Info, news & debate
The ‘nature problem’
Why we’d be better off living like the Saxons (with a few mod cons)
If you spend your life trying to promote low-impact living, you sometimes get asked the most ridiculous questions. More than once I’ve been asked something along the lines of: ‘you want to take us back to the Middle Ages, don’t you?’
Is a Permaculture world achievable, and if so, why are we moving in the opposite direction?
Every species has to live in harmony with nature, and humans are no exception. The alternative is gruesome and very short-term. Our ultimate and most valuable treasures are the soil and the sea. They provide all our food
Ecology as theology: religion must oppose the destruction of nature
The vast majority of the world’s population subscribe to a religion. According to Pew Research, although the number of people unaffiliated with a particular faith will increase by 2050, as a percentage, this group will fall from 16% now to 13% in 2050
Review of ‘Extinction: A Radical History’ by Ashley Dawson
I tend to look out for new books on extinction – I think species extinction is the clearest indicator of what’s happening to ecology, and the thing that will precipitate its collapse unless we stop it.
New report: number of plastic bags on UK beaches falls by almost half – so charging 5p for plastic bags works?
The number of plastic carrier bags found on UK beaches in surveys carried out by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has dropped by almost half between 2015 and 2016. This is the lowest number reported in over a decade, and fantastic news for marine wildlife.
If society collapses, which skills will you wish you’d learnt?
Here’s a conversation between Dave of Lowimpact.org and Nigel Berman of ‘School of the Wild’. Nigel teaches appreciation of nature and wilderness, and he’s provided us with information for our topic introduction on ‘firecraft’.
The pros and cons of fracking in the UK and why you need to know about them
It’s time for all those interested in how society will achieve a sustainable level of impact on the environment to brush up their own thoughts and opinions on the pros and cons of fracking in the UK.
Reimagining progress: what we can learn about ‘lean thinking’ from indigenous communities
Here’s a living example of a ‘lean’ economy (outlined by David Fleming in our last blog post), and how you can help to preserve it. The ‘unlean’ economy is encroaching onto the territory of the Kichwa and Sapara communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon, in the form of large oil corporations, and will destroy their communities, as …
David Fleming’s ‘Lean Logic’ and ‘Surviving the Future’, and why they’re important
I attended the launch of two books at Daunt Bookshop in Chelsea on Wednesday evening. David Fleming died in 2010, and now his friend Shaun Chamberlin has edited his magnum opus, Lean Logic, and Chelsea Green have published it.
Revisiting my old university economics textbook – how did I ever fall for this nonsense?
I haven’t opened my old university economics textbook (Economics, by David Begg, Stanley Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch) since the 1980s, so I was curious to see how I would respond to what I was taught 30 years ago.
We’re heading for environmental meltdown – how the planning system could help
As a professional planner (of the town and country planning variety) and fan of Low-impact Living I always expect to see demands or requests being made of the planning system to assist in attempts by individuals or groups to experiment or set examples where impact on the environment would be minimised.
Moving forward without the EU: clouds & silver linings
I think we all have stories about mad conversations we’ve had about Brexit since the referendum (or is it just me?). I was called a racist, for example, for suggesting that the UK is nowhere near the top of the league of ‘most xenophobic countries’, and I’ve been amazed by the vitriol this has stirred …
The EU referendum from an environmental perspective: are you willing to be challenged?
Almost all of my friends, and people whose opinions I respect, are intending to vote ‘Remain’ on Thursday. Here are the four main reasons I hear:
Why Alicia Keys giving up makeup is important
Readers of the Lowimpact blog won’t necessarily know who Alicia Keys is. She’s an American singer / songwriter who has sold over 35 million albums. So very famous, very successful, and right at the heart of the entertainment industry.
Stephen Hawking says that we should prioritise space travel and that ‘philosophy is dead’; cleverness and wisdom are very different
There’s clever and there’s clever. There’s clever like a computer or a calculator, and then there’s clever as in wise. The first kind of cleverness is the technical type, that can work out how to build nuclear weapons, or to genetically modify food crops, or to cut through the branch that we’re sitting on
The EU referendum from a low-impact perspective
We’ve got a referendum coming up in June that Cameron didn’t want, but was forced to promise at a time when it looked as though votes lost to UKIP might have cost him the election. His arguments now are largely based on the number of jobs that could be lost if we leave.
Is it a good idea to recruit (in N America and Europe) for sustainable living apprenticeships in Peru?
We’ve just been approached by someone running ‘sustainable living apprenticeships’ in Peru, asking if there’s anywhere to promote them on our site. This sort of thing happens all the time, by the way – yoga retreats in India, conferences in Malaysia, meditation on Greek islands etc.
The discipline of economics presupposes corporate capitalism and perpetual growth, which renders it invalid
Economics is not an unbiased academic discipline, it’s an ideology. Furthermore, economics is based on the false premise that perpetual growth is achievable. It is not, and the reason most people can’t see this is
Review of ‘Drinking Molotov Cocktails with Gandhi’ by Mark Boyle – part 1: reformism and the Transition movement
This was a very challenging and thought-provoking read. Mark lived without money for three years, and wrote the Moneyless Manifesto, published in 2012. This is his latest book about the corporate ‘Machine’ and appropriate responses to it.
Can constantly-moving livestock help prevent desertification?
Desertification is the process whereby grasslands slowly turn into deserts, and suggesting that we can help reverse this process with livestock sounds counter-intuitive, especially as livestock is usually named as one of the major contributors to desertification. In the video below, Allan Savory, who has spent a lifetime studying and working towards poverty eradication and wildlife conservation, …