Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Byron W. King IF WE ARE reaching the Peak Oil phase of the Age of Oil, perhaps it is useful to return to its origins to understand how it all began. What brought mankind to the point where we now find ourselves? It is not overstating the case to say that John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil Co. invented the Age of Oil as we know it.
China’s anti-pollution efforts stink /
Engineered grass found growing in wild /
Scientists add years to ozone recovery
…Let us drop the conceit that these are “problems,” and that they can be “fixed.” Let us instead try an experiment: let us dissociate from human history, and free-associate our way into the next chapter of natural history, which, let us bravely assume, a member of our ecologically challenged species will still be on hand to narrate.
The question for a future with ecological limits becomes: What shall we do with this powerful force of envy which has been awakened across the globe? How will people, both the rich and those aspiring to greater wealth, come to grips with limits which will undermine the consumer society within which that envy flourishes?
Amazon rainforest ‘could become a desert’ /
Forecast puts Earth’s future under a cloud /
US Suffers World’s First Climate Change Exodus /
Global Warming & Global Food Supply
Life in a Post-Carbon World /
The more precious commodity in 2050: Water or oil? /
CorpWatch: Bye Bye Petroleum /
The Politics of Dancing (Peak Oil in music) /
Michael Ruppert in exile: A Permanent Goodbye to the United States
Australia: Heinberg & Holmgren – Peak Oil & Permaculture Tour /
Hopkins: Launching Transition Town Totnes! /
The Priest and the Prophet /
Social revolution that may well save our planet
ared Diamond calls it “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Bill Mollison says that it can “destroy whole landscapes.” Are they describing nuclear energy? Suburbia? Coal mining? No. They are talking about agriculture.
Large oil spills in Indian Ocean, Philippines /
Corroding sewers, not Alaskan oil pipes, are the real danger /
Water shortage ‘a global problem’ /
Why don’t we change?
To get through the first decades of peak oil, only those that get very high mileage, or preferably do not use liquid fuels at all, will be affordable or useful for most of us.
What created the modern petroleum industry was a confluence of circumstances, and certainly of events. Col. Drake’s innovation in driving a hole into the earth was just one of many things along a long chain of events.
We are … biotechnologists, as well as chemical engineers and have successful processes going today… Our carefully considered view, for which we will be happy to provide abundant evidence is that severe barriers remain to ethanol from lignocellulose. The barriers look as daunting as they did 30 years ago.
(The latest salvo in the Khosla-TOD debate about biofuels.)
