Now if they could just make them lighter.

Living in Michigan in winter and seeing the state of the roads has definitely increased my resentment of heavy vehicles, and then seeing how much the state ends up spending on road repairs…

One of the details which coverage like that in the Economist usually glosses over (I haven’t read that article so apologies if it covered this) is that a lot of that overproduction is the result of Structural Adjustment Policies applied in the 70s and 80s to encourage developing countries to build their economies by focussing on cash crops. The heavy debts of those countries were used as leverage to force them to adopt such policies.

Overproduction isn’t a surprising result of that, but I’d argue that those of us in the countries that enforced them have some responsibility to redress the situation. Fair Trade works as one way of providing funding for communities to use to fund education and resources for diversification.

There are of course those who argue the other way. Kyoto is a a ridiculous compromise and doesn’t call for nearly enough action.

That’s never seemed a strong argument for not ratifying the treaty, though, it’s just that we ought to get that one ratified and negotiate another while showing just how easy it would be to meet the Kyoto targets.

Wow, I was out of power quickly. Probably predictably I did well on the environment, kept the economy stable, and had an entertaining 3% job satisfaction rate.

But then, who wouldn’t after 20-30 years in power…

Now if they could just make them lighter.

Living in Michigan in winter and seeing the state of the roads has definitely increased my resentment of heavy vehicles, and then seeing how much the state ends up spending on road repairs…

One of the details which coverage like that in the Economist usually glosses over (I haven’t read that article so apologies if it covered this) is that a lot of that overproduction is the result of Structural Adjustment Policies applied in the 70s and 80s to encourage developing countries to build their economies by focussing on cash crops. The heavy debts of those countries were used as leverage to force them to adopt such policies.

Overproduction isn’t a surprising result of that, but I’d argue that those of us in the countries that enforced them have some responsibility to redress the situation. Fair Trade works as one way of providing funding for communities to use to fund education and resources for diversification.

There are of course those who argue the other way. Kyoto is a a ridiculous compromise and doesn’t call for nearly enough action.

That’s never seemed a strong argument for not ratifying the treaty, though, it’s just that we ought to get that one ratified and negotiate another while showing just how easy it would be to meet the Kyoto targets.

Wow, I was out of power quickly. Probably predictably I did well on the environment, kept the economy stable, and had an entertaining 3% job satisfaction rate.

But then, who wouldn’t after 20-30 years in power…

And the device is lovely. Obviously it’d be nice to have a better camera, more battery life, and more storage, but what there is looks great. Not just a phone, more like a miniature mac. And released in Europe just when my K800i will be due for replacement….

I’ve been taking this rumour with an even bigger pinch of salt than usual after it turned out that a lot of fuss in December over the iPhone was actually fuelled by a Cisco product.

But even though it’ll be a while before I want to move on from my much loved Sony-Ericsson K800i, I am eagerly awaiting what news may come.

Good to see Stanley Hauerwas getting some air time here. He’s a compelling figure with much to say.

This past summer there seemed to be a lot of attention paid in the media to urban beekeeping and it was fascinating to learn that bees prosper in high-density urban environments. Very inspiring, and a good example of how the urban world can be a (food) productive place.

If that’s the model we’re looking at for food production in cities, that’d be wonderful. More food production in cities would be great, so long as we steer clear of the utopian garden cities et. al. that led us to the current sub- and ex-urban blight that fills so much of the modern landscape.

I tend to think TV gets short shrift. We don’t get any reception (no cable, no antenna) but we do spend a lot of time watching TV shows we’ve downloaded or got hold of on DVD and some of those (such as The Wire, to pick the popular example of the moment) pack a good bit of education and stimulation into their 40-60 minutes.

Whether it’s zoning restrictions, cultural assumptions in education, the management of global lending systems, or the arrangement of trade regulations, it’s worth spending a little time working out how our actions connect with bigger systems and how they could be helping to transform them.