This is to be a story about the politics of food, and about food as a place to begin the revolution.

I’ve been puzzling for a long time over my intentions for this weblog. I’ve also lately been browsing through various popular online discourses, across the political spectrum, about our future as a species.

There’s a lot of millenial end-times thinking and speech, swirling about these days. Of course, we’ve just come through the turn of the millenium, and so that should surprise no-one. Prognostications of doom are mostly just ceremony; they have little predictive power. Really good futurists are rare (I’d count Arthur C. Clarke as one, and John Brunner as another). However, in the range of futures we can imagine for ourselves, we can at least map out the possibilities.

Over the past hundred years or so, as it seems to me, we humans have painted ourselves into a very tight corner indeed: it is ecologic, economic, social and political, all more or less at once on a global scale. We are damaging our own habitat; just as we’ve done to that of so many other species. To avoid potentially horrific outcomes, we’re going to have to change course in dramatic and profound ways.

Unfortunately, the global systems and institutions of social production in which we are enmeshed, are constructs of such scale and momentum that I do not see how they will be tranformed and survive; and if they don’t, how will they be replaced, so that we are sustained, and safeguarded from the terrible peril of our times?

To meet what’s coming, would seem to demand a unity of purpose between governments and industries of unprecedented scope and scale.

Hmm… ever wonder why so many people on the right choose to believe that climate change is a hoax? On both the right and the left, it’s a shared assumption that policy responses to a global crisis such as climate change can only emanate from the political and economic centre. If you agree, that would seem to be a vote for global/transnational government, and by implication, the erosion of more local sovereignties. I think they’re quite correct to be skeptical; but on the other hand, I don’t think a world government will emerge to fix this.

This is partly the boiling frog problem. Binding and effective global policies might emerge, you never know; but I think it’s unlikely that they’ll arrive in time to prevent some significant transnational breakdown of critical systems in the global economic machine. It’s established that belief in climate change grows on hot days, and fades on cold days. The political will won’t emerge until the crisis is upon us, and by then it will perhaps be too late for governments altogether.

Who knows indeed; but I do think we are heading for some kind of catastrophe. It won’t affect all of us in the same way. Wealth will insulate, for example–it was ever thus; and favourable geopolitical factors will mitigate a lot of risks (Vancouver is blessed; Africa will probably become a kind of hell).

Check back later if I’ve caught your interest; more to come.

I heard something today that reminded me: there are those who profit by fear, who have an interest in encouraging it. I did a quick Google search on that concept, and discovered (of course) that others are taking an interest and writing about this:

www.businesspundit.com/25-people-and-industries-that-profit-from-fear/

Why I Am Not a Conservative by Friedrich August von Hayek

Presumably these things are available because there are customers for them. I’d guess there might be places in the world where a facility like this would be worth the expense. That would be a different way of life, to be sure.

The story of an illegal garden in Brooklyn.

3D printing looks like it’s going to be a really important and disruptive technology: I mean let’s be clear, we’re talking about replicators. Download a template, tweak it, make  your own and sell them; the rest is a matter of feedstocks. They say they’re expensive, but they’re in the range of early inkjet printers. The path is unmistakeable: 3D printers will be cheap, ubiquitous; if you can’t afford one, chances are your village can; and that will be a stupendous political and economic transformation.

As the Internet is to creating and sharing information, 3D printing is to creating objects, and sharing design templates for printing objects. For example: it appears likely that it will become possible to manufacture untraceable and undocumented weapons. I got that story from Rachel Maddow, who wisely offers light commentary, she’s just letting you know about this new thing in the world.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Today I went for a drive in a brand new Nissan Leaf. The Leaf, as you may know, is an electric car. There aren’t that many true electric cars on the market (the Chevy Volt doesn’t count because it has both electric and gasoline engines).

The Leaf is surely one of the butt-ugliest cars I’ve ever seen in my life, but otherwise it’s a pleasant ride, a typical small hatchback. I took it out for a drive of about 25 kilometers, and was, of course, worried that the battery would run out. However, the car was fully-charged when I picked it up, and is capable of covering up to 140 kilometers on a charge, depending on driving conditions.

If I hadn’t known it was electric, I probably would not have known from the driving experience, except to say that the car was unusually quiet, particularly at low speeds. The Leaf is comfortable, well-appointed and solid–there are no compromises that I could detect in the way it’s made. Driving it is quite straightforward once you get past the fact that there’s no ignition key (you start it like a computer, by pushing a power button on the dashboard). The dashboard is designed, unmistakably, to address range anxiety. It’s reassuringly informative about the available charge, the projected range at any given moment, and even an estimate of the time you’ll need to recharge the car. When you plug it in at the end of your day, there’s a flashing blue “charging”  light on the dashboard, easily visible from a distance, so that you might look at the car in the driveway from your house, say, and you’ll know if it’s still charging. For today’s 25K trip, I racked up an estimated charging time of 2.5 hours.

Kudos to Nissan for a brave innovation. I hear tell the car isn’t selling well, and some people put that down to skittishness about an expensive small car with a limited range. My two cents: if Nissan wants to sell more of these, the first problem is aesthetic. The new Ford Focus EV, by contrast, is quite a handsome vehicle, and it’s what I would go for if I cared to spend 40K on a car.

the Rachel Maddow Show, 2011 Nov 21

How a Common Sandbox Is Battling Arizona’s Wallow Fire | Techland | TIME.com