Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jay Walljasper It came as a surprise to many when Bicycling magazine last year named Minneapolis, Minnesota as America’s “#1 Bike City,” (unseating Portland, Oregon, which had claimed the honor for many years). Shock that the heartland could outperform cities on the coasts was matched by widespread disbelief that biking was even possible in a state famous for its ferocious winters.
– Less stuff, more happiness (video)
– WWOOF UK: Forty years of inspiration, education and perspiration
– Transition Toronto’s winning film! ‘The people in my neighbourhood’
– Geothermal Power Plants Could Help Produce Lithium for Electric Cars
– NY Times gives thumbs up: Protesters Against Wall Street
– Pelosi Supports Occupy Wall Street Movement
– Krugman: Confronting the Malefactors
– Derrick Jensen Speaks To Occupy DC via Skype (audio-video)
– Think Again: The Era of the ‘One Percent’
– Occupy Sesame Street Gets Violent
– #OccupySesameStreet: The Making of a Meme
In this post I’d like to begin to review Herman Daly’s notion of how to build a steady-state economy (which were ahead of their time—the first edition was written in 1977). His ideas are both deep and simple at the same time, and should be a foundation for any future economic system.
Daniel Yergin has written The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, designed to provide information that policy-makers can rely upon in shaping energy policy for the decades ahead.
This could be a dangerous reliance, for Yergin is an advocate for the fossil fuel community, not an honest broker of information. Nearly all the data cited in the book is from his company and is proprietary and non-public, so it can’t be verified or challenged. He doesn’t appear to take seriously the views of people he doesn’t agree with, and they are not included in his extensive bibliography or interviewee list.
– WaPo: Was Wall Street to blame for high oil prices?
– Yergin: The perils, prizes and pitfalls of the post-Gaddafi era of oil
– U.S. and Saudi Relations on Oil
– McKibben: The Cronyism Behind a Pipeline for Crude
We have a well known problem called the “Fermi Paradox”. If all those extra-terrestrial civilizations exist, then could they develop interstellar travel? If there are so many of them, why aren’t they here?
Tim O’Reilly may have been the first to note, in 2008, that the Hubbert curve may be relevant for the Fermi paradox. Because of the non linearity of the curve, no matter what resources are being used, a civilization literally “flares up” and then subsides, being able to maintain the highest level of energy production only for a very short time. This phenomenon that we might call “The Hubbert Hurdle” may be very general and make industrial civilizations in the galaxy to be very short-lived.
Review of “What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism” by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster.
Long-haul trains provide Americans with at least one other option to the frenzied and frustrating tangle of our airports and freeways. And, passengers can witness the fantastic landscapes of our country unavailable to them when they fly 500 miles per hour at 30,000 feet or drive 70 on the superhighways. “Slow Travel” is as aesthetically pleasing and romantic as the Slow Food movement has been because it encourages people to notice and savor the landscape.
The majority of protesters against Wall Street, like the ones at Tahrir Square, have not to my knowledge spoken about overpopulation or civilization, but instead rail mainly about material deprivation and the absurd monetary wealth of the greedclass. This is healthy, but when demands are too narrow, and they are even possibly met, where are we?
– Jeffrey Brown: Yergin cut his projected rate of increase in total liquids “Capacity” by 70%
– WaPo: What is ‘peak oil,’ anyway?
– Oil’s Most Accurate See No Reverse of Worst Run Since 2008: Energy Markets
– Al-Naimi Says World Oil Market Is Not Oversupplied as Demand Fluctuating
– CSM: Post oil: Glimpses of life after fossil fuel
Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center in Shelburne, Vermont spoke about how to think about population and population control as the world passes seven billion souls in October. His prescription for reducing world population: provide women everywhere with good health care, including contraception. The Population Media Center also produces soap operas and other media that include women who go to school or take other paths than getting married and having kids while a teenager. Ryerson said Vermont could feel dramatic effects of overpopulation, with environmental refugees streaming here from drought-stricken parts of the country.
