William Powers
Author and Sustainable Development Professional
Powers has
worked for two decades in development aid and conservation in Latin America,
Africa, and North America. From 2002 to 2004 he managed the community
components of a project in the Bolivian Amazon that won a 2003 prize for
environmental innovation from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
His essays and commentaries on global issues have appeared in the New
York Times and the International Herald Tribune and
on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air. Powers has worked at the
World Bank and holds international relations degrees from Brown and Georgetown.
A third-generation New Yorker, Powers has also spent two decades exploring the
American culture of speed and its alternatives in some fifty countries around
the world. He has covered the subject in his four books and written about it in
the Washington Post and the Atlantic. Powers is a senior fellow at the World
Policy Institute and an adjunct faculty member at New York University.
In his first book, Twelve by
Twelve, Bill lived in an off-grid tiny house in rural North Carolina. In New
Slow City, he and his wife, Melissa, inhabited a Manhattan micro-apartment in
search of slow in the fastest city in the world. In Dispatches from the Sweet
Life, the couple, with baby in tow, search for balance, humanity, and happiness
in Suraqueta, Bolivia, a subtropical town where the Andes meets the Amazon.
Surequeta is also a Transition Town — a model community that aims to increase
self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate
destruction, and economic instability.
Worldwide, about sixteen hundred Transition initiatives currently exist, part of a global Transition Network, in which local communities foster “glocal” low-carbon economies through alternative energy, local consumption, organic agriculture, and community development by and for the community.
Leaving behind America’s work-and-spend treadmill, La Familia Powers embrace the potential of the Sweet Life (la Vida Dulce) — the Bolivian idea that happiness is best achieved in deep community in balance with nature.
Initially, the young family discovers a blossoming Transition Town with a miniscule carbon footprint, organic farms, community work parties, and a pace of life reflected in its denizens’ longevity and happiness. They build an adobe house beside a prolific orchard and weave their lives into a creative community of Bolivians and foreigners.
But it isn’t long before tropical insects ravish their organic garden and invade their house. Carbon-neutral transition initiatives sputter. And North American-inspired capitalism — mines, malls, Big-Ag — extends its seductive tentacles, threatening Bolivia’s pioneering Law of Mother Earth and the very foundations of the Sweet Life.
Joining the battle is a motley crew of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, beer brewers, earnest university students, creative business people, and public officials who, against all odds, struggle to forge a Global South model of self-sufficiency and sustainable happiness.
Can one family overcome the obstacles to living a sustainable, happy life? Can a vulnerable town confront fast corporate globalization, defending a slow economy and community? Can the Bolivian nation, in the end, forge a workable alternative to inspire an endangered planet? No matter the outcome, Powers delivers a timely, inspirational, and thought-provoking personal exploration of what sustainable living can look like.
Worldwide, about sixteen hundred Transition initiatives currently exist, part of a global Transition Network, in which local communities foster “glocal” low-carbon economies through alternative energy, local consumption, organic agriculture, and community development by and for the community.
Leaving behind America’s work-and-spend treadmill, La Familia Powers embrace the potential of the Sweet Life (la Vida Dulce) — the Bolivian idea that happiness is best achieved in deep community in balance with nature.
Initially, the young family discovers a blossoming Transition Town with a miniscule carbon footprint, organic farms, community work parties, and a pace of life reflected in its denizens’ longevity and happiness. They build an adobe house beside a prolific orchard and weave their lives into a creative community of Bolivians and foreigners.
But it isn’t long before tropical insects ravish their organic garden and invade their house. Carbon-neutral transition initiatives sputter. And North American-inspired capitalism — mines, malls, Big-Ag — extends its seductive tentacles, threatening Bolivia’s pioneering Law of Mother Earth and the very foundations of the Sweet Life.
Joining the battle is a motley crew of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, beer brewers, earnest university students, creative business people, and public officials who, against all odds, struggle to forge a Global South model of self-sufficiency and sustainable happiness.
Can one family overcome the obstacles to living a sustainable, happy life? Can a vulnerable town confront fast corporate globalization, defending a slow economy and community? Can the Bolivian nation, in the end, forge a workable alternative to inspire an endangered planet? No matter the outcome, Powers delivers a timely, inspirational, and thought-provoking personal exploration of what sustainable living can look like.
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Dagmar and Patrick Sullivan
Wild Grill Foods was formed in 2010 to produce healthy seafood
products including burgers, dogs and sausages. Their line of products
feature sustainable fish all natural ingredients – a perfect fit to meet
today’s demand for healthier lifestyles. All the products are made with
reliable, sustainable natural protein sources such as wild caught Pacific
Salmon, Pollock, and shrimp along with highest quality GMO free gourmet spices
and ingredients. Additionally, Wild Grill offers Natural and Gluten Free products.
The founders of Wild Grill Foods, Patrick and Dagmar Sullivan,
have been in the seafood business since 1997, making one of the first salmon
burgers available in the retail market. Wild Grill Foods has capitalized on
this knowledge by introducing for the first time nation-wide, a seafood sausage
featuring a natural seaweed casing. This special casing allows the seafood
sausages to be cooked right from frozen in just minutes. If you are looking for
a more traditional hot dog, they have that too in the latest addition to the
Wild Grill Foods product line - a smoked/cured salmon hot dog in a skinless
casing. These new products, along with their outstanding fish burgers, fulfill
the company’s pledge to today’s consumers—to provide high quality, healthy, sustainable
seafood products that are nutritious, delicious, minimally processed &
all natural.
