The 2009 holiday season was a tough one for retail businesses. In November, their sales increased just 1.8 percent over low 2008 numbers—failing to keep pace with inflation. December was worse, with sales actually falling three tenths of a percent from 2008. But in more than a hundred communities across North America, independent community-based businesses had a more positive story to tell. A nationwide survey of more than 1,800 independent businesses by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) found them outperforming chain competitors. Most notably, the survey found independent retailers in communities with active “Buy Independent” or “Buy Local” campaigns reported an increase in holiday sales three times stronger (up three percent) than those in cities without such campaigns (up one percent).

…Fortunately, many individuals and families have awoken to the reality that what our species is confronting is nothing less than the total collapse of industrial civilization and the end of the world as we have known it. They are coming to understand that the collapse is a process, not an event, and that some aspects of it will be slow and grinding, while other aspects will be sudden, catastrophic, and traumatic. And very importantly, they are becoming prepared. But how does one “prepare”, and what is preparation anyway?

…If we are to build cultures of peace, we have to start talking about something that still makes many people uncomfortable: gender. We might as well put that on the table; people don’t want to talk about gender, do they? But let’s also remember what the great sociologist Louis Wirth said: that the most important things about a society are those that people are uncomfortable talking about. We saw that with race: Only as we started to talk about it did we begin to move forward. We’re beginning to talk more about gender, and starting to move forward, but much too slowly.

…Gates spoke about his commitment to using his massive philanthropic resources (the Gates Foundation is the world’s largest) to make life better for people through public health and poverty alleviation (“vaccines and seeds” as he put it). Then he said something he’s never said before: that is it because he’s committed to improving life for the world’s vulnerable people that he now believes that climate change is the most important challenge on the planet.

…In my view few green people or transitioners recognise the huge distinction here between trying to reform consumer-capitalist society and trying to replace its major structures and systems. The Simpler Way contradicts the core systems of the present society and cannot be built unless we replace them. Consumer-capitalist society cannot be fixed; it cannot be reformed to not create the alarming global problems we face while still being about the pursuit of affluence and growth etc.

…Relocalization is job one. That is to say, for a truly sustainable economy we must look first to the renewable resources, farmland and craftspeople close to home. In Montana, it wasn’t that long ago that most of our energy, food, and goods came right from our own counties. In this age of global food and energy systems we’ve lost that self-reliance and local economy. Thankfully there are plenty of folks in Montana who still know how to work with and care for the land, or are capable of wiring a home-power system. Seek out those people in your town as you look towards a new gardening season or as you consider how to cut your dependence on coal-fired electricity.

…Ultimately, if we change our eating habits, and curtail our Madison Avenue and mass media-induced need to buy and consume so many clothes and consumer products, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Whether or not government bureaucrats and corporations change their behavior in the short term will be determined by the strength of U.S. and global grassroots movements . But we will never be able to build, motivate, and lead these movements unless we first start walking our talk and create viable models of organic conversion and green economics in our individual lives and in our local communities.

…”As Europe’s leaders gather in Brussels today, they have only one crisis in mind: the debts that threaten the stability of the European Union. They are unlikely to be in any mood to listen to warnings about a different crisis that is looming and that could cause massive disruption. A shortage of oil could be a real problem for the world within a fairly short period of time.”

…What elevates ‘Food Inc.’ above just being a rant about industrial farming is when it tells the other side of the story.  You hear from the farmers as to why they farm in such a way, you meet a Hispanic family struggling to feed themselves on a very small budget and who, in spite of the resultant ill-health, still see a nightly trip for burgers and fries at 99c a head as the only way they can afford to fill their bellies.  It becomes clear that this is only a short term investment, as in the long term, the father’s healthcare bills look set to far exceed what they have saved on food.  The point is well made; this is a food system in which we all lose, farmers, consumers, the soils we should be building for future generations, those working in the food processing industry.  It is not a happy system.  Those who win are usually shareholders and captains of industry, situated as they are at some considerable distance from the reality on the ground of what industrial agriculture is doing to people.

A mass emailing went out a while back from a prominent permaculturist looking for “projects where people are fully self sufficient in providing for their own food, clothing, shelter, energy and community needs. . .” There it was, the myth of “fully self sufficient,” coming from one of the best-known permaculturists in the world. In most US permaculture circles, the idea that anyone could be self sufficient at anything past a very primitive level was abandoned a while ago, and the softer term “self reliant” replaced it. But even self-reliance is barely possible, and, other than as way of expressing a desire to throw off the shackles of corporate consumerism, I don’t think it’s desirable…