This morning I heard from PostCarbon Rhode Island, a new blog that entered the world just three days after 2008, on January 3. It's a great website with info on efforts to deal with energy and natural resource issues locally in South County. Looks like they are doing some reverse globalization, taking national-level resources and using them for local good.
They focus on sustainability and "relocalization":
Building on the models established by groundbreaking organizations worldwide, we hope to serve as a clearinghouse of information, a means of networking, and an organizing hub for those who share a sense of urgency in these endeavors.
The author writes,
...we have been approved as a new member of Post Carbon Institute's Relocalization Network, a worldwide network of more than 150 groups working in the areas of relocalization planning. Our efforts with our group are still in the early stages...
Several of the posts are about starting a community garden or gardens in South Kingstown, which I'm sure would interest many folks around there. Community gardens are sprouting up all over the place. If anyone else knows of other people cultivating such ideas, please let me know! I stumbled onto Sustainable Sakonnet a couple of weeks ago, which shares similar interests with PostCarbon Rhode Island; how many more Rhode Islanders are blogging away out there on environmental topics?
Here are some other sustainability and garden blogs that are based in Rhode Island. You know, using Google and the other search engines is simply not an efficient way to find focused local information ~ they're better at the big picture and finding leads. The rich information sources are what librarians call the "hidden web," the stuff within websites that is never indexed by the search engines. Blogs show up better in Google searches than regular web pages, but still it helps to have local folks organizing local information. This is especially true in gardening because of the variations in climate and ecosystems.
When you need local information, start with Rhode Island-based blogs:
Primarily gardening info:
- Blithewold Blog ~ A fabulous journal recording the Blithewold gardens in Bristol, RI
- Earth Friendly Gardening ~ A beautifully presented and fascinating garden blog
- Ledge and Gardens ~ Another fabulous journal recording a Northern RI garden
- Projo Garden Blog ~ "What's growing in RI gardens and how"
Eco/environmental blogs, some of which may also have gardening info:
Thank you, Sue, for highlighting our effort. The site is brand new, but feedback has been good so far. I'm adding content almost daily, so please keep checking back. There is a huge amount of important work being done right now by groups around the world. The web is the perfect vehicle for sharing best practices and disseminating much-needed info.
This website is less than 2 weeks old, and the number of links and the amount of material posted to the site so far are only a small part of what's out there. This is reflective of the magnitude of the problem.
When I say "sense of urgency", I'm not kidding. We have collectively squandered the luxury of time, so our efforts at this point need to be very focused and effective, since we're basically talking about overhauling the way we live. If you're rich, maybe you can still hit the snooze button for awhile, because rising prices for energy, food, building materials, pretty much everything--may not concern you. It's the rest of us we need to be concerned about.
Let's take care of each other.
David
Post Carbon Rhode Island
Posted by: David Floyd | Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 08:13 AM