The Food Crisis: “A Perfect Storm” - and How to Turn the Tide
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, GMOs, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton — by Craig Mackintosh
A recently released study, the largest of its kind, examines the root causes of, and solutions for, a food crisis that will likely get much worse before it gets better — and that will never get better if we continue with business as usual
I’m hungry.
No, not because I don’t have enough food to eat, but because I’m too busy typing and too lazy to walk to the refrigerator. How I wish it were this simple for the people I keep reading about.
Comments (3)Posted on: November 14, 2008
Chemical Based Farming Systems Robbing Us of Nutrients
Health & Disease, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Water Contaminaton — by Craig Mackintosh
 Full Report (5mb PDF) Executive Summary (PDF) 2-Page Consumer Summary (PDF) Press Release (PDF) |
Nutrient levels in food supply eroded by pursuit of high yields
When we sit down to a meal of supermarket-bought produce, we like to think we’re getting a reasonable cross-section of the body’s nutrient requirements, but studies are showing that our chemical intensive monocrop farming systems are not delivering the vital ’secondary nutrients’ that our ancestors enjoyed. Plants ‘flourishing’ on fast, soluble chemical fertilisers get ‘lazy’ and do not develop the deep, healthy root systems that pull additional elements out of the soil. In addition, the soil micro-organisms that break down organic matter and minerals to feed to plant roots are being slaughtered through chemical bombardment and violent mechanised manipulation of their environment.
Essentially, we’re getting robbed, and having to pay for it in reduced health/vitality/longevity and increased medical bills.
Comments (1)Posted on: November 13, 2008
Powering Down - Will We?
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh
 Most underestimate the implications… |
Through our Hollywood-tinted glasses we’re accustomed to happy endings. The instinctive “it won’t happen to me” mentality is alive and well, but, whilst perhaps preserving the comfortable status quo (if not our sanity), it does little to promote objectivity. In a world threatened by global warming, potential constructive accomplishments are thus too often hampered and bogged down in the realm of discourse and debate.
In plain English - we need to get real.
On this note, check out the following clip. Richard Heinburg, the author of the book “Powering Down“, has much to say on possible strategies, or failing that, outcomes, for our post peak-oil world. I think it’s time we really examine, not just computer climate models - but societal projections.
Comments (0)Posted on: November 12, 2008
Exodus
Biodiversity, Comedy Break, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Marc Roberts
 Click for larger view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
Whilst the newly elected president of the Maldives brings up the massive issue of the resettlement of whole nations due to sea level rise, the UK panics over a more imaginary inundation, and limits non-EU immigration to ballet dancers and sheep-shearers. The Dutch, meanwhile, - in their great tradition of physical nation building - plan to build a hydro electric island in the north sea. The basking shark, amongst others, begins its long goodbye.
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Cross the Line - an Interview with Sustainable World Radio
Podcasts, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
Geoff and Nadia demonstrating a miniature dam, swale
and overflow system at Quail Springs
When we were at Quail Springs recently, Sustainable World Radio came up to see us and to talk to Geoff and Nadia about their Permaculture work. You can listen to the clip in its entirety here. Geoff and Nadia talk about how and why they first got interested in Permaculture, and share inspiring thoughts on why we should "step over the line" from our never-complete, disatisfied lives, where we want to live a better, more fulfilling life, but we keep stepping back to the uncomfortable ‘comfort zone’ we know. As Geoff says, this psychological conflict has us "dying every day", as we keep living lives we don’t want to live - too scared to cross over and embark on what would actually turn out to be a very enjoyable path to personal fulfillment.
Thanks to Geoff, Nadia and Sustainable World Radio for a very inspiring talk!
Comments (5)Posted on: November 11, 2008
New Beginnings?
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
 Click for larger view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
I don’t blame old Cantankerous Frank here (at right) for getting all excited. Everyone likes to hope - and there’s nothing like a perceived new beginning to get people all agitated in a positive way, ready to pick up the ‘ol load again, and trudge forward, excitedly, into a golden new age.
For myself, half of my relief over the election was just as much that McCain didn’t get in as it was knowing that Obama will step into the Oval Office in January. The thought of just more of the same old Bush mentality was more than I could stand (I mean - really - how did he get in that second time around? Okay, let’s not go there).
And, now it’s down to Mr. Obama - a man who is the smack-dab centre target of more expectations than Santa ever was. Boy has Obama got his work cut out for him. If there was ever a great big pile of doggie do left on someone’s desk, it is this end-of-term.
Comments (1)Posted on: November 6, 2008
Escaping the Matrix - Lifestyles Without Limits
Consumerism, Global Warming/Climate Change, Society, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh
How many of you remember having to share the bath water with your siblings? A few baby boomers may get nostalgic here, but younger ones will laugh, or shreak “eewww!”.
For us in the North, long gone are the days of little Johnny going in last, the days of gathering wood and doing your best to make it last the winter, the days of cold mornings and dimly lit rooms. Frugality has given way to frivolity, conservation to carelessness. For decades our collective psyche has looked to infinity and beyond. We’ve lived lifestyles without limits.
Last century the phrase ‘The Great American Dream’ was coined. Our dream was to live the rags to riches story, to be whatever we wanted to be, to reach for the stars. It was a pleasant fiction, and some of us even got to live it. Just some.
Comments (1)Posted on: October 30, 2008
Human Footprint
Consumerism, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
One life. One Lifetime. What does it all add up to? Imagine that you could see, piled up in front of you, all the things that you will ever use and produce in your lifetime.
The UK’s Channel Four has done the imagining, and the research, for us. The following documentary is a unique way of looking at the impact of our short, modern life — our individual human footprint. It is a documentary of excess, about an ‘average’ UK existence.
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Posted on: October 26, 2008
Learning from the Past
Biodiversity, Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination — by Earth Policy Institute
by Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute, Washington D.C., U.S.A.
Our twenty-first century global civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond. We do have one unique asset at our command–an archeological record that shows us what happened to earlier civilizations that got into environmental trouble and failed to respond.
As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of the early societies that were in environmental trouble were able to change their ways in time to avoid decline and collapse. Six centuries ago, for example, Icelanders realized that overgrazing on their grass-covered highlands was leading to extensive soil loss from the inherently thin soils of the region. Rather than lose the grasslands and face economic decline, farmers joined together to determine how many sheep the highlands could sustain and then allocated quotas among themselves, thus preserving their grasslands and avoiding what Garrett Hardin later termed the “tragedy of the commons.”
Comments (0)Posted on: October 25, 2008
Congress Confronts its Contradictions
Alternatives to Political Systems, Consumerism, Economics, Society — by George Monbiot
They baled out of the bail-out, but the money will still have to come from us. It always has.
by George Monbiot - journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist
According to Senator Jim Bunning, the proposal to purchase $700bn of dodgy debt by the US government “is financial socialism, it is un-American”(1). The economics professor Nouriel Roubini calls George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke “a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America”(2). Bill Perkins, the venture capitalist who took out an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the deal, calls it “trickle-down communism”(3).
They are wrong. The banking subsidies Congress rejected last night are as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded by Bush and Paulson might be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.
Comments (1)Posted on: October 1, 2008
A Pattern Revolution
Eco-Villages, Health & Disease, People Systems, Society, Trees — by Warren Brush
by Warren Brush, Quail Springs
All over the world, an ancient way of being has combined its elemental forces with the truths gained in the modern age to spark the fires of a new and imperative revolution. It is a subtle revolution of knowing the story of where all that sustains us comes from, and of honoring those things deeply. This revolution’s power draws from an ancient well of knowing that we as humans, with our opposing thumbs, expansive brains, and the capacity for empathy, are destined to draw from as we become stewards and caretakers of the land, and one another. Weaving our story with that of which sustains us not only empowers us to be revolutionaries in an age of rampant capitalism and its resource and culture eating syndromes, but also allows us to take true responsibility for the impacts of our lives. In its sheer humility, this revolution may be the very humus that is formed under the footsteps of the soldiers of capitalism and imperialism. As they pass unaware of us, our way of being becomes the nutrient from which new life will grow in a time beyond our own.
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Easter Island - Our Past, or Our Future?
Economics, Food Shortages, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, peak oil — by Craig Mackintosh
 Click for full view Courtesy: Throbgoblins |
Easter Island has long been looked upon as an historical looking glass, through which we can observe the implications of continued environmental destruction to our planet - the larger island floating in a sea of black. The cries of a people that could clearly see destruction coming, but did little or nothing about it, come hauntingly down to us here in this new millenium. With startling clarity they teach us what happens when immediacy takes precedence over future needs.
If you have a moment to take a trip to another time and place, check out some of the material and links here. No need to dream of going to Easter Island though, as, in many ways, you’re already there….
Comments (0)Posted on: September 24, 2008
How the West was Lost
Consumerism, Economics, Society — by Craig Mackintosh
Click for larger view
Courtesy: Throbgoblins
What a week it has been. The world’s financial systems have been convulsing violently - an edge-of-seat roller coaster ride, sans the fun. Massive centralisation of financial management, combined with blinkered, short-term thinking, is seeing us teetering on the edge of a global depression. And the result? Even greater centralisation as banks swallow up banks in a bid to shore up the damage - and the taxpayer, it seems, is left to foot the bill for the greed and ineptitude of a ‘chosen few’.
The question is, where from here? Or, as this BBC article asks - "Where now for Capitalism?"
Comments (5)Posted on: September 21, 2008
Demystifying Economics
Consumerism, Financial Management, People Systems, Society — by Kath Fisher
Tigger Economics
For many people economics appears complex and incomprehensible. As soon as the debate turns to economics, and jargon such as ‘productivity’ or ‘microeconomic reform’ start to be used, people can feel alienated and mystified and unable to respond appropriately.
It seems that many policy makers rely on this economic illiteracy of the general population to make sure that policies are not opposed or that serious debate is averted.
It is imperative that the language used so glibly by politicians and policy-makers, advised by the ‘economic rationalists’ whose assumptions and methodology are never questioned, is explained and demystified.
Comments (1)Posted on: September 9, 2008
Look Mom, There’s a Farmer in Our Back Yard
Markets & Outlets, Project Positions, Society, Urban Projects — by Craig Mackintosh
Normally the words ‘business’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ do not fit harmoniously together in one sentence (although, of course, this doesn’t stop their marketing machines from trying to imply that connection). Businesses generally make money by doing damage.
Coca Cola takes perfectly good water, that we’re short of, adds ingredients that are bad for us, and then sells it back to us in a disposable can. Big Agribusiness doesn’t want you to know there are natural farming systems that people have utilised for millennia, for free, that would do the job far better than their toxic chemicals and genetic tinkering ever could. The more people killed by cigarettes, the more profit Big Tobacco makes. Even the health care systems in some countries make a buck from our misery — essentially incentivising a non-interest in preventative health education. If Big Oil and Big Coal were to encourage conservation, they’d be missing an opportunity to maximise profits today.
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