Year: 2011

City Forest Farming

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We tend to think of our beloved trees as monuments but they are living things. We should be planting them and harvesting them on a schedule of about eighty to a hundred years to take advantage of their value as lumber or fuel while avoiding most of the possibility of storm damage. The issue is increasingly pertinent, especially now that power companies are again thinking seriously of using wood for some of its electrical generation.

The way the future wasn’t

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Predictions about the future very often turn into a force shaping the future they try to predict, and not always with the expected results. A glance back over the trajectory of an older movement that thought it knew which way the future was headed has lessons of some importance for the peak oil movement. Brushing the dust off a stack of old pulp science fiction magazines, the Archdruid explains.

McPherson’s film series: introduction, water security and food

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In an earlier series of posts, I identified the four primary attributes necessary to thriving during the post-carbon era (or, for that matter, today): water security, food security, body temperature, and human community. … I’m adding to the previous essays with a series of video clips. The usual caveats apply, primarily including the one about relevance to a specific region. The first two video clips, posted below, provide (1) a brief introduction and (2) an overview of how we secure water at the mud hut.

Complete English translation of German military analysis of peak oil now available

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Last week the Bundeswehr posted an English version (112 pgs) of their extraordinary analysis of peak oil. The original German document (125 pgs) was approved for public release last November, yet neither the complete German version nor the partial English translation has attracted interest from mainstream media. Now that a complete translation is available, it is hoped that media throughout the English-speaking world will see the Bundeswehr study for what it is: a comprehensive, realistic analysis of one of the most formidable challenges of this century, the (potentially imminent) peaking of global oil production.

Recovering lost knowledge about exhaustion of the Earth’s resources (such as Peak Oil)

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One of the saddest aspects of the Internet is that it so often fails to make us smarter. In a mutant version of Gresham’s Law, loud amateurs too-often drown out the voices of experts. Here we an excerpt from a 1975 book that tells us more about Peak Oil than a typical dozen posts on most peak oil websites. [Excerpt from Sir Ronald Prain’s classic “Copper: the anatomy of an Industry”]

Monsanto’s cotton strategy wears thin

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From the toes of our socks to the hem of our necklines, Americans alone consume 25% of the world’s cotton, mostly in the form of clothing and home furnishings. People are often surprised to learn that the world’s largest purveyors of cotton seeds (80-90% of market share in some cotton-producing countries), is a company generally assumed to be focused on food stock. When pulling on their pants in the morning, most people don’t think about Monsanto.

Facing the new reality

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The Community Action Partnership presents here an unprecedented and extraordinary report: “Facing the New Reality: Preparing Poor America for Harder Times Ahead.” This report is based on the equally extraordinary premise that much of what passes for reality in “the popular narrative” is not based on reality but instead on a collective denial of a genuine reality too difficult for most Americans to fully comprehend or accept.