riot for austerity
sastyk | October 4, 2011My friend Alice hosted an urban permaculture class at her house a few years ago. She lives in an brownstone in a downtown neighborhood of Albany with her husband and two young kids, and the occasional housemate. Two permaculture design teachers and a host of enthusiastic students came together to create several designs for how she might optimize resource use and productivity at her home. She and her family chose one of the plans, and set to work on a number of inside and outside projects, including transforming her small, sunny backyard into an urban garden, full of food producing plants.…
sastyk | August 1, 2011The Riot for Austerity came about this way. In 2007, after the release of the IPCC report, and a number of books drawing attention to climate change, a friend of mine and I were discussing our frustration that no political organization was considering any kind of emissions cuts that even resembled those necessary to limit the damage from climate change. In fact whenever we discussed the 90+% emissions cuts required to give us the best chance of a reasonable stable climate, the immediate reaction was "that's not going to happen!"
Stealing a great line from George Monbiot's wonderful book…
sastyk | July 15, 2011What, you ask, has Sharon been duing, besides getting mud and manure on her? (I feel like there's been a theme to some of my recent posts, no?) I'm sure you have nothing but this on your mind - the doins a'transpirin at my house being the focus of whole tens of people (well, maybe one ten on a good day ;-). Still, I'm going to tell you.
Well, what we've mostly been doing is getting ready for the fall garden season, and getting ready for the family expansion project. As of this week, our house is open as a foster home, but of course, in our usual "doing at the last minute something we…
sastyk | April 25, 2011Ok, I've always hated those "Top 10 Ways to Green Your Apartment/Cat/Sex Toys/Shaving Equipment" articles, and yet they do serve a sort of purpose (at least the ones that aren't total rubbish) - narrowing things down and prioritizing is helpful. So for those of you teetering on the edge of joining the new Riot for Austerity, check out the real 10 ways to make a big difference - I promise this is the only "Top 10 Green" List I'll ever make you read!
1. Buy a lot less stuff. So much of what's out there focuses on replacing one consumer need with a marginally less toxic or awful option. This is…
sastyk | April 25, 2011
Almost exactly four years ago, my friend Miranda Edel and I were discussing the recent IPCC report on Climate Change and George Monbiot's book _Heat_ and the reactions that we got when we talked about about the sheer depth of the reductions in climate emissions that would be needed to stabilize the climate. Whenever we began to discuss emissions reductions on the order of 80 or 90% (depending on your country of origin - for the US Monbiot's estimate was 94%, although there are reasons to question that number now), the universal reaction we got was that it was impossible - impossible to…
sastyk | March 2, 2010One of the pleasures of blogging here has been the focus that this community has on issues of public health. Doing everything we can to maintain the health and well-being of populations through a shift into a different model of life is an issue that is deeply important to me - I don't always agree with everyone who writes here on these issues (and, of course, they don't always agree with each other ;-)), but I am struck with admiration of the degree of concern for the public welfare expressed by my Science Blog Colleagues.
Which is why I'm being so presumptuous (since I am a science writer,…