The Industrial Food System Depends To Its Peril On Cheap Oil

The Industrial Food System Depends To Its Peril On Cheap Oil

With a gallon of gasoline in America now averaging almost $4.00, the topic of oil dependence is timely. Cheap oil and other fossil fuels have helped create the modern American economy, and to a lesser extent, the economies of other industrialized cultures around the world. Big industry totally depends on them. Naturally, this includes the food industry.

The Survival Value Of Oral And Written Traditions, By K.B.

The Survival Value Of Oral And Written Traditions, By K.B.

Traditional societies that have survived so long in natural TEOTWAWKI conditions – in Australia, Central Asia, South America, North America, Siberia, and many others right up to our day all share one thing in common with regard to the young: educating youth through stories that impart the values and character necessary to not only survival but constructive outlook and moral self-worth.

What's The Big Deal About "Resilience"?, By Torie Bosch

What's The Big Deal About "Resilience"?, By Torie Bosch

One of the really important things about resilience thinking is that it links together so many domains that we typically only looked at singly. Our thinking over the last 200 years has become very siloed, in part due to university structures, university careers, but also due to reasons beyond that. I think one of the really interesting things is that resilience crosses a lot of those boundaries between disciplines, because the general concept has applications in business and in the environment, but also in social communities. A really interesting part of resilience thinking is that you bring communities closer together so they have more options and can be more creative in responding to stress.

Barack Obama Prepares For War Footing, By Edwin Black

Barack Obama Prepares For War Footing, By Edwin Black

Last Friday, March 16, President Barack Obama may have quietly placed the United States on a war preparedness footing, perhaps in anticipation of an outbreak of war between Israel, the West, and Iran. A newly-propounded Executive Order, titled “National Defense Resources Preparedness,” renews and updates the president’s power to take control of all civil energy supplies, including oil and natural gas, control and restrict all civil transportation, which is almost 97 percent dependent upon oil; and even provides the option to re-enable a draft in order to achieve both the military and non-military demands of the country, according to a simple reading of the text. The Executive Order was published on the White House website.

Are We Running Out Of Water? By Brian Richter

Are We Running Out Of Water? By Brian Richter

We’ve tapped underground water sources pretty heavily as well. The water level in the Ogallala Aquifer in the Midwestern U.S. has dropped more than 150 feet in some places, leaving many farmers’ wells bone dry. As water is sucked out of aquifers, the overlying soil and rock can compact or collapse into the dewatered void, causing tall buildings to teeter in Mexico City, automobiles to tumble into sinkholes in Florida, or swallowing tourists on the fringes of the shriveling Dead Sea in Israel and Jordan. With so many rivers, lakes and aquifers going dry, we have to ask: Are we running out of water?

Why The American Empire Was Destined To Collapse, Nomi Prins Interviews Morris Berman

Why The American Empire Was Destined To Collapse, Nomi Prins Interviews Morris Berman

America was founded within a conceptual framework of being in opposition to something—the British and the Native Americans, to begin with—and it never abandoned that framework. It doesn’t really have a clear idea of what it is in a positive sense, and that has generated a kind of national neurosis. I mean, we were in real trouble when the Soviet Union collapsed; in terms of identity, we were completely adrift until the attacks of 9/11 (just think of how frivolous and meaningless the Clinton years were, in retrospect). War is our drug of choice, and without an enemy we enter a kind of nervous breakdown mode.

Getting Real About It: Meeting The Psychological And Social Demands Of A World In Distress, By Susanne Moser, Ph.D.

Getting Real About It: Meeting The Psychological And Social Demands Of A World In Distress, By Susanne Moser, Ph.D.

The landscape you will find yourself in, once you allow this realization to take hold, is a different one. Despair lives there, along with helplessness and anger, fear and disorientation, undoubtedly also unspeakable sadness. You are likely to come to recognize that this is a new time. The time before was one in which we insisted and relied on hope, on better tomorrows, in the US on the “American Dream.” Now, we have to accept that “better tomorrows” may not come. It is akin to accepting one’s own mortality, maybe a doctor’s prognosis of one’s impending death, but on a much grander scale.

Walking And Our Ability To Cope, By Raymond De Young

Walking And Our Ability To Cope, By Raymond De Young

The prescription is simply to walk in a natural setting. Nothing extreme, neither grand nor distant, is required. A walk during lunch down tree-lined streets, a restful interlude in a vest pocket park, or an evening stroll through neighborhood nature will suffice. Certainly the choice of what walking route to take does matter. In a study that validated aspects of attention restoration theory, a walking route through an arboretum that was tree-lined and separated from traffic significantly improved mental effectiveness when compared to a route in the same area and of the same length but more urban in character ( Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008).