Light Posting 8th to 22nd October
By Resilience.org Staff, Resilience.org
Due to editorial holiday, there will be light posting from 8th to 22nd October. Regular posting will resume on the 23rd.
There Is More to It than Oil
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
The end of our industrial lifestyle paradigm will be dictated by Liebig's Law, and by humanity's response to its consequences. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know at this point which increasingly scarce nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) or NNR combination will ultimately prove to be industrialized humanity's limiting factor. Consequently, humanity's global societal collapse may be triggered by scarcity associated with one or more NNRs other than those commonly considered "most critical" to the perpetuation of our industrial lifestyle paradigm—fossil fuels, or oil specifically. After all, the space shuttle Challenger disaster was caused by a faulty o-ring.
The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) oil spew demonstrates that we just don’t get it
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
The GOM oil spew reinforces the extent to which Americans “just don’t get it” regarding the unsustainable nature of our American way of life.
Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis
By Chris Clugston, The Oil Drum
During the pre-recession years of the 21st century, we experienced wide-ranging nonrenewable natural resource (NNR) scarcity on a global scale for the first time. Supplies associated with an overwhelming majority of the global energy resources, metals, and minerals that enable our industrialized way of life failed to keep pace with increasing global demand during the 2000-2008 period, resulting in global NNR supply shortfalls.
Continuously less and less (paper abstract)
By Chris Clugston, www.wakeupamerika.com
The fundamental enabler of our industrialized American way of life is continuous access to enormous quantities of inexpensive nonrenewable natural resources (NNRs)—energy resources, metals, and minerals.
Humanity’s Choice: A Series of Exits—Not a Fork in the Road
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
The ecological and economic prognosticators who warn of a potentially unpleasant future for the human enterprise typically portray humanity as being at a fork in the road on our evolutionary journey. They contend that we are at a pivotal decision point at which we must make an “either/or” choice between a positive future outcome and a negative future outcome.
Quantifying Overextension—America’s “Predicament”
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
The objectives of the following paper are to demonstrate quantitatively that America is irreparably overextended—living hopelessly beyond our means ecologically and economically; and to quantify the disastrous consequences associated with our “predicament”.
America’s self-inflicted societal collapse
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
I have argued elsewhere that our American way of life is not sustainable, and I have presented compelling evidence to demonstrate that America is on the verge of imminent societal collapse. The purpose of the following paper is to make the case that we — all Americans — through our distorted worldview and resulting dysfunctional resource utilization behavior, are responsible for our “predicament”, and that we lack the collective will to take meaningful action to mitigate its catastrophic consequences.
On American sustainability – summary
By Chris Clugston, Energy Bulletin
Message to mainstream America: our American way of life—300+ million people enjoying historically unprecedented living standards—has been enabled by our increasingly dysfunctional ecological and economic behavior over the past 200 years. Our existing way of life is therefore unsustainable; in fact, America is facing imminent societal collapse.