Posts Tagged ‘sustainability’
Native Colored Cotton Rescue Project in Mexico
Mexico is the country of origin of Gossypium hirsutum, which is the species of cotton used in 95% of the world´s production. The Costa Chica of Oaxaca is one of the 11 sub-sites of origin in Mexico where wild and cultivated, native cotton are still found. Farmers and artisans in this region have been cultivating…
Read MoreHow Then Shall We Live?
How then shall we live? – a short story of old roots and new shoots in Transylvania “Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there” – Gary Snyder “The place will tell us what to do.” Robyn made this prediction more than 20 years ago. Now we understand more what…
Read MoreIt’s Not the End, We Have Several Possible Futures: Interview with indigenous author Ailton Krenak
For decades, scientists have been warning that the world is heading toward catastrophic scenarios due to climate change. But Ailton Krenak refuses to think about an apocalypse. On the contrary, he argues that there are several possible futures — but they will only be achievable when we realize that “being is more important than having.”…
Read MoreThe Green Growth Delusion
In the annals of industrial civilization, the Green New Deal counts as one of the more ambitious projects. Its scale is vast, promising to reform every aspect of how we power our machines, light our homes and fuel our cars. At this late hour of ecological and climate crisis, the Green New Deal is also…
Read MoreWhen Idiot Savants Do Climate Science
William Nordhaus, who turned 82 this year, was the first economist in our time to attempt to quantify the cost of climate change. His climate-modeling wizardry, which won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018, has made him one of the world’s most consequential thinkers. His ideas have been adopted by the…
Read MoreNew Worlds to Build
George Monbiot recently came out swinging for me in his article ‘The cruel fantasies of well-fed people’, concerning my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future. Since that book in large part is a rejoinder to his own volume, Regenesis, I can hardly blame him for aiming a few blows. I just wish they hadn’t…
Read MoreBicycles and Localization
World Celebration Days are ways to highlight a cause, to collectively focus and bring important ideas to public attention at the community level while uniting globally behind them. Several important days were packed into the month of June. These included World Bicycle Day, followed two days later by World Environment Day, and then World Localization…
Read MoreFive bad arguments against agrarian localism
Perhaps incorrectly, or even arrogantly, I’m anticipating that my soon-to-be-published book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future might elicit pushback from those unconvinced by its arguments for agrarian localism. If it does, obviously that’s fine. It’s a polemical sort of book, so counterargument is only to be expected. But my hope is for thoughtful, engaged…
Read MoreStop Solar Geoengineering
Geoengineering is the intentional, large-scale technological manipulation of the Earth’s systems, often discussed as a techno-fix for combating climate change. Climate geoengineering technologies include so-called solar radiation management, greenhouse gas removal and sequestration and weather modification. None of these technofixes address the root causes of climate change, and would allow CO2 emissions to continue, creating…
Read MoreYard to Table: Building a Local Wood Economy
Inside the Washington, DC beltway – a densely populated area of roughly 20 by 20 miles – trees removed due to disease, death, and development contained 200 million board feet of usable lumber in 2008. That’s enough wood to frame more than 12,000 homes of 2,000 square feet each.[1] But instead, nearly all of it…
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