Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The extraordinary hype surrounding this industry has been impressive to say the least. It has clearly been a public relations exercise of disproportionate scale compared to what the wells are actually producing. That should have been our first clue. Methinks they doth propound too much.
As we reported two years ago, an international group of scientists, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group has been sailing into the Arctic waters around Norway and Russia to take samples of methane bubbling from ocean clathrates frozen methane deposits on the sea floor. Some of their findings, very preliminary, are now making their way into the blogosphere, but like many, we await peer-review published articles or discussion in the next IPCC report – AR5 – due in 2014, before we draw hard conclusions.
Transition groups sometimes meet with the understanding that somewhere in the woolly future “the community” will engage in energy descent. However when you put your own highly consumptive lives under the microscope, the kind of double think and denial that allows Transitioners to talk passionately, for example, about peak oil but still take planes, could no longer happen.
This summer has seen record heat waves and wildfires in the U.S, the worst flooding in Beijing’s modern history, and droughts that devastated the U.S. corn crop and led India to set up “refugee camps” for livestock. These extreme events were not freak occurrences – this is how the Earth works now.
It has been a long time since I posted here, with many changes. As initiator of Transition action in Los Angeles, and one of the original circle that created the Transition Los Angeles city hub (TLA), I’ve been doing a bit of the “empty nest” syndrome myself. For successful initiators in large areas worldwide, this too is part of the natural and evolving Transition journey of building local community. The empty nest phenomenon is something I haven’t seen discussed much.
A weekly update including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-The Middle East
-EU
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Starting next week longtime Energy Bulletin author Kurt Cobb will have his posts regularly featured in The Christian Science Monitor on its new “Energy Voices” blog. The highly respected Monitor has a century-long tradition of reasoned, thoughtful journalism which has earned it seven Pulitzer Prizes and many other awards. Its global reach–it stations writers in 11 countries–will bring a large new audience in contact with Kurt’s work on peak oil.
Today’s post is the first installment of a six-part series which will introduce key concepts and ideas to this new audience. (Hint: good also for forwarding to skeptical friends and family!)
The ideology supportive to growth will fight the growing pressure of evidence to the contrary; it will strain to convince us that the growth of our impact on nature will somehow lead to the best result. When the natural limits to growth themselves become a barrier to economic expansion, the science that warns of natural limits will itself meet with widespread opposition and denial.
Feeling overwhelmed by the latest scientific prognosis for our planet? Do doomer blogs plunge you into despair? Then read on.
Growing up I knew charcoal as the square, chemical-soaked briquettes people bought in bags and poured into the barbecue grill once a summer. Like so much else in our lives it came from a store, wrapped in plastic and pre-treated for shelf life, with no sense that it shared a name with something amazingly useful, which hundreds of generations had made themselves.
Our obsession with money will be an issue for many as we transition from a wealth-oriented capitalist system. Many blogs focus on money—how to make more, how to keep what you’ve got, how to transition to something different and still be “ahead of the game.” Where will these voices be when the currency quits?
The word “sustainability” sometimes is used to green-wash and promote things that are not sustainable. Genuine sustainability must be evidence-based. But language can be used to conceal rather than reveal. Lets explore as a case study what is currently occurring in the small town of Sebastopol, Northern California.
