The “we’ll-just-adapt-to-climate-change” team takes drubbing
Adaptation to climate change alone is already a failed strategy.
Kurt Cobb
Energy consultancy keeps lowering worldwide recoverable oil resources
If there is so much more oil for us to discover and produce, why have estimates of recoverable resources been declining for three years in a row?
Acceleration forever? The increasing momentum of mineral extraction
It is hard for most people to imagine the vast increases in the rate of consumption of practically everything that makes modern life possible. Resources appear without most of us ever thinking about how or whether the rising rates of consumption can be sustained.
Journey to resilience
I came to the topic of Peak Oil in 2005 at a workshop given by Richard Heinberg in Palo Alto. The information had a profound affect on how I would view the future going forward.
The ride of our lives
When have we ever truly steered our path as a species? Are we actually in control at all?
Weaponization of GMO technology? Obscure federal commission uncovers the danger
Cheerleaders for new technology tend to ignore the ways in which that technology might be used to harm humans and/or the environment. But there are always people who will figure out how to create such harm.
Oops! U.S. oil and gas exports fuel domestic price rise
The oil and gas industry got U.S. export restrictions lifted in the last decade promising that there would be so much production that the United States would have plenty for domestic use and export. Rising prices of oil products and natural gas have Americans rethinking that policy.
Close communities and traditional culture allowed Irish to survive crises
A chat about the Irish elders I’ve talked to, and how their close communities and traditional culture allowed them to survive crises like the bank strikes of the 1960s and 70s.
Gene editing: You can’t edit behavior because…
Scientists thought they could make hamsters more cooperative by editing out a gene … But just the opposite happened. Both male and female hamsters with the altered gene became more aggressive—much more aggressive.
Climate change, energy, and an unstable grid: The mainstream belatedly gets the connections
I enter summer with a sense of foreboding, not only about a simmering war in Ukraine, but also the stability of basic energy infrastructure and our ability to function if the lights, computers, and the water, sewer and gasoline pumps go out for an extended period.
Helium: Longtime ‘canary in the coal mine’ signals more trouble
Peak Helium! For each and every resource, we as a society have assumed that we will always find the substitutes we need in the quantities we require at the prices we can afford by the time we need them. We are now testing that belief with regard to helium.
What it means to have children
We devote much of our lives to our children, the messages we send to the future we will never see.
