How to build a chicken tractor: version 2.0
Chicken Tractor Version 1.0 was damaged enough to warrant building an entirely new portable coop. So I broke out the long list of change ideas I had been collecting and designed a new tractor.
Year: 2011
Public health in the era of peak oil (Canada)
For public health professionals, peak oil is significant because it will affect what are commonly called the social, environmental and economic determinants of health. For example, it will significantly affect, and require some reorganization of, our economic, transportation, and food systems. It is also important to public health professionals because it will very likely affect how health services are organized (the use of products and services dependent on petroleum permeates our health care system).
The history and processes of milling
I believe in eating local, nutritious foods. It is relatively easy to do this with vegetables, eggs and dairy products but buying bread that I feel good about is much more challenging. This past summer, during the Our Daily Bread Course, I learned more about why buying local healthy bread is very difficult because bread is a highly processed product by its very nature.
Resource revolts: the year of living dangerously
Rising food prices leading to riots, protests, and revolts, mounting oil prices, mammoth worldwide unemployment, and a collapsed recovery — it looks like the perfect set of preconditions for a global tsunami of instability and turmoil. Events in Algeria and Tunisia give us just an inkling of what this maelstrom might look like, but where and how it will next erupt, and in what form, is anyone’s guess.
Heinberg’s new coal question
Blackout offers scholars and activists an overview of projections on future coal production and their complexities, but social movements will need to look elsewhere for what is to be done about the historical burden of our coal question.
[Excerpts]
How do I love thee?
How can we be required to purchase what already belongs to us? Such a plan was not part of the election campaign and has no public mandate, but how might resistance be most effectively organised? …my suggestion is that we lobby our local authorities to revive our ancient woodland rights.
Rocky times ahead: Are you ready?
So here’s the point: you must not face the future alone. Find your own “reality support group” (we’ll tell you how below). This year, make a resolution to deepen your relationships with people around you with whom you can face what’s coming down the pike.
Tradable Energy Quotas: A policy framework for peak oil and climate change
The purpose of TEQs is not to limit the consumption of individuals per se, but rather to share out fairly the shrinking energy budget required by national circumstances, and to allow maximum freedom of choice within that.
Commentary: TWIP fails to warn of a 1.8 mb/d supply shortfall
Mission failure. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is funded by American taxpayers to warn about energy issues. Every Wednesday the EIA publishes This Week in Petroleum (TWIP).
Biofuels: setbacks, rulings, incentives, GM
-Biofuel jatropha falls from wonder-crop pedestal
(references new Friends of the Earth report)
-U.S. okays ethanol boost for more cars
-US offers $650m in loan guarantees for second-generation biofuel
-Court challenges stall new biofuel crops
Peak oil review – Jan 24
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Iran’s nuclear program
-China
-Unrest in the Arab World
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Opportunities for a different economy in 2011
With last November’s election there are new governors, state legislatures, and a very different U.S. House of Representatives. The issues of budget cuts, tax reform, corruption, the global financial collapse and the rise in unemployment are high on the agenda. We have an opportunity to shape the debate on these issues and bring the steady state economy into the discussion.
