Kagey

A Couple of weeks ago I joined Tim Vireo Keating on one of his city forages in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Tim leads regular events in New York highlighting the abundance that is all around us. His passion is for the wild edibles that nature delivers free to those ready to look and gather.

We didn’t need to look too far.  As if to make the point we stopped just 10 yards inside park gate. Here with the sound of traffic still clear Tim pointed out an impressive variety of common edible plants to be picked for free. Weeds to many of us these plants are packed with nutrients and can help to cleanse and detoxify the body. Venturing further into the park we picked and ate leaves straight from a Sassafras tree, delish! Then we harvested a few young roots from its multitude offshoots to make Sassafras tea to accompany our dinner that night.

In a break from gathering Tim explained some of his passion for foraging. He loves bringing people into the park to show them an alternative to the idea that the earth’s resources are running out. A view he believes is the misconception that leads us to compete for dominance over food, energy and land. His experience has led him to observe that in functioning communities when resources are plentiful the impulse is to share. We just need to see what’s under our noses. He recalled how on finding a sack of perfectly good but out of date tomatoes on the sidewalk his first thought was how he could make a fantastic spaghetti sauce to feed all his chums. “When nature gives in abundance we need to find ways to receive it, adapting and living according to its cycle. It’s way of thinking many of us have lost, he says. We’ve been conditioned to demand what we want, when we want it, from the earth rather than accepting what it gives in plenty.” With bags full of greens he set off to add his harvest to the dinner in the making at ‘Grub’ a community dinner in Brooklyn.

I joined them later, a friendly bunch of anarchic kids in an industrial unit madly decorated with recycled materials and smelling of great food. Together with Tim’s wild edibles there was a banquet of food lifted from the bins of grocery stores, out of date but cooked with love and tasting delicious!

Watch the short film from Grub ! “First the Dishes, then the Revolution!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4eOSAQKDc4

If you’re in New York I recommend you join one of Tim’s forages contact him on info@rainforestrelief.org

I was going to write another piece on the lunacy of global expansion and the irrelevance of another G8 meeting. But to be honest what is the bloody point?! They certainly aren’t listening to what we think so I’m up our allotment if you want me…

Last night we picked these babies on our patch, strawberries that taste like god made them … and perhaps he did. We didn’t plant them; they were there when we got our allotment. We cleared some choking weeds and fed them well-rotted horseshit and they taste like … strawberry! An explosion of complex flavours that make you savour every last after taste.

So in the words of Titus Oats, “I’m going out, I may be a while.”

(Written before the server crash… more soon)

Sign the petition to say no to deforestation!

There are times when an image changes our understanding, speaks a thousand words.

I came across this graph the other day (1). It shows the carbon emissions of the major polluting countries verses the carbon released through deforestation. The image speaks for itself.

Today and every day thousands of hectares of ancient forest are trashed. When just one hectare of forest is cleared up to 200 tons of carbon is released into the atmosphere (2).

Something which, when intact is a positive carbon sink becomes through it’s destruction a hugely negative contributor to climate change. Carbon emissions from forest destruction out weigh even what the US pumps out.

It would be too simplistic to suggest that “Avoided Deforestation” could completely mitigate the emissions of the US or China but one thing is clear. Cutting down ancient forests to grow palm oil for bio-fuels is folly of the highest order. Yet this is the outcome of the west’s current affair with so called green fuels.

We need quick, cheap solutions to mitigate our impact upon the atmosphere. Clearly the first on the list is to stop cutting down the very thing that’s saving our arses. Extending the World Bank’s BioCarbon Credits scheme to include Avoided Deforestation would provide the incentive to developing nations and landowners to protect their forests and our climate.

Sign the petition to Say No to Deforestation

(1.) http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/5051_CF%20Forestry%20article1.pdf
(2.) http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1031-deforestation.html

This week a friend sent me an email petition to bring an end to the cruel Chinese fur trade. It contained a link to an undercover video of incredible cruelty. So shocking is it that I couldn’t bring myself to subject my friends to the images… I kept the petition alive by sending it on to the organiser. If you wish to see what is behind the trade in fur trimmings then watch this

If you would rather not see dogs skinned alive then please help the campaign to stop it. Make a donation to PeTA

After a few weeks of soul searching and finger pointing by the media it’s clear that the nation is tainted by the slave trade.

From royalty and church to the benefactors of the industrial revolution we carry the guilt like a genetic trait. How we deal with the legacy of our genetics is the measure of our development, we can despise these historical lines within and without ourselves but what is done is done.

Today slavery is alive and well and permeates much of our lives. Modern slavery is under the wrappers of the cheap commodities we’re so addicted to. Next weekend for instance millions will devour tons of chocolate in the form of Easter eggs with much of it still contaminated by forced labour.

The best appolgy for the past is personal action today. Ask questions, buy fair trade, Resist Free Trade!

I’m not sure why but I hadn’t expected such wise words from Fidel Castro. I recommend you read his views on the meetings of minds between President Bush and the US motor industry and their plans to focus on bio fuels as the solution to future oil shortages. In a time when the global population is in expansion, climate change threatens crop production and water shortages are likely to create major instability it cannot be right to convert food into fuel. But I’m stealing Fidel’s thunder … Read on

Mr Finn the younger!

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWpM6NDx8DU[/youtube]

 

More on his UK Shed site

I am not a Tony Blair

My guess is you are not George Bush, Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad either.

However the logic of nuclear warfare is that figures like the above will create the conditions for nuclear war that you may be required to pay for with your life.

This week Tony Blair forced through the renewal of Trident. I wholly oppose this decision and yet because of his determination to retain them it is possible that these weapons will be used to incinerate people who like me oppose the decisions of their government.

Listening to the arguments in favour of nuclear weapons in the recent weeks I was struck by the absolute stupidity of the justifications. In a radio debate I heard a woman keep saying that we have a ‘moral duty to protect our population.’ However it is the possession of nuclear weapons by the state that imposes a blanket responsibility on its population to accept total annihilation in the event of nuclear conflict.

Alliance forces are currently fighting and dying to ensure that the Iraqi people have the opportunity to elect a leader of their choice through the democratic process. Our leaders have said that their highest ideal is to create conditions for peace and stability; that the Iraqi people are to be protected from tyranny. However if Saddam Hussein had possessed nuclear weaponry and looked like using them the nuclear logic would have required the ordinary Iraqi people under his tyrannical rule to be vaporised in retaliation or even in a pre-emptive strike.

Were all Germans Nazi’s? Clearly not yet if Hitler had had a nuclear weapon it would have been the German populous who would have paid an even higher price for the evil of his regime. The citizens of Nagasaki were neither Emperor Hirohito or at the seat of Japanese military policy yet the American government dropped its bomb there anyway.

Declare yourself a Nuclear Free Zone!

OK so I slag the government off for not doing enough the day before they release their Climate Change Bill!

Well as far as it goes the new bill has to be aplauded but … as per my last blog they’ve got a job on their hands to meet the targets while they continue to bulid roads, runways and depend on economic growth to meet their policy plans.

Lobby your MP to make the their new climate bill fit for purpose!

The Climate Change Swindle seems to have wound people right up and I can understand why people feel so suspicious, i.e. it looks like Climate Concern is a government rouse to raise more taxes. It is exactly the above contradiction that feeds these doubts, if you apply taxes to apparently change one behaviour (frequent flying) but support the action (build more runways) it does indeed look like a neat fundraising opportunity.

Responses to the swindle

The Ecologist - George Monbiot – The Independent – The Guardian for C4

I’ve been avoiding my blog. It’s just every time I start to write I’m just too overwelmed by the stuff that goes round in my head to be able to put something down that isn’t a complete doom laden rant.

But I’m beginning to feel brighter. Apparently I don’t really have to worry about climate change after all. According to Channel 4 and “The Great Climate Change Swindle” it’s all a load of old tosh dreamed up by scientists to get their hands on juicy funding. Mind you Channel 4 seem to be on a bit of mission to find ways to raise funds themselves and what better way to boost ratings than a bit of climate controversy or minority bashing aka Jade Goody and her well chosen words on racial harmony.

But probably the best news is that the outlawing of incandescent light bulbs in favour of low energy bulbs is the key to cutting CO2 and saving the planet. It’s going to be a toughie and already there’s a row over light bulb subsidies but I’m sure we’re ready for the sacrifice.

I wonder then is that it? Is this the extent of our politician’s grasp of what is required to save the planet? No wonder things are moving apace on global agreement. Bio fuels and lightbulbs it is then; as long as we can get em cheap.

The one thing nobody inside government is talking about is zero growth. While taxes on air travel are being touted as a way to curb emissions no one is talking about abandoning airport expansion. Taxing motorists for road use is put forward as a way to raise green taxes and restrict the further growth of car journeys but the UK government is still wedded to a huge program of road building. Surely the easiest way to curb the growth in carbon producing journeys is to just not build any more runways or roads.

As I’ve said elsewhere on my blog the sums simply don’t add up for the environment and the things that live in it while we continue to avoid the simple truth that there isn’t enough planet to go round.