(OK, this is the first time I'm using LJ as a recording place for my interest in Systems Theory, so casual friends may want to just skip this...)

I get an RSS feed from AlterNet , and today it had several really good articles - and then internal links led me to several others.

The first one was How to Build a Local Energy Economy, which is an excerpt from Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots (PoliPointPress, 2007) by Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs, and Jason Mark.

The section quoted is actually an interview with "David Morris, who  is a Co-Founder and Vice President of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis. He is the director of their New Rules Project, an excellent resource on the best practices for getting local control over energy, agriculture, retail development, finance, and other key areas. He is the author of many books and reports, which are available from the New Rules website. His regular articles are featured on AlterNet.org."

Some interesting points (which need some research/validation):

In 2002 almost 50 percent of all ethanol facilities in this country were majority farmer-owned, and about 80 percent of all the new ones coming on line were majority farmer-owned. By 2007, about 95 percent of all the new ones are absentee-owned. So we've had a big change in the ownership structure of ethanol.

Morris claims this is because Wall Street discovered that ethanol plants can return 30-40% on investment capital.. this had led to most plants producting 100 M+ gallons, instead of 30-40M gallons for previous plants... meaning they are too large scale to work in a purely local level

Also, Morris claims that sugar cane production in Brazil is becoming corporatized because Japanese, US, and other investors are taking over, implying that farmers no longer work for themselves... this surely is not as simple as that, right?  (q.v. Cardoso and Faletto's Dependency and Development from the 80s?) 

(In general, checking out the true story of ethanol in Brazil would be a useful thing to do...)


Another good article was What it Will Take to Build A Sustainable U.S., which had some very interesting elements in it:

• Article is by Founder of Bioneers conference
• Major quote (interesting summary of "resilience thinking"):

The name of the game is resilience. It means the capacity of both human and ecological systems to absorb disturbance and still retain their basic function and structure. Resilience does not mean just bouncing back to business-as-usual. It means assuring the very ability to get back. But if regime change happens, resilience means having sufficient capacity to transform to meet the new management.

A network of ecologists and social scientists called the Resilience Alliance outlined some of the rules of the road in their book "Resilience Thinking." The first principle of resilience thinking is systems thinking: It's all connected, from the web of life to human systems. "You can only solve the whole problem," says Huey Johnson of the Resource Renewal Institute. Manage environmental and human systems as one system. Taking care of nature means taking care of people, and taking care of people means taking care of nature. Look for systemic solutions that address multiple problems at once. Watch for seeds of new solutions that emerge with changing conditions.

• Dutch started on a National Green Plan in 1989... now 70% there?  And Europe followed in turn (?)
•  Move towards joining social justice and environmental causes - can't have Green Plan without social justice (?)... this is where Bioneers comes in..

This led me to an article on Bioneers, a new movement trying to join environmentalists and civil rights., mostly a review of the conference they held, but with some interesdting examples.

Finally,  11 Solutions to the Environmental Crisis had a number of other interesting bits:

• UK has "transitional towns":

In the UK, "transition towns" are creating new modes of locally rooted agriculture, commerce, energy, transportation, housing, and government that are the building blocks of a "post-carbon future." This "transition movement" holds that the need to consume less oil can lead to a healthier, happier future in places where the shift is well-planned, locally grounded, and democratic.

(Quite the list of caveats there, but still... is this part of the UK's Green Plan?)

• Several other examples of non-growth alternatives (=low-gain?) -  Bhutan, Thailand, also mentions Cuba (does this last hold up?)

• A little bit preachy and pollyanna - "ending impoverishment of the South" is a bit much as a solution, eh? - but overall, interesting.

All in all, a very interesting set of articles..

Tags: alternet, articles, citations, discussion, environmentalism, social justice, systems research topics
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