Fourth U.S. conference on peak oil and community solutions
This October several hundred activists, educators, and community leaders pioneering a low-energy way of life will gather in Yellow Springs, Ohio, at a three-day conference
Society
Transport – July 31
The world’s costliest roadworks? Widening the M6- at £1,000 an inch
Europeans reluctant to give up cars
WalkScore and the Great Neighborhood Book
MPs urge government to boost water freight (canals)
Environment – July 28
Humans appropriate 24% of Earth’s productivity
Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation
Our share of the planetary pie
China cancels environmental report
Deep thought – July 28
Review: The Upside of Down
Alex Steffen: The world with us
Researchers say giving leads to a healthier, happier life
Understanding the demographic transition
A shift in world population into a roughly steady state is occurring right now. How it works, what causes it, and what we can do to encourage it.
A failure of mimesis
Are there lessons for the peak oil movement in the cultural schism that has opened up in American society?
More transport – July 26
Interactive site: is your neighborhood walkable?
How London car curbs inspired U.S. cities
Transport policy needs to go off-road (Australia)
The seven habits of highly subversive people
Habit #1. Think
Habit #2: Understand the big picture, the global supply chain of everything that you touch
Habit #3: Fix, make or bake stuff yourself
Habit #4:
Know your porn so that you can understand how you are being told what to desire
Jack of all trades, mistress of none
Almost everyone in the peak oil and climate change movements is operating outside their fields. It is the disease of new fields and new realities – everyone is stretching themselves out of their natural range. And in many cases, I think that’s good.
Sex sells, but at what cost?
“Sex sells” is the mantra of advertisers, but our fixation with status symbols and material wealth is undermining our efforts to tackle climate change.
Solutions & sustainability – July 21
Peak oil and solutions on NPR (Albert Bates interview)
City commissioner Adams sees web of streetcars for Portland
Smart Cities: rethinking the city centre in Brisbane
Culture death
Cultural patterns, like political institutions, are likely to go through drastic changes as a society based on cheap abundant energy has to stand its assumptions on its head to deal with the twilight of fossil fuels. Can societies that have turned their cultural resources into a sideline of the marketing industry put them to more sustainable uses?
