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by Jan Lundberg
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Margot McDowell is a sail maker and seamstress in Anacortes, Washington. She has a counterpart here and there in the region, such as a woman in Port Townsend and a woman in Bellingham. Considering the number of sailboats and ongoing demand for more sails and sail repair, these sail makers barely comprise a local industry. This is because the great majority of sails are made in Taiwan -- made out of Dacron, a petroleum product. |
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by Ray Jason
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In this, Part Two, of the Lotsageddon report:
Self-reliance at sea
Learning to sail
Buying a sailboat
Outfitting your boat
Specific Lotsageddon preparations
Quite a few of you were intrigued by the concept I presented in my recent essay, “Sailing Away from Lotsageddon.” |
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by Jan Lundberg
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Join us! To help the Sail Transport Network to make more strides, along the lines of this newsletter, please support our work by donating at culturechange.org/donate.html. 
Several bits of good news:
• B9 Shipping, part of B9 Energy that is the biggest maker of wind power units for UK's renewable energy sector, has a plan to build sail transport vessels of a major capacity. They are linking to our STN website |
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by Peter Crabb
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"If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time.” Benito Mussolini, Italian Encyclopedia (1932)
I sat down at my kitchen table a few days ago to pay my monthly bills. It was that time of year when several insurance bills were due. While writing the checks I fumed about the large proportion of my income that is sucked up by the insurance industry and the other corporate puppet masters. |
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by Tracy Barnett
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Solastalgia – 1. A feeling of loss at demise of Earth; mourning for Gaia; profound ennui.
2. Lost connection to nature; an eco-psychological imbalance.
Antidotes: Ecological restoration
Permaculture
So begins Albert Bates in his introduction to permaculture – a design system whose name originated from the idea of “permanent agriculture” and evolved into a system promoting permanence in the human culture itself. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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 "Coming after You" means both your legacy of non-biodegradable plastics and that they are out to kill you. Now that the hilarious double entendre is out of the way, we can go on to our patient heroines. The nurturing, brave journalists about to be presented are patient as heroines and they succor untold numbers of unknown patients suffering from plastic-caused diseases. For you hardy men who may not care about this girly-men stuff, and pride yourselves in being out to have a good time, keep in mind that erectile dysfunction is on the rise thanks to plastics. |
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by Ray Jason
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My lovely little sailboat just completed a most unusual catastrophe trifecta: she and I have now ridden out an earthquake in San Francisco, a multitude of hurricanes in Key West and a nasty flood in Panama.
During the hurricanes my land-dweller friends ridiculed me exuberantly for staying aboard. But then enormous trees fell on their apartments. And when a devastating tidal surge destroyed their ground floor belongings, while my sloop just floated above it, they gained a reinvigorated appreciation for my “stubborn stupidity.” |
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by Jan Lundberg
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What was required for a growing economy, that was supposed to uplift all of modern humanity, is at root a false notion for the manipulated public: the overwhelming majority must work for others to enrich the few so that all of society benefits through unlimited expansion. This problematic profit-scheme is failing to hold up, what with general economic uncertainty on the rise (apart from “Hope”) and the advanced depletion of easily extracted, cheap oil. |
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by Peter Goodchild
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 Humanity has struggled to survive through the millennia in terms of balancing population size with food supply. The same is true now, but population numbers have been soaring for over a century. The limiting factor has been hidden, but this factor -- oil and natural gas, or petroleum -- is close to or beyond its peak extraction. Without ample, free-flowing petroleum, it will not be possible to support a population of several billion for long. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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The U.S. appears to be breaking down on all levels, probably taking the rest of the modern world with it. Noticing this helps us understand the hopelessness of our intrinsically flawed system. Also, recognizing breakdown is helpful for seeing impending collapse in a new light.
Breakdown should be seen in such a way to realize that order is becoming an illusion. Breakdown is preceding and adding to future collapse. Simultaneously there are myriad magnificent yet small-scale efforts to improve people's lives and the health of our Earth. |
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by Peter Goodchild
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In pragmatic terms the coming collapse can be equated with the phases of what will happen to money. The first phase will be “stagflation”: high prices combined with high unemployment. During the second phase, as government starts to fade, currency will collapse: money will have no use as a medium of exchange.
Of course, economic trends can always be seen in terms of either materials or money. We can say that the near future will be one of diminishing fossil fuels, and hence a depletion of plastic, asphalt, fertilizer, electricity, and so on. |
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by Alex Smith/Radio Ecoshock with Keith Farnish
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Is global warming unstoppable now? Could we be saved by total economic collapse? If so, should we help civilization fall?
Last night I recorded another glimpse of the climate apocalypse, with the author of Climate Wars Gwynne Dyer. He outlined the short distance from here to the cliff where long-known natural feed-backs leading to runaway global warming begin, and continue on for millennia. That limit is known as two degrees. |
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