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by Jan Lundberg
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 Albert Bates, well known to Culture Change readers, is in Copenhagen for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). His daily blog is probably the most reliable source of news and analysis because of his personal, philosophical balance. And, he wrote Climate in Crisis in 1990 with a foreword by Al Gore.
Day 2 (excerpt): Klimabundmode is dansk for “Climate Bottom Meeting” |
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by Jan Lundberg
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The latest mainstream media coverage on Climate Changegate might indicate at first glance that the scientific research might have been hopelessly compromised. Millions of people saw this widely syndicated headline: "UK University to probe integrity of climate data" (Associated Press, Dec. 3, London)
The East Anglia University's Climatic Research Unit has been embarrassed and attacked after leaked emails showed its head, Phil Jones, discussing strategy to deal with fossil-fuel industry-funded climate-science skeptics. |
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by Elly Blue, BikePortland
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 Jan Lundberg moved to Portland a year ago because it seemed like the best place to pursue his intersecting passions for food security, peak oil, bicycles, and sailing.
These passions will be coming to fruition later this month when the oil analyst’s brainchild, the Sail Transport Network, will launch into its first major, ongoing local venture. Lundberg is finalizing plans to deliver malted grain from Vancouver, Washington to a brewery further down the Columbia River by a combination of cargo bike and sailboat. |
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by Mobilization for Climate Justice
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 UPDATE: afer yesterday's protests, this rundown was circulated through the Global Warming Crisis Council:
The People Speak on
Climate Change
Today marks that day ten years ago when so many of us worked together
to shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. And today, creative actions
in San Francisco, Chicago, DC, New York and Seattle foreshadow the
massive civil disobedience predicted to erupt during Copenhagen
Climate meetings. |
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by Michael Poremba and Jan Lundberg
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Editor's note: Climate-change deniers and those not familiar with climate science are spreading confusion lately, or they are getting extra confused. For this to happen there's a germ of truth, with assistance from minor management mistakes in academia. Basic truth is now under fire, ignoring that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. The following report by Michael Poremba, long-time San Francisco peak-oil and climate-change activist, clarifies the climate change picture that is unchanged. Then I comment on technofix-bound climate scientists and Al Gore's latest book. - JL |
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by "Wild Girl" Rebecca Lerner
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 Together, my forager friends and I spent five hours preparing our wild Thanksgiving feast. We sipped lemonbalm tea as we worked, crafting a colorful spread of nourishing foods that were totally local, money-free, and produced 100% compostable waste. Most impressively, our dinner actually tasted good! |
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by "Wild Girl" Rebecca Lerner
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 Identifying, locating and gathering enough wild edibles is only half the challenge of eating them. Figuring out how to process them efficiently and then prepare them in a way that makes them palatable has been an interesting quest. As a people, our civilization has lost so much knowledge about how to live off the land directly that there doesn’t seem to be any information on how to do it. There are books with recipes that include wild food, but it is very rare to come across a recipe that is 100% wild. |
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by Albert Bates
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Since the early two thousand oughts we pessimistas have been trying to discern the shape of the backside of Mr. Hubbert’s curve. John Michael Greer has made a strong case for catabolic collapse, which could be described as a stair-step down from the present peak, punctuated by precipitous drops (the 147-dollar oil spike; the Lehman default; the ARMs race) and level treads (“Green Shoots,” the “Morning in America” phase we are currently re-hallucinating).
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by "Wild Girl" Rebecca Lerner
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Off to dance in the cold waters of a marsh, myself and eight friends piled into a big van and set out on our quest for wapato. Also known as Indian swamp potato or arrowhead, for its arrow-shaped leaves, wapato is a bulb-shaped root vegetable that grows underwater in wet mud.
Conditions seemed almost preternaturally accommodating. Though it is duck-hunting season, Culture Change publisher Jan Lundberg easily secured a permit for our harvest at the last minute. We just happened to pick a day closed to hunters.
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by "Wild Girl" Rebecca Lerner
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Sumac is a big shrub or a tall tree, depending on your view, that grows all over the United States, Europe and the Middle East. I have seen it along roadsides, in drainage ditches and as an ornamental plant in front yards. The dark red-purple berries form a distinctive cluster the size of a fist at the ends of the branches. The berry clusters are dense and fuzzy with a texture that reminds me of a carpet. They can be boiled to make tea or left to sit in cold water to make a refreshing beverage reminiscent of lemonade. Like citrus fruits, sumac is very high in Vitamin C. |
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by Peter Goodchild
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It now seems to me that the systemic collapse of modern civilization will have two distinct phases. The first will be merely economic hardship, and the second will be chaos. In the first phase, the major issues will be inflation, unemployment, and the stock market. In the second phase, there will be the disappearance of government, law, and money.
I am reminded of Robert D. Kaplan’s Ends of the Earth. We might imagine the USA, for example, as one of the collapsed countries he describes, where official borders are meaningless, and where police, armies, and bandit hordes are indistinguishable from one another. |
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by Rebecca "Wild Girl" Lerner
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Wild plants are compelling because they hint at an alternative reality where food and medicine are free, given by the Earth in an incredible act of generosity and compassion, like a parent for a child.
Inside every heart is a memory of another way. Advertisers have noticed that consumers long for a connection to nature, which is why so many commercials now play up products as "natural" and "green." |
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