How To Turn Shoe Pockets Into A Vertical Vegetable Garden

“In The Garden” Print // KimIllustration

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here

What does it mean for the rest of life on Earth?

~ the pondering muse🌙

Where have all the bugs gone? That’s what this post tries to answer and if you’re like me and hadn’t really noticed the lack of bugs recently, you’ll understand why this is such a big deal after reading the article. However, before we dive into this article, I want to share with you what I’ve noticed. 

I’ve lived in Missouri for almost 19 years now, about a decade ago I remember windshields so full of bug splats that you couldn’t see out of it while driving down the highway and cringing at the *thump* of especially large bugs when they hit. I remember a season where when I rode my bike around town I couldn’t not hit a grasshopper because there were more than I could count all over the roads and fields. Last summer however? I remember pulling a single butterfly from the grill of my dad’s truck. That’s it… There were no more bugs. …

Here’s how plentiful our world used to be. We tend to think that the environmental conditions that we are born into are normal, but it is anything but normal.

“In “The Once and Future World,” the journalist J.B. MacKinnon cites records from recent centuries that hint at what has only just been lost: “In the North Atlantic, a school of cod stalls a tall ship in midocean; off Sydney, Australia, a ship’s captain sails from noon until sunset through pods of sperm whales as far as the eye can see. … Pacific pioneers complain to the authorities that splashing salmon threaten to swamp their canoes.” There were reports of lions in the south of France, walruses at the mouth of the Thames, flocks of birds that took three days to fly overhead, as many as 100 blue whales in the Southern Ocean for every one that’s there now. “These are not sights from some ancient age of fire and ice,” MacKinnon writes. “We are talking about things seen by human eyes, recalled in human memory.”“

So, when you read the above article, please understand how dire these circumstances are for us and our planet. Ok, so what are the highlights of the article?

“A 2013 paper in Nature, which modeled both natural and computer-generated food webs, suggested that a loss of even 30 percent of a species’ abundance can be so destabilizing that other species start going fully, numerically extinct — in fact, 80 percent of the time it was a secondarily affected creature that was the first to disappear.”

- Drastic drops in insect populations have been recorded globally.

- World’s largest king penguin colony shrank by 88%.

- Blue-fin Tuna populations have shrunk 97%.

- 60% decrease in total wild land animal populations.

- 96% of the planet’s biomass now is humans and livestock. Wild animals represent less than 4%. …

- 10-60% less arthropod biomass in Puerto Rico.

- 50-80% drops in partridges from France due to the lack of insects they eat.

- 50% of all farmland birds in Europe are gone.

- Birds which rely on insects may be starving to death due to their collapse. 

These are some drastic decreases and we tend to forget that all species are connected. When we loose one species, we can loose all the species that rely on it. We need to recognize what is happening around us with our environment and our planet. We need to know, that what we are seeing today, isn’t normal. 

I just came across Molly Costello’s art, and it’s so incredibly solarpunk! It’s so gorgeous and hopeful and wonderfully nature-inspired and I love everything about it.

The plastic backlash: what's behind our sudden rage – and will it make a difference? – podcast

Decades after it became part of the fabric of our lives, a worldwide revolt against plastic is under way

A history of plastic and the lobbying that surrounded it.

solarpunk actions for minors/ppl with generally less independence ?

WOW LATE! Sorry, I’ve been without computer for a while.

Reuse! Wash and save jars. Rescue cans for planters. Before you toss something, think: is there another use for this?

Blow dandelion seeds around. Seriously, they grow anywhere and they’re useful from flower to tip.

On that note, learn what plants are edible where you are. Eat them.

Learn, research!

Find local organizations focused on conservation, food, and local sustainability. Donate money, time, stuff, whatever they need/you have.

Walk/bike places if you can/it’s safe

That’s all I have right now!! Anyone can reblog with more.

Permaculture and the Myth of Overpopulation

by Lisa Depiano When teaching permaculture I often start out by doing a giant problems mind map. I ask students to brainstorm all of the major “problems” they see in the world to reflect on what brought them to study permaculture. Nine times out of ten the idea of overpopulation as a root “problem” in […]

Six talking points to use when debunking the myth that overpopulation is the root of the environmental crisis:

1. Rates of population growth are declining: Between 1950 and 2000, the world population grew at a rate of 1.76%. However, between 2000 and 2050, the rate of growth is expected to decline to 0.77%.

2. Overpopulation is defined by numbers of people, not their behaviors: Industrialized countries, who make up only 20% of the world’s population, are responsible for 80% of the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The United States is the worst offender, with 20 tons of carbon emission per person. Therefore, it is not the amount of people that leads to degradation, but what they are doing. Permaculture design illustrates how humans can have a positive impact on the health of our ecosystems, bringing greater health and equity.

3. Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of color, and immigrant communities: Often times the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of color, and immigrants. This idea has been used to justify such practices as the forced sterilization of 35% of women of childbearing age in 1970′s Puerto Rico, under the control of and with funding from the US government. This is a human and reproductive rights violation. 

4. Overpopulation points the finger at individuals, not systems: This lets the real culprits off the hook. When we look at the true causes of environmental destruction and poverty, it is often social, political and economic systems, not individuals. We see militaries and the toxic legacy of war, corrupt governments, and a capitalist economic system that puts profit over people and the environment.

5. Supports a degenerative mental model of scarcity: Much of this ideology was created by Thomas Robert Malthus, an 19th century English scholar. Malthus gave us the erroneous idea that the reason there is famine is because there are too many mouths to feed. This hides the reality that we have a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem. Malthus’s work has been used as the philosophical bedrock to justify many human rights violations throughout history.

6. Focusing on overpopulation prevents us from creating effective solutions and building movements for collective self determination: Permaculture teaches us that how we define a problem determines how we design solutions. How does viewing overpopulation as a root problem impact the way we think of and design solutions? What would solutions look like if we viewed people, all people, as an asset? The myth of overpopulation has lead to solutions of population control and fertility treatments, rather than overall health care and women’s rights. The more we blame humans and think we are bad and evil, the harder it is to believe in ourselves, count on each other, and build a collective movement for justice and self determination.

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[Image Description: indoors, Annie is sitting in a power chair front of an elevator wearing sunglasses, wrist/thumb braces, and a black t-shirt with text that reads, “The future is accessible”]