Year: 2012

What’s “Rio+20″ and why should we care?

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For those of us working in ecological and economic sustainability, Rio+20 is a big deal, and in our circles, just about everyone knows about it. Yet we have to wonder, what proportion of the general public has even heard of Rio+20, much less knows what it is? It’s a big question for a forum like the Daly News, where we’re all about mainstreaming sustainability. When we mention Rio+20, do we quickly lose readers who vaguely assume it’s some international, esoteric event with little relevance to mainstream society?

Food’s critical path: review of “A Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country” by Peter Bane

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Peter Bane’s big idea here is not entirely original — Toby Hemenway, David Holmgren, and even the UN Rappoteur on Human Rights have written about it — but it is timely and Bane describes it with greater depth and practical guidance. The big idea is that creation of 21st century garden farms at all scales and in all locations — horticulture not agriculture — provides a serious, necessary challenge to 20th century factory farms.

Energy and peak oil – May 14

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– Peak Oil – Forbes author concedes on “Net Exports” debate
– Oil prices could double by 2022, IMF warned
– Jeff Rubin argues in “The End of Growth” that central bankers must focus on high energy prices
– Jevons paradox busted by new emissions fee mechanism.
– No clear correlation between energy use and growth rate of the economy in the EU

Updating world deepwater oil & gas discovery

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Deepwater oil production will help reduce the decline in world oil production from aging fields. The IEA claims that four Saudi Arabias need to be discovered up to 2030 to replace the present decline in production (about 5 %/a). The deepwater ultimate is likely to represent less than half of Saudi Arabia’s oil ultimate. It is not enough!

An interview with Nick Shaxson, author of ‘Treasure Islands: tax havens and the men who stole the world’

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This narrative that comes out of the city and is widely repeated, is demonstrably untrue. It is a much more complicated and nuanced picture than that. I would argue that if you have a system that remains unregulated and uncontrolled, you’re going to store up even bigger problems in the future. I think if you did start to regulate banks and banking properly, not just in an offshore sense but in terms of, you know, capital requirements and all sorts of other things, you would end up having a much stronger, much healthier economy. In fact, there is historical evidence to suggest that this is the case.

Peak Moment 211: The straight poop on sustainable farming

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Innovative farmer Joel Salatin says sustainable agriculture requires both perennials (like native grasses) and herbivores (like cattle) to build soil. Mimicking patterns from nature, this maverick Virginia farmer rotates cattle followed by chickens into short-term pasture enclosures, where their poop fertilizes the earth. His new book Folks, This Ain’t Normal is a critique of the industrial food system, and envisions a future where humans are participants in a regenerative, sustaining community of abundance

Chesapeake and JPMorgan: Risk (mis)management with other people’s money

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If you were personally faced with betting on complicated nonsense with your own money, you’d never do it. But JPMorgan was betting with other people’s money, with deposits, with INSURED deposits no less. Now, JPMorgan traders thought they understood the risks. Obviously, they didn’t. And, probably they couldn’t. They pretended to be able to understand the world through models that simply cannot account for unquantifiable risks, risks in the real world.