Stark choices and positive futures: what climate change means for rich-nations’ way of life.

Neva Goodwin, for the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, has released a working paper titled:“An Overview of Climate Change: What does it mean for our way of life? What is the best future we can hope for?”.
The intention is that this paper will later develop into a book, and based on what [...]

Can New Zealand cope with the staggering environmental consequences of the dairy boom?

Dairy farming is big business in Aotearoa New Zealand these days. Given the payout of NZ$6.90 per kg made by Fonterra this year, and the average dairy cow producing 330kg of “milk solids”, each dairy cow earns NZ$2277. The commonest herd size, around 225 cows, earned NZ$512,000 this year. One of the larger herds of [...]

Ecofeminism and the subsistence perspective: fostering cooperation, not competition

Ecofeminism sees parallels between the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of women, parallels that are understood in the context of patriarchy. One particularly vigorous ecofeminist analysis stems from the work of Claudia von Werlhof and Maria Mies.

The end of the golden weather: political choices in economic hard-times

There’s not a lot of economic good news out there at the moment, and even after the current credit-crisis passes us by, the storm-fronts of peak-oil and climate change look set to keep the economic weather looking bleak. In economic bad-times the essential nature of capitalism, the political choices that buttress it, the social costs [...]

Whole Living on a Budget

If you are looking for practical tips and gentle inspiration on living a ‘green’ lifestyle then you might like to head on over and have a look at Heather’s blog ‘Whole Living on a Budget‘.
Reducing Waste in Our Home is a good place to start on our challenge to say Enough Already! (1) & (2) [...]

25 lessons from the history of nonviolence

March 20, 2008, is the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. The human cost of war is always beyond comprehension. The enormity of the financial cost of the war in Iraq, noted by Barry in a recent post, leaves me stunned.
What I can grasp, however, is the importance of keeping the spirit of [...]

Some of the most expensive blood ever shed?

William D Hartung, writing for AsiaTimes Online breaks down the U.S. $3.5 billion per week cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’ve seen these kind of numbers before. It shouldn’t shock me. But it still does. It is such a colossal waste – outrageous in the original meaning of the word. Almost anything else [...]

Enough Already! Part Two

I set myself the task, at the end of Enough Already! Part One, to give a ‘picture’ of what a sustainable lifestyle might look and feel like. I’m sure a good answer must be out there somewhere amidst the thousands and thousands of ‘green’ web-pages, but my searches failed to find it, or to find [...]

Corporate social responsibility as “progressive window dressing”

The business of business is business, or so the old cliché goes. However, the growing popularity of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) suggests that the hard-nosed approach is slowly being supplanted by a kinder, more caring business model. But just what is CSR and why is there such widespread interest in it? In an article published [...]

The inconvenient side effects of increased eco-efficiency

George Monbiot’s book Heat (reviewed here) includes a brief discussion on the difference between efficiency and reduction. Given that eco-efficiency is one of the buzzwords of sustainability, I want to highlight his discussion, as it seems to me to be very important for greens to be aware of the problem he outlines.
Monbiot notes that if [...]