Year: 2011

Commentary: Oil, climate, agriculture and learning to love limits

by

How is that we don’t spend our lives chafing against the rules in sport? After all, in the economy as a whole, we’re told in a thousand ways that limits are bad, and that “choice” is the same as “freedom.” Why is it that limits work when we’re playing games, but are restrictions on our personal freedoms when we are told “now is not the time for asparagus, now is the time for squash” or “we should consider the bicycle rather than the car.”

Peak Moment 206: Awakening the Village Heart and Mind

by

From their zero-mile bistro to zoning and financing innovations, O.U.R. Ecovillage in BC, Canada has paved the way for many communities worldwide. For Brandy Gallagher, the story on the planet right now could be a shared ethos of caring: “Everyone is fed. Everyone is taken care of.” Asserting that “No is just an uneducated Yes,” Brandy shows how a village mindset can transform individuals, preserve land, reduce resource use, apply permaculture principles, change laws, and even the way money works.

Courage and cowardice at Durban

by

Our collective efforts forced the US to back down from locking in the “worst idea ever”: delaying agreement on a new climate treaty until 2020. The roadmap agreed to in Durban calls for a climate agreement to be reached by 2015, with full implementation five years later. It’s better than “the worst” possible outcome, but it’s still a cowardly, unacceptable delay on global climate action — and a recipe for climate disasters.

Exploring humanity’s place in the journey of the universe

by

The language in Journey of the Universe is something that is deeply dependent on scientific discoveries. It’s not using any kind of overt religious language. But it is suggesting, what are the grounds for environmental concern and ethics and action? We are not naming it from any particular perspective — it’s an evocation more than a preachment.

Shale gas – Dec 12

by

-E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas
-Shale gas drilling’s dirty secret is out
-Encana throws cold water on EPA report
-Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry
-No U.S.-style shale gas boom in EU: E&Y
-Petrochina says new shale gas find tough to develop

A psychological carbon tax

by

There’s plenty of understanding that efficiency measures can sometimes (often) fail if they fall victim to Jevon’s Paradox. The common response is that we need to couple efficiency measures with a carbon tax or similar policy that give people both the means and the incentive to decrease energy consumption. But let’s look at the underlying goal of a carbon tax: to change behavior. How does it change behavior? By penalizing undesirable behavior (financially). The downside to a carbon tax is that it requires overcoming many political hurdles that don’t seem likely to be overcome anytime soon. What are the alternatives?

Vampire coalition unveils “Save the Humans” program

by

Vampires were quick to point out that climate legislation would be good for humans. “Of course we care about the environment,” said eight-hundred year old vampire Neills Carson. “But mainly, we care about humans – they’re our primary food source. And if you guys are all crowded up around Siberia and Canada, fighting for space and getting drowned in tsunamis and dying of malaria and famines in fifty years or so, well, let’s just say that things are going to get ugly. I sure as hell don’t want to live through another century of the Black Death – do you?”

Transition branching out? Land reform: losing and recovering the Commons

by

The power of the Transition to Unsustainability relies on the threat of physical force backed up by the story that there is no alternative: that there is no way of belonging. Here in Scotland (as I am sure elsewhere) that story has been given the lie over the last 15 years as communities on the west coast have taken back their land into community ownership.

The Bakken boom — A modern day gold rush

by

While the Bakken boom offers a hopeful story in which American ingenuity and nature’s endless bounty emancipate us from energy oppression and dependence on evil and oppressive foreign dictators, musings of energy independence are premature, misguided and misleading. The problem with the Bakken story as told by Crooks and others is that it lacks historical context. Referring to recent developments as an energy revolution implies that there are no lessons to be learned from history. But as Mark Twain put it, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

Blazing a trail for community-based clean energy

by

“Community Solar Gardens appeal to those–like renters, or businesses that lease space–who don’t already have somewhere to install solar,” explained Tom Price, director of policy for CleanPath. In a solar garden, the cost for getting started can be as low as zero. In return, you get back a smaller portion of your rate as compensation, and don’t end up owning the solar panels. But in both cases, you still save money, and get your power from renewable energy.