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Invisible Ships and Boiling Frogs: The End of Industrial Affluence
Monday, June 7th, 2010It is said that when the ships of the Old World first approached the New World, they were sometimes invisible to the indigenous people of the Americas because the latter could not imagine such a thing as a fleet of large sailing ships, and simply did not believe their eyes.
In the same way, when a [...]
Visioning County Food Production – Part Four
Monday, April 19th, 2010Urban Agriculture
This series of articles is an exploration of designs for agriculture in Tompkins County to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. In earlier parts of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design, addressed the key [...]
Visioning County Food Production – Part Three
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Seeing County Food Production as an Integrated Whole
In Part One of this series, I proposed principles of agroecosystem design for growers to follow if agriculture is to approach sustainability in a future of declining access to the cheap energy and other inputs on which our industrialized food system relies. I said that providing [...]
Through the Looking Glass: Adventures in Landgrant Land
Saturday, February 27th, 2010 Through the Looking Glass: Adventures
in Landgrant Land
- Karl North, 5-09
“If Alice were reborn in these times, she would not need to step through the mirror; it would suffice that she lean out the window.” – Eduardo Galeano
Once upon a time in a faraway empire, a land so prosperous it overflowed with gmo milk, [...]
Visioning County Food Production – Part Two
Monday, February 15th, 2010General Problem Areas in Sustainable Agricultural Design
In Part One of this series, I noted that providing for the local food needs of urban populations requires a design that integrates three overlapping categories of production systems: urban agriculture systems (many small islands of gardening in the city center), peri-urban agriculture (larger production areas on the immediate [...]
Visioning County Food Production – Part One
Sunday, February 14th, 2010Visioning County Food Production
by Karl North
“Because energies and monies for research, development, and thinking are abundant only during growth and not during energy leveling or decline, there is a great danger that means for developing the steady state will not be ready when they are needed, which may be no more than 5 years away [...]
The Left and the Zioncons
Monday, January 4th, 2010The Left and the Zioncons[1]
Karl North
January 2010
Back a couple years Michael Moore wrote a piece about how “we”[2] should get out of Iraq. It was all very nice, cheeky, classic Michael Moore. And much of it of course true. But by saying the oil industry wanted the war, he made the same mistakes about war [...]
