A New Kind Of Co-Op: Ending Dependence On Nuclear Power (VIDEO)

Communities around the globe are taking control of their power and switching off dirty energy to clean renewable sources instead. Here’s the first in a series of posts to share these inspiring stories. One mother’s dedication can make a difference. Ursula Sladek was spurred into action after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. A mother of [...]

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Chevron’s RICO Suit: An Exercise in High Satire?

Oh, the irony. Chevron filing a racketeering lawsuit against the impoverished Indigenous and campesino Amazon residents who are suing the oil giant in Ecuador for plundering their rainforest land over several decades of reckless oil drilling would be all too fitting for the satiric geniuses at the Daily Show — if it weren’t nauseatingly insulting. [...]

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Top Five Ways to Protect Rainforests in 2011

This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post. Many of us live thousands of miles away from Brazil, Indonesia and the Congo Basin, where the last stands of tropical rainforests still exist. It’s easy to forget that each breath we take is connecting us to those remote ecosystems, and that we should care as much [...]

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Life Has Changed On Ecuador’s Aguarico River Since Chevron’s Arrival

The mighty Aguarico River is where the Cofán people have fished, bathed, and washed for many generations. The river also traditionally provided the community’s main source of drinking water. It was the lifeblood of the Cofán. But the Aguarico now holds a very different meaning for the Cofán and for Emergildo Criollo, a leader in [...]

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Community Transition in the Coal River Valley

I’m  a big fan of Transition Theory – a model of socioeconomic localization, developed by Rob Hopkins where communities come together to envision and then develop a future where they are not dependent on oil. The big question the community asks is: “for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to [...]

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