Weekly Linkfest – Edition 001
News — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor February 10, 2010
Welcome to the first edition of our new Weekly Linkfest! Where possible, I’ll put up a weekly roundup of interesting environmental and permaculture news – with the intention that it’ll be an easy way for readers to jump to important and/or interesting news and practical or inspiration material.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculture.org.au with links (and ideally a sentence outlining key points) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet (put ‘Weekly Linkfest Fodder’ in the subject line, as I have a message rule that will move these messages into a specific folder for this purpose). This is a great way to share information of merit with the greater permaculture community.
Let’s get started:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- Coming soon for UK residents are more permaculture-oriented material to arrive via mainstream media channels, with the BBC’s upcoming ‘The Edible Garden‘ series. This is perhaps due to popular reception of their ‘A Farm for a Future‘ feature they did recently.
- A leftover New Orleans FEMA trailer becomes a mobile garden and permaculture library.
- Even Richard Branson is warning the world about peak oil.
- Imagine that – product packaging, and maybe even buildings, made from fungus? (See also.)
- Indoor plants are good at removing toxins from the air of our living spaces, NASA studies show.
- While human powered bicycles in relocalised agricultural communities would be better, electric bicycles for China have got to be a better option than a billion cars.
Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):
- World’s soils gone in 60 years? That’s not good…. A recent study calls for drastic change, stating that the world’s soils are being lost at rates many times faster than they can be replaced (57 times faster in the case of densely populated China). People that question whether sustainable farming can feed the world (we know it can) should consider these figures – whatever they may think of sustainable agricultural methods and yields, we know for sure that industrial agriculture is not an option, and we need to move fast if we want to avoid spiraling into widespread famine, and even cannibalism. And, despite this, we’re vaporising biomass to fuel cars instead of using it to build humus.
- Our glaciers are melting faster than ever – and with it goes our water supplies.
- Mexico, the U.S.A.’s #3 oil supplier may soon be unable to supply….
- Bill Gates may fund us into darkness in a plan to halt global warming through global dimming.
- There are perhaps as few as 3,200 tigers left in the world, and China has only fifty wild tigers left.
- Obama embarks on a big Nuclear push.This may be one of the causes of the great uranium stampede that’s underway. All this while nuclear is looking increasingly unsafe in the present – without even taking long-term energy and water requirements (and the necessary technological knowhow of our descendents for many generations) for safe storage into account.
- New Zealand now has more cows than people. It seems the country is selling its soil and its soul (and its water) to provide millions of chinese, many of them lactose intolerant, with milk power and cheese they never needed before. Someone has got to be making a few dollars though.
- Oases of silence are harder to find. The world is just plain getting noisy.
Just plain interesting (coz we’re curious creatures):
- Jenny Pell asks the question – "How do I invite you to grow food?"
- Dubai’s ‘The World’ project looks to be not only sinking into history due to lack of money, but also literally sinking into the ocean. Despite pouring billions of dollars and millions of tons of sand and rock into the project, it looks like ‘The World’ is going down the gurgler.
- You’ve gotta love these panda pics.
- Man and whale become firm friends.
- How much life can you find in one cubic foot?
- What does the famous sci-fi ‘Dune’ and permaculture have in common? Find out here.
Don’t forget to send me your links for next week’s linkfest!!
Comments (3)
Great idea Craig, you do seem to have a knack of finding some very interesting and relevant stuff. I look forward to this new section.
Comment by Glen Novello — February 10, 2010 @ 7:34 am
Check this, serious resistance to GM in India.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQZu7WLBNMI&feature=sub
Comment by James — February 10, 2010 @ 11:42 am
Thanks Craig
Great idea. Tracking mail is a big challenge.This will really help those folks that get a lot of mail. Your are doing a great job I click in very often
Cheers
Bruce
Comment by Bruce Zell — February 10, 2010 @ 7:04 pm
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