kelpiewilson

Sex, Rock 'n' Roll and Global Warming

Sex, Rock 'n' Roll and Global Warming
By Kelpie Wilson
Truthout | Environmental Editor

Monday 30 July 2007

Can globally synchronized music concerts change the world? Was Al Gore's Live Earth extravaganza worth its cost in carbon emissions? Since the July 7 event, a number of commentators have groused about the carbon footprint of the events, the lack of focus on measurable goals and the inherent wastefulness of mega-stars who fly their bloated entourages around in private jets.

These complaints are all valid enough, but the organizers also never claimed the concerts to be anything more than the launch of a public education campaign about global warming. In the long run, however, the organizers have extremely outsize ambitions. They hope the Live Earth concerts will have been the tipping point for a transforming change in consciousness. The proof of this concept, that a global entertainment event can start a revolution, will only be available as time shows us how Live Earth has impacted mass consumer culture.

Preliminary returns are not greatly encouraging if you go by such barometers as People magazine. People's story on Live Earth, wedged into the back half of the July 23 issue, ran barely 250 words with a scant half dozen pictures. The article's main point was that the music "helped the medicine go down." These are not words to start a revolution.

Dissecting the rest of this issue of People shows you what the problem is. From the cover story, "The World's Richest Teens," to the multi-page spread on the million dollar Eva Langoria-Tony Parker wedding, it was all about bling. Clearly, to save the planet, we'll have to find other role models than the winners of the most lavish wedding competition.

Preparing for Permaculture

By Kelpie Wilson
t r u t h o u t | Environmental Editor
Monday 02 July 2007

An interview with permaculture expert Robyn Francis in New South Wales, Australia.

While in Australia for the International Agrichar Initiative conference in April, I got a chance to visit Djanbung Gardens, a farm and learning center founded by permaculture expert Robyn Francis in the alternative community of Nimbin, New South Wales. After a wonderful hour touring the garden with students from Canada, South Africa and France, I sat down with Robyn for a chat about permaculture and the future of Australia's and the world's agricultural systems.

KW: Robyn, please tell me - what got you interested in permaculture?

RF: In the early 1970s, I was part of the whole counterculture movement and not very happy with the way society was going. I traveled overseas for five years and saw a lot of things good and a lot of things wrong, and one of the things I found that really fascinated me in my travels was the sustainable traditional systems of farming and village culture. Then I lived in Europe, in southern Germany, in a small farming hamlet, for three and a half years, just out of Munich, where I got to see the traditional European farming systems. There were still old farmers who were doing their crop rotations, and the only input to the farm was diesel fuel to put into the tractor and the Mercedes Benz. It was all mixed cropping, and they had their cows and their pigs, and they would use the manures and compost them and put them out in the fields. These types of farms would have a little forest that was managed over 200-year rotations, from generation to generation, and it was just such a stark contrast to the mono-thinking, monoculture, broad-acre agriculture that I grew up with here in Australia.

KW: How did we end up abandoning those kinds of systems?

RF: Post WWII; that's when society went on the most incredibly manic fossil-fuel binge. From the end of the Second World War you can track this corporatization of Western culture and commoditization of land. And all the chemical weapons that they created for war, well, those chemicals then went into chemical-based agriculture, so they could continue manufacturing and have a new market. We really see those major changes in agricultural systems occurring then.