We have had fun with this latest SkeptEco Podcast, this time addressing the contentious issue of Genetic Engineering. I attended an Earth Day conference organized by Sustainable Ireland (now Cultivate) about 10 or 12 years ago in Maynooth which brought together anti-GE activists Vandana Shiva and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho with a representative from Monsanto. There [...]
The first episode in a new podcast SkeptEco has just been launched. The SkeptEco team has chosen an old favorite for our launch: Can Organic farming Feed the World? with Eoin O’Callaghan, Naomi Fein, Christina LaPerle, Graham Strouts and Michael Wellock The SkeptEco podcast came out of a study group that has been meeting around [...]
Friday, December 18, 2009
Peak Water Civilisation and the World’s Water Crisis Alexander Bell Luath Press 2009 Hardback 208 pp If oil supply peaks and begins to decline times will be hard. Standard of living will decline and people may go hungry but they will be able to adapt by powering down and making do with less. If water [...]
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Book Review: The Heretic’s Guide to Vegan Cookery Warning! Not suitable for Breatharians Andy Murray The Good Elf Press 2009 187pp Astrology is an amazing tool to run your life by, without having to waste time with the fraudulent pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of Science. Astrology explains wars, thunderstorms and plagues. We can even use it historically. [...]
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Update Aug 10th: Thanks to Robbie for sending me the link to Dominic Lawson’s piece on the FSA report and responses from the organic movement in the Times. Lawson quotes research suggesting farmers may have lower cancer rates possibly because pesticide use may protect against cancer! Now that has just got to be corporate spin… [...]
Just got back from saying goodbye to 14 new permaculture Design Course Certificate holders who completed a 9-day course in Cashel, Co. Tipperary. Above: Mayor of Cashel Cllr. Eddie Bennet (second from left) with course organiser Micheal of Aimsir Bia discuss a design for an educational center in Cashel town made by one iof the [...]
We were fortunate enough to have Irish Times columnist John Gibbons attend our last permaculture course in Cloughjordan, and he had a great write up in his column last week: Permaculture offers one vision of a future where human ingenuity and adaptability will allow us to survive, and indeed thrive, in the age after oil, [...]
When Technology Fails- A Manual for Self- Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency Matthew Stein Chelsea Green 2000, 2008 494 pp Matthew Stein’s massive survival manual When Technology Fails packs into one volume everything you need to survive “The long Emergency”- (a phrase later used by Kunstler in his 2005 book of that name [...]
I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to attend a 2-day course on Forest gardening with Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust. The course was professionally delivered by Martin who has encyclopedic knowledge of his subject and was a fantastic experience, re-inspiring my own attempts and forest gardening and showing me some [...]
The Eden Project in Cornwall was established 7 years ago and has become a world famous visitor attraction with its iconic huge bubble-wrap domes providing the closest you’ll get to an experience of the rain-forest this side of the Amazon. I was visiting my sister this week, who lives nearby in Bodmin, and got the [...]