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That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner

We can get more food out of the plants we raise as food crops, thereby making better use out of the biomass.

If home cooks reconsidered what should go into the pot, and what into the trash, what would they find? What new flavors might emerge, what old techniques? Pre-industrial cooks, for whom thrift was a necessity as well as a virtue, once knew many ways to put the entire garden to work. Fried green tomatoes and pickled watermelon rind are examples of dishes that preserved a bumper crop before rot set in.

“Some people these days are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their natural state, they don’t even know that a broccoli stalk is just as edible as the florets,” said Julia Wylie, an organic farmer in Watsonville, Calif.

via That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner – NYTimes.com.

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Categories Great Reskilling, Great Revaluing, Resilience

JOURNAL: The Resilient Community Wiki – Global Guerrillas

27 Jun

Check it out, live cyber tools to help you make it happen:

The great part about starting out small, simple, and a little cheesy is that it can only get better from there. Using that logic, my friends and I have launched a wiki called Miiu (pronounced me-you). Miiu is a visual wiki. Essentially, a catalogue of things (products, tools, etc.) and places (homes, businesses, gov’t buildings, etc.).

via JOURNAL: The Resilient Community Wiki – Global Guerrillas.

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Categories Good Information, Good Decisions, Great Localization, Resilience

What Trees are Appropriate for Your Area?

16 Jun

The Arbor Day Foundation has recently completed an extensive updating of U.S. Hardiness Zones based upon data from 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the continental United States.

* See a map highlighting changes between 1990 and 2006.

* Find your hardiness zone.

* See a map of Alaska and Hawaii.

* See suggested trees for your region.

via The Arbor Day Foundation.

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Categories Biodiversity, Climate & Environment, Resilience

Chicago’s Prepares for Steamy, Southern Weather

15 Jun

Looks like Chicago’s got a good start on a transition plan:

Back in 2008, the city formed the Chicago Climate Action Plan to figure out how to mitigate the inevitable. The plan includes a bundle of useful information, such as how the city’s atmosphere is changing and ways people can get involved.

Planners are also figuring subtle ways to blend ecological improvements into the city’s facade. For example, permeable pavement and rainwater catchments will easily advance existing urban structures. The city also has the most green-roofs built or being planned for. Globally, it is the only city to have four buildings awarded LEED platinum status.

via Chicago’s Prepares for Steamy, Southern Weather | The EnvironmentaList | Earth Island Journal | Earth Island Institute.

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Categories Great Revaluing, Resilience

Apples top most pesticide-contaminated list

13 Jun

Apples are at the top of the list of produce most contaminated with pesticides in a report published today by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a public health advocacy group.

Strawberries are high on the list (#3), as are imported grapes (#7). Onions are the lowest in pesticides.

via Apples top most pesticide-contaminated list – USATODAY.com.

Tags: pesticides

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Categories Resilience, Uncategorized

Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression – CBS Evening News – CBS News

6 Jun

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months – a higher percentage than during the Great Depression….

The problem of course is the economy, but some industries, especially certain manufacturing jobs, are not ever expected to come back. Experts say unemployed workers need to be prepared to change careers.

It’s hard to bounce back when the government’s got it’s head in the sand while it burns the midnight oil seeing that bankers get their bonuses and that the nuclear industry is free to regulate itself.

via Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression – CBS Evening News – CBS News.

Tags: unemployment

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Categories Politics, Resilience

Food Supply Under Strain on a Warming Planet – NYTimes.com

5 Jun

Even more biodivcersity needed, fast, or more people will starve.

These experts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it while reducing the considerable environmental damage caused by the business of agriculture.

Agronomists emphasize that the situation is far from hopeless. Examples are already available, from the deserts of Mexico to the rice paddies of India, to show that it may be possible to make agriculture more productive and more resilient in the face of climate change. Farmers have achieved huge gains in output in the past, and rising prices are a powerful incentive to do so again.

But new crop varieties and new techniques are required, far beyond those available now, scientists said. Despite the urgent need, they added, promised financing has been slow to materialize, much of the necessary work has yet to begin and, once it does, it is likely to take decades to bear results.

via Food Supply Under Strain on a Warming Planet – NYTimes.com.