Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Our understandings and expectations of the world have been shaped by our experience of economic growth. The dynamic stability of that growth has habituated us to what is ‘normal.’ That normal must soon shatter. – David Korowicz
The sustainability of a human society is not just about its relationship with the environment: it’s a problem concerning the nature of the society and the way it is organised. This is the important message of a book by Angela Espinosa and Jon Walker: A Complexity Approach to Sustainability — Theory and Practice. Both authors were pupils and colleagues of the late Stafford Beer who saw that hierarchical forms of government were incapable of dealing with the complexity of the problems faced by modern societies.
-Putting a price on the rivers and rain diminishes us all
-By insisting that nature is priceless, George Monbiot would condemn the world to destruction
-How Do We Value Nature?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Middle East
-India’s power grid
-Kurdistan
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Despite growing enough food to feed to entire world, almost a billion people are now hungry — one in seven of the global population — and, according to Oxfam International, conditions are getting worse and the number of acutely malnourished children has risen for the first time this decade.
This week in the ASPO-USA Webinar series, Dr. Charles A.S. Hall presented his talk “Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality. Dr. Hall was trained as a systems ecologist by Howard Odum at the University of North Carolina. Today he is ESF Foundation Distinguished Professor at State University of New York in the College of Environmental Science & Forestry. He is also the author of Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy.
Two prominent energetic systems principles that drive our complex economy are hierarchy and autocatalysis. Earlier posts highlighted the concepts of energy transformity and hierarchy. The concept of autocatalysis can be seen in many circular loops in our current society, such as current proposals for geoengineering technology to fix the problems that industrial and post-industrial technology have wrought. Autocatalysis is also known as the positive feedback loop, and it is the engine for our growth economy.
I now think of my native country the way many of my countrymen think of Ireland, as a holiday destination, indulgent and surreal, except instead of a rollercoaster my daughter and I scream happily and hold on to the car as we drive around a highway cloverleaf, and instead of a castle I can take her to a Barnes and Noble the same size. But then, as much as we enjoy seeing friends and family again, I’m reminded why we’re raising our daughter somewhere else.
There’s no easy path to reinvent the global economy, but Mike Lewis’s new book offers some ‘trailblazers’ marks.’
Sometimes you have to go off-line, off-grid, out of your comfort zones, to get a sense of what is possible. I know now when push comes to shove people can work together in hard conditions and flourish. And when they do something beautiful can happen that you would not expect if you judged everything from the way things appear, from the outside. The people who will make the future work are not the people you think: the control people, the shiny people, the spiritual people. They are the activist people, smart, funny, edgy, generous, friendly, warrior-hearted. The people who are not afraid of the mud. Who are not afraid of the earth or each other, and who can still make a fire, come what may.
Giiwedinong means “going home” in the Anishinaabeg language- it also means North, which is the place from which we come.This is a key problem that modern industrial society faces today. We cannot restore our relationship with the Earth until we find our place in the world. This is our challenge today: where is home?
Out here in the Farm Belt, it’s hard to do much other than beat the same drum again and again (and again). It’s hot. It’s dry. Nothing is growing. We’re running out of water. And there is no sign of change on the horizon.
