Year: 2011

Putting the lawn back, eating more industrial food and other adventures from the counterintuitive edge of sustainability

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I use these two examples because I think they are good ways to describe the range of possible places that reducing your impact can take you. Adapting-in-Place, Rioting for Austerity, making your life more resilient and reducing your consumption aren’t one-size-fits-all activities, and determining what is truly sustainable is never going to involve plugging in formulas. There are some generalities that one can articulate, and some broad principles we can apply, but the answer isn’t simple.

Memo to the #Occupied movement (a post-growth economy)

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You courageous people in the #occupy movement are absolutely right in saying the system is broken, greedy, and unfair. But when our discussion turns to replacing the current system, we’ve got to embrace a bigger view of reality than the one held by stock traders and politicians. It’s not just our wealth they want to control, it’s our vision for what is both possible and necessary. We need a post-growth economy that works both for people (all of them) and for the rest of nature: a localized economy based on renewable resources harvested at nature’s rates of replenishment

The ecocide trial

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The UK Supreme Court hears appeal cases of huge constitutional significance, the outcomes of which often ricochet through the political arena, challenging the status quo, and shifting societal perceptions. It is fitting then, that on 30th September 2011 this grand building in Parliament Square provided a stage for the hearing of Regina v Bannerman & Tench. In this mock trial, two CEO’s stood accused of aiding and abetting the crime of ‘ecocide’. Currently just a conceptual crime, ecocide has been submitted to the UN for consideration as the fifth crime against peace (alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity).

Zalmay Khalilzad’s not-so-excellent Afghan oil adventure

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The private investment firm of Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and one of the most powerful diplomats in the George W. Bush Administration, is upset that a client has lost an oil deal in the country. Khalilzad’s son, Alexander Benard, is on the attack in Washington, in particular against the Pentagon, which he says acted against U.S. interests by not advising the Afghan government to favor Western companies in the deal.

The peak oil initiation

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A commonplace of discussion in the peak oil scene for most of its existence is the way that communication so often fails between those who get peak oil and the majority that doesn’t. In this third post discussing the interface between peak oil and magic, the Archdruid offers another way of looking at these breakdowns. Step into the lodge room and make the secret sign–today’s meeting of the Ancient Hubbertian Order of Peak Oil is about to begin…

Bringing down the wall: Occupy Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge arrests

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The big bronze bull is surrounded by metal fences and strategically placed members of NYPD’s finest. The famous statue, the symbol of aggressive market optimism, is normally open for tourists to grope and fondle, but today, in part because of the “Occupy Wall Street” protest, it has been penned. Today, the Wall Street Bull looks amusingly like a panicked animal in a cage.

Energy storage – flywheel

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This piece resulted from a challenge within the staff to write a collaborative post on emerging energy storage technologies. I left Chemistry back in high-school but one technology that for long has fascinated me lead me to volunteer to the project: the flywheel. It seemed a good justification to study why these ancient mechanisms haven’t lost of the industry.

On the Occupy Wall Street ‘media blackout’

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Part of the blame for poor coverage lies in the movement’s own media strategy, or lack thereof. From the outset, its organizers have focused primarily on creating their own media—just as Gandhi did during the Indian liberation struggle, and as so many other movements have since. The occupiers do this very well, with a (theoretically) 24-hour livestream, a newspaper, websites, and more.

Meanwhile, many organizers have purposely avoided contact with mainstream media outlets, and no plan was in place at first for how to deal with them should they arrive. … This is changing.