This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. This might be an opportune time to make a disclosure: I am a BP shareholder. Admittedly, I’ve never attended the company’s annual meeting, and if I did, I would have very little weight to throw around. Those who believe that the price of my BP stock will recover in the next year might be wrong. Even if the stock bottoms out, however, that won’t restore a shattered Gulf, nor will it change a system that prizes easy consumption and deferred responsibility. We can only correct …

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. Research assistance was provided by Sean Nortz. Will climate disobedience heat up in the months before Copenhagen?In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime …

Wendell Berry, right at home. Wendell Berry, 70 years old today, has established himself as many things in his lifetime: a veteran sage of sustainable agriculture; a progressive defender of virtue and tradition; one of our most famous farmers to renounce the tractor; and one of our most acclaimed authors to shun the computer. To appreciate Berry, you must first understand that he has staked his life on a gamble of faith -- "the faith being," he says, "that if you make a commitment, and hang on until death, there are rewards." His own commitment, most of all, is to …