Year: 2012

Gas leak at North Sea Elgin Platform

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A crisis situation has developed at a gas and condensate production platform in the Elgin field in the North Sea. Gas is leaking out of a well near a offshore platform at a rate of approximately 2 kilograms per second (12 MMCF/day if gas), and a large sheen (assumed to be condensate) has been observed on the water. All workers on Total’s Elgin PUQ (production-utilities-quarters) Platform plus those on the Rowan Viking drilling rig, which had been working next to it, have been evacuated. On Monday, workers on a platform and drilling rig at the Shell-operated Shearwater field (4 miles / 6.4 km away) were also evacuated. There is currently a two-mile vessel exclusion zone around the site and a no-fly zone.

Translating Transition: from small town to mega-city

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“How can you possibly do this in L.A.?” people familiar with the Transition model often ask me. Even people who live here find the idea quite daunting. One local Permaculture teacher, when asked “What about LA?”, literally threw up his hands in a gesture that said “It’s hopeless.”

Los Angeles is a mega-city. At 11 million people, we’re somewhere between 8th and 15th on the list of the world’s largest. We’re one of the biggest population centers that have dared to actively work with the Transition model. Just for the record: it isn’t categorically “hopeless.”

Together: The Rituals Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (book review)

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As if recovering from the binge of market triumphalism that crested in 2008, the Zeitgeist is now unleashing a steady stream of new works on cooperation. The rediscovery of this aspect of our humanity is long overdue and incredibly important, given the deformities of thinking that economics has inflicted on public consciousness. So I was excited to learn that the distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett had written a new book about cooperation, Together: The Rituals Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation.

The bike as a lens

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Culturally we believe that the car is a symbol of personal freedom. But the truth is that car ownership can be oppressive on several levels. Personal mobility represents freedom to the individual, but it’s the form it takes that tells the story of freedom.

Watching Hens Eat

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I’ve learned more about the economies of small scale food production from watching chickens than from any library or university. The hens reveal a world almost foreign to our human experience. Ever since farming became a capitalistic enterprise, husbandry has been organized around the idea of making money, not making food. When the farmer is freed from the yoke of money-making, wonderful alternatives become possible in food production.

How many circles does it take to make a community?

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I have read some of the “energy descent plans” of some of the leading Transition communities, and they strike me as being long on ideals and objectives and short on credible strategy — how to get there from here…I have come to realize that our future is so “unimaginable” that strategic planning is impossible…Instead, I wondered if it made sense to have…a “Working Towards” plan — specific ideas for helping us (1) build community and increase collaboration and sharing, (2) reduce dependence on imports and centralized systems and increase self-sufficiency, and (3) prepare psychologically and increase resilience for whatever the future holds.

Could we do this using the Resilience Circle model?

Disentangling the channels of the 2007-2009 recession

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A number of economists and commentators have mocked the idea that the "housing crash" was started by an oil price shock. Profs. Stock and Watson analyze the data and conclude that 1) it was actually a fairly typical recession, though unusually deep because of one or more very large shocks, and 2) the most likely initial cause was a significant oil price shock.

A city that runs on itself

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What happens when you ask 14 landscape architecture and three planning students to cut the energy use and consequent greenhouse gas (GHG) production in the city by at least 80 percent — by 2050? How is this to be done? We started by looking at the city of Vancouver as it is now, finding the places where energy use was high and where it was low, and trying to understand why.

In small groups and small towns, opposition to Citizens United spreads

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The small group, or “affinity group,” has been a crucial part of many social movements, and people are increasingly realizing its relevance for today. 
“It can sometimes be hard to get a group of activists to pull away from a political or social agenda,” says Lore. “But I always promise people that if you take five or six sessions focused on getting to know each other, you won’t be sorry. You’ll become much more effective activists. And you’ll also have fun in the process.”

Lack of systems thinking

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While it’s understandable to focus on a single problem, what succeeds in providing domestic energy may, for example, worsen global warming. Thus, we find triumphant articles that celebrate energy independence, as if extracting more domestic fossil fuel were an overall solution rather than, as it is, a continuation of a problem of a different kind.

On being in time for Transition

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At a time when entire peoples — and species — have lost their homes to flooding, deforestation, war, agribusiness and other forms of hatred and greed, when health has been lost to the increasing toxicity and the decreasing nutritional quality of food, it may be that we no longer have time to indulge in the moral miasma of an urgent need to create a more positive future. Our only time is now, a now that holds the whole complexities of hope and suffering, joy and negativity.

Digging in the couch cushions for loose change: Or, why don’t we just create more resources?

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Let’s scrap the misleading language of “creating more resources.” When was the last time you made a fish or some oil? Instead, let’s try and get a real sense of what high oil prices are driving us to do – digging around in our couch cushions for loose change.