The Produce Box: Local Foods in the NC Triangle Region

The trend toward local foods is one of the movements that makes tremendous sense to me in the current emerging economic environment. Here in the Triangle region (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA), a local startup, The Produce Box, has been been making weekly deliveries of local foods for the past couple of years. Each week [...]

How Can Local Economies Transition to a Petroleum-Scarce World?

Today I read an interview in New Scientist with Rob Hopkins, a key figure in the Transition Towns movement — see “Rob Hopkins: Getting over oil, one town at a time.” He writes about how communities can transition to a more sustainable economy at Transition Culture. Hopkins describes the Transition Towns concept as follows: A [...]

Disaster Housing: Solutions Conceived by the Hexayurt Project

Vinay Gupta of the Hexayurt Project has done much work in the area of emergency housing, something I have explored in some postings here at Bubbleconomics — see “MSF’s ‘Plug and Play Hospital’ in Haiti,” “Haiti Disaster: Housing for When the Bubble Pops,” and “Where will people live after the Big Bubble pops?“ Gupta articulates [...]

MSF’s ‘Plug and Play Hospital’ in Haiti

Yesterday I was discussing the potential value of rapidly-deployable emergency housing in disasters — see “Haiti Disaster: Housing for When the Bubble Pops.” Today, BoingBoing published a fascinating interview with Laurent Dedieu, logistics supervisor for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, aka Doctors Without Borders), about the inflatable hospital the organization has deployed in Haiti. (See “Haiti: [...]

Haiti Disaster: Housing for When the Bubble Pops

Seeing the devastating effects on the lives of the people in Port au Prince, Haiti, in the wake of the recent earthquake emphasizes the potential value of emergency housing solutions for recovery. In such a disaster, survivors are thrust into chaos and forced to live in unstable, unsanitary conditions, seeking out housing any way they [...]

Where will people live after the Big Bubble pops?

If the Big Bubble proposition turns out to be true, the world could be faced with hundreds of millions or even billions of people homeless or under-housed. Where might people live if they lose their incomes and can’t pay rents and mortgages? Some might have the ability to live off the land, join with relatives, [...]

The Value of Extremist Economics

An article by Justin Fox in the June 1, 2009, issue of Time called my attention to the economic commentary and libertarian views of Peter Schiff, president of brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital. (Justin Fox writes the column “The Curious Capitalist” for Time. The article I’m referring to was called “Excluding the Extremist” in the [...]

Author of ‘Life Inc.’ Bashes Corporatism, Points to a New Way

Recently I’ve learned about a new book, Life Inc., by Douglas Rushkoff, scheduled for release June 2, 2009. In a recent video, Rushkoff says he believes humanity is at a crucial point, not just a crisis but an opportunity. He thinks this is “probably the first moment in the last couple of hundred years that [...]

5-Euro cardboard solar cooker could drastically reduce wood fires

On April 9, 2009, Forum for the Future announced that it has awarded a $75,000 prize to Kyoto Energy for its Kyoto Box, a cardboard solar cooker designed for households in developing lands. The foil-lined cooker can be made for only 5 Euros and can boil water as a substitute for woodburning. Wood fires are [...]

Would they really hack the planet to sustain economic growth?

President Obama’s science advisor John Holdren tells the Associated Press that he has brought up geoengineering as a possible alternative in the fight against climate change in discussions with Cabinet-level U.S. officials, as well as with heads of agencies such as NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency (see AP’s article “Obama looking at cooling air [...]