http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/tags/environment/ Thoughts from the Foothills of Life's Learning Curve en John Casey Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:04:57 GMT Pebble (http://pebble.sourceforge.net) http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/04/22/1208881317884.html I ran out of cereal this morning, and threw the empty box away. We recycle what we can, but unfortunately the list of what our curb-side service will take doesn't include cereal boxes. We also compost what we can, including any veggies from our CSA subscription that go uneaten for too long. Everything else gets a one-way ticket to that magical place called "away." But where is away? Is it really some magical place like Heaven, or that farm where so many urban dogs go to chase rabbits? I'm guessing plenty of people will bristle at my comparison of this place to Heaven, and rightly so. Nobody in their right mind would equate a landfill with the ultimate reward for a pious life. But if the landfill isn't magical, how can it hold so much stuff without filling up? Well, it can't. We're dealing with trash in essentially the same way as our ancestors going back thousands of years: we dig a hole in the ground and put the trash in it. When the hole starts filling up, we cover it over and dig a new hole. The problem ... http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/04/22/1208881317884.html#comments http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/04/22/1208881317884.html Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:21:57 GMT http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/02/13/1202917423916.html I’ve been reading about the potential for future environmental catastrophe for awhile now, branching out as I went into books that studied collapsed cultures of the past and on to other topics even farther afield. You could call it my second great education, because although I always knew there was the potential for danger in the phrase ‘global warming’, I only recently awoke to a fuller understanding of its implications. From environmental studies and a sort of anthro-ecological history if you like, I found myself taking a sidetrack that would lead me to staring at another perilous danger of our time: peak oil. Along the way, while studying both of these topics through books, documentaries, podcasts, blogs, and plain-old web research, I kept coming back to the idea of getting back to local communities of people you trust. Whether it’s escaping the addiction to a petroleum supply that’s running out, or finding the most effective way to curtail my contribution to climate change, ... http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/02/13/1202917423916.html#comments http://www.ejlife.net/blogs/john/2008/02/13/1202917423916.html Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:43:43 GMT