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It is a really simple idea - things that can't go on the way they have been, usually don't. Sooner or later things that have no future just stop. We all know intellectually that we can't all live and consume like middle class Americans, that our kids are going to have a harder time because of our way of life, that Empires end and ecological disasters cause things to come to hard stops. We know it, but we don't KNOW it. This blog is about coming to KNOW, and figuring out where we go from here.
I'm a science writer, teacher, environmental activist and small farmer who is trying to put her lifestyle where her mouth is, and live in a way with a future. When not writing books, serving on the board of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, I run my farm with my husband, where we raise dairy goats, herbs, pastured poultry, heirloom vegetable plants, children and havoc.
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January 31, 2010
Category: Collapse
I've come to think that I'm only beginning to grasp the ways that gender and sex have been integral in creating our collective predicament. I have and do argue that at least as significant as the famed failed suburban experiment that James Kunstler and others see as central to causing our problem was the shift to a corporatized feminism that replaced women with cheap energy, "housewifized" or professionalized all labor in the subsistence economy, and, along with the push to move farmers off their land and into the workforce, was a major factor in enabling our industrial expansion.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:09 AM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 28, 2010
Category: agriculture
One can and certainly should pressure the IMF and the World Bank to change policies, not to mention the US to redirect its aid, but let's not hold our breath here. What this also seems to be is a potentially remarkable opportunity for creative social justice work. That is, if the Haitian government can't do it, perhaps a portion of the millions of people who want to help Haiti can, providing tree seedlings and agricultural subsidies to people already working on the deforestation problem in Haiti.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 2:38 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: garden
And then I discovered the garden calendar. What a miracle it was - I realize this is one of those "duh" things that probably most of you have figured out, but for me, it was such a revelation that I can't resist sharing.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 2:02 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2010
Category: agriculture
Buying seeds here is not a quick process. First there's the perusal of all the seed catalogs, the dreaming and fantasizing with my garden porn. Then there's the marking of all the things I'd like to try this year, which...
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:54 AM • 42 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: zombies
I suspect most of the likely scenarios involve gradual declines in resource availability and increasing poverty. In some ways this is more depressing than the grand and more dramatic scenarios that writers love to create - you can win against the zombies, but it is tough to win against the enemy "crushing national debt and gradually increasing world temperatures."
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 8:10 AM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2010
Category: Economy
The New Economic Foundation's Report on the infeasibility of continued economic growth is yet another bit of analysis that points out the obvious - we have radically overdrawn our resources and that has consequences. One of them is that we...
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 4:52 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Community
Whether we have fewer fossil fuels because we can't afford them, or because we regulate emissions, or because of peak energy or, most likely, all three, we are going to need more help and more hands in our lives.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:53 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Haiti
Only after we have sated ourselves on meat, our pets have done the same and our cars have sated themselves on biofuels do the world's poor get to come and eat a little grain. Or if the grain is gone, or its price risen out of reach, they fill their bellies with what they can find - the dirt in the title refers to "cookies" made out of clay that Haitian people were eating to quiet their misery because they could not afford enough food to live.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 9:31 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2010
Category: agriculture
Every spring they have "baby animal days" and every year, the baby animals discreetly disappear at some point in early fall. We celebrate the arrival of the animals, but no clue to their fate is ever given. This, I think, is a problem. Most of us don't really grasp that the life and death of animals has a direct connection with us.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 10:06 AM • 56 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: health care
What Eric does inevitably get when he gets sick is the lingering cough. This is no fun, of course - but it does have its compensations. One of them is the homemade cough syrup.
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Posted by Sharon Astyk at 7:47 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front
A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil
Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage and Preservation
