Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Energetic Kris Holstrom is the first Sustainability Coordinator for Telluride and a smart Colorado county. The action plan she developed encompasses energy efficiency and renewables, green building, food and water security, economy, and recycling/resource recovery.
Richard Heinberg, author of “Peak Everything”, reviews the accelerating events since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and fossil fuel price volatility, noting that we’ve missed most of the best opportunities to manage collapse. He asks, “how far down the staircase of complexity will our global civilization have to go until we’re sustainable?” His answer: when managed properly, with deliberate simplification, not as far as we might otherwise.
From the ASPO-USA 2008 conference: two long-standing peak oil awakeners: author James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) and Post Carbon Institute Founder and President, Julian Darley.
In his book, The Long Descent, John Michael Greer observes that our culture has two primary stories: “Infinite Progress” or “Catastrophe”. On the contrary, he sees history as cyclic: civilizations rise and fall.
Responding to peak oil will require reshaping our communities. These two interviews, taped in September 2008 at the ASPO-USA conference, are with Megan Quinn Bachman of Community Solutions, and Bryn Davidson of Dynamic Cities Project.
This past week the New Yorker published “The Dystopians” by Ben McGrath… Sitting with this piece for the past seven days has been unsettling, not because I personally wanted more air time, but because of the article’s paucity of references to the female perspective regarding the collapse of civilization
Climate adaptation for resilient communities
Controlling our history: encyclopedias vs Wikipedia
Powerdown toolkit
Freedom and the price of oil
Disease in the land of plenty
Vaclav Smil’s book: the worst is yet to be
Dr. Lin Jiabin on sustainability in China – an alternative to consumerism?
Autonomist essays: there’s an energy crisis (among others) in the air
When will the water run out?
Old-Growth Forests Dying Off in U.S. West
Ecologists warn the planet is running short of water
Eastern Europe braced for a violent ‘spring of discontent’
Study looks at mortality in post-Soviet era (importance of community)
Military report raises concerns about social unrest fueled by globalization, urbanization
The new ecology of war (Mike Davis interview)
Not everything about the suburbs will be a downside when the era of cheap fossil fuel comes to an end. Nearly all suburban dwellings have broad roofs and yards that are suitable for collecting some form of solar or in some places wind energy. In many cases, suburban yards are suitable for growing food or perhaps even raising poultry or other small livestock.
Because just as my friend’s husband found, when something is needed – and by needed I mean either practically necessary because there is no alternative (ie, the baby is coming or the power is out) or when something is needed because a body of people are committed to its rightness and seriousness (ie, the embargo requires us to make our own cloth, or the bus boycott requires elderly women to walk miles each day) we find in ourselves capacities that we hardly knew were there. While sometimes the worst does happen, often we are surprised by outcomes – simply because we underestimate people.
