Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The first lesson of this story is that having a mug of tea too close to your computer when your cat is chasing an imaginary mouse is a bad idea. The second lesson is that the so-called immaterial economy is highly dependent upon very material devices and infrastructures and is very likely to crumble when those devices and infrastructures can no longer be built or maintained.
It is possible to build a computer with XVIIIth century technology, even if it will be costly.
– The Return of the Demographic Crisis
– Gail Tverberg: Rentier Debt and the Collapse of Debt-Based Finance
– Eating the Seed Corn? Consumption in the American Economy Since 1929
– Former Hedge Funder Presents A Terrifying Vision of the End Game
– Steve Keen & Chris Martenson: Why 2012 is shaping up to be a particularly ugly year
Concerned citizens who seek to reduce their individual impact on climate change are often misguided in their choices. Transportation? Household energy use? Food? Where can the individual make the greatest impact? Our panel of experts pokes holes in current myths and reveals how we can truly create change.
The people of Hawaii have lived an incredible story of cultural assimilation. Numerous external influences on the island have driven a process of creation and destruction, resulting in innovative musical styles. Now, Hawaii faces difficult challenges with food security and genetically modified seeds as it survives the dying values of a corporate culture. Can we learn from the adaptability of the Hawaiian people to facilitate a process of cultural change in Western society?
– Albert Bates: Slavery 2.0
– Carolyn Baker: Masculine, Feminine, Collapse, And The Next Culture
– Andrew Nikiforuk: You and Your Slaves
– Ivan Illich: Energy and Equity
Here I describe some interesting new research on modifying Hubbert’s model of peak oil to take into account the incentives for additional production that higher oil prices would be expected to bring.
The IMF research should help raise awareness of an issue that remains underappreciated by many economists, which is that we will eventually reach a point, and may have already, at which quite significant increases in price and improvements in technology can produce only modest increases in production, or may be insufficient to prevent outright declines in annual crude oil production levels.
– Dan Yergin’s Dilemma: Energy ‘Reality’ Vs. Climate Reality
– Daniel Yergin in the NY Times
– A peak oil follower despairs of his movement’s future
– Coal’s resurgence undermines fight against global warming
This week saw the release of the annual BP statistical energy review. In the words of the press release 2011 was a year of “disruptions to supplies and ever-increasing demand”. The big stories for oil were supply disruption in Libya, a record average oil price of $100/barrel, an average annual Brent price rise of 40%, a decline in OECD consumption of 600,000 bpd, and an increase in US production of 275,000 bpd — the largest increase outside OPEC…
It’s Tuesday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and sales have been slow, but Poli Yerena of Yerena Farms is content with his business for the day. He stands amid waist-high stacks of organic berries that are all sold and accounted for, purchased by local chefs. “At least every week I have a new chef coming to buy strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, so I am happy,” he says. “Over the last eight years, we’ve been supplying to chefs. We know each other and there’s a good relationship.”
Will the world’s leaders dare to think beyond the growth paradigm that lies at the root of our environmental crises? Will they be bold enough to constrain the overconsumption of natural resources or even acknowledge the problem of stagnating oil supplies? Sadly, history provides little grounds for confidence. What is more likely is that the conference will simply warm the climate further through an exchange of hot air disguised as genuine commitment.
I spent a very enjoyable day at Bristol Green Week yesterday. Green Week is a celebration of green ideas and thinking in Bristol, which has featured a wildly eclectic mix of talks, workshops, music, comedy, films, walks and much more. Had I been able to stay around for the whole week I would have been able to see the electric bike races up Park Street, seen Vivienne Westwood talking about climate change, gone on ‘Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride’, done a course on keeping chickens, gone to a gourmet cider-tasting and gone to a permaculture day. Oh well, there’s always next year.
We do not need to be suffering from the death spiral, which is largely of the Chancellor’s making. We could be using the opportunity of the bursting of the credit bubble to acknowledge the role of the government in monetary policy and to use that to shift the economic energy in our country away from finance and speculation and towards investment in a transition to a real green economy. The opportunity is there; it is only the ideological blinkers worn by our politicians that prevents it from being grasped.
