BWN: Guest speaker environmentalist JoAnne Fleming-Valin
Brockville Women's Network is kicking off its new membership year on Thursday, Sept. 9 with environmentalist JoAnne Fleming-Valin, who will explain how the environment has a direct connection with businesses, the economy and our daily lives.
The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. at Brockville Country Club.
OSEA Community Power Conference
The Ontario Sustainable Energy Association (OSEA) is hosting its second annual Community Power Conference this November. The event is Ontario's single largest annual gathering of Community Power producers, proponents and supporters. Together with the Power Networking Centre trade show, the conference attracts industry regulators, commercial and community power generators, farmers and First Nation and Métis delegations.
Survival Personality: Develop Your Intuition
Mother Earth News / Matthew Stein / 26 August 2010
The following is an excerpt from When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein (Chelsea Green, 2008). This comprehensive primer on sustainable living skills — from food and water to first-aid and crisis management skills — will prepare you to live in the face of potential disasters coming in the form of social upheaval, economic meltdown or environmental catastrophe. This excerpt is from Chapter 4, “Emergency Measures for Survival.”
Community Economic Laboratories (CELs)
Post Carbon Institute / Richard Heinberg / 23 August 2010
As America adjusts to the New Reality of tight credit, chronically less-affordable energy, high unemployment rates, rising levels of homelessness, and steeply declining tax revenues, new strategies will be needed to help swelling ranks of low-income people adjust and adapt. National policies designed to ease credit, lower mortgage rates, or provide basic financial assistance (including extended unemployment benefits) may help over the short term, but over the longer term many needs will be better met locally by largely volunteer-driven non-profit organizations, co-ops, and hybrid public-private agencies and programs.
One strategy worth exploring is the seeding of a loosely coordinated national network of locally-based Community Economic Laboratories (CELs).
The term “laboratory” is suggested because the sorts of efforts and enterprises that will best serve communities under rapidly evolving economic circumstances may not be apparent or even knowable at the outset—we will have to experiment. However, it is by no means essential or even important that the entities envisioned adopt this suggested title. Some communities may prefer slightly different names for political reasons: a Local Enterprise Laboratory, for example, might fare better in red states.
In any case, the mission of each CEL would be to increase personal and community resilience.
Audio: Peak Everything: Oil, Water, Climate Stability & More
An interview with Richard Heinberg about how to conquer gracefully with post-Peak Oil declines in climate stability, economic growth, food security, fresh water and energy resources while preserving the best of our collective achievements.
Brockville: Area getting warmer
Recorder and Times / Ann Craig / 30 August 2010
The mean temperature in this area has increased just over 1 C in those 40 years, typical with the rest of the world. What isn't typical, he explained, is the maximum temperature increase of over 1.5 C.
"It's very different from most places. Globally, it's the minimum temperature that's rising."
The winter is where Dr. Fenech noted the biggest increase in maximum temperature, a jump of 3.2 C.
In terms of other findings, Dr. Fenech noted "there isn't a lot of increase in precipitation but the number of days with precipitation are increasing."
Also of note is the increase of extreme hot days, which records the number of days with a maximum temperature over 30 C. The hottest years were 1983, 1988 and 2005.
