Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A few years back Stuart Staniford, (who is one of the most brilliant people I know) and I had a lively debate about the future of small scale agriculture over at The Oil Drum. Stuart argued that agriculture would continue to get bigger and more industrialized, because its fossil fuel dependency really wasn’t that great. I argued that in fact energy and environmental pressures would push us back to smaller scale agriculture.
The Baltic Sea is just one example of a challenge that crops up everywhere. Think about the food systems of a city; the restoration of a river; the management of informal waste economies; or the care of older people. In all such contexts, a variety of different actors and stakeholders — formal and informal, big and small — need to to work together.
A weekly review including:
– Oil and the Global Economy
– The Middle East
– Slowing economies
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
A few days ago, I showed the close relationship between growth in world oil consumption and growth in world GDP. In this post, I will extend that analysis by building a model that shows how much of an increase in world oil supply is needed for a given increase in world GDP. This model indicates that if we want the world economy to grow by 4% per year, world oil supply will need to grow by close to 3% per year. This is more than world oil supply has grown per year since the 1970s–giving a clue as to why the world is having so much problem with economic growth now.
Two mechanisms may be occurring when speakers frame climate change as the most important problem that the world has to face. If one’s view of the world is that energy is unlimited, and that we can grow infinitely, and that the environment has a limitless ability to absorb our pollution, then growth is not an important issue…Secondly, speakers who focus on climate may fail to grasp the severity of the problem of peak oil, because of declining net energy or emergy yields…These problems are inextricably connected, but we prioritize them differently depending on our ability to think like a system.
The Chicago School of economics has been preaching for decades, with lots of money from rich people adding to the volume of their message, that low taxes, small government, and deregulation are the road to nirvana. But the last time we had low taxes on the rich and little regulation was called the Great Depression. Clinton, at least, has come to understand that America made a mistake in believing the fairy tale that “government is the problem, so let’s cut rich people’s taxes.” Clinton still remains bamboozled, however, by the neoclassical nonsense that sees economic growth as the solution to unemployment.
No doubt you’ve heard people speak of an energy transition from a fossil fuel-based society to one based on renewable energy–energy which by its very nature cannot run out. Here’s the short answer to why we need do it fast: climate change and fossil fuel depletion. And, here’s the short answer to why we’re way behind: History suggests that it can take up to 50 years to replace an existing energy infrastructure, and we don’t have that long.
There are two major school networks in France, and a large number of minor ones. Public Schools (écoles publique), also called Secular Schools (écoles laïques), are state run and free (as in free beer). In most areas, they are the default schools and their quality is highly dependent upon their localization. Some, in suburban ghettos for instance, are dreadful, others, such as Henri IV in Paris or Clémenceau in Nantes, are elite institutions, on par with the best British public schools can offer.
How would the ordinary middle-class consumer – I should say middle-class citizen – deal with a lifestyle of radical simplicity? By radical simplicity I essentially mean a very low but biophysically sufficient material standard of living, a form of life that will be described in more detail below. In this essay I want to suggest that radical simplicity would not be as bad as it might first seem, provided we were ready for it and wisely negotiated its arrival, both as individuals and as communities.
So here I want to lay out an insanely obvious principle that apparently needs clarification. There are bad things and they are bad. There are good things and they are good, even though the bad things are bad. The mentioning of something good does not require the automatic assertion of a bad thing. The good thing might be an interesting avenue to pursue in itself if you want to get anywhere. In that context, the bad thing has all the safety of a dead end. And yes, much in the realm of electoral politics is hideous, but since it also shapes quite a bit of the world, if you want to be political or even informed you have to pay attention to it and maybe even work with it.
Oil prices were once again oscillating between the price depressing effects of economic uncertainty and the price enhancing effects of Middle East political uncertainties this week…Saudi Arabia has promised to keep oil markets supplied in the event of shortfalls elsewhere, but Deutsche Bank, and others question whether the kingdom is really in a position to make good on the promise. The IEA now estimates Saudi spare capacity at just under 2 million barrels/day.
It has become increasingly clear that we are poised between an old world that no longer works and a new one struggling to be born. Surrounded by an archaic order of centralized hierarchies on the one hand and predatory markets on the other, presided over by a state committed to planet-destroying economic growth, people around the world are searching for alternatives.
