Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
You may have heard about the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of our combustion of fossil fuels. If we wanted to sweep the excess CO2 out of the air, what would it take? How much is there? Where would we put it? In this post, we will put the numbers in perspective and briefly examine a few of the possibilities for storage.
– N. American oil output could top 40-year-old peak
– The End of Cheap Uranium
– Peak Phosphorus (video from ABC Australia’s “Catalyst”)
The history of energy use in human civilisation is generally summarised as follows: from Antiquity until the start of the Industrial Revolution, people made use of the manual labour of both animals and humans, as well as biomass, sun, water and wind. Next, all these renewable energy sources were replaced by fossil fuels: first coal, and later oil and gas. Uranium completed the picture in the second half of the twentieth century. While this historical summary is basically correct, there were some – rather important – exceptions. Almost all of the Western European economies during the last millenium relied on a large-scale use of fossil fuels such as peat and coal.
While growth remains as our main goal economic and environmental crisis will persist. A green economy requires us to aim at development rather than growth, through the responsible promotion of justice, the common good, and environmental sustainability.
In this Climate One conversation, two of the most influential environmentalists of the past 30 years share the same stage for just the second time in their long careers in public life. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth, and Paul Hawken, entrepreneur and author of Blessed Unrest, talk about the ailing economy, the economy we must build to succeed it, and the forces that stand in the way.
-What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?
-Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination
-A Spray Like a Punch in the Face
The draining and burning of peat bogs is a major global source of CO2 emissions. Now, a pilot project in Russia — where wildfires burned vast areas of dried-out bogs last summer — is looking to re-flood and restore tens of thousands of acres to their natural state.
Wes Jackson believes that shifting from fragile annual monocultures to more hearty perennial grains grown in a mixture of plants (polycultures) is the key to a truly sustainable agriculture. Instead of a brittle industrial agriculture dependent on fossil fuels, Jackson’s research team is working to build a resilient agriculture modeled on natural ecosystems.
With the health of our soils and our own bodies at stake, Jackson says, we can’t afford to assume old approaches can cope with coming crises. Because humans like to resolve ambiguity, we reward researchers who appear to do that within existing systems — such research may be right but irrelevant, if the real problem is at the level of the whole system. Solving individual problems within a system that can’t be sustained actually creates problems.
What do Love Potion No. 9, half a dozen centuries of classical thought that get edited out of undergraduate survey courses, and Al Gore’s mansion have in common? Just possibly, a pointer to one of the most challenging aspects of the predicament of contemporary industrial society. The Archdruid explains.
If Washington is now stunned and operating on autopilot, that’s in part because, historically speaking, its moment as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” barely outlasted Andy Warhol’s notorious 15 minutes of fame — from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to 9/11 and the Bush doctrine. The new American century was swiftly throttled in three hubris-filled stages: 9/11 (blowback); the invasion of Iraq (preemptive war); and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown (casino capitalism).
Around the world, conventional currencies such as the euro, the dollar and the pound are in short supply because of the current economic crisis. A liquidity network (LQN) is designed to ease this shortage by creating and distributing a supplementary debt-free currency so that businesses and individuals can trade locally without needing the conventional sort.
Today begins a grand experiment in Transition — a national blog created and compiled by 12 writers around the country that aims to communicate the real-life issues and experiences of being in Transition. From tomorrow we’ll be posting every day for the next three months on subjects ranging from economics to food to inner change. Each Sunday a guest editor will write on a chosen topic and set the theme for the following week.
The term social reporting was first coined by David Wilcox, one of the media crew at this year’s Transition Conference. He defines it thus: Social reporting is an emerging role, a set of skills, and a philosophy around how to mix journalism, facilitation and social media to help people develop conversations and stories for collaboration.
