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For health, smarts and resilience, drink your beer

By April 8, 2013
beer inforgraphic cropped

Anybody interested in buying more food from local farmers and learning how to cook and preserve it at home knows that taking control of what goes in your mouth is a powerful way to get healthier. But if you're trying to eat more organic kale, more free-range eggs and more pastured beef, you may also be trying to cut back on booze to stiffen up that beer belly or shrink those love handles. Well, if you don't think about drinking more IPA as the high road to a healthy body and even a sharper … [Read more...]

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You built that: 3 top strategies for resilience

By October 17, 2012
letterpress

President Obama aroused the GOP's ire for reminding business owners of the obvious point that their success relies in part on roads and bridges built at public expense. But the rest of us would do well not to place too much faith in big government in the uncertain times coming with peak oil, climate change and economic collapse. Whether you think we're facing another financial meltdown this fall that could lead to global chaos or just another fifty years of on-and-off recessions and partial … [Read more...]

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Ackerman and McPherson: Madness of the mainstream

By September 27, 2012
Lunacy sign

The following dialogue continues an on-going cyber-discussion between two cultural philosophers, Dr. Sherry Ackerman and Dr. Guy McPherson. ACKERMAN: Wow! I don’t leave the homestead all that often. And, when I do, I don’t go that far. But, today I had occasion to venture out into mainstream culture for the afternoon and I was flabbergasted. The mainstream has never been my thing, but, Guy, I'm telling you that it's plunged even further into madness. Sheer madness. There's nothing out … [Read more...]

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Fantastic animated Transition video

By October 30, 2011
screenshot

Thanks to Rob Hopkins for introducing me to a great new animated video from Ireland, "Surfing the Waves of Change." "The challenges we're facing are huge," begins the narrator of the nine-minute film, as ominous music plays in the background and a surfer in a wetsuit stands atop a steep cliff battered by rough sees. "These waves of change threaten our way of life: a broken economic system, job losses, resource scarcity, rising prices. The levels of anxiety are growing...How do I cope? How do … [Read more...]

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Making Transition happen, starting now

By August 5, 2011
plant growing from rock

The Transition Town movement starts from the realization that modern consumer culture is not sustainable. We currently use too much oil and other fossil fuels, resources that won't last forever and are being used up fast. Fossil fuels permeate modern life. At home, work, play, or moving in between, we're almost always burning fossil fuels. Or we're using petroleum-based plastic stuff from around the world, wrought from fossil-fueled networks of production, distribution and … [Read more...]

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Children in Transition: Art, nature, life

By June 9, 2011
Nature Child

Recently I sat in on a Transition US webinar on Children in Transition with Dianne Monroe. Monroe calls herself an “Expressive Arts Facilitator"—she creates, leads workshops, and mentors in San Antonio, Texas. Her purpose with the presentation was to look at how our interactions with children, as parents, extended relatives, educators, and community members, can help them meet the future. Transition in the webinar title refers to the worldwide Transition Movement founded in 2005 by Rob … [Read more...]

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Mission critical approach to planetary risk management

By June 7, 2011
lit up aeroplane cockpit dashboard

How often do we think about the complexity and risk inherent in our modern world? We don’t think twice about jumping onto a Boeing 737 and flying to Sydney at the drop of a hat. We take for granted the intricate supply chains required to keep our supermarket shelves stocked. We plug electronic equipment into our 240 volt sockets without ever thinking about the reliability of our power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. Yet what sort of risk management decisions … [Read more...]

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We’re all peak oilers now

By June 1, 2011
Photo by Poorfish

There has been a distinct increase in dialogue around energy in the last year, and I hear a growing acceptance of the idea that we live on a finite planet and will either reduce the amount of energy we demand from this planet, or hit some version of a brick wall when that demand cannot be met. Maybe we’re there already, we’re just not hitting the wall at speed, and therefore we’re not recognizing it. Before we can find the silver lining in our predicament, we first need to look at where … [Read more...]

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Transition within: mental resilience

By November 1, 2010
You're not alone, the end times are freakin crazy!

Almost six years ago I swallowed the little red pill of peak oil, climate change and the growing instability of the world economy. My life has never again been the same. Like a lot of folks, my initial response was, “Oh my God, what do I do?” I was a manager in corporate America with frightfully few useful low-energy skills, so, first I just focused on basic preparation for a lower energy future. I assessed my food resources, water supply, financial choices and health care needs. Frankly, … [Read more...]

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