Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Professor Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University has recently published the book Peeking at Peak Oil that has aroused considerable attention worldwide. The professor’s energy journey that culminated in this book began at a meeting of the Liberal Party of Sweden in Katrineholm in 1995.
A weekly update, including:
•Oil and the global economy
•The Middle East
•Chavez
•Quote of the week
•Briefs
Reverting to traditional handicrafts is one way to sabotage the throwaway society. In this article, we discuss another possibility: the design of modular consumer products, whose parts and components could be re-used for the design of other products.
“No violence. No theft. No drugs or alcohol. No constant disruptive behavior. Everyone must contribute to the village.” While finishing our tour, Jon Hawkes lays out the five agreements residents must abide by, all forged by real-world experience. What would it be like if our entire society followed these rules? Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Dignity Village is an organically evolving, self-organizing intentional community — and a model for others.
The word "breathtaking" has become cliche when put with "photographs" but here it really applies. You will gasp aloud as you turn each page. (even my teens did) And then you’ll want to show the pictures to more people, because you can’t keep this kind of stuff to yourself. Coal strip mines. Spawling oil fields. Landscape wracked by palm oil plantations. The debris of Fukushima. And of course the BP oil platform going down in flames.
The reverence accorded each new forecast of future energy supplies from international and government agencies and from major oil companies seems to go far beyond that accorded to the oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. That oracle’s record may be lost in the mists of time, but we can check the record for these modern energy oracles.
There are only two ways out of the real dilemma involved in this structural crisis. One is to establish a non-capitalist authoritarian world-system which will use force and deception rather than the "market" to permit and augment the inegalitarian world distribution of basic consumption. The other is to change our civilizational values.
Strike Debt, which grew out of Occupy Wall Street, wants to foment conversation about the debt we rack up in pursuit of basic needs, and the industries that profit from that debt.
Setting aside the discussion of international conflict, what will be the options of nations for dealing internally with economic decline? So far, the first resort of many countries has been fiscal austerity.
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil recently held its annual conference down in Austin, Texas. The venue for the meeting was right across the street from the University of Texas football stadium which is as close to the heart of Texas as you can get. This year the conference focused on two main themes: the rapid growth of tight oil production in the U.S. and where it is going; and the economics of oil (or, will prices continue to allow us to grow our economy?).
It is now all but impossible to limit global warming to less than +2°C from pre-industrial temperatures. The hope offered by fossil fuel limitations and ecnomic slowdown is fading. We now have to consider life in a 4 °C warmer world.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. With that in mind, the 195 color, mostly full page — often double page — photographs in the Post Carbon Institute’s latest book, ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, speaks volumes beyond its gigantic sized pages about the energy and environmental predicament humanity is immersed in today.
