With so much talk about the need to radically reduce our ecological footprint and the imminent end of oil availability there is a rising tide of panic about inter-continental travel. It seems that the air travel industry may have finally caught on. This month top members of the EU air industry are meeting to discuss [...]
What will you do to save our lives and genes, before we must?
We live in an extraordinary time of dramatic change in the face of scientific and technological advances: rapidly accelerating global climate change and the certainty that we will soon run out of oil, the lifeblood of civilization itself. As engineers, architects, businessmen and [...]
My last day in England is blustery and autumnal. I hike up the lane behind my sister’s house and follow a Public Footpath sign across stubbly fields. The wind roars in a big ash tree and a flock of about a hundred rooks rise flapping and cawing into the air. I find a fragment of [...]
Michael Pollan’s new book is called IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. In it, he disparages something he calls “The Western Diet”. This “Western Diet” is made up, not of food, but of “foodlike substances” sold in supermarkets. Michael wants to get us back to eating real food.
Hello Michael? Hello? What is this “Western” nonsense?
Has Europe been [...]
A friend of mine knows a guy from the Pashtun region of Afghanistan. The guy told my friend that if he wanted to send money home, he would do it by giving cash to someone from the same culture who was traveling back. “What?” asked my friend. “Someone you know, or just anyone?”
“Anyone”, said the [...]
There’s an ongoing dilemma faced by many of the ecologically minded city dwellers I know. While many of them feel a strong desire to be living in ways that are aligned with their environmental activism, this seems practically impossible to achieve in an urban setting.However, there is also a feeling that urban centers are where [...]
When I asked Village Health Works founder and director Deogratias Niyizonkiza what inspired him to build Burundi’s first free medical clinic, he said, “Anger.” Then he laughed and continued, “When I went back to my country, and saw how people were living, I got sooooo angry. So I asked what I could do to help, [...]
“Learn skills, cultivate knowledge, discuss ideas, question assumptions, revolutionize education ” the Tatamagouche Summer Free School website declares (http://freeschool.fairtrademedia.com). For four days each August, Waldegrave Farm in Tatamagouche Nova Scotia is transformed into a whirlwind of energy, discussion and skill-sharing, bringing in participants from across the country and over various borders. The Tatamagouche Summer [...]
Green Solutions Magazine (www.greensolutionsmag.com) is an on-line magazine designed to report information about environmental solutions and services, expert recommendations, best practices, products, tools and other solution-based news and resources to help economies, communities, businesses and individuals with alternative options that they can implement to create sustainability, prevent destructive impacts on or improve the quality of [...]
I was in the San Francisco Bay area last week for work. The first day, I had to commute from Oakland to Mountain View by car. The approximately 45-mile trip took me almost two hours: two hours of stop-and-go traffic and frustration, with only the radio for company.
That afternoon, after work, I drove to Palo [...]
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