Searching for scapegoats
The question of what to do about the imminence of peak oil has become tangled up with questions about who to blame for it. A hard look at this thinking may be in order.
Society
survival
I had a much treasured book when I was a kid—something to the effect of “How to Survive in the Woods.” It covered the basics of building shelter, finding food, starting fire, and purifying water—important skills for a ten year old.
Can ecologists save the ecosphere?
Whenever ecologists gather, we might expect them to be screaming at the top of their lungs (or at least doing what passes for this in academic circles) about the imminent peril in which we humans find ourselves. But at a recent annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), those figurative screams could only be rated as somewhere between muffled and nonexistent.
Museletter #185: Peak Everything
This issue is an edited version of the Introduction to Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines.This book is not an introduction to the subject of Peak Oil; …Instead it addresses the social and historical context in which the event is occurring, and explores how we can reorganize our thinking and action in several critical areas in order to better navigate this perilous time.
Plastics & pollution – Sept 1
Plastic and the albatross
Message in the drink bottle: recycle
Not in whose backyard? (environmental justice)
Media – Sept 1
Point, click… eavesdrop: how the FBI wiretap net operates
How to submit ebooks to Project Gutenberg
A guide to media manipulation
Transport – Sept 1
Climate, conscience, and atmospheric carbon (air travel)
YouTube on Vélib’, the bike rental scheme that’s shaking up Paris
Solutions & sustainability – Aug 29
Jumbo jar is ready for rain (Thai water saving)
Radical Simplicity and the Fourth Step (online book)
What must we do?
Transport – Aug 29
Hooky Bump’in, and other parasitic relationships
The green VW
Save the environment, work from home
The twelfth hour
For decades our collective conversation about the future has focused on claims that the eleventh hour has arrived and radical change is the only alternative to imminent catastrophe. Inevitably the peak oil situation has been portrayed in these terms.
Deep thought – Aug 28
Sharon Astyk: Diversify, diversify, diversify
The Plan (a new human culture)
The Economist: Problems of aging, shrinking population
Transport – Aug 27
In India, one cheap car could go a long way
Sharon Astyk: Get on a bike
How walkable is your neighborhood?
Virgin Blue finds fuel costs add drag
