There’s a new conversation spreading through the environmental movement at the moment. Their first conference is underway this weekend, the first issue of the journal is out this week, so it seems like a good time to engage with the Dark Mountain project. Essentially, the Dark Mountain proposal is that every civilization in history has [...]
Archive | May, 2010
What we learned this week
The latest update from the Centre for the Advancement for a Steady State Economy (CASSE), the Steady Stater, is available as a pdf here. Some good news on something we campaigned on recently: $480 million has been cancelled from Haiti’s debts since the earthquake. A spice rack made from old light bulbs, a traffic cone [...]
Speaking louder
Activists in Vancouver have fitted out a local dolphin sculpture with a giant six-pack ring to highlight the problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. The Plastic Pollution Coalition has graced a series of statues with the rings, in a rather eye-catching bit of culture-jamming. In real life of course, the rings would be [...]
Green Up Luton video review
For the last three months Lou and I have been trying to reduce our energy use, cut our waste and change the way we travel, as part of the council’s Green Up Luton challenge. As the challenge draws to a close we’ve been feeding back to the council on how it went, and this is [...]
The People’s Supermarket
Here’s an idea I like the sound of – creating a community owned and run supermarket, and undercutting the big supermarkets in the process. Chef Arthur Potts Dawson is trying to do exactly that, giving people cheaper groceries by getting together a community of shoppers. Customers register, volunteer a certain number of hours a month [...]
Party at the pumps
I used to live just 200 yards from this particular petrol station on Holloway Road, so I was pleased to see that it hosted an impromptu street party last week. Very generous of them.
Bad Samaritans, by Ha-Joon Chang
Bad Samaritans is the name Ha-Joon Chang gives to the rich world in this book about globalisation. Like the Good Samaritan of the gospels, they want to help the poor. It’s just that they don’t know how, and their actions actually make things worse. The policies that the rich world imposes on the developing world [...]
What we learned this week
Half of all meals in the UK are eaten alone, Boris Johnson observes in this rather good article on loneliness. We’re also stressed, and the credit crunch has been bad for our mental health – one in 10 has seen their GP about stress since the start of the financial crisis, and 1 in 14 [...]
10 things you can do for biodiversity today
Today is International Biodiversity Day. To mark the occasion, here are 10 things you can do this weekend to boost biodiversity in your area, courtesy of sustainability agency Futerra. Be lazy with your lawn. Don’t mow it too often and let the edges run wild – it’s better for the beasties. Bee friendly. Plant flowers [...]
Seasick, by Alanna Mitchell
Seasick: The hidden ecological crisis of the global ocean is an eye-opening book. In a style that is part scientific enquiry, part travelogue, Alanna Mitchell visits a series of places where the ocean is changing, from Panama to Zanzibar. She explores the Great Barrier Reef, joins marine research expeditions, and takes a submarine to the [...]
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