People who read my work often say, “Okay, so it’s clear you don’t
like this culture, but what do you want to replace it?” The answer is
that I don’t want any one culture to replace this culture. I want ten
thousand cultures to replace this culture, each one arising organically
from its own place. That’s how humans inhabited the planet (or, more
precisely, their landbases, since each group inhabited a place, and not the whole world, which is precisely the point), before this culture set about reducing all cultures to one.
There is an old
African saying "Whether elephants make love or war, the grass suffers."
The two elephants in the agricultural seed business are now making real
war, although they have been wary of each other for years. Monsanto,
a relatively recent entry into the business, has become the "dominant
male" in the battle after moving to acquire a large number of formerly
independent seed companies. Pioneer,
content for years to be the premiere corn breeder in the world, has
Last month, the world lost a Nobel laureate. In the many tributes following his death, Norman Borlaug was credited with saving more lives than any man in history. Borlaug’s legacy was the Green Revolution – bringing industrial agriculture to Mexico, India, and Pakistan. Pesticides, ammonia fertilizer, irrigation, and hybrid seeds resulted in a predictable outcome: lush green fields full of high-yielding crops. At last, mankind had the tools at its fingertips to overcome hunger.
One of the earliest health and anatomy lessons for many of us came from the traditional spiritual "Dem Bones," when as children we sang how "the toe bone's connected to the foot bone," the foot bone to the ankle, the shin, on up to the neck and head.
The lesson reflects the importance of connectivity. Without the knee bone, leg bone or even the tiniest of bones, the body's ability to work and move about as a whole suffers. We can apply this lesson today as we consider how we get places and how we create healthy, sustainable communities.
In the lunchroom at Stowe Elementary School in Duluth, Minn., forlorn piles of half-eaten sandwiches and bruised bananas are transformed from trash to treasure.
Instead of tossing their uneaten school lunch scraps in the garbage bin, Stowe students donate their leftover fruits and vegetables to the school's worm compost. Items that aren't as compost-friendly, such as breads and potatoes, are donated to area farmers, who feed the free and tasty slop to their pigs.
Rich consumers are still voraciously gobbling up the world's resources, despite the worst recession in a generation, with their appetite pushing the planet into "ecological debt" from today, according to a report by think-tank the new economics foundation.
This "ecological debt day" marks the point in the year when consumption around the world exceeds the Earth's annual "biocapacity" — so for the remainder of the year, we will be eating into environmental resources that will not be replaced, according to nef's calculations.
Pam Hartwell-Herrero is making sure she washes her family's clothes when the olive tree, rhubarb and coffee berries in her front yard look thirsty.
Why?
Hartwell-Herrero and a team of fellow water conservation enthusiasts recently installed a "laundry to landscape" graywater system at her 1960s Fairfax bungalow. It took most of a day to attach a special valve, punch a hole in her garage wall and set up the pipes leading from her washing machine to the garden.
But now, every time Hartwell-Herrero fires up a load of whites, the plants perk up.
San Franciscans have six more weeks before they're required to toss their food scraps into green composting bins or face a fine - but apparently all the trash talk coming out of City Hall is already having an effect.
Just a few months ago, the city Department of the Environment was doling out five to 10 green composting bins a day; now that number is up to 130. The amount of composted material coming out of San Francisco is up 15 percent over the past few months - now totaling 480 tons every day.
CALIFORNIA, Md. - Approaching Evergreen Elementary, it's clear right away that there's something different about this new school. A pair of silo-like structures squats in front of the two-story brick building - cisterns storing rainwater for flushing the toilets. Then there are the cactuses and other plants growing atop the entrance canopy - put there to soak up more rain.
