Rex Weyler has vision. (Look at the last thing of his I posted — trust me you wont be sorry even if you just take a fast peek: http://theconversation.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=199&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0.)

This piece here o­n peak oil isn't a woe-is-me, although all the categories where we are threatened are front and center:

Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.

But what Rex presents embraces all of that in a bigger picture of how it would be if we intelligently deal, in systematic ways, with what our oil situation calls for:

Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and womens rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.

Rex is quite a guy. He was o­ne of the founders of Greenpeace, and, surprise surprise, his newest book is The Jesus Sayings: A Quest for His Authentic Sayings.

In The Jesus Sayings, I raise two more questions, presuming that we might approach some understanding of Jesus’ authentic message.

How did that message get confused or misrepresented?

What relevance does that message offer us in the twenty-first century?

To answer these questions, I’ve examined the research of scholars such as Crossan and Reed, Robert J. Miller, Elaine Pagels, Burton Mack, Bart Ehrman, Karen King, Margaret Starbird, Nicholas Wright, Robert Funk, Westar Institute’s Jesus Seminar, and the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion’s Jesus Project. These scholars attempt to answer the questions raised by Reimarus: What can we reasonably say about the historical Jesus, and what did this person teach?

Our modern ecological crisis appears as a crisis of spirit, failing to see the miracle in which we live. Our destruction of the earth follows hording over sharing, private ego over common sense, dominance over humility, and addictive consumption over simple pleasures. Human civilization looked for paradise in all the wrong places, in power, wealth, in myriad heavens. We have failed to worship — to ascribe worth to — the o­ne thing that sustains us: the living earth. A new reformation in religion and spirituality will recognize the inherent value of the earth itself, life itself, other beings for their own sake, not for private glory.

So, with that as background, see if you aren't nodding yes to this vision Rex is presenting here. And, if you'd like to create a community along the lines he proposes, please invite me to be in it:

Peak Oil drastically changes global economy

By Rex Weyler

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of “trillions of barrels” of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago.

Meanwhile economies everywhere want to grow, so demand for oil soars worldwide. The gap between this surging demand and flat or declining production will drive price increases and shortages. That’s peak oil.

Peak experience

Peak oil is not a theory, but rather a simple observation of a common natural occurrence. Peak oil is o­nly o­ne symptom of an exponentially growing population, with exponentially growing demands, reaching worldwide limits of all resources.

“Peak oil has long been a reality for the oil industry,” says Anita M Burke, former Shell International senior advisor o­n Climate Change and Sustainability. “To believe anything else belies the facts of science.” In 2007, Dr James Schlesinger, former US Defense and Energy Secretary stated flatly, “If you talk to industry leaders, they concede … we are facing a decline in liquid fuels. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”

Global warming, caused primarily by forest destruction and the burning of fossil fuels, now aggravates natural limits and the human turmoil that these limits provoke. o­ne might think that peak oil will solve global warming because less oil means less carbon emissions. Sadly, this is not so because humanity took the best, cheapest, and easiest oil first, leaving dirty, acidic, expensive oil in marginal reserves that require vast amounts of energy to recover. In the 1930s, 100 barrels of oil cost about 1 barrel in equivalent energy to extract. That ratio is now about 20:1 and sinking fast. The Canadian tar sands produce barely 1:1 net energy. By the time someone burns tar sands oil in his or her vehicle, the industry has burned nearly an equal amount retrieving it.

When we account for the net energy left after production, and population growth, we discover that the world peak for net-oil per-capita occurred three decades ago, in 1979. Many oil suppliers – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and others – recognizing the limits of the resource, are now keeping more of their oil for domestic use, and saving it for future growth. Regardless of energy alternatives – ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal – humanity will never again enjoy the current consumption rates of cheap, convenient fuels. This fact changes everything.

We witness the impact in the increasing scarcity and cost of food and other critical resources that rely o­n oil. Most trucking firms now add a fuel surcharge to hedge against fuel price increases. As fuel prices soar, airlines cancel flights or simply close down. In many cities, police add a gas charge to traffic tickets because police departments have already spent their annual fuel budget o­n high-priced gasoline.

The post-peak oil era will require new human development patterns and strategies that cope with limits to growth. Humanity has no new continents to exploit or planets to occupy. Frantic industrial nations may drill in the Arctic and dig into dirty tar sands, but none of this will increase or even match the past abundance of cheap liquid fuel that we have already squandered. Nevertheless, the actual moment that world oil production peaks is less relevant than our preparation for the impact.

Relocalization

Well-financed voices promoting global industrialization claim our economies can grow “forever,” or “for the foreseeable future,” but these voices cry out against the evidence before our eyes. Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.

The dream of a globalized world marketplace linked by airplanes and trucks will not endure. Monolithic superstores that rely o­n liquid fuels to ship cheap goods around the world will become the relics of the cheap oil era. These massive chain stores also undermine the local enterprise that communities will need to survive.

“The current solutions being bantered about are inadequate to the conditions we are faced with,” says Anita Burke, after decades inside the oil industry. “We must embrace adaptation strategies that immediately create whole new ways of being in relationship to each other and the planet. Buy local, get off of hydrocarbons in every aspect of your life, gather in community, and espouse o­nly love – your grandchildren’s lives depend o­n it.”

Communities addicted to cheap oil, especially suburban environments without public transport, will become untenable. Regions that still build highways for cars are simply designing their own demise. Smart communities will design light, convenient public transport to run efficiently o­n the most locally available energy source.

The post-peak oil era will require that we re-establish local manufacturing and food production, and refurbish economies that have been gutted by globalization. Smart urban designers are now planning for the end of cheap energy, global warming, and the human migration that these changes will set in motion. Smart neighbourhood and regional planners are preparing communities for the inevitable transition from escalating consumption to conserver societies, built o­n a human scale and linked to social services and the natural cycles that sustain them..Building communities in nature

I recently walked through an abandoned industrial section of Vancouver, where I live. The empty, poorly designed, decaying buildings seemed depressing, but I noticed how much actual green space flourished with wild plants. Squatters with gardening skills, I kept thinking, could make a life for themselves here.

Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and women’s rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.

Relocalize: The end of cheap oil means less products arriving from around the world and less jobs making junk to sell elsewhere. Globalization is literally running out of gas. As fuel prices soar, communities will have to supply more food, water, and vital resources locally. If you are thinking of earning a degree in international finance, it might be smart to take some permaculture courses as well.

Preserve farmland: Wise communities will preserve agricultural land, support farmers, provide local food for local consumption, compost all organic waste including sewage, build soils, apply efficient water use, move toward vegetable diets, and restore and replenish water resources. Rather than building suburbs and highways o­n farmland, smart communities will design small residential neighbourhoods o­n the least-arable land, integrated with the life-giving farmland and natural bounty that supports a healthy society.

Change the pattern of community: The entire distribution of public activity, public space, and housing must adapt to less fuel and resource consumption. Past planning in the cheap-oil era created public dysfunction, decaying city cores, foul air, and squandered energy. We do not have generations to correct these mistakes – the time we have to act is now best measured in months, not decades. We now face the choice of responding gracefully and wisely or reacting later in chaos.

Productive urban green spaces: Cities face huge challenges and require green space, not o­nly for play and peace of mind, but for food. Suburbs and urban neighbourhoods must be redesigned to transform lawns and streets into productive green zones linked by public transport. Planting trees anywhere reduces global warming. Cities such as Bogotá, Columbia, and San Luis Obispo, California, have shown that degraded cities can revitalize community and economic life with programs that increase green space.

Public transport: Basing development and land-use patterns o­n the private automobile may be the worst design decision in human history. The automobile is responsible for resource depletion, global warming, degraded farmland, alienated neighbourhoods, aesthetic eyesores, time wasted in traffic, and an epidemic of transport death and injury. Light rail public transport is clean, energy efficient, safe, community-building, and allows travelers to be productive rather than stressed. Smart cities will implement public transit, encourage bicycle use, and create neighbourhoods that encourage walking for most services and family needs.

100% recycling: Nature recycles everything. There is no “away” in nature where garbage and waste is thrown. Human communities must mimic the 100% recycling of nature, eliminate designed obsolescence, and turn garbage landfills into recycling centres. Sewage is natural compost that can be converted to productive soil, as demonstrated in Sweden, India, and Mongolia.

Preserve wilderness: Smart ecological planning not o­nly nurtures people but also preserves wilderness habitat for species diversity. In regions where indigenous people still live o­n the land, wilderness also preserves cultural diversity and knowledge of local food, medicines and resources.

Modern consumer cities – made possible by the age of cheap fuels, designed for cash profits, or not designed at all – alienated people from each other and from their organic roots. When we gaze upon degraded cement landscapes and the lost souls of inner city children taking refuge in gangs and drugs, we see the cost of broken communities. The end of cheap fuels may help us reclaim an authentic quality of life, not purchased with more stuff but with relationship: our affiliation with each other and with nature.

Rex Weyler is author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker.

Courtesy: www.greenpeace.org.uk

http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001HjDH1IgGNcBHdQA06lzbgnVz1C4oHY-70l2YgGM8By0kOWmx19LDy_05a3geoheAMzFn6gUlrG8Iiakh5eQqce5LpNfz1N3tHlTsiL_aQruvzA8FJatAbcekMvQDDL8fhQpPL5cy_wBOcrCkujdp2PpHn9FlhtB9mW0uKCbGno6BklfXfAkMJ6THm6VjrvBy_ay3Xxv4lAzgA4uZDBZmYnefxnBCSJ9DEHxEJWXvXY4_-WAu8lSrBlejXoBlSevMfmHvwVC5PB0=

The article above is o­ne of the most touching, real, and urgent writings I have ever read. The way the author writes touches my heart and soul in such a profound way that I feel I must do something with my life to do my part!!!

How about you?

Are you sick of the TV and the shit that is thrown at us? Are you sick of the pointless celebrity shit? Are you sick of watching our weather systems change day by day and we all wait for someone else to do something about it, like our government? HA!! Give me a break….

The government are o­nly interested in saving their own necks and they sure don't care about anyone else outside of that.

Have you woke up to the bullshit that is all around us? I feel so frustrated as I want to do something with this passion that is inside of me. So many people are still asleep and just live out their lives in depression. Let's get together? Let's start something off? I don't know what but this feeling inside is driving me crazy. Come o­n!!! is anyone listening? If more than ten people respond to this email then let's hire a hall? have a chat? Throw some ideas around? at least we will feel like we are establishing contact with each other and at least we will know how we all feel about the plights affecting us all?

Please write back.

From Suzanne to Kerry

Wow. Did I write this? I sure could have. My sentiments exactly. This is so well done. I could see it sparking something: “Out of nowhere, a citizen flung a challenge, and it spread to hundreds and then thousands and now there is a worldwide movement…” Keep in touch about what happens.

Here's what I wrote back to someone else who responded, itching to act:

I am so of the mind that getting conversation out there about our worldview, so that people become aware that we have o­ne and that there is an alternative, is THE thing to do. All the problems we have will just get picked at until there is a new understanding that we're all in it together, and I've always got my thinking cap o­n as to what to do to bring that about.

Brian Swimme is the master story teller. Get Brian o­n Larry King and Charley Rose, not to mention Oprah. Us, too. I know you are as at least as wild as I am, and that's good!!!!

I feel like I am hatching something around the idea of A Bigger Game Than the o­ne We Are Playing. I like the John Mack quote, that's in the film I'm finishing about the crop circles:

“The scientific worldview is failing. It fails in a number of crucial ways. It doesn't tell us what really exists in the cosmos. It doesn't tell us about our own inner life. It doesn't tell us about all the anomalous experiences people are having that can't be explained by purely empirical and rationalist ways of knowing reality. It also doesn't have much to say when heightened dualism occurs under nationalistic pressures, as conflicts between powers and the dualism of the mind get more and more sharp and the polarizations become so severe that we threaten to destroy ourselves. The worldview of scientific materialism doesn't have much to offer at that point. But the emergent worldview — which would re-ensoul the world, which would reconnect us with the divine, which would transcend the dualism of peoples — would connect us with the world of all living creatures, not just o­ne another. That worldview, if it were to prevail, would have something to offer in relation to the social realities that we're facing, the economic problems…”

A round table? A website? A film? I do plan o­n doing some L.A. dinner events for “serious conversation,” where how to get a new worldview popularized would be the topic. Happy to hatch with you…???!!!

From: Brad Blanton [mailto:brad@radicalhonesty.com]

Thanks Suzanne—this is an excellent article. It may be too little too late but some of my friends and I are going to work o­n sustainable localization immediately. This gives a whole new meaning to “Jesus Saves.”

Jesus saves o­n gas and oil.

And he just might save our city soil!

Despite ignorant Christians’ rants and raves

It does turn out that Jesus saves!

The Rex Weyler Earth Day talk is excellent too. Consider me a supporter and potential helper with the roundtable or other event for a new world view. I am sure Michael Dowd would like to help too.

From Suzanne to Brad

Rex appreciated your comments, which I passed o­n to him.

This saving the world is complex work when you take it seriously. I am so of the mind that getting conversation out there about our worldview, so that people become aware that we have o­ne and that there is an alternative, is THE thing to do. All the problems we have will just get picked at until there is a new understanding that we're all in it together, and I've always got my thinking cap o­n as to what to do to bring that about.

Michael Dowd pays me no mind, so I've abandoned the idea that we are of the same working group even though I'd think we'd be a match. I was sorry not to be able to get in o­n his invitational events, especially with Brian Swimme with whom I am tight and who I think is the master story teller. Get Brian o­n Larry King and Charley Rose, not to mention Oprah. Us, too. I know you are as at least as wild as I am, and that's good!!!!

I feel like I am hatching something around the idea of A Bigger Game Than the o­ne We Are Playing. I like the John Mack quote, that's in the film I'm finishing about the crop circles:

[ditto — what I wrote to Kerry above]

From Brad to Suzanne

Thanks for this email Suzanne— I have been percolating o­n it. I am sorry you and Michael haven’t got together but I won’t give up o­n the story that you will someday. I think you and John Mack are right o­n about the need for a new transcientific perspective, and that we need to consistently focus o­n that wider realm of possibility as our chance at survival itself.

I have come up with the idea of a kind of web roundtable –in the form of a subscription blog centered around segments sent out of what I am currently writing about. Right now that is my autobiography. As you can see in the attached, I am doing three things pretty much intensely focused o­n co-intelligence as the new and possibly o­nly hope for humankind.

Those 3 things are: 1 promoting other people’s books along with mine, 2 conducting workshops and 3 creating and participating in an o­ngoing subscription blog. I am also making talks and presentations in various locations in the world and writing a few songs and lots of emails etc.

I am particularly enamored of Derrick Jensen and David Korten these days and am focusing o­n selling my big house and some land here in Virginia and traveling a bit more to engage with folks who are focusing o­n localization and sustainability in communities of mutually dependent intellectually independent people. I will be in San Francisco for a week or two sometime this fall and again in the spring, and might zip down there and hang with you guys for a day or so if our schedules permit. I would like to meet Rex and Brian Swimme sometime too. More later… Brad

P.S. I am also thinking of writing some about modern day fascism, left and right, in America these days. After your film becomes a big hit I may name it “Cop Circles”. Heh heh

From Suzanne to Brad

I so get you. It would be interesting if bitching that large were o­n a very public stage. I am struck by the emperor's new clothes sort of thing that's going o­n, where everyone is treating insanity as if it isn't — witness Sarah Palin treated like she makes sense. Everybody is rational when things are deeply irrational.

What's going o­n in your rabble rousing outside of the workshop milieu? Presuming participants aren't at your level of leadership, are you in any core group that plots together? Some place for the minds to meet would be valuable. The Reality Club http://edge.org , where savants are cogitating o­n the universe, puts me to sleep. They are supposedly the big futurist brains, but they are playing a different game. There's no comparable play going o­n for us — unless it's out there and nobody's told me.

Maybe the dire state of things will create such turmoil that there will be an opening for radical thought. I am cogitating o­n that. How to invite it? What to do?

Am thinking to start creating a mythic team. Just do it in mind's eye. You are the honesty guy. I'm the crop circle outside-the-science-box queen , Brian Swimme is the New Story man, Graham Hancock links the supernatural to our psyches, o­n and o­n. Build it and they will come…???

I've been working o­n some writing — for my film, maybe for a post o­n my blog — to deal with the fundamental change that we need that isn't in the public dialogue Here are a couple of quotes I'll use:

From John Mack:

I want to talk about the matter of a worldview and how it works. It has always been referred to as a paradigm and that has more of a scientific flavor. But I prefer to call it “worldview” because it refers to something bigger. A worldview is the way we organize reality. It is the way we believe things work. In a way it is like an instrument of navigation. Our worldview is what holds the human psyche together. What I came to realize with that Harvard Committee was that I was threatening the scientific medical worldview by which they were living. What has been the dominant worldview in our society could be called Newtonian/Cartesianism or anthropocentric humanism. It is a worldview that puts the human being at the top of the cosmic hierarchy of intelligence. The simplest term for this is scientific materialism. In this worldview, matter and energy form the primary reality and there is no larger intelligence in the cosmos. The principle method of study is objective reality, which separates the investigator from the matter that is being investigated.

From me — after the tsunami in 2005

Could this shake be big enough to wake us up to the need to set ourselves o­n another course? An examination of the fundamentals of how we think, based o­n who we perceive we are and what we think we are doing here, is a much needed conversation for the world to engage in. Many people eloquently express their outrage about what isn't working, but there isn't a common conversation about how else to run the world. The tsunami could be our spur to rethink everything. Its message is that it's o­ne world — we need to engage with each other in o­ne system. This would be more important than giving our attention to everything else that needs attending, because, without such an over-arching consideration, we will continue to generate problems that devastate us and be victimized by a lack of preparedness for what nature can impose.

I'm looking to pass along this piece, which I think is a cogent history lesson that supports the notion that finding out we're being visited would be a change-maker at the scale we need: THE DEMOLITION OF RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY http://greatnewstory.com/new/pages/read.jsp?article=785 (These people, whoever they are — and I'll find out — are o­n our beam.)

I'm glad you're out there. May something gel for us and ours.

From: Orrin Venn [oavenn@hotmail.com]

It's a beautiful dream. But, the sad fact is: No o­ne is going to give up their iPod to save the world. It's like saying, “All we have to do to end war is to get every soldier to put down their gun.” Ain't gonna happen. There are simply too many people who don't give a damn about the Earth or anyone o­n it.

I was thrown in jail in Oklahoma City last month when some teenage dopehead overheard me making a joke about the See Eye Ay to my gf o­n my cell phone. I was surrounded by police, thrown o­n the ground, truck towed, thrown in jail. The cop who arrested me tells me o­n the way downtown how much he loves his job because “I get to abuse people and get paid for it.” This is the kind of people who now inhabit planet Earth.

I know a post like this is supposed inspire hope within me, but all it really does is make me realize how hopeless the situation really is.

From Suzanne to Orrin

Who knows how things will unfold? These are terrible times in so many ways. I resonate with your despair, but human life is still a privilege, and serving it as best we can has got to suffice. I've got a daughter who interjected herself with my demented mom before she died to wrest control over her and steal the family estate, where now no o­ne will speak to her and I can't see my granddaughters — just to match up to your story of the arrest. Into all of our lives some absolute crap will fall, but still I think it's incumbent o­n us to allow for that and to continue to serve.

Have you ever read my favorite book, “The Universe is a Green Dragon”? It gives you the sense of privilege, not because it jerks you around to get it but just because that's the way it is.

And of course my passion for the circles is because waking up to visitation from elsewhere would change everything. We'd be o­ne humanity in relation something bigger than we are, and we'd have to rethink everything.

Too bad we're not in the same neck of the woods. Conscious companionship is another antidote to despair.

From Orrin to Suzanne

Gosh, I wasn't expecting a response at all. I know you get a lot of e-mail. I'm sorry I dumped o­n you like that, someone I hardly know. It wasn't right. I guess I didn't realize that you might really be affected by my rant. And your thoughtful and caring response is more than I deserve. I feel ashamed.

Everything that's been going o­n lately; Wall Street, the war… everything. It's been wearing o­n me. No excuse, still I feel terrible for my whining. You are right. I should and do feel privileged to be here at the fulcrum of history. From my position, things can seem very bleak. It's compounded by loneliness when you can't find anyone who really gives a damn. But, then, here you are. Just when I was losing hope. You are a mighty companion, Suzanne, and I feel very privileged that I found you.

No more despair from me, promise. I'll follow your example and sally forth with a smile. It's what I do most of the time anyway, you just caught me with my guard down. Thanks for the kick in the pants!

From Suzanne to Orrin

Gosh, no reason to apologize. I'm touched that you would be so raw with me. And no reason to paste o­n a smile — hard to believe that things got worse since our lamenting emails back and forth. Just don't sink, and try to steal some joy wherever you can. I am lonely, too, believe it or not. L.A. is huge and my allies are far flung. I'd so love to be living in community with nears and dears. Come visit, even stay with me, if you ever are in L.A.

From: Fred Cook [fredcookla@gmail.com]

Thanks for including me in your loop. It is my intention to create beloved community around the themes of eco-sustainability, popular participation & democracy justice, peace, prosperity of spirit with minimum material consumption, ARTS, MUSIC, CULTURE, permaculture. etc. etc. I'm reaching out in the LA are to find out who else is working with the same vision(s). My hope is to find and build bridges among people in different language communities who are recovering the traditional wisdom of their forebears. Adjusting gracefully to a bicycle-speed society HAS begun for a few intrepid pioneers, even here in motor-dominated LA.

My o­ne POSSIBLE reservation about Rex's presentation

“We have failed to worship – to ascribe worth to – the o­ne thing that sustains us: the living earth. A new reformation in religion and spirituality will recognize the inherent value of the earth itself, life itself, other beings for their own sake, not for private glory.”

Is the collapsing of the “Absolute” into the “Relative” in reducing “Spirit” to “Nature.”

Donnella Meadows put out a similar call a decade ago in BEYOND THE LIMITS TO GROWTH. She was actively walking that path of SHARING, building community, getting involved in local agricultural production when an antibiotic-resistant bug got the better of her.

I see a need to go beyond the person “love and sharing” ethic to rework our accounting system and economic systems.

These are some pioneers from whom I draw inspiration:

Marilyn Waring – Who's Counting?

Bernard Lietaer – THE FUTURE OF MONEY

Paul Ekins

Fr. Arizmendia

Manfred Max-Neef

REAL LIFE ECONOMICS by Paul Ekins and Manfred Max-Neef (eds)

STEADY STATE ECONOMICS by Herman Daly

Vandana Shiva

the folks at THE NATURAL STEP and the

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=footprint_overview

and Redefining Progress – http://www.rprogress.org/index.htm

and the sisters at http://www.iaffe.org/

http://www.jstor.org/pss/136025

10 Principles of Feminist Economics: http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/gschnedr/FemPrcpls.htm

and Robert Gilman with his summaries about the Mondragon Cooperatives in Basque Spain

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC02/Gilman2.htm

and his brilliant:

“Design For A Sustainable Economics”

in IN CONTEXT MAGAZINE:

http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC32/Gilman.htm

I hope you can see the usefulness of changing the logic by which our INSTITUTIONS

are guided to better fit with the realities of our being part of a planetary ecology AND being part of a loving sharing community.

Locavores and slow food fans are making some progress in creating a sustainable/ “local” food security infrastructure (though there's still a LOT of petroleum involved in getting food from the nearest fields to our urban famer's markets),

for example:

http://www.slowfoodla.com/archives/000738.html

Here's o­ne take o­n how LA is officially doing as far as creeping toward sustainability.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006049.html

We have “Opportunity Green” to look forward to in November

http://www.conferencealerts.com/seeconf.mv?q=ca1xx0hs

I look forward to dialog with you about how we can accomplish the needed change in the scant time we have available.

From Suzanne to Fred

How well versed you are in all this. Applause!

I'd be up for helping out with any effort to create community here. God bless if you have lights to do that. I actually feel fairly bereft of community in this sprawling city. I used to do lots more events and everybody loved to come to hear whatever I was hosting, like the evening you came to, but my energies were consumed in what actually didn't seem to advance the action enough. In the 70s I tried to create a working community and in fact we did do some wonderful things, but that time, when people were participatory and creative together, seemed to pass. It happened when a money craze hit L.A. in the early 80s, and a chain letter led to house meetings and a storefront that was dispensing and collecting money to a line around the block. That's when the authorities stepped in to shut it down and, after a lot of the participatory projects had shut down because everyone was going to money meetings, the bad feelings that were pervasive changed the climate for participation. That's my analysis. Now we get things like L.A. Bioneers, where you can go hear speakers., but nothing to participate in to do, and that isn't juicy for me.

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