Yesterday’s news about the Paris Climate Accords has provoked a groundswell of commitments for local action on climate change. But what can cities actually do in the absence of federal support? A lot. In fact, with the help of states, cities have many avenues to boost their economies and drive down energy costs with local clean … Read More
On June 28, 2016, Montgomery County Council (Maryland) Vice President, Roger Berliner, introduced legislation to require the development of a comprehensive composting and food recovery strategic plan. The bill might be the first in the country to stipulate a diverse and distributed plan that considers food rescue, backyard composting, community scale composting, on-site institutional and commercial composting, … Read More
In 1995, David Morris spoke at the Riverside Church about localism and globalism. In his 15-minute speech David maintains that globalization and gigantism and absentee ownership were not inevitable but the result of public policies. We make the rules, and the rules make us. And the rules we’ve made, especially over the last 50 years, have enabled and encouraged an economic and political system where those who make the rules are separated from those who feel the impact of those rules. … Read More
Being from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, I’m often asked, “You want everyone off-grid and independent with their own solar array and a battery, right?” In a word, no. But our mission of economic and energy self-reliance has several similarities to the kind of (economic) independence being sought by England’s American colonists in the 1770s and celebrated … Read More
We are excited to announce a new effort to restore and preserve local decision-making authority when it comes to public private partnerships and Internet infrastructure investment. The Coalition for Local Internet Choice, CLIC, will work to ensure communities can make these decisions for themselves. Mission statement: The Coalition for Local Internet Choice – CLIC – represents … Read More
In February, ILSR’s Christopher Mitchell travelled to Stockholm to share our work on broadband at an event titled Fibre: The key to creating world-class IT regions. On February 21st, he presented info to attendees on the status of broadband in the U.S. While Chris was there, he also spoke one-on-one with Anders Broberg, one of the … Read More
In Episode #83 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, we bring you Barry Lynn to talk about the direct and indirect threats that make market consolidation dangerous. There are many threats from monopolies and many are much more dangerous to a free society than higher prices. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author … Read More
What is the role of local self-reliance in the modern economy? As world travel, global commerce, and communications across the oceans bring us closer together, the role of localism changes. In our inaugural podcast episode, we bring together three ILSR veterans to look at the issue. Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Telecommunications as Commons initiative at … Read More
This article by Christopher Mitchell originally ran on MuniNetworks.org, our site dedicated to broadband and community networks. To finalize our series on reflections from Seattle and Gigabit Squared, I discuss open access networks and how the requirement that a network directly pay all its costs effectively dooms it in the U.S. Read part one here and … Read More
