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POPSSusan George: Transforming the Global Economy Susan George, Chair of the Board of the Transnational Institute ( http://www.tni.org/george ) speaking on "Transforming the Global Economy: Solutions for a Sustainable World", sponsored by the School of International Development & Global Studies, University of Ottawa, 29 October 2008
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POPSFood needs 'fundamental rethink' "Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s," he told BBC News. It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.
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POPSMoths: Images by Jim des Rivieres These are just two of hundreds. This is an absolutely incredible collection of hundreds of beautiful colour images of different moth species, captured by a unique scanning process by collector/artist, Jim des Rivieres here in the Ottawa Valley in Canada. /e
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POPSEdible wild fungi: Marasmius oreades One of my favorite wild mushrooms. I've been picking and eating this one for 30 years. It's a great mushroom to dry for long storage and rehydrate any time you're in the mood for mushrooms. Great in stews and soups. There's nothing like free food. Usually abundant on grassy areas, such as parks, in Eastern Ontario in the fall after heavy rains.
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POPSCommunity Garden Slide Show This is an 8 minute success story slide show featuring a downtown, urban community garden project in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Thanks to Pauline Gabriel, Regina.FullCircles.org, for bringing the project to our attention. /e
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POPSJane Jacobs - Urban planning hero Jacobs had no professional training in the field of city planning, nor did she hold the title of planner. She instead relied on her observations and common sense to illustrate why certain places work, and what can be done to improve those that do not. Together with William H. Whyte, Jacobs led the way in advocating for a place-based, community-centered approach to urban planning, decades before such approaches were considered sensible.
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POPSJane's Walk (Ottawa, Canada)
Who is Jane Jacobs? Edit Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was an urbanist and activist whose writings championed a fresh, community-based approach to understanding, organizing, designing, and building cities. She had no formal training as a planner, and yet her 1961 best-seller, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and her later books introduced ground-breaking ideas about how cities function, evolve, and succeed or fail that now seem like common sense to today’s architects, planners, politicians, and activists. Jacobs saw cities as ecosystems with their own dynamics that would evolve over time according to how they were used. With a keen eye for detail, she wrote eloquently about sidewalks, parks, retail design, and self-organization. She promoted higher density, short blocks, local economies, and mixed uses. Jacobs helped derail the car-centred approach to urban planning in both New York City and Toronto, invigorating neighbourhood activism by helping stop the expansion of expr
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POPSPERMAculture: Path to Sustainable gardens Some of permaculture's key guidelines for designing a garden (or a lifestyle) include: * Honor the health of the system and of all components above their productivity; favor slow changes and low levels of work and input and output over the drive to maximize production, which pushes the system out of balance. * Maintain closed-loop cycles of all materials to keep the system in balance; what we might call waste is re-imagined as a surplus resource, to be used as an input into another process. * Designate zones of more intense and less intense energy use to maximize efficiency and minimize wasted labor and resources. * Build in redundancy -- each element has many functions, and each function is performed by many elements -- to ensure stability in the system. * Do not use stores of natural capital to sustain ongoing processes, but tap them for the extra energy needed when generating a structure or system or putting a process into action. * Use natural proces
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POPSLawnless Landscapes Here in Ottawa, Canada, this it the PERFECT time for us to start thinking about ways to get rid of the lawn. In 2008, we all know that a monoculture, single species landscape is not self-sustaining. It needs TONS of inputs -- water, labor, fuel, fertilizer, pest and weed control, etc. What a waste! And for what?
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POPSBackyard biodiversity: Make Space for Nature The 2004 Make Space for Nature campaign in Sheffield England inspired people across the nation to enhance their gardens with wildlife-friendly measures. Almost 100,000 pledges were made during the campaign to put out nest boxes, dig ponds, plant trees, and we can only assume this was the tip of the iceberg. Many viewers were already doing all these things. Many more might not have pledged, but might have thought twice before mowing their lawns or going out to annihilate their local slug populations after watching the series.
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POPSThe Alarmist's Slick Trick "How have Al Gore and the fraudsters pulled it off? It’s really simple. They just flipped the burden of proof and put it on the “deniers” — the skeptics, who don’t believe the computer models. With the Left in control of the media, you can do it. So now it’s prove to me you’re not a witch! Because there is no decisive evidence. There are 21 computer models that “prove” global warming over the next century. By the time 2050 rolls around, most of the modelers will be dead."
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POPS[MORE...] Food not Lawns: The website Lawns can be replaced with perpetually self-sustaining, thriving human habitats. Diverse environments with greenery, flowers, animals, birds. Sounds like a very palatable, enjoyable replacement for lawns -- those life sucking systems on permanent life support! Hey, maybe we could even turn grass clippings into fuel for automobiles??
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POPSFood Not Lawns These statistics are absolutely mind boggling. What are we humans thinking... dedicating so much of the planets resources to grow a totally useless crop -- grass!
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POPSBiodiversity "champions" Some good, clonable ideas here on using the concept of biodiversity "champions" to promote and publicize the concept of biodiversity.
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POPSCity of Ottawa approves Biodiversity Task Force This task force will be composed of members of the Environmental Advisory Committee, a staff person from the Environmental Sustainability Division, and representatives from the community, the Ottawa Forests and Greenspace Advisory Committee, the Rural Issues Advisory Committee and the Conservation Authorities. While the City does not yet have a Biodiversity Strategy document, staff is already implementing policies to protect natural features and habitat. Currently, work is ongoing in the areas of climate change and stormwater management.
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POPSWhen Nature Re-claims the Planet: Life After People Humans won't be around forever...Imagine when humans leave the Earth...What happens to its biggest and most prosperous capital cities and other attractions when mankind is gone! Check out the book: "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman. He offers an approach to examine humanity's impact on earth, by envisioning the Earth without us.
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