Tom Whipple

What could a post-growth society look like and how should we prepare for it?

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It seems obvious to say that common ways of thinking about growth and development among the population of the industrial countries assumes that peoples in poor countries would want to develop along a similar path to what has happened in the industrial world – for this is the direction of “progress” and reason. That is, after all, why they are called “developing countries”. However, for indigenous peoples “development” and growth has actually been a long history of colonial exploitation, suffering, racism, the oppression of women, not to mention the destruction of “Mother Earth”.

President Obama’s (hoped for) “Amaze Speech”

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Fellow Americans, this evening I have a special message for you. It’s an unprecedented and surprising message, but ultimately it will resonate with your common sense, good will, and patriotic spirit. It turns out that the recessionary cloud we’re under does have an extremely valuable silver lining. I know; it sounds like something only a politician would say, but wait. I think you’ll be surprised to hear my explanation.

A nation-sized battery

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As we look to transition away from fossil fuels, solar and wind are attractive options. Key factors making them compelling are: the inexhaustibility of the source with use (i.e., renewable); their low carbon footprint; and the independence that small-scale distribution can foster (I’ll never put a nuclear plant on my roof, even if it would make me the coolest physicist ever!).

Nature bats last: Notes on revolution and resistance, revelation and redemption

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My title is ambitious and ambiguous: revolution and resistance (which tend to be associated with left politics), revelation and redemption (typically associated with right-wing religion), all framed by a warning about ecological collapse. My goal is to connect these concepts to support an argument for a radical political theology — let me add to the ambiguity here — that can help us claim our power at the moment when we are more powerless than ever, and identify the sources of hope when there is no hope.

Norway’s mad killer, private justice and the future of the state

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Vigilante, klan, family and private justice, all are the path to barbarism today just as surely as they were when Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia. I will stand on the side of civilization for as long as I am able. The only alternative I see is what philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all.”

Book review: Beyond Oil Bust: Investigating Oil Economics, Society and Geopolitics

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In their recently published book ‘Beyond Oil Bust’ two researchers of the University of Nicosia [Cyprus], James Leigh and Predrag Vukovic analyze the dramatic changes in the supply and demand of one of the most important sources of energy, oil, and they point to possible negative repercussions for the geopolitical map of the world. The authors first of all analyze the role of oil in the world economy starting from the first years of the twentieth century till today.

U.S. shale gas: Less abundance, higher cost

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Shale gas has become an important and permanent feature of U.S. energy supply. Daily production has increased from less than 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day (bcfd) in 2003, when the first modern horizontal drilling and fracture stimulation was used, to almost 20 bcfd by mid-2011. There are, however, two major concerns at the center of the shale gas revolution. Despite impressive production growth, it is not yet clear that these plays are commercial at current prices because of the high capital costs of land and drilling and completion. Reserves and economics depend on estimated ultimate recoveries based on hyperbolic, or increasingly flattening, decline profiles that predict decades of commercial production. With only a few years of production history in most of these plays, this model has not been shown to be correct, and may be overly optimistic.

ODAC Newsletter – Aug 5

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An eleventh hour political deal on the US debt crisis this week turned out to be just a stepping stone in the ongoing economic and fiscal crisis. By Thursday markets were plunging again on fears that Italy or Spain may default, and on the growing anticipation that the US may be returning to recession after Q1 GDP growth numbers were revised down from 1.9% to 0.4%.