Posts Tagged ‘sustainability’
Yard 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…
Read MoreHin Lad Nai: A Successful Model of Indigenous Resistance
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a couple of days with an Indigenous hillside tribe here in Thailand called Hin Lad Nai, and I wanted to share some of that story with you today. It’s the story of a small community who, when faced with a multitude of challenges to their…
Read MoreEcological Economics
Herman Daly, who died in October of this year, was for 60 years a powerful and articulate critic of mainstream economic thinking. Along with an early stint working at the World Bank, Daly had a distinguished career in academia, authored numerous books, and was the 1996 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award. What follows is…
Read MoreThe food shortage solution in your backyard
A confluence of crises – lockdowns and business closures, mandates and worker shortages, supply chain disruptions and inflation, sanctions and war – have compounded to trigger food shortages; and we have been warned that they may last longer than the food stored in our pantries. What to do? Jim Gale, founder of Food Forest Abundance,…
Read MoreThe Radical Roots of Community Supported Agriculture
Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) is one of those rare ideas which combine transformative potential with an elegant simplicity. The CSA model of funding and sustaining locally-rooted agriculture has grown exponentially around the globe over the past four decades. Since the first formal CSA at Robyn Van En’s Indian Line Farm in South Egremont, Massachusetts in the…
Read MoreRepairing broken economies
Sepp Eisenriegler loves giving second chances: to the defunct electrical appliances awaiting repair or refurbishment, the hundreds of unemployed people he’s trained as skilled repairers over the decades and even the two rescue dogs that follow him devotedly around Reparatur-und Service-Zentrum (R.U.S.Z.), the repair and service center he founded in Vienna in 1998. It wasn’t…
Read MoreThe inner dimension of climate adaptation
Capitalism in its earliest incarnation dates back to the end of Europe’s medieval period. ‘Growth’, such as it was, first manifested itself in the innovation and creativity of the Renaissance, while economic expansion in the commonly understood sense was to come later. The commercial revolution of the 16th century, the scientific breakthroughs of the 17th…
Read MoreAs we consider our future…
Ask not for energy or goods that depend on international supply chains. Ask not for solar power, wind power or battery electric storage (BESS). Ask not for e-vehicles (EVs) or smartphones. These can’t be manufactured without fossil fuels, extractions, deforestation, greenhouse gases, toxic waste and international supply chains. They can’t operate without backup from…
Read MoreAppropriate Technology, Traditional Cultures and Degrowth
The industrial-capitalist-technological system is characterized by perpetual growth through excessive production, relentless marketing and public relations to expand markets and demand through consumerism.[1] In the process, novel ‘needs’ are manufactured and the boundaries and norms of comfort and convenience are continually reshaped.[2] In this system relatively few technologies are socially necessary, and their manufacture and…
Read MoreIndigenous and feminine wisdom: an interview with Ella Noah Bancroft
Ella Noah Bancroft is a descendant of the peoples of the Bundjalung nation (in present-day Australia) and has bloodlines to England, Poland and Scotland. She is an Indigenous artist, storyteller, mentor and active advocate for The Decolonization movement. She is the founder of the not-for-profit event The Returning, which works to reconnect people back to…
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