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Food and Farming: The Hub of Planetary Transformation
At the moment we’re spending about $700 million a year on food. From all that we can tell from the limited data that’s available, less than 1% of that is being spent on food being grown in Boulder County. That’s a tiny, tiny amount. So currently, our foodshed, which is kind of like a watershed, stretches across the globe. We’re bringing in food from China, South America, Europe, and as the industrial agricultural system begins to fail, we have no choice but to shrink our foodshed to be much, much more local. And it looks like we don’t have much time to do that…
In the wake of the failed Copenhagen summit, prospects for cutting global CO2 emissions are worse than they’ve been in years. With talk of mandated cuts now fading and with countries exploiting loopholes, the world appears headed toward a flawed agreement based not on science but on politics.
Among the myriad reactions I hear to the BP disaster from the folks with whom I interact, the one that overshadows all others is anguish. We hold hands across the sand and bodies of water, we pray, and we talk to our friends, but fundamentally, we are absolutely powerless to remedy or reverse what occurred on April 20. We knew our planet was in a state of full-blown collapse, but we didn’t expect it to unfold this way. As one friend recently said to me, “It’s just a matter of time now.” I could have said, “Until what?” but I long ago learned not to ask questions I already know the answer to. My friend and I could just as well have been standing on the deck of the Titanic having the same conversation.
…Look: I want Obama to succeed; I want it earnestly, even desperately. And so I hate to be critical. It’s true that we’ve all got to work together to solve our energy crisis, and that means rising above partisanship. But leadership is sorely needed here, and leaders must set definite goals. Jimmy Carter at least had a plan. He proposed lofty objectives and investments: targeted reductions in oil imports, an energy security corporation, a solar bank. In contrast, Obama’s strategy seems to be to avoid specifics while insisting that we Americans will somehow overcome our oil dependency because . . . well, because we’re Americans.
…It may be hard to believe now, writes Dr. Richard Ward in his introduction to a “stark” report just published by Lloyds and an influential UK think tank, but that’s because “the bad times have not yet hit.” He warns business managers to be ready for “dramatic changes” as oil, gas and coal supplies will soon be “less reliable and more expensive.” The world “has entered a period of deep uncertainty in how we will source energy for power, heat and mobility, and how much we will pay for it,” he states.
…Beliefs exist at the sub-conscious level, they’re actually what cause us to take actions or not take action. The point of everything, the one thing that I’m trying to get across to people is that this is a time to take action, even if we’re not really clear what they are, we haven’t got it all mapped out, it’s really time to start demonstrating strong alignment and in many cases any alignment between what we know to be true and the lives that we’re living. For a lot of people that’s a huge gap and it creates anxiety. My goal is to help reduce that anxiety and to give people the most important gift I know, which is the gift of time – time to begin adjusting to a possibly difficult future on your own terms, in your own way.
Reports from the Gulf of Mexico just keep getting worse. Estimates of the rate of oil spillage from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead just keep gushing (the latest official number: up to 60,000 barrels per day). Forecasts for how long it will take before the leak is finally plugged continue pluming toward August—maybe even December.
…How long will it take for an ecosystem this ravaged to be “restored and made whole” as Obama’s interior secretary has pledged to do? It’s not at all clear that such a thing is remotely possible, at least not in a time frame we can easily wrap our heads around. The Alaskan fisheries have yet to fully recover from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and some species of fish never returned. Government scientists now estimate that as much as a Valdez-worth of oil may be entering the Gulf coastal waters every four days. An even worse prognosis emerges from the 1991 Gulf war spill, when an estimated 11m barrels of oil were dumped into the Persian Gulf – the largest spill ever.
…What does this mean? It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot…the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?…the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?…it doesn’t leak so bad, you close the nozzle?…it leaks real bad, same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off…or tried to anyway…but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks “down hole”. I’m sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed…because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below. 
Like anyone who gives a damn about anything, I too have been watching the BP oil spill with horror. It is becoming increasingly clear that this is well on its way to becoming an unprecedented ecological disaster for North America, perhaps our Chernobyl. At the least, it is likely to have environmental ramifications for decades to come and may prove to be a watershed moment in American energy policy as the images of futile technological efforts to stop the leak begin to inhabit our collective consciousness alongside the terrible images of ruined wetlands and the gruesome wildlife casualties we have inflicted.
Hi all, I’m Jennifer Wilkerson of Oakton, VA! And boy am I ever humbled to have been featured in the 
…in the interests of promoting non-attachment to ideas and enshrining the principle that none of us really know what we are doing, as encapsulated in the ‘Cheerful Disclaimer’, for the Transition Handbook 2.0 I am taking the original Transition model and throwing it up in the air, using ‘A Pattern Language’ as a way of recommunicating and reshaping it. Transition has evolved and grown hugely since the first Transition Handbook. The principle of it being an iterative process, of the sharing of failures being as important as the successes, has done it a great service, and much has been learnt as a result. New models and tools have been developed, and as a result the second edition of the Handbook will look very different to the first, but it will also, I hope, actually be a more familiar representation of the Transition you know, and also a more useful tool.
…The Deepwater Horizon disaster reminds us that, of all non-renewable resources, oil best deserves to be thought of as the Achilles heel of modern society. Without cheap oil, our industrial food system—from tractor to supermarket—shifts from feast to famine mode; our entire transportation system sputters to a halt. We even depend on oil to fuel the trains, ships, and trucks that haul the coal that supplies half our electricity. We make our computers from oil-derived plastics. Without oil, our whole societal ball of yarn begins to unravel.
…In spite of the Queen’s musing aloud in early 2009 as to why no one had seen the economic meltdown coming, many people had been only too aware that economics, as currently practised, is designed to draw money upwards, does nothing to stop the poor getting poorer and everything to help the rich get richer, and has no loyalty to communities or individuals. A common national unit of exchange – sterling – is, of course, extremely useful, as it enables national trade. Yet its weaknesses are such that it needs a complementary currency running alongside it. Some transactions can be in one; some in another.
It is embarrassing to be lost. It is even more embarrassing for a leader to be lost. And what’s really really embarrassing to all concerned is when national and transnational corporate leaders attempt to tackle a major disaster and are found out to have been issuing marching orders based on the wrong map. Everyone then executes a routine of turning toward each other in shock, frowning while shaking their heads slowly from side to side and looking away in disgust. After that, these leaders might as well limit their public pronouncements to the traditional “Milk, milk, lemonade, round the corner fudge is made.” Whatever they say, the universal reaction becomes: “What leaders? We don’t have any.”
As the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster continues to unfold, the peak oil community has a “teachable moment” in which it can illuminate the reality of our energy plight. The public has had a crash course in the challenges of offshore oil, and learned a whole new vocabulary. They are more aware than ever that the days of cheap and easy oil are gone. What they do not yet grasp are the challenges in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.
Members of Transition Louisville hope their one vegetable garden grows into many, part of their goal of promoting sustainable living and local food production. The group has about 150 members, and about 15 members spend their Sunday afternoons planting and tending their crop of arugula, tomatoes, hard squash, peppers and potatoes.
“Dandelions are not a problem for the environment,” said herbalist, author and event co-director Brigitte Mars. “Herbicides are.” Mikl Brawner, co-owner of Harlequin’s Garden, will be teaching a class on the basics of how to garden without chemicals. Brawner has spent 35 years researching and testing alternatives to toxic chemicals, and has managed the nursery and his display gardens organically for 19 years.
To help convince local businesses, non-profit groups and residents to collaborate on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, the city of Boulder is set to host the first of a series of ongoing, semi-annual summits on climate change. The inaugural Community Climate Action Summit, planned for April 16 at the Millennium Harvest House in Boulder, is meant to serve as a clearinghouse for ideas on how to combat climate change at the local level.
Colorado State Representative Claire Levy (D-Boulder) is planning on introducing a bill this session that would legalize community “solar gardens”, allowing renters, condo owners, or people who live in otherwise unsuitable locations for solar, to take advantage of local solar incentives and take part in the burgeoning residential solar industry. The bill would allow people to buy into a solar array not on their property and receive credits from the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, for the resulting electricity.
The Grow Local Colorado Campaign is partnering with Denver Parks and Recreation and the Parks Stewardship Program in 2010 to grow Edible Public Demonstration Gardens in four Denver parks: Civic Center, Berkeley, Highlands and Highlands Gateway. The produce will be planted, maintained and harvested by local volunteers. The food will go to Denver’s residents in need, delivered to such organizations as The Gathering Place, EarthLinks, and Food Bank of the Rockies.
..Xcel Energy agreed to pay for the transition to renewable energy out of its own deep pockets. The letter assured Colorado ratepayers: “While, over the past several years, we have raised rates for our customers numerous times, our new approach will put the burden on Xcel’s executives rather than our loyal and hardworking customers. And, rest assured, we can afford it. With an annual profit of nearly $700 million and CEO pay in the millions each year, our ‘responsible by nature’ executives are volunteering to take pay cuts to ensure the success of our plan.”
For a group of University of Colorado students, the “freshman 15″ says less about the sedentary lifestyle, underage drinking and stressful schedules of students and more about CU’s food system and the lack of understanding about food waste and food production by their peers. CU Going Local is a group of students working to get locally grown food into dining halls, educate fellow students on how to grow and produce their own food and work with the Boulder community to build urban gardens in elementary schools and low-income housing developments.
“A local food and farming revolution is already underway, as citizens across Boulder County are quietly beginning to completely rebuild our local foodshed,” says Michael Brownlee, “Catalyst” for 
…“Why can’t you buy raw milk, ice cream with eggs in it, or home-made sausage?,” asks Salatin. “America’s food system, enslaved by a global corporate bureaucratic fraternity, offers less choice amid the perception of abundance. The only reason the framers of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights did not guarantee citizens freedom of food choice was because they could not have conceived of a day when private treaty neighbor-to-neighbor food commerce would be demonized and criminalized.” In this call to grass roots food activism, Salatin seeks a Food Emancipation Proclamation, freeing citizens to opt out of the industrial food fraternity.
