Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Albert Bates Drawing strength from the rage of the masses is not a formula for longevity, especially in a consumer culture, where rage shifts seasonally…Just ask the veterans of the great uprisings of 1968. We still wonder, what became of our revolution? Rather than being adopted by everyone, it unified the opposition, and while it made some milestones, especially in the popular culture, it missed its political mark by a wide mile.
– IEA Sees Dire Future For Climate, Energy Without New Technology
– Global Warming Study Finds No Grounds for Climate Skeptics’ Concerns
– “When politicians distort science” by Robert Socolow (co-author of Wedges proposal)
The world must reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions significantly, in the range of eighty to ninety percent over the next few decades. Every use of energy is now under review, and we are finding that the greatest generators of CO2 are not automobiles and airplanes but buildings. As a result, developers, architects, and planners are looking for ways to build structures that use significantly less energy than even the top-rated “green” buildings of today.
A much-trumpeted partnership of one of today’s most celebrated scientists and the world’s largest publicly traded oil company seems stalled in its aim of creating mass-market biofuel from algae, and may require a new agreement to go forward. The disappointment experienced thus far by scientist J. Craig Venter and ExxonMobil is notable not only because of their stature, but that many experts think that, at least in the medium term, algae is the sole realistically commercial source of biofuel that can significantly reduce U.S. and global oil demand.
Recently I’ve been getting emails from folks who had previously read an article or two on Peak Oil and found the evidence convincing—but who have more recently encountered a piece or two by Daniel Yergin (or another writer following the same train of thought). Their new line of reasoning goes like this:…Just as “fracking” shale gas has been a “game changer” for the natural gas industry, new technologies for accessing tar sands, oil shale, and shale oil…will change the oil game…Now, every element of that argument has already been dealt with at length in the Energy Realist literature. But occasionally a review of previous course material is called for. So here we go…
We don’t talk much about what we do for a living in Transition. So today I was going to write about the “real world” work some of my fellow Transitioners are engaged in, about being a cook, or market gardener or librarian. Then I thought: why am I not writing about myself trying to make a sustainable livelihood from writing?
Radical change is happening. Our goal is to guide that change in a direction that brings shared prosperity and justice for this and future generations. We must shift from an economy based on wasteful use of fossil fuels to one based on the careful stewardship of renewable energy. We must shift from an economy based on depleting our inherited trust fund of natural resources and healthy ecosystems to one based on rebuilding them.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Futures
Around the United States, cities and communities are coming together to showcase the benefits of eating healthy, locally grown, and organic food.
In the absence of any info to the contrary so far, I am going to draw myself up in grandiose hauteur and declare that I grew the longest ear of dent corn in the world this year. It is Reid’s Yellow Dent open-pollinated corn and if it is not the longest ear, I bet it is the biggest. Other years, I have grown ears nearly as long as this 15 incher, but this is the first time there were 20 rows of kernels on such ears instead of 16 or 18 rows.
What if a variety of dent corn could be developed that consistently produced very large ears on every stalk? My biggest ears easily contain a pound of kernels each. Even at a plant population of 25,000, lower than commercial plant populations used today, that would mean a record-breaking yield of over 400 bushels per acre. Because it is open-pollinated corn, the farmer could save his own seed, thereby saving a bunch more money. Think of the conniption fits commercial seed corn growers would throw, if farmers started planting with their own seed.
I read so many books about peak oil, the state of the world, and environmental degradation that I often glaze over. This one is different. It has authority born from practical experience, a musculature that is immediately engaging, even reassuring. It feels mature. The book is not afraid to catalogue the limitations and failures, even celebrate them, as well as the successes. I like the way the book was crowd sourced. Rob blogged on each Transition Tool and invited feedback and ideas. The participatory aspect brings it alive: here is more than one visionary man’s voice but a whole chorus of voices.
Does energy availability and quality drive economic growth? Or is energy use merely a side effect of growth? Has the relationship between energy and growth changed over time? And what factors have reduced the energy needed to produce a dollar of GDP?
