Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
New areas for oil and gas development on the UK’s North Sea continental shelf are to be made available through annual licensing rounds subject to net zero tests. These proposals by the UK government, outlined in the 2023 king’s speech to parliament, fly in the face of recommendations by the Climate Change Committee – the government’s own independent advisers.
It may seem odd that I’d begin an essay on the topic of energy descent as I am, by speaking of this theme specifically as a topic of philosophical concern. But I have my reasons for doing so, as hopefully you’ll soon understand.
On this Reality Roundtable, Nate is joined by small-scale farmer Jason Bradford, permaculturist and documentarian Andrew Millison, regenerative agriculture activist Vandana Shiva, and regenerative farmer and educator Daniel Zetah to discuss the feasibility of a food system fully or mostly independent of fossil fuel inputs.
If there is one resource that seems like it would be truly inexhaustible, it’s sand. But we are now using sand at an unsustainable rate.
There is so much work that needs to be done, and almost none of it is in an office or a shop. The garden of the world needs to be weeded. This home needs to be cleaned. This body needs nourishing food. And we all need to rest and recover — so we may build new, more durable, more beautiful, more rewarding relationships with the world when the spring returns.
If the question is not made explicit – if the existence of upstream questions, these questions that take us beyond the boundaries of what science can tell us about climate change, is not recognised – then the default answer will be to treat it as bad luck and pursue some combination of techno-fixes and lifestyle adjustments.
My little flock expanded in November 2013 when Bob told me about a ram lamb for sale from a Boreray flock in the Highlands that had started with sheep from Bob.
We have spent many years planning, building, and repairing the infrastructure to support multiple endeavors, to make the farm resilient, to create and sustain a place where the absence of one species simply indicates another cycle, unremarked in the larger scheme.
On my latest flight surveying fossil fuel industry sites in southwest Louisiana at the end of September, I photographed liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities, signs of drought, fire-scarred stretches of marsh, and a salt dome site at risk of collapsing.
Fundamentally, we need to figure out what and who we are, where we come from, and what we need to do now in order to contribute to the making of a new sacred agreement between all the people living in North America, in addition to acknowledging the colonial crimes made throughout history.
Pope Francis is inspiring in his willingness to confront hard truths. At the same time, he could go further in diagnosing the full range of causes of the global sustainability challenge.
Our tracking shows there is now 783 gigawatts (GW) of oil- and gas-power capacity under development – projects that are either announced or in the pre-construction and construction phases. These represent a stranded asset risk of hundreds of billions of dollars and potentially locking in tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
