A local food revolution is quietly unfolding in our midst right here in Boulder County. It’s a revolution aimed at rebuilding this region’s capacity to feed its own people, to ensure food security and food sovereignty for all.
In a previous article I have suggested that revolts in so-called developing countries can be predicted not only by the fraction of educated youth who are unemployed and other factors, but also by the fraction of household budget spent for food. Now we might ask of developed countries: to what extent will voters tolerate extreme inequality if the standard of living of a large majority of them no longer gradually rises or at least seems to remain stable, but actually declines noticeably?
Institute Calls for More Intensive Contingency Planning by Japanese Authorities; U.S. Should Move as Much Spent Fuel as Possible to Dry Storage to Reduce Most Severe Risks, Suspend Licensing and Relicensing During Review
Radiation found in fields 40 kilometers north of Fukushima runs 5 cm. deep, and an expert expects it will last at least 30 years. A big part of Japan is lost to agriculture, if not to human habitation. Certainly the tens of thousands of nuclear refugees from Fukushima itself and neighboring villages are not going home. Not in their lifetimes. Caldicott says this is the big one.
Yes, we talk about collapse, but it’s rather academic, and I think people in wealthy nations are nowhere near prepared for the awful shock of energy descent and financial uncertainty, and a freaky, damaged climate. We’re not ready inside, so why don’t we start with what you mean by the word “sacred?”
Rather than maximizing real well-being, policy makers are compelled to focus on avoiding economic collapse by growing the money economy. A debt-based money system can make sense when the credit funds real investment. When the credit funds current consumption and phantom wealth speculation, the result is ever-increasing debt, inequality, destruction of the natural environment, erosion of the social fabric, and ultimate default. For too long, we have put up with a money system designed to grow the financial assets of rich people at the expense of assuring continuing cycles of economic boom and bust, confining billions to lives of desperation, and reducing Earth to a toxic waste dump. We can do better