Society

Salvaging Science

by

The spiralling economic contraction we can expect as the impact of peak oil grows stronger poses a particularly sharp challenge to the institutions of modern science, which are already facing budget cuts and a widening loss of social influence and prestige. In a future where pumping money into research projects simply won’t be an option any more, the survival of the scientific method as a way of solving problems is arguably up for grabs — but there are options for salvaging it.

The question of Sovicille

by

Professor, I liked your talk, but I am perplexed. You told us many interesting things about fossil fuels, energy and climate. I can’t avoid noticing that I have heard other scientists arriving to different conclusions. I heard someone saying that people were predicting the end of fossil fuels already 20 years ago and they were wrong, of course, and therefore there is nothing to worry about today. And it is the same about climate; I heard someone saying that scientists were expecting an ice age in the 1970s, and they were wrong, of course. So, I am surprised that experts can have such different positions while, theoretically, they all have the same data.

Hope for the Hell of it

by

Hope lies in the future. Look at what’s already here. If 61 native nations oppose a tar-sands pipeline, it’s because they’ve survived the last 519 years of Euro-invasive attempts to eliminate their rights, their identities, and sometimes their lives. They’re still here. So are the Immokalee workers. And the feminists. And the climate-change activists. And Nelson Mandela. So are you. Do something hopeful about it, just for the hell of it. There’s no reason not to.

The future of pavement

by

One of Ireland’s most iconic images, seen in many postcards and calendar panoramas, is the mosaic of green fields divided by stone walls. Those walls, so common in the west of our island, look even more interesting up close, for the stones are loose, irregular and often lain without mortar. They look as unstable as a card pyramid, yet many have lasted centuries. They demonstrate how insoluble problems can be combined into simple solutions, as farmers here turned an obstacle – the stones that broke their ploughs – into a barrier that would protect their livestock.

The shadows of the bagaudae

by

Most people hardly noticed, but the recent Spanish elections have been troubled by a series of demonstrations. A relatively high number of demonstrators have gathered in major Spanish cities during the months of May and June, demanding radical but curiously unspecific changes in Spanish politics. There have been similar protests in Portugal and in Greece, all of them about the austerity measures taken in those countries in response to the debt crisis. Of course, the French far left has seen in these protests the premises of the revolution it has been waiting for throughout the last fifty years, but what strikes me most about those protests is their pointlessness and their conservative nature. In that, they may well be representative of the political climate of the early decades of energy descent.

To touch a future sky: Raising children in changing times

by

We have received a tremendous gift – to be alive at the edge of these changing times. It’s not an easy gift, if we look open-eyed into possible futures. Yet within this gift lies the tremendous opportunity (and yes, responsibility) of crafting tools to place in the hands of those who come after, to enable them to shape the world in which they live through their own vision.

Salvaging learning

by

There’s probably no notion more widespread in contemporary American culture than the claim that whatever the problems driving the widening spiral of crisis that afflicts us, they must be somebody’s fault. There’s probably no notion that would be more derided in contemporary American culture, if anyone were so unwise as to suggest it, than the proposal that the humanities might have something useful to offer as that spiral of crisis worsens. The acceptance of the one claim and the dismissal of the other are not as unrelated as they seem, and the thread of connection that unites them offers a glimpse at some of the crucial issues surrounding education in the age of peak oil.

‘Totnes: what the past can teach us about the future’: a new film

by

I have had the great pleasure over the past few months to work with Susana Martinez and Emilio Mula to create a new short film about oral history and Transition. It emerged from the oral histories we did in preparing the Totnes EDAP, interviewing some of those people in more depth. The resultant film, premiered on Thursday night in Totnes, is one I very much hope you enjoy.

Debt tantrum on a sinking ship

by

Republicans have created a political crisis by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling unless they achieve their priorities of dramatically reducing government spending—primarily on social programs.

A larger context is the fact that the U.S. is still reeling from an epic credit crunch. …

The even bigger, and most important, context is that we are entering a new historic era. … Economic growth—fueled during past decades by cheap energy and raw materials, but also made possible by a stable climate—is coming to an end.

What a waste! The scoop on poop and ecological wastewater management- Part 2 of a 2 part interview

by

Have you ever wondered why we poop in fresh water? In Part 2 of an interview author Carol Steinfeld, we talk more in-depth about human waste as a resource. Carol, co-author of The Composting Toilet System Book and Reusing the Resource: Adventures in Ecological Wastewater Recycling, shares her extensive knowledge about human waste management practices around the globe, how to clear human waste of possible pathogens, and different waste-composting systems for the home.

Whispers of a gentle species

by

Believed to be a gift from Pachamama, the sacred earth mother, alpaca have been present during the rise and fall of many human civilizations from the point of their domestication 6,000 years ago. As the lives of the alpaca and humans became increasingly and intricately woven within ancient South American culture, they became revered and honored for their integral place in pre-Colombian society. The people of the Andes developed an exquisite language of gratitude for the animals who became a vital source of food, fiber, fuel and skins.

Life Rules: Why so much is going wrong everywhere at once and how life teaches us to fix it

by

Floods, drought, natural fires, hurricanes, violent storms, massive species extinction, infrastructure collapse, terrorist attacks, starvation, economic disaster, climate change … What in the world is going on?

“We’ve lost sight of the fact that the non-living systems we’ve created and the natural ones we didn’t create share the same planet….and on Earth, Life rules, we don’t,” says Ellen LaConte, author of the new book, Life Rules