Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rebecca Burgess Meet Kacy Dapp, a modern day artisan whose life has been consciously crafted to balance the needs of the individual with the reality of the times we live. Her personal passions are carved from a value system of self-sufficiency, community building, and a quest for simplicity.
In Extraenvironmentalist #24 we speak with reformed lawyer, business thinker and blogger Patrick Andrews about how the failure of business to understand our ecological reality presents an opportunity to introduce new business structures that can prevent groupthink and allow responsible stewardship. We discuss how businesses that seek only profit are failing to actualize the power that business transactions have to transform our world. Can the failure of our economy allow us to reimagine business?
-Why an understanding of money creation is essential to financial reform
-This economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’
-The real recession never ended
-Functional deficits for dysfunctional America
A weekly review including:- Oil and the Global Economy
-Libya
-Gasoline prices
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
My final week as the director of CASSE was beyond belief. It included oddities such as bear poop, a speeding ticket, a discussion of steady state economics on horseback, and the juxtaposition of ostentatious consumption (an iconic billionaire’s vacation mansion) and humble sharing (an iconic poet/philosopher’s willingness to impart his lifelong wisdom). It also offered an opportunity to pause and reflect on humanity’s predicament, a reflection that produced feelings of hope for the future. All the while, I felt like the dumbest guy in the room.
After I published in “Cassandra’s Legacy” a post titled “The renewable revolution” I was surprised at discovering that many of the commenters reacted negatively to it, taking for granted the fact that renewables, in the form of photovoltaics or wind, “have a low EROEI” and, as a consequence, are unable to exist without a subsidy from fossil fuels. This view has its origins in the 1990s, when it was commonplace to state that “A renewable plant cannot provide enough energy to repay the energy needed to build the plant.” That is, the EROEI of renewables was supposed to be smaller than one.
Perhaps the “low EROEI” of renewables was true in the 1990s, but it is not true any longer.
Daniel Yergin, whom the media have consistently designated as one of the world’s premier experts on energy matters–and who has a consistent track record of predicting higher oil production levels–has been very visible of late, especially with a in the Wall Street Journal, focused on why concerns about Peak Oil are misplaced. I thought that it would be useful to review how some of Mr. Yergin’s prior predictions regarding oil prices, production and exports in the 2004/2005 time frame have turned out, now that we have several years of post-2005 price, production and export data. Following is a brief summary.
In Transition we’re taking part in something which could lead to enormous change by relying on everyone’s inherent creativity, commitment and generosity…Whether or not Friedman is right that only a crisis can produce real change, there’s no doubt that we’re facing one now. Transition is responding to that crisis and showing the power and potential of seeding and growing alternative ways of being.
We’re at the end of growth. Growth of the economy, of consumption, of wealth. That this would happen isn’t news to those who’ve followed the writings of Meadows, Heinberg, and many others. What’s different now is that it may have actually arrived. I’d like to briefly look at our current situation in this context and synthesize the various ideas we explored in previous posts.
Joseph Tainter and Tadeusz Patzek are authors of a soon-to-be-released book called”Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma.” This book is not simply the story of the Gulf oil spill (although it does tell this story, quite well). Tainter and Patzek use the story of Gulf oil spill as the background for discussing the energy-complexity spiral, and its relationship to this accident.
Even as symptoms of peak oil begin to manifest themselves, the public remains ignorant that stringency in oil supplies lies at the heart of them (though peak oil is admittedly part of a complex web of problems related to our broader energy and resource use). Why is this so?
From the long view the level of oil production on a graph in this decade may well look like a peak. But from closer in, as we experience it day to day, month to month, and year to year, production may seem to be on a long, bumpy plateau.
– Occupy Wall Street: FAQ
– The Bankers and the Revolutionaries (NYT’s Nicholas Kristof gives it a thumbs up)
– Keep It Simple, Keep It Real
– Declaration of the Occupation of New York City (official statement)
– A Tale of Two Rallies
– Coverage by Guardian, BBC, NY Times
– Young activist covers Occupy Boston
