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2020 vision: Second-hand Prius, anyone? Car use declines across Europe as society returns to medieval values
Robin Barton, The Independent
Looking back, the energy riots of 2016 were avoidable. The technological setbacks of completing the new smart grid, into which householders were supposed to sell surplus energy, and the lower-than-forecast supply from renewable sources, meant energy prices continued to climb year by year. When the broadband blackouts began, driven by overloaded networks as we stayed in to download HD films to our unsleeping computers, well, that was the spark.
But the tinder was already dry. With a greater portion of household budgets going on utilities and new taxes, the 2009 recession slumped into a depression. Everywhere except London. The capital, newly minted centre of the carbon-trading universe, hummed to the sound of carbon credits being bought and sold on the exchanges. Millionaire traders became billionaires and billionaire industrialists were untouchable in their silent, hydrogen-powered limousines. The same old faces – retrenched bankers, former ministers and stock-market speculators – cashed in. The economic revival, fuelled by the green tech bubble in the US and the green manufacturing boom in China, never touched the rest of the UK.
…Despite the smart meters we have in each home ekeing out water and energy, power consumption has swelled even as oil prices are peaking under demand from a booming Asia. No new nuclear power stations have been completed and there are mixed results from Southampton University’s research into algal biofuels. It’s not all bad news: the success of the Orkney’s tidal-power generation has reinvigorated the Scottish independence movement.
…In hindsight, the decade had started optimistically enough. Under the Tories, the New Localism movement brought some character back to towns and villages. Rooted in the 1960s idea that the most sustainable model of civilisation was a medieval town in which most products and services derived from within its walls, the start of the decade saw a dawning realisation that new jobs and responsible custodianship of the environment weren’t mutually exclusive. We travelled less and bought locally. It wasn’t about food miles, rather the idea that our local economies were more vibrant if supported from within.
It was a transition taking place across Europe and led by financial necessity. Declining birth rates and ageing populations in Italy, Spain and Germany have seen the ratio of taxpayer to state-supported citizen shrink from four to one to three to one, while cities such as Lagos grew by 60 people an hour. Patterns of consumption changed almost month by month. Soon, Europeans were cycling more and subsisting locally. Neighbours got to know neighbours. As roof gardens were cultivated and street markets thrived, so out-of-town supermarkets closed…
(27 Dec 2009)
The Independent’s take on a more “powered-down” future. -KS
America’s New Year’s resolution: Break our addiction to oil
Eric Stweart, Creative Loafing
Very soon we will begin to hear of how well Christmas shopping season was for the retail stores. These numbers will be utilized in accounting mechanism to determine whether or not some retail chains will remain in business this year. As the commercial real estate market in America becomes swamped with upcoming bond renewals causing banks to worry, a new tidal wave of home foreclosures looms in the distance as well.
Alt-A mortgages and Option ARM loans will begin resetting from 2010 all the way through 2012, causing millions of homes to go into foreclosure. We are at a paradigm shift in America. A new relationship will have to emerge as America loses its middle class and possibly its automobile lifestyle.
Let me connect the dots a bit more for you. With this credit crisis it is becoming more difficult to acquire capital to begin construction of new drilling operations for oil, as well as acquire credit to maintain a business such as trucking…
(30 Dec 2009)
Retired, no, refired, yes: on call for collapse
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
To everything there is a season, the biblical bard says. There is a time to sit and be, and there is a time to act. Personally, I could not live without the balance of sitting and listening alongside doing what I feel most called to do, and I encourage everyone in my world to incorporate a meditation or mindfulness practice to complement the conscious work that fulfills their purpose.
As institutions crumble and the global economic meltdown worsens and morphs into irreversible collapse, many people feel lost and disoriented, especially if they have lost jobs, healthcare, experienced foreclosure or bankruptcy, and of course, if they have lost the funds which they may have spent decades assuming would be there for them in retirement. The seemingly endless losses of collapse can be terrifying and paralyzing, and it is always easier to complain about the culture than to take action to empower oneself and serve the rest of the community of life on this planet. It may also be tempting to assume that since collapse is inevitable and now moving along unstoppably with a life of its own, there isn’t any point in exerting any effort to alleviate the misery it is manifesting everywhere by compassionately serving others, even those who may know or care little about collapse. On one level, it is easier to just sit than to act.
One woman who does not embrace that perspective and who beautifully exemplifies empowerment and service is Kathleen Byrne, R.N., who works essentially two full-time jobs as a hospice nurse and as the proprietor of a cheery boarding house and hostel in rural Vermont. Despite numerous challenges in the past year, Kathleen has been able to thrive by working in two industries which not only pay the bills but feed her soul, namely, hospice care and hospitality. A former restaurant owner and gourmet chef, she offers housing but also serves up a sumptuous cuisine which enhances the feeling of home her guests already experience.
(28 Dec 2009)
Portland ratchets up volunteer-led ‘tool libraries’ that lend tools for free
Scott Learn, The Oregonian
If you need a table saw, a 10-foot pipe clamp or a 20-foot pruner, you’ve normally got three choices: Buy it, rent it or borrow it from a neighbor.
Portland is fast becoming a leader in a fourth way: checking it out for free at a tool lending library.
The city’s first nonprofit tool library, founded in 2004 in North Portland, is up to 2,300 members. Its second, in Northeast, has already drawn 800 members in 16 months and just expanded to a far bigger space. A third, in southeast Portland, is scheduled to open this spring, which would make Portland the only U.S. city with a trio.
The volunteer-run tool libraries offer low-cost home and garden lessons as well as tools. They help people save money and connect to their community.
And they promote recycling and reuse.
About 900 of the more than 1,100 tools at the Northeast Portland Tool Library were donated, helping give the library a hardware store’s worth of inventory…
(8 Jan 2010)
Nine meals from anarchy
Andrew Simms, The Guardian
Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall,” wrote Albert Schweitzer. A colossal banking crisis and a big freeze in the middle of what was meant to be a mild winter don’t encourage confidence to the contrary.
Reassurance is fine as long as it’s well founded. And in the midst of fears about gas supplies and the panic buying of food Gordon Brown is hardly likely to scream that we are all doomed. It is, after all, his job to tell us that all will be well. But will it? People were shocked at the scale of social breakdown when Hurricane Katrina revealed a long-term, creeping erosion of civic resilience. Are we just waking up to the fact that several wrong turns have left our essential supplies much more vulnerable than they need to be?
In 2004 Britain ceased to be able to meet its energy needs domestically. Since then our dependence on imports, particularly of natural gas, has risen dramatically. The situation can only worsen as gas is subject to the same iron law of depletion as oil, and its moment of peak production lags not far behind.
Similarly, Britain’s ability to feed itself has been in long-term decline, and food prices are reportedly rising in the cold spell. It was only two years ago that droughts in Australia caused a crisis in world grain supplies; in April 2008 food crises affected at least 37 countries and there were related riots in many. As climate change and volatile oil prices destabilise global agriculture, we are becoming more dependent on food and energy imports just as the geopolitics of both make it less likely that the world will generously meet our needs…
(11 Jan 2010)
Boiler scrappage scheme offers £400-off vouchers
Emily Beaument, The Independent
Thousands of households will be able to apply for vouchers giving them £400 off the price of a new boiler, under a “scrappage” scheme launched today to cut carbon and help people save money on bills.
Up to 125,000 households with working boilers with the lowest “G” rating in England can apply for vouchers from the Energy Saving Trust towards “A” rated boilers or renewable heating systems such as a biomass boiler or heat pump.
The Government said the £50 million scheme will save as much carbon as taking 45,000 cars off the roads and will also cut a household’s energy bill by up to £235 a year.
The average cost of a boiler and its installation is around £2,500, according to the heating industry.
Some energy companies are planning to complement and even match the Government offer with money-off initiatives for upgrading to more efficient boilers – so that more householders can take advantage of the scheme…
(5 Jan 2010)
