Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Carolyn Baker’s newest book, Navigating the Coming Chaos: A Handbook for Inner Transition offers a rich spectrum of personal (and potentially group) exploration around the issues experienced as we face down the collapse of industrial civilization. But this cannot be hurried. And it cannot be the domain of any one particular spiritual point of view.
Reviews of three novels set in the wake of the oil age:
– Player One by Douglas Coupland
– Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
– Afterlight by Alex Scarrow.
A new study from Cornell suggests that the production of natural gas from shale using fracking techniques generates more greenhouse gases than burning coal. The report has generated coverage by New York Times, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle, as well as a response from the NG industry. (Article extracts and links)
UPDATE: Link to the embargoed report
The ‘holy grail’ in terms of the construction of new sustainable buildings is homes that reach the highest level of energy efficiency, whilst also using as high a proportion of locally sourced materials as possible, what we might call ‘The Local Passivhaus’. Two buildings, recently completed in Ebbw Vale, known as ‘The Lime House’ and ‘The Larch House’ have moved this concept forward significantly.
Public process as it exists today is not a desirable commons-based, inclusive, creative, bottom-up assertion of ideas by the people—although that is what it pretends to be. It’s actually an expert-driven, one-way dissemination of ideas from the top.
The Heirloom covers a lot of intellectual ground without leaving a small geographic area. In addition to casting a penetrating look at our present and potential future, it serves as a coming-of-age story for young Ben Naiche, who is torn between the rapidly vanishing techno-world and the rapidly vanishing remnants of his native heritage.
We cannot expect to maintain a steady state economy at present levels because present levels are deep into planetary overshoot.
When hell breaks loose, a car is a very limited beast. It can carry a lot of stuff or multiple people, but your car is easy to put out of commission. Cars run out of gas; they break down. And cars can be blocked by debris, leaving you a long way to go on foot.
But what about bikes? You can get just about anywhere on a bike if you don’t mind lifting it over obstacles and weaving your way around the stalled traffic. Fast as a car on anything other than a clear highway, nimble as a pedestrian, a bicycle also gives you a long range.
“You’re so pessimistic,” one student said. Another added, “There are alternative energy sources and electric cars that are coming along.” Yet another said, “Look, oil prices are high because of speculation –there’s really lots of oil left.” … Another, who had not spoken during the discussion, said, “I get what you’re saying; it’s pretty damned late to be thinking about this stuff if you’re right, isn’t it?”
– Hiding From Shame, Addicted to Optimism
– Hedges: Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System
– Stiglitz: Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
– The Blowback World of Chalmers Johnson
– Swans and Zombies: Neoliberalism’s Permanent Contradiction
– Waiter, why isn’t there a fly in my soup?
– Britain’s taste for cheap food that’s killing Brazil’s ‘other wilderness’
– Nitrogen pollution ‘costs EU up to £280bn a year’
– Shell’s outgoing UK boss has seen oil firm’s role shift in a changing climate
– Edward Burtynsky’s Oil Exhibition Shines
– Energy and Security Issues in the Red Sea Transforming as the Age of Gas Begins in Earnest
– Fukushima Daiichi and Decision Time
– Fukushima Nuclear Disaster at One Month: The Explosion of Nukespeak
