Common Sense for the New Times
Common Sense for the New Times
“Well, should we just give up then?” If only I had a dollar for every time I have heard this, always from well-meaning people.⊕Well, if I had a dollar for each time, I would be drinking Laphroaig right now, with…
Trees are green, right? And green is good, right? So trees must be good, right? How could trees be bad for the environment? Many of us have a sense that we are not on the right path; in our bones…
Want to Build Great New Habits?Interested in the Stunning Research that Changes Everything?How about The Brain Hack that Makes You a Winner? Clickbait like this is common, alongside more respectable Serious Yet Slightly Breathless News Items. I spent several years…
Sustainable means able to be sustained, and the alternative, then, is things that are unable to be sustained.⊕Bill Rees, the co-developer of Ecological Footprinting, says sustainability is like pregnancy. You either are or you aren’t, no sorta. You can read my…
Why are we not winning the fight against climate chaos? Why was Trump just elected? Why has there been a slaughter of drug addicts this year? Because we think about change wrong,⊕You can read all my past writings on this…
I sometimes find myself making negative comments about vertical farming. This happened again today, and the facebook friend to whom I responded replied very openly with, “Well, what then? Green belts?” So rather than continue my terse and impatient crypticism…
Our cultural veneration of free will traps us in dead-end expectations that are unsupported by reality. If we want to make effective change, the idea of free will is one of the first things we should jettison, or at least…
Two days ago I awoke to an eerie, silent hellsky. It was dusky dark, even first thing in the morning. The colour and brightness of the sky was all wrong, not just overcast but unnatural. Throughout the day, people described it…
Most of our attempts to make change rely on a belief that people can change, that change is possible. Of course, this is true—but just barely. So, this is not much of a theory of change, but rather a Theory…
I wrote this about five years ago, but had no place to publish it. After the topic of his most recent post veered to razors, John Michael Greer suggested I post it. Joy is a thread that runs through our Small and…
I recently reviewed Jean-Martin Fortier’s book The Market Gardener (summary: Excellent. Buy it) and was reminded of a philosophical and yet very practical farming question I asked him over beer. “Since the economy is contracting, and for many reasons we believe…
The first piece of swag to come out of writing this blog hit my mailbox this spring, when I was asked to review Jean-Martin Fortier’s book The Market Gardener. Sadly, they did not also send me a broadfork. Carmen and I…
One of my comfort foods is whole-wheat macaroni with vegetables. Since I am a lazy cook and reluctant dishwasher I have always just grated cheese and sprinkled it on top of the noodles then stirred it into a clumpy and…
We have honeybees flying in our backyard again, and they have brought our family a noticeable sense of comfort. Our bees died last fall. Likely it was the varroa destructor mite, archvillain of many news stories. Carmen has noticed our…