Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The world’s elites don’t want to admit it. But the kind of global village that they have insisted on building–a vast free-trade paradise run by an ever more complex and opaque system of logistics and finance–isn’t working, not even for many of them. The cost of maintaining this brittle, complex system and keeping the huge imbalances it creates at bay is becoming dizzyingly expensive.
As William Catton put it in his pioneering work, “Overshoot,” we are no longer mere homo sapiens, with little impact on the Earth’s environment. We are now homo colossus, each of us having the energy impact of the hundreds of slaves once controlled only by lords and kings. .
For several decades Ted Trainer has been developing and refining an important theory of societal change, which he calls The Simpler Way. His essential premise is that overconsumption in the most developed regions of the world is the root cause of our global predicament, and upon this premise he argues that a necessary part of any transition to a sustainable and just world involves those who are overconsuming accepting far more materially ‘simple’ lifestyles.
This essay presents an overview of Trainer’s position. (Excerpt, link to full text)
Approval of hydraulic fracturing for gas in the UK moved a step closer this week as a DECC commissioned report on the seismic impact of drilling at Cuadrilla’s Lancashire operation advised ministers to proceed. The report recommended a tightening of procedures around drilling, including a pre-injection diagnostic phase, and a traffic light warning system halting operations should an earthquake over 0.5 magnitude occur…
-The cost of new oil supply
-Feeling peaky
-Peak oil goes mainstream (again)
-Peak Oil Off: Great Game On
Countries trade crude oil and oil products back and forth. When all of these transactions are netted out, is the US close to becoming a “net” oil exporter?
With the recent increase in oil production (perhaps even exceeding that of Russia on a “barrels-per-day” basis), a person might think that US oil production problems are behind us. If we look at the data, though, it is very clear that the US is still a long way from becoming a net oil exporter.
-France’s small-scale organic farmers celebrate 10 years of boxing clever
-‘Food Forward’ PBS Series Debuts With ‘Urban Agriculture Across America’ Episode
-Motown hopes food will spur rebirth, growth
-Move over cotton, hello hemp
-‘No-till farming’ revolution grows in Indiana
Okay I admit it upfront. I do have a Transition initiative. In fact, I’m involved with two. Sustainable Bungay and Transition Norwich. So why don’t I just get out of here and let the Transition individuals without an initiative get on with the week? The thing is, I live in neither of the places where the initiatives are. So in my transition beginnings in 2008 I was very glad of the introduction to the 12 original key steps, with its idea of Transition Anywhere-You-Find-People.
Bad weather won’t stop climate denial, but it seems to be encouraging average people to agree we have a problem. A new survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concern about climate change. (Link to full report.)
Considering the fundamental changes in human civilization that are forecast for the coming decades, are these urban-rural migrants the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, or just exceptions to the prevailing rule? And what role can these urban-rural migrants potentially play in supporting ecosystems and fostering resilience?
The truth is we really don’t know how to truly manage a cooperative economy successfully on a national or regional scale yet. If anything, we should be learning from the experiences in the global south to help clarify what might work here, but we should also be sensitive to our own unique cultural situation. What worked in Kerala, or Porto Alegre, or Mondragón may not work automatically in the U.S. We also need to be willing to critically evaluate those experiences. The design of “the next system” is, in my opinion, still to be worked out.
Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of the sense that we’re too big to fail. There was this big machine, this human system, that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn’t turn, it couldn’t stop in time to avert a disaster. And that’s what we have right now. We can’t turn because of the momentum of the system, the political momentum, the business momentum. – James Cameron
