http://smalltownproject.org This site is one of the Web's most comprehensive sources of information on the problem of needless urban growth and the benefits of a no-growth policy. It began as an effort to help Mount Vernon and Lisbon, Iowa, preserve their small town characters and open spaces. It subsequently adopted a broader focus on issues of growth, sustainability, and the environment. The site is now essentially an archive, only occasionally updated. For John Feeney's current writings on growth-related topics, see his active site, growthmadness.org Thu, 22 May 2008 19:37:25 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Time to introduce a new site! After 18 months, Growth is Madness!, introduced below, began to take too much time away from writing for larger publications. To be able to focus on the latter, I've now settled into johnfeeney.net. It features a sampling of my writing, updates, information on speaking ... http://smalltownproject.org/2008/05/22/new-home-on-the-web-johnfeeneynet/ I'm happy to announce that I have now launched a new weblog, Growth is Madness! This was the result of a great deal of thought. Though I had previously reported that I was planning a site which would be "uniquely participatory," I decided to take another route. The site I ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/12/21/growth-is-madness-launched/ My apologies for the long delay since I last posted here. In the previous entry, I mentioned that I planned a new website. I can report that while it is still a site in concept only, aspects of the plan have been refined, bringing it slightly closer to reality. I ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/10/07/update-on-planned-site/ If you read this site regularly, you may have noticed a shift in focus. Recently, I've written less on topics of local interest and more on broader issues. This shift reflects a necessary change for the site. In about a month, my family and I will be moving to Colorado. ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/05/11/the-future-of-the-small-town-project/ My last post touched on the politics of climate change. Today, PRI's program, To the Point, addressed the issue well. (You should be able to listen to the show in your preferred format from this page. Better, perhaps, is to download it as a podcast, which you can play on ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/04/28/politics-of-climate-change-exposed-on-to-the-point/ Here's a good link for Earth Day. Admittedly, it was the first link supplied by clicking today on Google's logo. But it's a good one, well designed with plenty of useful links and information. By the way, here's another link that was not far down the list on that first page ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/04/22/poking-around-the-web-on-earth-day/ The White House needs a subscription to Scientific American. The gap between science and society is profound and extraordinarily dangerous. -- Jeffrey D. Sachs In the recent essay, Will We Avert Ecological Collapse?, I led off with mention of Jeffrey Sachs's keynote address at the State of the Planet conference at ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/04/16/please-attend-this-lecture/ From Peter H. Raven's 2002 Presidential Address, American Association for the Advancement of Science: Over 400 generations (10,000 years), our human population has grown from several million people to approximately 6.1 billion... We continue to depend on a series of ancient, genetically and socially determined habits and attitudes, many of ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/04/10/an-instant-in-time-and-a-world-transformed/ Revised, 4/8/06, 4/9/06 ------------ The cataclysmic consequences of unsustainable development pose a challenge to the world that will make the war on terror seem a mere distraction. One possible outcome of unchecked population growth. Image source: e-text population material So begins a recent article summarizing what Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/04/06/will-we-avert-ecological-collapse/ Attorney Gail Small fights for Northern Cheyenne environmental rights. Image source: Kathdin Foundation You can't investigate topics such as growth and sprawl without soon recognizing how they connect with a variety of interrelated issues of environmental degradation. Today there are countless stories of environmental destruction, all indicative of our ... http://smalltownproject.org/2006/03/28/environmentalism-on-american-indian-lands/