John Michael Greer

Tweedledoom and Tweedledee

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When peak oil comes up in conversation these days, some people insist that shale gas or algal biodiesel or some other technofix will take care of it (and so we don’t have to do anything), while others insist that the world as we know it is about to end in a sudden unstoppable collapse (and so we don’t have to do anything). To what extent does that common thread provide the driving force for both viewpoints? Glancing at the calendar–no, not the Mayan one, though that also plays a part–the Archdruid explains.

The government that likes to say ‘Yes’

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Where between the situation we have now, with species becoming extinct but there still being enough green land to enable breathing, and the future development paradise where every scrap of field and hill is covered with concrete and tarmac, is development supposed to stop? Assuming that future generations will still need air to breathe, there must be a boundary, so how do we know that we have not already reached it? And if not, when will we know we are there?

Massacre of oil workers in Kazakhstan

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– NYT: Defying Police Crackdown, Kazakh Protests Continue
– The Massacre Everyone Ignored: Up To 70 Striking Oil Workers Killed In Kazakhstan By US-Supported Dictator
– Kazakhstan: Riots Not Prelude to Arab Spring
– Seeing Revolution Everywhere: the ‘Kazakhstan Spring’ That Isn’t

How the crisis may puncture the GDP cult

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Polaris, or the North Star, is a reliable guide to measure one’s latitude in the northern hemisphere. But if you want to go east or west, you need other guiding stars. Similarly, short-term economic growth has served as an attractive guiding star for public policies since the Second World War. But the current crisis requires Europe to move in new directions to meet the challenges of rising debt and inequalities. We need new guiding stars.

Henry Red Cloud: Solar Warrior for Native America

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Henry Red Cloud’s address is 1001 Solar Warrior Road on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. But the road sign hasn’t arrived. A windmill towering over the cottonwoods in the draw of White Clay Creek marks the location of Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center and his “Solar Warrior Community.”

Land Rights and the Rush For Land Report (excerpt)

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Originated by the rising concerns expressed by many International Land Coalition (ILC) members in 2008, the Commercial Pressures on Land research project is intended to go beyond the large-scale land acquisitions phenomenon, focussing on the wider set of converging drivers for investment interest in land, such as rising food consumption and predicted long-term food prices rises; demand for feedstock for agrofuels; increasing commodity prices; carbon-trading mechanisms such as REDD; and rent seeking and speculation practices on land by recontextualising them within longer term trends.

Can we manage without growth? An interview with Peter Victor. Part One

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I had the privilege recently of speaking with Peter Victor, Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of “Managing without growth”. At a time when the obsession with making our economies grow again is close to hysteria, Peter’s work asks the question as to whether economic growth is the best way to achieve what we want from a society; employment, happiness, good public services, increased equality and so on, and concludes we could have an economy that isn’t growing, but which is actually better at those things.

Deep thought – Dec 20

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– It Begins: Dogs and cats use public transport to commute to food
– Avoiding bad news is not going to solve the world’s problems
– Transition And Transformation: The Joy Of Preparation (video with Carolyn Baker and Andrew Harvey)
– John Bellamy Foster: Capitalism and the Accumulation of Catastrophe
– Ted Trainer: The problem is consumer-capitalism