Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In uncertain economic times, people are going to be less interested in something that’s intellectually interesting or idealistic, and they’re going to be much more interested in something that will help them to keep going and feed themselves and take care of their family…
There are greener, cheaper, more secure, quicker to install, safer alternatives to new nuclear so don’t let yourself be persuaded that it’s the only solution. It’s not.
– Official: Japan’s Nuclear Situation Nearing Severity of Chernobyl
– Nuclear industry in turmoil after Japan quake
– Disruptions of Power and Water Threaten Japan’s Economy
– NYT: Reactor Design in Japan Has Long Been Questioned
– Nuclear power: when the answer becomes the problem
– What will spark the next Fukushima?
– Nuclear power: After the flood
Hokusai’s famous 1820 painting of fishing boats battling through The Great Wave portrays a distinctly Japanese awareness of the vulnerability of human life amidst the tremendous forces of nature. In Shrine Shinto, the main Japanese Shinto tradition, certain places are held to be particularly sacred, where the ordinary and the everyday interact with the divine. But, needless to say, in modern secular times this ancient Shinto wisdom of respect for the sacred and for the power of nature has not been permitted to stand in the way of industrial progress.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The earthquake
-Quote of the week
As our technologies have gotten more complex and grown in size, the scale of the problems when failures occur have grown in step. Even when technological complexity works according to plan, the scale of ecological and environmental devastation can be unprecedented, as mountain-top removal in southern Appalachia, the tar sands of Alberta, and the vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico remind us daily. It is no coincidence that the destruction of species and ecosystems has reached an epochal level at the same time.
Reduce your consumption. Increase your awareness. Use berms/swales/mulch. Use infiltration as well as storage techniques. Build healthy soil. Change your plant palette. Bucket in the shower. Greywater-plumb your laundry (and consider guerilla greywater too). Use found materials as shade devices. And use rain barrels. Do all of the above in combination, and move into the gardens of the future.
In February, world food prices reached the highest level on record. Soaring food prices are already a source of spreading hunger and political unrest, and it appears likely that they will climb further in the months ahead.
First of all, we have a very fragile economy that could come apart, almost at a moment’s notice. Then we have the political situation in the Middle East, which is forcing oil prices up and which could in turn cause the economy to come apart at the seams at any moment. So putting all those things together, it’s a very, very volatile situation. I think 2011 is going to be an interesting year… in the Chinese sense…
Program for the meetings about Peakoil at the European Parliament (03 May) and Walloon Parliament (26 April)
In the wake of the Japanese nuclear debacle, we need a practical and affordable clean electricity plan that does not rely on new nuclear power. This article presents just such a Plan. New nuclear is absent from the Plan not because of any safety concern, but simply because it fails the “practical and affordable” test. President Obama called for “80% Clean Energy” by 2035. This Plan presents how we can do it right.
