Center of the Drum

This is a parabolic solar cooker at a Permaculture homestead in central Vermont. It is turned away from the sun in the photo, but rotate it 180 degrees and aim it at the Sun and within minutes, rice is cooking, onions are sizzling, and lunch is almost ready! There are different kinds of solar cookers and many are easy to make and even easier to use. These are saving lives and trees in deforested regions and turning people on to the many uses of the free energy of the Sun.
Click Here for the Solar Cooking Archive

The government is compiling information about the nation’s children for future military recruitment. The link below takes you to a site where you can learn about the ways they are getting the information and how to be removed from this database.

Click here!

Follow the link below to find out about biodiesel, supplies and instructions for making it, kits to run your diesel engine on recycled cooking oil and more.

Click here!

Here’s the solar panel I recently mounted on the roof. It produces 100+ watts at 12 volts. The wires run through a waterproof gasket into the vehicle and down to the charge controller:

The charge controller takes the electricity from the panel on the roof, charges the batteries and sends the current to the fuse block where I connect everything I need to power; lights, vents, speakers, refrigerator and 12 volt sockets for charging batteries and running anything else. There’s also a small inverter that converts the 12v DC to 120v AC so I can run the juicer or other house-current appliances. I use 2 sealed deep cycle batteries. I can add another panel for faster recharging or an additional battery so that I can go for longer periods without sun.

In the fall of last year, I put together an hour-long video, featuring Ross Gelbspan and John Seed speaking about climate change. They addressed a group of local activists and concerned humans at an event organized by Earthlands in Massachusetts in the spring of ‘06.

Earthlands website

In this video, we learn about the politics and profit-motive behind the pollution, things we can do as individuals and communities, and ways to deal with the various emotions that arise when confronted with such a massive issue.

You can purchase a DVD from the Rainforest Information Centre website. All profits go back into grassroots projects to protect the world’s last wild places.

RIC website

There’s also a streamed version on google video for you to watch on yer ‘puter. It’s over there on the right side of this page, under ‘Videos,’ called ‘CC,D&E.’

Here’s a map of the nuclear power reactor sites in the US. This map only shows power generation plants, not research, waste storage or weapons facilities:

Click here to watch an animated timeline of nukes in the US

Imagine all of the nuclear power plants around the world being decommissioned! The air space above them would be off limits to aircraft for a very long time.

But right away, large horizontal wind turbines, using kites and cables, could produce as much electricity as the nukes they replaced! Well, the technology is here and small models are about to be tested. Here are some links to find out more about this amazing idea:

KiteGen Website

Wired Article

Treehugger Article

John Seed is back in the US and Canada for his ‘Climate Change, Despair and Empowerment’ roadshow. I picked him up in Ottawa, Ontario 7 days ago and we headed north and west, deep into the Ontarian bush, through an expanse of endless pine forest.

The week began with a 2 day Deep Ecology workshop in Pembroke. About 35 folks attended from the surrounding region. It was a diverse crew; activists, scientists, Permaculture farmers, one totally amazing kid, and other local earth citizens.

Monday morning, John spoke with a group of about 50 teens from some local schools. Before handing it over to John for his presentation, the group began by pairing up and looking at where the other person’s shirt was made. Then we all marked a giant round map of the world with pushpins. Most, of course, were manufactured in southern Asia and Latin America. A great lead off to discussions about globalization; how corporations avoid having to deal with environmental regulations and workers’ conditions.

John speaking at the Freeway Coffee House in Hamilton, Ontario
Freeway website

Since then, we have done a presentation in a different town each evening, followed by a weekend workshop in a central location, where we use experiential deep ecology and eco-psychology processes to explore the emotional aspects of the issue, which can stun us into inaction and a deeper denial of the immediate threats we are facing.

I am filming the presentations for a video version that will be available for streaming on the web.

Click here to watch the video of John’s climate presentation

John has put together a great selection of video clips from Ross Gelbspan, Al Gore & Vandana Shiva. He speaks in detail about some of the things that were not covered in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and addresses the problems that arise from rushing into solutions without thinking through the potential problems. One example he gives is the European Union’s effort to encourage a switch to biofuels, sparking the Palm industry to expand into the rainforests of Borneo, burning and destroying huge areas of ancient forest land to clear the way for oil palm plantations, releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and driving the Orangutan closer to the brink of extinction.

Oil palm plantations in and around Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo.

Below are some links to articles about this issue.

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Another aspect of the tour is to encourage folks to start local ‘Climate Study Action Groups’ in towns where there isn’t a group specifically focused on the climate issue. John stresses the importance of further study into the potential pros and cons of any particular strategy or campaign. He feels that small local groups are the best way to influence larger entities, such as governments and industry, as well as to address the myriad ways in which we can change our lifestyle choices as individuals and families. He says, “The single most important thing to do is to start with a small group of like-minded people and reach out to your immediate community.”

Last November, I was traveling north, from San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, with my friend Larry. We were on a fact-finding mission for his project, the University of the Wild, visiting centers of ‘green’ higher learning, as well as eco-psychology program centers, environmental research facilities and intentional communities. After events and visits with groups throughout the Bay Area and Mendocino and Humbolt counties, we reached the northern-most stretch of the California coastline.

That evening, in Arcata, California, about 200 people gathered for a celebration of local food and music. The instructions went out with the word-of-mouth invitation; come to a Bioregional Potluck! Every ingredient of every dish had to be grown and produced within 250 miles of the town, even the spices! All ingredients were to be written down on a card and placed in front of the dish. Other information was encouraged, including the sources from which the ingredients were procured, as well as the method of preparation.

It was an omnivorous gathering, but that night, we were all ‘localvores!’

The goal was to highlight the amazing diversity of locally grown food and the ability of the town to manifest self-reliance in food production and distribution. The plan in Arcata is to continue this kind of gathering, once a month, reducing the radius each time, until all foods come from the immediate biological region, or Bioregion.

In the US, an item of food travels an average of 1500 miles from the place where it is grown to the place where it is purchased and consumed! The positive environmental results of buying organic can be negated by the distance and method with which the food is transported. Also factoring into the ‘food miles’ concept is the distance the consumer travels to increasingly centralized marketplaces. Many towns are losing their small stores in the downtown regions to the giant mega-stores, out of reach of pedestrians and bicycles.

Foods shipped long distances often require constant refrigeration and heavy packaging. But the amount of energy required and the subsequent air, soil and water pollution from large-scale production and long-distance transport are not the only problems. There are also negative effects on small farmers and small stores, as well as the quality of the food. Here are some links with more info on this subject:

food miles article #1

food miles article #2

University of the Wild website

After the climate roadshow wrapped up, I rolled down to Moonshadow at SVI in Tennessee. We had a few days to prepare for our week at Bonnaroo. Our m.o. is to get there 3 or 4 days before the 100,000 attendees arrive. We have a 20 x 20 foot tent in ‘PlanetRoo,’ the activist area that festival-goers pass through to get from the camping zones to the 6 music stages.

Our crew of 23 began assembling a strawbale wall with two arches. Then it was covered in cob, a mixture of clay, sand, straw, water, and earth. It’s a lot like adobe, but the addition of the straw adds strength. There are structures made of cob all over the world. The most famous might be the houses in Devon, England, some of which are over 1000 years old.

Bonnaroo is insane! It’s dusty and hot and dry and flat and loud and crazy. By the time the event ‘began,’ I felt like I had lived in that ginormous field for weeks. This was my second time at the festival.

While most of our gang worked on the construction of the wall, 4 of us prepared a 45 minute set to perform on the Solar Stage, also located in PlanetRoo.

The wall was a big attraction and we continued adding finishing touches as the festival got under way. That allowed people to come and watch the process, ask questions and even get their hands and feet in the mud!

Our booth was one of the cooler places at the festival. The cob/strawbale combo is a fantastic insulator and the organic shapes and special artistic touches make people feel comfortable and inspired…

click to see more images of Bonnaroo