Society

Barbarian invasions

by

Many authors have predicted the energy descent will result in mass migrations, leading to large scale population replacement. John Michael Greer has thus stated he considered an Arab conquest of Europe as a distinct possibility… There is certainly an American bias here. America certainly experienced a large scale population replacement in the last three centuries, with natives being progressively swamped out by immigrants from the other side of the sea. This hasn’t happened in Europe for five millenniums.

Response to “Who’s to blame for the population crisis?” in Mother Jones

by

Congratulations to Mother Jones for dedicating the cover of their May/June 2010 issue to the population crisis. I have worked in the population field for four decades, and since joining the movement in the late 1960s, when the issue was at the forefront of public concern, I have witnessed an alarming decrease in responsible reporting on population issues and the importance of addressing the dramatic growth we are faced with each and every day. So, thank you, Mother Jones, for being one of the few to bring the population issue back to the forefront of public discourse.

Politically impossible?

by

Last week I spoke before a very committed group of juniors and seniors taking a college class on sustainable cities. One student challenged me saying, “I’m tired of people in your generation saying that everything we really need to do is politically impossible. All of us here are graduating soon, and we will be moving into positions of responsibility including ones in government. When we’re the generation making the decisions, the things we need to do won’t be politically impossible.” Point taken.

Confessions of a Doomer

by

A month ago I visited my friend Sadie in Cincinnati. During a chat in her apartment, I confessed to a morbid fascination with the possible collapse of society. She laughed and, in a tone of gentle sarcasm, said she’d noticed my enchantment with that subject.

Finding healthy addictions

by

Our brain likes ‘happy’ chemicals and we tend to find ways to effect their release. Trouble is, we become quickly habituated to stimulation and then seek novelty in order to get that same old feeling. Our modern society gives us so many opportunities to be rewarded, but many people can’t handle it. They gradually become addicted to unhealthy things.

Conservation and the Community Garden: One Suburban Model That Works

by

Conservation efforts are surely the only sane response to the insane destruction accelerating all around us. But what should we spend our time conserving, and how can we maximize success? In this essay I discuss my local community garden as a conservation project and the factors that I believe are making it successful.

Video review: The Road and 2012

by

Hollywood images of the future tend to be pretty grim: most video stores even have a single section now entitled “science fiction / horror,” since any future they show is likely to be horrifying. Just the last few years have given us The Book of Eli, The Road, 2012, I Am Legend, Children of Men, 28 Weeks Later, Resident Evil, Terminator films and series, and even WALL-E, the first post-apocalypse children’s movie.

Cultural hegemony

by

2010 might very well be seen in retrospect as the year when Peak Oil became, if not exactly mainstream, at least something of a subject for the powers that be…Yet very little of it transpired into mainstream press and we can be quite sure, as Matthieu Auzanneau himself acknowledges, that a lot of water will run under the bridges of Paris before any kind of policy is implemented to address the problem. And there are unfortunately very good reasons for that.