Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Sharon Astyk If we are to make by necessity or desire, a shift to a lower input society, it is necessary to take the lessons learned in other lower-input societies and ask the question: what are the major food security issues likely to be?
In a Brookings Institution presentation in early 2009, UCSD economist James Hamilton suggested that the government think of using the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to counter high oil prices. Although the suggestion failed to gain traction at the time, recent upheaval in the Middle East is once again putting the future of the SPR back on the agenda. Should the reserve be drawn to cool oil prices which have surged on the back of lost Libyan crude output? I must admit I was somewhat cool to the idea when Hamilton published his Brookings paper, but his suggestions often prove prescient and therefore deserve closer examination.
The near-religious belief that economic growth depends not on energy and resources, but solely on increasing innovation, efficiency, trade, and division of labor, can sometimes lead economists to say silly things.
In the sphere of disaster recovery there is a term that we can expect to hear a lot in the coming months, even years — “build back better”.
One question that needs to be asked is – do the happiness proponents and their public spokespersons know what they’re doing?
Despite soaring rhetoric and some promising proposals, President Obama is repeating the same mistakes that have doomed U.S. energy policy to failure for 40 years. Until Obama and Congress finally put a true price on the fossil fuels America consumes, the U.S. will continue its addiction to foreign oil and domestic coal.
This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation for urban agriculture in the nation. The new legislation has amended the zoning code to allow agricultural activities in all parts of the city, as well as defining the parameters by which urban agriculturists can sell their products.
– Peak oil special on ABC (Australia) with IEA’s Fatih Birol, Chris Skrebowski and Jeremy Leggett
– What’s Driving Gas Prices (interview with ex-CEO of Shell John Hofmeister)
– A short history of oil: 1900 to 2010
One no longer needs to go through the long and often arduous process of becoming a “person-in-the-foreign-culture” in order to spout off in public as an expert about its core realities. The new discourses about the other are predicated, more often than not, on an underlying belief in the essentially normative and universal nature of US cultural, political and economic behaviors.
Local initiatives like the Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan aren’t enough to tackle the climate crisis. We need national and international regulations requiring deep, scientifically grounded emission reductions, and we need strict systems of enforcement. But before that can happen, people need to see that getting off fossil fuels isn’t a dour punishment. Done right, it can be a kind of gift. Oakland, once again, is leading the way.
A new law expected to pass in Bolivia mandates a fundamental ecological reorientation of the nation’s economy and society.
– Is the Tide Turning Against Arab Freedom?
– Lester Brown: This will be the Arab world’s next battle (water and population)
– Iraqi Oil: What is hidden inside the Oil Contracts from the 1st and 2nd Bid Rounds?
