Our Plunder Of Nature Will End Up Killing Capitalism And Our Obscene Lifestyles
To anyone who is paying attention, things look doomed. Fortunately for American capitalism, nobody is paying attention. They never have. [...more]
To anyone who is paying attention, things look doomed. Fortunately for American capitalism, nobody is paying attention. They never have. [...more]
Everything from our food systems, water sources, oceans and deserts is negatively influenced by our obsession with mining, transporting and burning carbon-based fossil fuels. [...more]
Thirty-three years ago, I watched as a culture that had been sealed off from the rest of the world was suddenly thrown open to economic development. Witnessing the impact of the modern world on an ancient culture gave me insights into how economic globalisation creates feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, particularly in the young, and how those psychological pressures are helping to spread the global consumer culture. Since that time I have been promoting the rebuilding of community and local economies as the foundation of an ‘Economics of Happiness’. [...more]
Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed. [...more]
"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford. [...more]
The number of hungry people, which was declining for several decades, bottomed out in the mid-1990s at 825 million. It then climbed to 915 million in 2008 and jumped to over 1 billion in 2009. With world food prices projected to continue rising, so too will the number of hungry people, leaving millions of families trying to survive on one meal per day. “We know from studying earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians, Mayans, and many others,” says Brown, “that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their demise. It now appears that food may be the weak link in our early twenty-first century civilization as well. [...more]
The following is an exchange between two environmentaists, Paul Kingsworth and George Monbiot over the question of how to approach the enormous threat posed by climate change and resource depletion. The collapse of civilization will bring us a saner world, argues Paul Kingsnorth. No, writes George Monbiot -- we can't let billions perish. [...more]
A sort of generation gap on global issues is emerging around the pace of change. The older generation, especially the older generation of well-heeled white men, today respond to our calls for rapid change by urging "realism" -- meaning an expectation of delayed action and minimal commitment. [...more]
What if you woke up one day to find that humans eventually did make the right decisions, and those decisions had all the right effects and, well, the world turned out to be a pretty cool place. [...more]
People across the country and throughout the world are realizing that to confront the climate crisis and create secure and healthy communities, we'll need vibrant regional food systems. Interested in growing a local food revolution in your kitchen or community? Here are some helpful resources [...more]