James Samuel

After watching this video, I followed the link to the Natural Homes site, and discovered this beautiful gallery of photos (below), which led me in turn to the Facebook gallery with explanations of each photo according to that most inspiring book “A Pattern Language“. I was given this book by my wife when I was [...]

Earlier this year, Loo was awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication prize. This enabled her the time and resources to invest in a exploration of New Zealand – the people, their visions, their needs, their sense of identity. It is my [Jaime's] job to help Loo, uncover the ways to make it possible. To unravel the ecosystem of amazing people and abundant opportunities.

There are some quite well developed plans afoot which speak about extracting and utilising large volumes of very low-grade carbon-rich coal from mines in Southland. This carbon, which has been safely locked away in the ground for millions of years, would be unlocked and dispersed into the atmosphere. No matter what we do with coal, the end result is the same – the volume of carbon in the atmosphere will increase.

His analysis ends with a fatalistic statement: “Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel … A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.”

My heart sang last night, to see members of my community look at the challenges of the future, square in the eye, and then with energy and creativity name some creative, and do-able solutions. Here’s a six minute video I put together summarizing the evenings activities. Read on…

At some point in the collapse, it will become necessary to nationalise all unproductive land and distribute it to those willing to produce food for local consumption (this is already happening in Venezuela and Brazil – and some other countries).

I was seeking some background data in preparation for giving a talk at the Heart Politics gathering on Friday. I found this amazing list of debt data on Wikipedia. At a glance it is clear that there is trouble afoot. Already we are seeing the list of countries in economic crisis growing – Iceland, Ireland, Greece, [...]

I watched this week, as events unfolded across the world, indicating a clamping down of freedom of speech, and asked myself “Is dialogue on the increase?”

President Obama’s statement today that the world is running out of places to drill oil, confirms the need for political parties in Aotearoa to start cross party talks on the global peak oil crisis. “The time has come for all political parties to come together and take action on what we are going to do about the global oil crisis and how it will affect this nation,” – Maori Party energy and climate change spokesperson Rahui Katene.