Urban design – Aug 24
– Cities healthy for cars, unhealthy for people
– Building the New Urbanism
– Eco-friendly small-town America
Society
Chimpanzees and culture change
“Female, age 40, seeks wild, swinger male for procreation purposes, no commitments. Bonobo preferred but regular chimpanzee acceptable.”
Transport – Aug 24
– “Autocism” – a modern pathology
– Roadway deaths at highest level in 15 years
– Put a plug in it (electric cars)
– Living in California without owning a car
Water scarcity – Aug 23
Map details global water stress /
Need for Water Could Double in 50 Years, U.N. Study Finds /
Scientists Call for Water Conservation
The Renewed Activist
As an environmental activist at the peak of industrial civilization I’ve always felt like the underdog. I’ve imagined myself as a street-protesting, petition-signing, door-to-door knocking David trying to bring down a money-wielding, corporate-clad, government-shielded Goliath.
Travel – Aug 22
Portland: Where the car is not king /
Airlines tremble at prospect of $100-a-barrel oil /
Scotland’s love affair with the motor car is waning /
California’s SUV Ban /
The future of travel: where do we go from here?
Solutions & sustainability – Aug 22
Fight or flight? / That’s enough oil – I’m going to make my own energy from now on / Meditations on deciding never to fly again / 3rd U.S. conference on peak oil and community solutions (Ohio Sept 22-24) /
APSO 5: Plan B – enabling relocalisation as a response to peak oil
Geopolitics – Aug 22
Energy crisis – the culprit is national oil companies & socialism [Not!] / Sino-Cuba energy relations raise concern in Washington /
Russian pipeline monopoly warns Lithuanian refinery of long shutoff / Bolivia suspends a takeover of oil and gas / Japan and China race for African oil
Real men don’t go vroom
The Tesla would show the world that electric cars were definitely not dead yet. In fact the Tesla might well be the death knell of the combustion engine itself.
Telling Somebody
A letter from one friend to another
Environment – Aug 20
China’s anti-pollution efforts stink /
Engineered grass found growing in wild /
Scientists add years to ozone recovery
The democratization of envy
The question for a future with ecological limits becomes: What shall we do with this powerful force of envy which has been awakened across the globe? How will people, both the rich and those aspiring to greater wealth, come to grips with limits which will undermine the consumer society within which that envy flourishes?
