Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Bacteria Can Build Better Roads for Our Peak Oil Years
– The food storage secret our grandparents knew
– New $1.1 million program to create urban farms in Cleveland’s Kinsman neighborhood
– First Canadian peak oil task force
– Transition Voice Covers Peak Oil, Zombies and Economic Crisis
– What’s the carbon footprint of … a newspaper?
– Like your dinner, your gadgets come from somewhere
– Forbes: Peak Stuff: Are We There Yet?
– New video from Annie Leonard: The Story of Electronics
– Why Is Obama Cuddling Up to Karl Rove and His Gas Drilling Friends?
– A Taxpayer-Funded Sucker Play for the 21st Century
– UC Davis study: Stock market expectations suggest that oil will run dry before substitutes roll out
The International Energy Agency issued its annual energy forecast today for 2010. At this point, we can only point to a few of the summary findings. One clear concern is that demand will be rising–especially from China and India. Another is that prices (in inflation-adjusted terms) will be rising. A third concern is that conventional oil production will no longer be able to rise.
In WEO 2010 the IEA presents facts that mean only one thing – the peak of oil production is imminent. By showing this data without announcing this obvious conclusion the IEA is making a cry for help to do what, for them, is politicly impossible. WEO 2010 is a cry for help to tell the truth about peak oil.
Local food is elitist! This trumpets from one paper or another, revealing that despite the growing preoccupation with good food, ultimately, it is just another white soccer Mom phenomenon.
America’s health care system is more expensive by 40–60 percent than health care systems in any other industrialized country (it makes up nearly half the health care budget of the entire world), but the results it produces are arguably the worst of the group.
– “The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride: A Brief History of Fossil Fuels” (Post Carbon Institute)
– “The Story of Electronics” (Annie Leonard)
– “Permaculture: The Growing Edge” (Starhawk and Donna Read)
– “The Economics of Happiness” (Helena Norberg-Hodge)
– “Collapsus” – what energy collapse might look like (interactive video)
In the same way the local food movement shifts its focus from out-of-season, long supply chain, high embodied energy foods towards more locally sourced, low impact foods rooted in the local region or ‘foodshed’, an emerging branch of architecture and construction examine similar transitions with building materials.
– Steve LeVine: How to read today’s big report on the future of energy
– National Georgraphic: Has the World Already Passed “Peak Oil”?
– Online Executive Summary of the report
– Energy inaction will cost us trillions
– IEA: “peak oil is an inevitability”
On this episode of the podcast we are joined by Dr. Blair Orr. Dr. Orr is the director of the Master’s International Program at Michigan Technological University, and has worked for several decades in the areas of agroforestry, forest economics, and small holder tropical systems. We discuss the MI Program at MTU, changes and patterns in Third World agriculture, land tenure, low input mixed systems, increasing connectivity and migration in developing countries, the future of Haiti, and strategies for promoting development in tropical agriculture.
Lemme start with letting my alter ego, Hamster, review the narrative in the style of my fellow Vanderbilt alumnus, Joe Bob Biggs of “Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In” fame, then the geek engineer can get to appropriate technology.
