Tired of waiting for the barbarians
The apocalypse is a dramatic way to talk about peak oil, climate change and economic collapse. But a new book, ‘The Last Myth,’ claims this story isn’t helpful.
Society
America: The Two Empires
There’s a fascinating parallel between the rise of America’s first overseas empire and the emergence of her petroleum industry. The age of oil, in fact, can be seen as an empire of time — the exploitation of the distant past for the benefit of the present — just as empire in the usual sense is an empire of space, the exploitation of distant countries for the benefit of one imperial nation. The two patterns would emerge together to drive a new mode of imperial expansion — one with a sharply limited shelf life.
Disunited kingdoms
In 2014, Scotland will decide whether it should leave the United Kingdom or not. At this point, the pro-independence opinion is still a minority, even though the unionist parties do their best to make it a majority by the time the referendum it held. Should Alex Salmond win his gambit, a new state would appear on maps of Europe, probably the first of a long series.
Translating Transition: from small town to mega-city
“How can you possibly do this in L.A.?” people familiar with the Transition model often ask me. Even people who live here find the idea quite daunting. One local Permaculture teacher, when asked “What about LA?”, literally threw up his hands in a gesture that said “It’s hopeless.”
Los Angeles is a mega-city. At 11 million people, we’re somewhere between 8th and 15th on the list of the world’s largest. We’re one of the biggest population centers that have dared to actively work with the Transition model. Just for the record: it isn’t categorically “hopeless.”
The bike as a lens
Culturally we believe that the car is a symbol of personal freedom. But the truth is that car ownership can be oppressive on several levels. Personal mobility represents freedom to the individual, but it’s the form it takes that tells the story of freedom.
How many circles does it take to make a community?
I have read some of the “energy descent plans” of some of the leading Transition communities, and they strike me as being long on ideals and objectives and short on credible strategy — how to get there from here…I have come to realize that our future is so “unimaginable” that strategic planning is impossible…Instead, I wondered if it made sense to have…a “Working Towards” plan — specific ideas for helping us (1) build community and increase collaboration and sharing, (2) reduce dependence on imports and centralized systems and increase self-sufficiency, and (3) prepare psychologically and increase resilience for whatever the future holds.
Could we do this using the Resilience Circle model?
In small groups and small towns, opposition to Citizens United spreads
The small group, or “affinity group,” has been a crucial part of many social movements, and people are increasingly realizing its relevance for today. “It can sometimes be hard to get a group of activists to pull away from a political or social agenda,” says Lore. “But I always promise people that if you take five or six sessions focused on getting to know each other, you won’t be sorry. You’ll become much more effective activists. And you’ll also have fun in the process.”
Open-sourced blueprints for civilization
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing a set of blueprints for 50 farming tools that can be built cheaply from scratch. Call it a “civilization starter kit.”
On being in time for Transition
At a time when entire peoples — and species — have lost their homes to flooding, deforestation, war, agribusiness and other forms of hatred and greed, when health has been lost to the increasing toxicity and the decreasing nutritional quality of food, it may be that we no longer have time to indulge in the moral miasma of an urgent need to create a more positive future. Our only time is now, a now that holds the whole complexities of hope and suffering, joy and negativity.
The solar envelope: how to heat and cool cities without fossil fuels
Architects all over the world have demonstrated the usefulness of buildings which are heated and cooled by design rather than by fossil fuel energy. What has received much less attention, however, is the possibility of applying this approach to entire urban neighbourhoods and cities.
Peak Oil – (House of Representatives – February 17, 2012)
Mr. Speaker, when I looked at the television this morning and at that little crawler across the top of one of our stations, I noticed that oil was $103 a barrel–$103 a barrel and we’re in a recession. What’s happening here?
Today, in spite of all that we have done in the most creative, innovative society in the world, the United States, today we produce half the oil that we did in 1970, and we’ve drilled more oil wells in our country than all the rest of the world put together.
The map is not the territory
This is the grove I come to each spring, first with the daffodils, and later with the bluebells and red campion. This is the season, between the Equinox and May Day, when England is her most green and exuberant. I love this spring moment. I love English marshes and Welsh hills, the deserts of Arizona, the valleys of Ecuador, the islands of Greece, the forests of Mexico. I have traversed many lands, sat with a thousand flowers and learned their medicine. I have climbed trees, swum in wild water, and spent a big part of my life immersed in the fabric of nature, trying to find words for the wild, the beautiful and the free . . .But what on earth has this got to do with Transition?
