Year: 2012

Cities and Suburbs in the Energy Descent: Thinking in Scenarios

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The vulnerability of cities and suburbs in the post-petroleum era has been the object of much debate because their present organization makes their operation so energy-intensive. The debate heretofore has tended to swing between two extremes. One claims that these forms of social organization on the land are so unsustainable that their populations will be forced to abandon them gradually as the energy descent progresses. The other extreme entertains dreams of massive programs of public transportation to save suburbia. It also relies heavily on technologies like high-rise agriculture and on the efficiencies of population density to save cities. This is the vision of the eco-cities movement. Neither of these scenarios makes much sense.

Peak Moment 219: Prairie Fire – Revolutionize the Food System

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Novelist Dan Armstrong’s Prairie Fire is a fast-paced thriller whose characters forge unlikely alliances to revolutionize the American food system. It’s spearheaded by farmers squeezed by skyrocketing oil prices while marketeers get whopping price gains. This revolution is unlikely to succeed, yet… well, we won’t spoil it! In Dan’s Taming the Dragon, climate change causes Chinese grain production to plummet, bringing the world to the brink. Dan illuminates the real-world backdrop behind both novels. His solution? Localize food production. Meet farmer Harry MacCormack with exciting results in central Oregon.

Mike Freedman on his new film Critical Mass

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Unsung Films watched Mike Freedman’s Critical Mass this year when it screened at the Biografilm Festival in Bologna, Italy. On approaching the filmmaker with a short review of his documentary, we ended up with a great deal more: a 3000-word interview taking readers deep into the story of how Freedman’s film came together, how it affected him – both personally and professionally — and what we should expect in the years to come.

A school of apples

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At Green Drinks we are looking at a map. It’s no ordinary map of roads and houses and municipal buildings. It’s a map of a community orchard, showing 100 fruit trees – apple, pear, quince, plum, cherry, damson, medlar – that were planted two years ago in the village of St James in Suffolk. Rob Parfitt who helped create the orchard is describing how a group rented the land (originally an over-grazed part of the common) and planted the trees, set around a restored shepherd hut which serves as an information centre and informal gathering space. The hardest thing, he said, was not the thistles in the ground, or raising the funds, but persuading the village to agree.

The emergence of regional Transition? A fascinating day in Lille

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The question of what a top-down response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction, and the regional rolling out of resilience, might look like, has been often discussed since the early days of the Transition movement. There was the short-lived Somerset experiment, there’s been interesting work in Stroud, Bristol, Nottingham and various other places, but nothing yet that is especially coherent and integrated. So it was with that in mind that I was really fascinated to be asked to go to Lille to speak at a one-day conference called ‘Assises de la Transformation Ecologique et Sociale’ organised by the Conseil Regional Nord –Pas de Calais, the regional authority for the Nord- Pas de Calais region.

Net Energy-what Captain Cook didn’t know

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We are not quite out of gas yet in the United States. But we keep steaming down fjords without outlets, turning randomly from one blind alley to the next in trying to adapt to our energy quandary. In Captain Cook’s case, he was exploring with zero information, so there was a good chance of failure. But when it comes to energy alternatives, we can avoid dead ends, since we have what Captain Cook didn’t have, information on the best alternatives. This post is about the science of net energy regarding those options.

Australia, Meet the Post-Growth Economy

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When Resources Minister Martin Ferguson told ABC that “the resources boom is over,” he was uttering an unwelcome truth. The government’s plan is to boost mining rates to make up in volume for what is lost in per-unit price. But a glut in supply will lower commodity prices even more. Unless the nation changes course, Australia is set to suffer the fate of all resource “boom towns.”

A practical proposal to erase externalities

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As the global economy grows, it expands into pristine habitats, interferes with critical ecosystems, consumes more resources, and emits more pollutants. Many activities that fall under the banner of economic growth are undercutting the planet’s ecological systems. At the heart of this tragedy are pollution damages that are imposed on society but not factored into company costs. These damages are called externalities because they are externalized by the businesses generating them.

Who owns life?

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The brave new world of “owning life” began 32 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court first approved the patenting of a genetically engineered bacteria that can help decompose oil. By a 5-4 decision, it was the first instance of U.S. law recognizing ownership in a “manufactured” lifeform. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to participate on a panel with the microbiologist who brought that 1980 case, Ananda Chakrabarty, who was then an employee of General Electric. Anyone who noses around the legal literature soon realizes that the case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty is a real landmark case because it opened the door for the patenting of lifeforms.

Ineffective government breeds ineffective demand

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The launch of the Bristol Pound on 19 September was the subject of international media attention, and rightly so. The decision by a whole city to reject the pound sterling and take charge of its monetary affairs is an exciting and unique one. However, the most important aspect of the Bristol Pound went widely unreported: the local council is prepared to accept it for payment of local taxes. Once a political authority underwrites a local currency in this way it can become a viable alternative, and the Bristol Pound is the first currency that has been accepted in this way in the UK.