What Works: Food
As I described in my prior post, water is a big deal for humans, as it is for all life on Earth. But food is pretty important, too. Currently, most Americans store large quantities of food in the form of…
What works: Caveats for a series of essays
My next few essays will concentrate on the cardinal elements of survival: water, food, body temperature, and community. Unless and until we secure these four entities, we will not survive. At the mud hut, our goal is not merely survival.…
Going back to the land in the Age of Entitlement
This essay is rife with the type of self-indulgence I try to avoid, often unsuccessfully. It’s a summary of my life’s story. It begins by insulting the readers, before the end of this first paragraph, and it ends with an…
Throwing off the shackles of debt
by Guy R. McPherson, Keith Farnish, Dave Pollard, and Sharon Astyk Indebtedness is a form of servitude, usually involuntary, and, in extreme cases imprisonment. Consider, for example, current rates of interest, usurious compared to what savers earn on their savings…
Prescription for (Killing) the Planet
Prescription for the Planet was written by Tom Blees and published in 2008. It was recommended to me, with a strong sense of urgency, by a couple friends. It is written in a very compelling style, which is too bad…
Goatlets, updated
It's a boy! And a girl! And another girl! One of the three goats we're tending had triplets last night. This morning, Ruby and the as-yet-unnamed kids are doing well. Our infrastructure has passed another test. More importantly, we were…
Viral collapse
According to economists, the beauty of globalization is worldwide access to materials and cheap (or free) labor to bring the materials to powerful countries. We provide garbage, pollution, and low wages -- or, in the “best” cases we enslave workers…