The Trap of Green Consumerism

I often get asked whether I think fair trade is a bad idea, and my response is usually "it's much better to buy fair trade than to buy unfair trade - but if you care about farmers, ask them what they want." In general, I'm not favorably inclined toward green consumerism.

Would We Listen to Nature if Our Lives Depended on It?

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.

Monsanto and Pioneer Duke It Out Over Biotech Corn, Farmers Take the Hit

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

Thinking Beyond Electric Cars

From listening to the headlines about the report from the Committee on Climate Change, you might think that a wholesale switch to electric cars over the next few decades would magic away our carbon emissions from transport.

Norman Borlaug's Unsustainable Green Revolution

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.

Connecting Transit and Health

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.