Economics and Energetics of farming 4 – Changing the way we farm and eat to get to Sustainable Agriculture (SA)   

An obvious, yet poignant question I used to ask my students to get them thinking – “What does the term Sustainable Agriculture imply about modern industrial agriculture?”  I am always amazed how so many people talk about sustainability but still practice unsustainability as something that is commonplace and acceptable.  As Read more

Economics and Energetics of farming 3 – The politics of food production and the future of sustainable farming.

“Modern corporate driven Industrial Farming is not about food!  It is about chemical and oil corporations making money.  Food is merely the vehicle in which they do this: And as a value added bonus, also a way to provide the healthcare industry – really sickcare – with long-term clients.    Richard Read more

Economics and Energetics of farming 2 – a reality check on food production energetics.

In the previous post I talked about the 10% rule of energetics within the food chain. The potentially most efficient way to eat is to consume the vegetables directly so that we get 10% of the vegetables energy.  Eating an animal that ate the vegetable only gives us 1% of Read more

Economics and Energetics of farming 1 – a reality check on the food system.

“The primary mode of cognition that the practitioners of science have used during the past century – Analytic, Linear, Reductionist, Deterministic, Mechanical – has begun to reach the limits of its assumptions.  For this particular mode of cognition and the system to which that mode has given rise, can only Read more

How people think about the future 2 – changing the message to fit the beliefs!

Main future view categories (numbers in parentheses are percentages for each category – 25 years and 100 years, with question three overviews in the narrative within each question). 1. No real change over 25 years (or even 100 years?) (0%/7%). An intriguing category because these people recognize that environmental changes Read more

How people think about the future 1 – how beliefs form actions, or non-actions!

“The only thing that can save us as a species is seeing how we’re not thinking about future generations in the way we live.” Erik Erikson  In my academic past-life I was doing some research on how people perceive the future might be.  My logic was that based on a Read more

Biophilia and Biodiversity 4: Nature – other pragmatic reasons to care for it!

In the last three posts I have outlined why I think we are all connected to nature.  But that connectedness lies along a continuum of liking it for its pragmatic personal needs to loving it intrinsically as a part of who we are.  I really do not believe that anyone Read more

Biophilia and Biodiversity 3: Nature – love it because it is essential to humanity!

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.  William Shakespeare BioDiversity is known to be a complete interaction of all the species in an ecosystem.  Modern science accepts that an ecosystem is a complete and interactive and dynamic collection of species (from the micro to especially the micro levels, which we Read more

Biophilia and Biodiversity 2: Nature – love it or leave it, why we need it!

Earth is not a platform for human life.  It’s a living being.  We’re not on it but part of it.  Its health is our health.  Thomas Moore (archetypal psychologist and mythologist). I really do not think that indigenous peoples go around saying I love nature.  To people that live within Read more

Biophilia and Biodiversity 1: Nature – love it or leave it, or is it just a fun playground?

In my last post I stated that nearly everyone connects to the natural world on a fundamental level.  The term Biophilia was first coined by Erich Fromm in his book The Heart of Man: It’s genius for Good and Evil (1964), but was popularized by E.O. Wilson in 1984 with Read more

Richard’s Research on Worldviews and why he is optimistic about a transformation

“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wears you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.” Muhammad Ali Recently I received the Comment:  “You actually make it seem really easy along with your presentation however I find this topic to be actually something that I feel I would by Read more

Geoengineering 3 – tying up loose ends?

“The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the ad handle because it was made of wood and they thought it was one of them.” Anon There seem to be three main areas of geoengineering:   1) modern accepted techniques – Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal Read more

Geoengineering 2 – Playing the HAARP: High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program.

The most prominent instrument at HAARP is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high frequency (HF) band. The IRI is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere.  Sounds Innocuous doesn’t it?   According to the Patents associated with HAARP, the military experiments say it Read more

Geoengineering 1 – Controlling Planetary Eco-Systems.

In the last 30 years it seems like the weather patterns and climate overall have become more chaotic. Most of this has been assigned by mainstream science to growing Global Climate Disruption (GCD).  The evidence is quite compelling.  More recently within the last decade the patterns have been more than Read more

Signpost to a Sustainable Future, or … a Subversive Con?  The Georgia Guidestones!

If you haven’t heard of the Georgia Guidestones (the GGs), don’t be surprised, because your local TV station will not be doing an exposé anytime soon.   I found them through my travels within the internet one day when an apparent conspiracist commented in another blog about the hierarchy.  Those who Read more

Monsanto and Bayer – Pesticides and Chemicals as the Basis of Our Society.

I have read several times now from different sources, “who thought it was a good idea to put poison on our food and think it would have no consequences?” Two of the largest chemical companies (Bayer and Monsanto) in the world have been given the go ahead from the US Read more

Making the transition to Sustainable Food Systems 3 – Rethinking what farming is about in the modern age.

Let’s face it, we all like food.  It has been the primary human occupation throughout humanities history.  It is the primary drive for all of nature.  Yet how many of us in the MDCs could actually find food if it wasn’t neatly packaged in a grocery store?  Once we were Read more

Making the transition to Sustainable Food Systems 2 – Enclosing of the public Domain

Will we choose sustainable living, or like Cuba, will we wait until it is forced upon us through some kind of regional or global crisis?  This is NOT about capitalism versus socialism or any other form of political system.  There are as many, if not more, people starving worldwide because Read more

Making the transition to Sustainable Food Systems – Cuba and Detroit as case studies

Over the years, during lectures and many talks I have given, one question that always comes up is could we actually make the transition to sustainability or is it just a pipe-dream.   Obviously the question usually comes from people who think a sustainable future is some half-life of a harsh Read more

The Dumbing Down of Humanity – Controlling the Information 2.

About a week ago I posted on Facebook a cartoon from ‘Collectively Conscious.’ In it a young boy asks his mother, “Why do we have wars?”  The mother answers, “Because we are ruled by an elite group of psychopaths who own the banks that control the government and the media.  Read more

The Dumbing Down of Humanity – Controlling the Information 1.

We like to blame the dumbing down of society to the electronic joy we are now inundated with in our lives.  While this is somewhat true, it is not a new phenomenon.  Throughout history, the people who controlled the information controlled the people.  This is not conspiracy, it is simply Read more

VISION – How we focus on what we really Want 4

A caring, sharing, collaborative world “Our civilized culture is failing us.  And to change things we have to start with our children, showing them the importance of love and kindness, of faith and hope, of compassion and non-violence, treating each other with dignity and respect, not as bodies to be Read more

VISION – How we focus on what we really Want 3

POPULATION, ECONOMICS, CHOICE and MORALITY                     I didn’t get to complete my thoughts on this in the last post because of a keyboard problem.  Countries that have invested in female education and family planning have demonstrated major drops in total fertility rates. Regardless of which counties are used as comparisons (e.g. Read more

VISION – How we focus on what we really Want 2

POPULATION:The late Al Bartlett had a lot to say about the exponential function (see earlier post) and how human population growth exasperated it even more with endless environmental insults.  Whichever type of future we collectively choose – agrarian or highly technological, or even a unique combination – we will have Read more

VISION – How we focus on what we really Want 1

Computers are wonderful things – until they aren’t.  For those following this blog, my apologies.  My programs needed some fixing, and I was on the road in Florida without access to program support.  There’s a metaphor there somewhere about modern living and the inherent problems we have?  (see further down). Read more

Why we stay in the rut 3 – A future of Possibilites

I decided to subtitle this post a world of possibilities.  There are many options for us and many are more desirable than what we currently have.  I didn’t say probabilities, which are more likely occurrences, because to get to probabilities we have to have more firm intention of what we Read more

Why we stay in the rut 1 – Living an Infinitely growing economy in a finite world

In the developed countries, when you have enough monetary wealth to live comfortably, being in the rut is not such an imposition.  It might still have problems, but you can afford to suffer through them – or as often happens, you can afford prescription or even non-prescription medications to blunt Read more

Old Euro-Worldviews gone amok – Trying to Change Beliefs.

I was clearing out boxes of books I had brought back home from my academic office after I retired and came across ‘The Mis-measure of Man’ by Stephen Jay Gould.  In this book Gould lays out the rationale and justification for how scientists used ‘good’ science to ‘prove’ that intellect Read more