Year: 2011

Review of Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil

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Peak Oil predictions range from the year 2000 to 2100 with the highest concentration of forecasts from 2005 to 2016. Confidence in international oil reserves data is lacking. As such, different forecasters make different assumptions about future undiscovered oil amounts and oil reserves, resulting in a wide range of peak oil estimates. Viewing this wide time disparity in forecasts as problematic, the research objective was to look for an economic cross-check indicator, metric, or alternative data-based means to corroborate or refute existing peak oil estimates.

Debt cancellation without chaos – a programme for the Occupy movement?

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Debt forgiveness is in the news and beginning to circulate as an idea which might be a solution to the financial crisis…This is important because the “Occupy” movement is growing fast and is looking for simple ideas that people could get behind to resolve the debt crisis. It seems inevitable that the idea of a debt write-off will grow and in this article I suggest a way in which a Jubilee could be administered effectively and fairly. For let us be under no illusion: merely writing off debts leaves a few problems and isn’t even that fair. As a simple solution on its own it would it leave the banking system broke and thus no payments coming out of the cash machines.

Food & agriculture – October 17

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-How India squared up to Monsanto’s ‘biopiracy’
-Study debunks myths on organic farms
-Planning reforms will threaten Britain’s ability to grow food
-Bitter harvest: migrant workers on UK farms ‘still exploited’
-Trees ‘boost African crop yields and food security’
-A New Approach to Feeding the World

How Mongolian herders are transforming nomadic pastoralism

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For centuries, herders have roamed the grasslands “following our animals,” as the herders’ adage goes, building, packing, and rebuilding their traditional gers, or tents, to make their living from nature’s bounty…A decade ago, herders first observed the impacts of climate change with the increase in severe weather events like storms, droughts, and extremely harsh winters, known as zud. The 2010 zud was one of the worst ever, resulting in the death of approximately 8.5 million livestock or 20 percent of the 2009 national herd.

Some are now arguing for a radical change in policy and practice: breaking down enclosures; terminating intensive land use (for example, for crop production); and reopening the grassland to collectively managed practices. Comanagement takes time and effort to become operational but, once established, becomes a driver of innovation.

Talk amongst yourselves

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People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which work on solutions ourselves.

10 ways to support the Occupy movement

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The #OccupyWallStreet movement continues to spread with more than 1,500 sites. More and more people are speaking up for a society that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

Here are 10 recommendations from the YES! Magazine staff for ways to build the power and momentum of this movement. Only two of them involve sleeping outside.

Gleaning, wine and jelly

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We don’t live near restaurants or city rubbish bins anymore, but we do have rows of hedges, all of which are sagging with fruit and berries this time of year. Most of them rot on the vines or are eaten by birds, and since we feed the birds through the winter, we can take our share in the autumn. A few weeks ago I decided to see how much I could glean from a five-metre stretch of hedgerow, along with some orange peels a co-worker discarded at the office. To preserve them over the winter, I wanted to make them into wine and jelly.

The compost candidates

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Something special is happening in France. A nationwide campaign will be launched next week by the Colibris movement for the 2012 Presidential Elections – but without a charismatic leader. The campaign, instead, is for everyone to be a candidate – for a new kind of politics.

In their language and tone-of-voice Les Colibris are like the Transition Movement, but different. They are like Occupy Wall Street but different, too. This is surely healthy. The movement for a global democracy is an ecology, not a single homogeneous movement.

“We know that an election won’t change society” says the Colibris manifesto [colibris is the French for hummingbird]. “For a real transformation, things have to change at the bottom and involve everyone amongst us.”

Is #OccupyWallStreet the Millennial Generation’s WTO?

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There are now tens of thousands of so-called Millennials who—for likely the first time ever—are having the life-changing experience of standing up and demanding change, of marching in the streets, of getting beat on and pepper-sprayed by the police, of getting misportrayed and vilified by the media,… and of coming back and keeping at it, and seeing their actions pay off.

And there are maybe millions of Millennials who are not on the streets but are watching on TV people just like them having these experiences — and don’t doubt for a second that they’re being affected too .

#Occupy is proving to be their first big political roar. Watch out.