Year: 2011

Bee keeping for the energy descent future

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The co-originator of permaculture is upbeat on the prospects for apiculture as a sustainable and resilient livelihood in the future. Bees are livestock that free range up to 2km from home across all boundaries and barriers, harvesting nectar and pollen sources using their own amazing intelligence and communication. Honey is a compact, self preserving store of wealth that makes an excellent tradeable surplus in any economy that might survive or emerge in an energy descent future.

Strictly Roots – Low Carbon Cookbook

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When you have plants in common something happens. When you cook together something happens. It’s hard to say what really except that invisible connections are made that make sense of things in a time when absolute madness seems to rule. When fish are thrown back into the sea and everything once owned by the people is up for sale.

The peak oil crisis: British proposal for Tradable Energy Quotas

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Although there obviously will be many problems buried in the details of a proposal as broad and comprehensive as this one, the basic idea of seeing that every person is given equal access to enough energy to survive (warmth, cooking fuel) is a noble one. It is well worth the costs in terms of avoided civil unrest if people come to believe that declining amounts of fossil energy is being allocated fairly.

Aerial ropeways: automatic cargo transport for a bargain

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The advantages of aerial cargo ropeways are so numerous that it is no surprise that they are – slowly – being rediscovered. Worries about global warming, peak oil and environmental degradation have made the technology even more appealling. This does not only concern energy use: contrary to a road or a railroad track, a cargo ropeway can be built straight through nature without harming animal and plant life (or, potentially, straight through a city without harming human life). Traffic congestion also plays into the hands of cableways, because the service is entirely free from interference with surface traffic.

Clean energy dreams

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Many people believe the State of the Union is just political theater. While it’s true the speech last night was thin on specifics, one thing that was very specific was that Obama says he wants to cut subsidies to oil companies and give the money to clean energy instead. But everybody knows Big Oil controls Washington. Does this proposal have any chance at all? And what about the future of clean energy in a down economy with a glaring national debt?