Peak Oil & New Urbanism

These three documentaries on Peak Oil have interested me:

The Power of Community (2006, trailer, Wiki). This looks at the economic crisis in Cuba following the break-up of the Soviet Union, which significantly reduced Cuba’s access to cheap oil. The way food production, transportation, education and other sectors adapted is telling. Cuba is said to be a test case for global peak oil. I appreciated the focus on local food production/permaculture.

A Crude Awakening (2006, trailer, Wiki). General description of Peak Oil and the potential ramifications of passing the peak.

The End of Suburbia (2004, trailer, Wiki). I like the first two films better, but this one made more obvious the reason people are pushing for fracking today–dwindling natural gas accessible via traditional approaches of extraction. All three films demonstrate why there is pressure to build the XL pipeline. One thing I appreciated about this film was its consideration of new urbanism (Wiki), though they admit it could be too little too late. A documentary I value on new urbanism is A Convenient Truth (Curitiba, Brazil, 2006, trailer, IMDB).

I have not watched the 2007 follow-up, Escape from Suburbia, which received mixed reviews (pro, con, Netflix).

Human Trafficking

Here are four resources shared with me by a leader at Tiny Hands Intl:

Books

• The Slave across the Street (Flores)
• Beyond the Soiled Curtain (Grant & Grant)
• More

Films

• The Day My God Died
• Very Young Girls
• Plus 10 more movies and a few more.

BONUS: Project Soap

>Waste Land

We really appreciated watching Waste Land with Ross last night. Very engaging.

The film reminded me of Born into Brothels (photography as social tool) + Dive! and The Gleaners and I and Recycled Life (reclaiming society’s waste).

Justice Conference 2012, Portland, OR

What is Justice? from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

>World Vision: What is Social Justice?

I appreciated this WV article — What does “social justice” really mean? Two excerpts:

The Bible makes social justice a mandate of faith and a fundamental expression of Christian discipleship. Social justice has its biblical roots in a triune God who time and time again shows His love and compassion for the weak, the vulnerable, the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the disinherited — you get my point. “For Christians, the pursuit of social justice for the poor and oppressed is the decisive mark of being people who submit to the will and way of God,” writes Tim Dearborn in “Reflections on Advocacy and Justice.”

Social justice is about creating kingdom space in the here and now, giving witness to the ultimate just society yet to come. So every time we use our voice and influence to get in the way of injustice — whether it’s human trafficking, economic exploitation, human rights abuses, or infants dying needlessly from disease and malnutrition — we provide a foretaste of God’s kingdom to come.

[COMPLETE ARTICLE]

>Intl Development

Compare 88 Bikes with these examples — 7 Worst Intl Aid Ideas.

>Two Links from a Colleague

Someone in the office today shared these 2 links with me. Actually, I got them from stickers on her laptop.

• Just Seeds Artists’ Cooperative
• Microcosm Publishing

>Three Ted Talks

These are a few of my favorite TED videos. The 3rd was shared with me today.

• On being wrong (Kathryn Schultz)
• Charter on Compassion (Karen Armstrong) — Interviewing the director of Amistad Intl for the Journal of Adv Education was the first time I heard about Karen.
• Moral roots of liberals and conservatives (Jonathan Haidt) — Looks at a bit of the psychological research I came across a couple summers ago when looking into the link between Christianity and support for torture. I’m glad to have keen thinkers from both sides of the aisle as friends.

>Evangelical Social Heritage

Today I’ve been reading Donald Dayton’s Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (1976) for a project on 19th century restoration movements and social justice. Great book. Here’s a thought from Charles Finney:

Is it possible, my dearly beloved brethren, that we can remain blind to the tendencies of things–to the causes that are operating to produce alienation, division, distrust, to grieve away the Spirit, overthrow revivals, and cover the land with darkness and the shadow of death? Is it not time for us, brethren, to repent, to be candid and search out wherein we have been wrong and publicly and privately confess it, and pass public resolutions in our general ecclesiastical bodies, recanting and confessing what has been wrong–confessing in our pulpits, through the press, and in every proper way our sins as Christians and ministers–our want of sympathy with Christ, our want of compassion for the slave, for the inebriate, for the wretched prostitute, and for all the miserable and ignorant of the earth.

May the Lord have mercy on us, my brethren. (p. 24)

(Dayton’s source is Letters on Revivals–No. 23: The Pernicious Attitude of the Church on the Reforms of the Age.)

>Three Films

Yes, I spend more time watching than doing. In the past month or so, I’ve appreciated these three documentaries:

God Grew Tired of Us (2006, PG) — War & Relocation

After raising themselves in the desert along with thousands of other “lost boys,” Sudanese refugees John, Daniel and Panther have found their way to America, where they experience electricity, running water and supermarkets for the first time.

Waiting for Superman (2010, PG) — Education

Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) weaves together the stories of students, families, educators and reformers to shed light on the failing public school system and its consequences on the future of the United States.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000, NR) — Globalization & Protest

[T]his powerful documentary recounts the story of more than 100 activists who gathered to promote economic justice and turned cameras on police during the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle.