This Forgotten Valley
That in this blighted landscape there are still places of settled beauty is a comfort: a chance to glimpse what went before and could be again.
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Against Fortress Degrowth: The Need for a Border Perspective in the Degrowth Discourse
The fight against borders and for freedom of movement needs to be part of a deeper social-ecological transformation that places global justice at its core.
I hear voices
One of them contends that there is no hope for the survival of civilization, regardless what we do; while the other thinks that humanity can get through this century of crises more or less intact, if it pulls together and behaves itself.
How many solar panels can dance on the head of a pin? Thoughts on the eschatology of energy transition
The main pushback of substance I’ve had to my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future is that this era of clean energy abundance indeed is upon us, making manufactured food feasible and confining my arguments for agrarian localism and a small farm future to the dustbin of history. I doubt that, and in this post I’ll try to elucidate some of those doubts.
The Future of Beauty
If the grounded sense of beauty Momaday derived from Kiowa cultural expressions is to play a role in shaping our response to social and ecological collapse, it will need a territory that can sustain it.
Whither energy?
If we put all our efforts into creating a system of electric heat, what we’re going to produce is very little warmth for most people, a whole lot of wasted resources and toxic trash — and no capacity to produce any energy at all within a few decades.
Towards an unliveable planet: Climate’s 2023 annus horribilis
The heat and extreme climate records of 2023 shocked scientists. So where are we heading? Given current trends, the world will zoom past 2°C of warming and the Paris climate goal of limiting warming to 1.5-2°C.
Putting justice at the heart of Transition
What if… the Transition movement could play a part in putting justice at the heart of the ‘transition’ we’re working towards, in our communities and beyond?
Commons and Commoning: A Progressive Vision of a Good Society
By developing the commons paradigm and discourse, its practices and ethical values will have many valuable impacts, not just in the agriculture and food sectors, but more universally.
Steve Keen: “On the Origins of Energy Blindness”
On this episode, economist Steve Keen offers a deep forensic history of why modern economic theory has neglected the role of energy in productivity – and why this “Energy Blindness” is now a major blindspot in how our culture views the present – and the future.
“Warning. Data Inadequate.”
Due to its incorporation of a simple “neural network” loosely analogous to the human brain, the perceptron of 1958 is recognized as a forerunner of today’s most successful “artificial intelligence” projects – from facial recognition systems to text extruders like ChatGPT.
Approaching the Energy Cliff
The longer we wait to act, the higher the cliff, the more painful the landing, and the more difficult the transition to a steady state economy.
