We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Roots of Sustainability

by Joe Roman, Tess Croner, Will Raap, Wes Jackson from Solutions. 

They provide an excellent historical perspective on the degradation of soils and argue for their own solutions from the 50-Year Farm Bill and those of the Worldwatch Institute's Mitigating Climate Change through Food and Land Use. 


However, I don't think that they really answer the question they posed early in the article:
When it is used and abused, soil becomes a nonrenewable resource, like fossil fuels. But there's no Big Soil, with friends and lobbyists on Capitol Hill. So how do we turn this around?
They seem to think that merely having sensible solutions will automatically transform into social policy.
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