Weekly Linkfest – Edition 007
News — by Patrick Blampied July 19, 2010
Welcome to round seven of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.
Off we go:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- A forward thinking Sicilian town has ditched its expensive, smelly, dirty diesel trucks in favour of donkeys for collecting the garbage (on YouTube and as podcast). This serves as a good proof of concept for the Maribyrnong council in Melbourne which is one of only two councils in Australia with a public peak oil policy. The policy mainly covers how to keep council services such as waste disposal running, as society as we know it starts to collapse.
- Major wins as biotechs back-off in Brazil and organic beats GE in India.
- An article about our perpetual assault on ‘weeds’ and permaculture as the answer to a war that can only end with nature winning, whether we join it or not.
- A New Orleans’ Zoo is teaching kids about the impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, and the effect we’re having on the environment.
- The creation of new power capacity from renewable energy has exceeded new fossil fuel power generation in the United States and Europe for the second year running, according to two United Nations reports published Thursday.
Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):
- The Energy Descent Pickle – Explained using an analogy of Tigger and Piglet from Winnie the Poo.
- Vigilante group releases detailed private information of 1300 illegal immigrants.
- As we run out of time to act on climate change, we continue to argue over matters that should be settled already, clearing the way for action. Two new reports say the science of climate change is fine, but that some scientists and the institutions they work in need to change their attitudes.
- January-June warmest first half of year on record.
- More questions about the policing at the G20 with Liam McHugh Russell asking “I would like to know why I was stripped naked and forced to sit naked. I find this cruel and unusual and unnecessary. This is how I was treated for attempting to exercise my right to counsel upon detainment, just to know what was going on and the validity of my arrest.?”
- Ontario’s rate cut for solar power a blow to green energy with Ontario Power Authority quietly chopping the rate being paid to more profitable installations from 80.2 cents to 58.8 cents per kilowatt hour.
- Gulf Oil Spill Altering Food Web Scientists Say, Long-Term Impact Unknown.
Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):
- New non-GM apple that’s red to the core!
- How can a smart species be so dumb?
- Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent.
- Nanopillars that Trap More Light could lead to cheaper solar cells.
- Finally! Something that eats jellyfish.
Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!! – editor (at) permaculture.org.au
Comments (4)
From the article on weeds:
“This all reads so much like a war story, it’s as though a template had been laid over the data, making it come out as another version of the Great American Myth: Once again, the valiant American little guy, in this case the noble farmer (and his ally Monsanto), takes on inscrutable evil, an herbicide-resistant form of pigweed that can grow three inches a day, reach heights of seven feet, choke out crops and wreck farm equipment. If we throw a little Agent Orange at it, we’re back in another era, fighting commie pigweed.”
I want to get hold of that pigweed!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Tamara Griffiths — July 19, 2010 @ 6:06 pm
“We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.”
-Tim Jackson
Splended! I saxed this from one of the articles, thanks for making this link collection!
Comment by Øyvind Holmstad — July 19, 2010 @ 6:18 pm
One more link (bad news), Island is selling their geothermical energy to a Canadian company. Sounds like selling your soil or your water to me. Globalism is crazy!
http://www.dn.no/forsiden/utenriks/article1939138.ece
Comment by Øyvind Holmstad — July 19, 2010 @ 7:09 pm
I tried growing amaranth (pigweed) this summer. Grew amazingly fast until we got a bit of a flood. Not tolerant of waterlogging at all.
Comment by JBob — July 20, 2010 @ 3:14 am
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