Year: 2012

It’s time to reconsider our biofuel policy

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As America’s corn and soybean crops wither in the current drought, it is time to reconsider our policy of mandating the conversion of a large percent of those crops into ethanol for our gas tanks. Even in a bountiful crop year, there is little sense in a food for fuel policy which takes nearly half of our corn crop for less than 10 percent of our gasoline supply. It can be sustained only by subsidies and mandates which increase prices for grains and the beef, poultry, and other products which depend on grain supplies.

Bill McKibben is wrong, we must not forget that “We have met the enemy and he is us”

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Bill McKibben has once again put his heart and soul into an attempt to stop global warming. That’s more than most of us can say, and I’m afraid much more than I can say. Remember that. He is, like every living, breathing being on this earth, our friend. The stunningly well-written call to arms has apparently at this time already been read 450,000 times on-line and received 3105 written comments. The attention is well-deserved. He tells us, as do the oppressive heat and drought that have overtaken the earth, that the time is now to protect our home from turning into a living – or dying – hell.

For all that, I have a bone to pick with Bill McKibben.

Monbiot peak oil u-turn based on bad science, worse maths

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Plenty of ink has already been spilled by oil depletion experts exposing some of the wildly optimistic assumptions contained in Maugeri’s report. More damning is that the work is shot through with crass mistakes that render its forecast worthless. When I interviewed him, Mr Maugeri was forced to admit a mathematical howler that would disgrace the back of an envelope…

Against the Grain

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What’s not to like about cutting the costs of a farm enterprise—and boosting its revenues? That, in effect, is Wichner’s pitch for the “beyond organic” farmland management system he plans to scale.

Energy ethics for survival of people in nature

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Cultural values are group norms or rules for behavior that make a culture work. Ethical values are our cultural DNA. But our values can change in response to the conditions of the economy and environment. Our current value system is no longer working—money, science, laws, mores, politics, religion, and culture are becoming less meaningful to many…The survival of the whole system is at stake, and ethics will begin to shift as old ways of doing and being endanger humanity…

Retrofitting the suburbs for the energy descent future

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Sometimes well-meaning ‘green’ people like to imagine that the eco-cities of the future are going to look either like some techno-utopia – like the Jetson’s, perhaps, except environmentally friendly – or some agrarian village, where everyone is living in cob houses that they built themselves. The fact is, however, that over the next few critical decades, most people are going to find themselves in an urban environment that already exists – suburbia.

Dog days

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There is an elegiac beauty in loss (or what we imagine is loss), to coming home, to realising your limits, to deepening your experience, to loving the neighbourhood, the people in the room, a humble dish of new potatoes, the small strip of seashore I go to each day, where once I could roam the world like Alexander. In fact when you look back and see the track you have made, the dance you have made with your fellows, that’s when you understand everything, the beauty of it all – even the hard times. We’re trying as a people to get back on track against all odds.

The Climate and the Commons

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The premise of this chapter is that there is a proliferating movement of initiatives seeking to defend the commons (mostly in the Global South) or restore the commons (mostly in the Global North), to ensure our survival and well-being. This chapter is also premised on the notion that we still have time to act to restore our socio-ecological sustainability.

Our current infrastructure was built for a different planet

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It’s easy to forget that every piece of our current infrastructure–roads, rails, runways, bridges, industrial plants, housing–was built with a certain temperature range in mind. Our agricultural system and much of our electrical generating system (including dams, nuclear power stations and conventional thermal electric plants which burn coal and natural gas) were created not only with a certain temperature range in mind, but also a certain range of rainfall.