History is not destiny, and yet a little understand of history can help to make sense of things. I am grateful to Alan Jacobs for surfacing this enlightening account of the history of an area called Palestine. And if I remember correctly, in 1948 Jordan could have accepted Arabs from Western Palestine who wanted to resettle, but feared that their presence would upset the Hashemite  kingdom.

”Plants are energised by zero-carbon, zero-cost sunlight, whereas factory-produced microbial biomass is energised by generated electricity at an energetic cost amounting to at least an order of magnitude more.”

Not going to quibble about that order of magnitude greater than zero. The point is very well made: Proposed ecomodernist solutions to future food supply are not solutions at all.

"the very nature of social media discourse requires you to stand your ground like Jeremy Vine behind that truck and die with your metaphorical Brompton of Righteousness rather than acknowledge that someone with an opposing view may very well have a valid point."

I couldn't stand him on the radio either.

Please give me what Monbiot calls ‘bucolic fairytales’ or ‘neo-peasant bullshit’ and what I call agrarian localism, agrarian populism or a small farm future over this sad dualism.

Glad to see that Chris Smaje has embarked on a series of articles about his new book: Saying NO to a Farm Free Future.

What's a person to do?