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Making an evaporative cooling vest from natural materials

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Doing agricultural or building work in an ever-hotter world will become more and more difficult and dangerous in future. Evaporative cooling vests exist to help people stay cool and safe whilst doing heavy, hot work. Here, Geoffroy Levy describes his ideas for a DIY evaporative vest made from natural materials.

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Ancient settlements show that commoning is ‘natural’ for humans, not selfishness and competition

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When I’ve had conversations about the commons with right-leaning people (and sometimes cynical people on the left too), a typical response might be something along the lines of: ‘don’t waste your time trying to build a more democratic, sustainable or peaceful society. It won’t work, because humans are inherently selfish, greedy and competitive’.

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Introducing commons ideas at the Festival of Commoning

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At the Festival of Commoning (Sep 13-14, in Stroud), our Stroud Commons group has a one-hour slot on the Saturday morning. I’m going to give an overview of commons ideas, and there will be representatives of the housing, land, energy and climbing groups to talk about what’s happening in their groups. Then we’ll have around half an hour to answer questions.

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The role of the Credit Commons in the commons economy: Tom Woodroof of Mutual Credit Services

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Dave Darby of Lowimpact.org and Stroud Commons talks with Tom Woodroof of Local Loop Merseyside and Mutual Credit Services about the Credit Commons – a way to federate different groups all over the world that are building the commons economy (because you can’t get everything you need from just your community) – but it does it without centralised control.

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Busted flush: why the big water corporations have to go

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The catastrophic problems of privatised English water companies are well known. Sewerage function and drinking water supply are now more deficient than even before privatisation. Terminal failure was in-built from the start, within the cultural, operational, & regulatory processes applied. Correcting these foundational criteria can help inform the quickest resolution.

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What makes the commons movement different? (A: it’s much more difficult to co-opt.)

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The commons is a movement to create a different world, not just the same system with a few tweaks to make it more bearable. If successful, obviously there will be entities out there that will try to undermine it, buy it and ultimately, to crush it. But there are aspects to the commons model that will, I think, make it more resistant to this than existing models.

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