Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The media is full of scary stories about what is happening in Greece – but what is the situation really like at ground level?
The heart-breaking beauty is still there, the 1,400 islands with soils so fertile that the tables are laden with more fresh produce than people can eat haven’t gone away either, and nor have the 10 million or so adaptable souls, some of whom are actually unaware there is a crisis.
Humans now labor in narrow occupational niches within our highly complex society in the same way that species occupy ecological niches in nature. This specialization leads to competition within each niche for the limited number of positions available. Consequently, the harder the economic times, the more intense the competition for the reduced number of positions within each niche. This leads to anxiety among those already holding a job since they are often not skilled enough to find work in other niches. The employee often asks himself or herself, “What could I possibly do if I were no longer able to do this kind of work?” Naturally, this concern also creates anxiety among those who are unemployed and seeking jobs within a particular niche.
So, it is no wonder that those in the middle and lower strata of society have a difficult time joining together for common action when they are daily locked in a struggle over keeping or getting jobs in their respective niches.
Over the last 100 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously, but it appears that people have not become much happier. In 2006, the first ‘Happy Planet Index’ (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the US 150th.
Various surveys have indicated that while wealthy western nations use up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources, many of their citizens are not much happier, or are indeed less happy, than those who belong to poorer countries that use far fewer resources.
The documentary takes a penetrating look at overpopulation, what fuels it and why the world has become complacent about the issue after making a good start in addressing it during the late 60s. The film dispels some key myths about overpopulation – chief among them the belief that it’s long been solved – even if it stops short of admitting the inevitability of a world population crash as the Earth’s resources deplete. And it conveys its message in an engaging, visually immersive style that finds just the right balance between hard facts and ordinary human involvement.
Most people living in our modern industrial society take air travel for granted. We think very little about hopping on a plane and travelling around the world for little more than a couple of weeks wages. As jet fuel prices bounce along with the price of crude however many airlines are increasingly struggling to break even. Fuel prices now account for 35 percent of operating costs compared to 15 percent a decade ago. The future of the global aviation industry is in big trouble.
Building things by yourself, especially with leftover material, has this air of post-peak self-reliance. But, often, that supposes the existence of industrially made products. When you need wood, for instance, you can get planks or beams from a store or, more in a post-peak style, you use material taken from discarded furniture. But in both cases, the wood you use has been industrially processed.
Suppose, instead, that you live in a remote village in the mountains, a place like Valboncione, in Italy.
Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions
Jorgen Randers is professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and among many other things, was coauthor of The Limits to Growth in 1972, Beyond the Limits in 1992, andLimits to Growth: The 30-Year Update in 2004. He has recently published 2052: a global forecast for the next forty years. I had the great honour of interviewing Jorgen recently, via Skype from his study at his home in Norway.
What’s happening that will change the world for better or worse? What do we need to know now to build a better future? The Millennium Project releases the 2012 State of the Future report – the annual “Report Card on the World.”
The world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected, and people are living longer; yet, half the world is potentially unstable. Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime are increasing, environmental viability for our life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity are increasing, climate change continues, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen dangerously.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Money is the least of our problems. It’s time to pay attention to the real deficits that are killing us.
These days, the United States is in conventional terms far and away the world’s most formidable military power, and nearly all discussions of the implications of peak oil for national security and the future of war take US predominance as a given. History warns, though, that military power is not a single uncomplicated variable, and sudden shifts in military technique — shifts that involve radical simplification as often as they involve technological progress — have frequently brought to defeat to the theoretically stronger side. As the world stumbles toward the Peak Oil Wars, the possibility has to be taken into account that the US may face military defeat, not in spite of its military advantages but because of them. The Archdruid explains…
