Destroy the Environment
This blog is also available in Arabic, Dutch, French, Italian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Turkish. If you’re seeking some good news during these troubled times, look at the ecologically sound ways of producing food that have percolated up from the grassroots in recent years. Small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers and food and farming activists have […]
Jacques Ellul: A Prophet for Our Tech-Saturated Times
By now you have probably read about the so-called “tech backlash.” Facebook and other social media have undermined what’s left of the illusion of democracy, while smartphones damage young brains and erode the nature of discourse in the family. Meanwhile computers and other gadgets have diminished our attention spans along with our ever-failing connection to […]
Reading Tagore to Become Human
In 1922, Rabindranath Tagore published one of his most important works, the play Mukta-Dhara. The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one. A child of mysterious birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a […]