During the past weeks, the world’s media have been transfixed by the convulsions of the US and global fi nancial system. At stake are billions in bail-outs and trillions in derivatives. The viability of banks and currencies is threatened, and ultimately the savings and investments of hundreds of millions of ordinary people.
It’s the battle of the century. In one corner, the Economy – big, bloated, greedy and growing. In the other, the planet Earth – fragile, finite and fighting back.
It’s 2008, and feeding ourselves has never been easier. We take for granted a supply of every agricultural commodity on the planet, 365 days a year. Food is cheap. Never in living memory have we spent less on it as a proportion of our total expenditure. Even our poorest citizens can afford the luxury foods of yesteryear, like salmon and chicken.
‘I’ve been to a fair number this – this is a fantastic place to be based,’ says the Soil Association’s Lee Holdstock, fresh from a trip to the remote south west corner of the Isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides.
The government is failing to meet targets for reducing energy and resource consumption in its own buildings, an embarassing report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has revealed.
Ladakh is framed by the Karakoram mountains to the north and the Himalayas to the south. Yet even in this remote environment the forces of global consumerism are intruding. Nicola Graydon reports on the locals' inspiring defence of their culture
Does it annoy you that the earth is being destroyed to benefit a tiny minority? Enough to do something about it? Derrick Jensen invites you to join him on the barricades
For all its obsession with international terrorism, Washington fails to see how the phenomenon is driven by its own model of globalisation – a model that is itself uniquely vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Fritjof Capra on security and sustainability
