Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Secret UK memos expose link between oil firms and invasion of Iraq
– NYT on Hyrdrofracking: Chemicals Were Injected Into Wells, Report Says
– Decision looms on Mekong River dam opposed by conservation groups
– Sasol’s Plan For North American Shale Gas: Turn It Into Diesel
– Big Coal’s Dirty Secret: Breakthrough New Study on Longwall Mining Regulatory Failure and Ruin in Pennsylvania
– Japan: Out of Disaster, a Burst of Enthusiasm for Bicycling
– Nature to Get Legal Rights in Bolivia
– Open-sourced blueprints for civilization (video)
– Leaving It In The Ground
Nobody’s yet accused Tom Donohue of leading a dark cult to enslave the human race like high priest Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But Bill McKibben seems to think that Donohue has cast an evil spell over his country’s young ruler in order to make him do his bidding.
I admit it: in the days of mobile internet and GPS, the concept of posting physical signs as a way of generating community may seem “retro” and outmoded. However, signs are all about locality. Finding resources in the course of our normal daily movements is direct, efficient, and full of the possibilities inherent in the manifold layers of existence that engage when we interact with our living immediate environment.
Modern agriculture would be inconceivable without phosphate fertilisers – and it needs more and more of them. Experts warn of an imminent phosphorus shortage. But not Roland Scholz from the Institute of Environmental Decisions. For him, the main problems are the open phosphorus cycle and non-sustainable resource management. Scholz considers the ecological and social costs of the unsustainable use of the resource to be more problematic than the peak: ‘The environmental damage caused by the extraction and use of phosphorus is still greatly underestimated.’
-The Ghost Park
-Emotional Resilience In Traumatic Times
-Let No Man Say It Cannot Be Done
-What Makes Life Good?
Japan’s oil addiction and nuclear woes have shown the world what the energy status quo doesn’t want ordinary people to see: the social limits of growing energy consumption. Japan is now running on empty. Imported oil not only grows more costly by the day but also buys diminishing economic returns. To pay for imported oil or fund its anointed substitute, nuclear energy, Japan now cultivates a hellish debt load that analysts call a ticking time bomb. Unlike many oil-driven cultures though the Japanese will now fall back on traditions of resilience.
How do you do all this and still conduct a “normal” life? That’s exactly the point: You don’t. At some time within the next few months or years, circumstances will be such that you will relinquish the feeble attempts to hang onto that gluttonous consumption, compete-with-the-Jones’s (or “keep the kids competitive” with the Jones’s kids), go-go-go life rhythm. You’ll begin to get real.
The media, public, and politicians like the optimistic projections by the US DOE/EIA, US Geological Survey (on-shore), and Minerals Management Service (off-shore), but that optimism doesn’t mean their projections and assessments are accurate.
Does the Saudi oil minister’s statement that the oil market is oversupplied make any sense? Saudi production goes down in the face of rising demand, and prices skyrocket, and that shows the market is oversupplied? Wouldn’t prices have dropped drastically during that period if the market had been oversupplied?
-DIY Urban Design, from Guerrilla Gardening to Yarn Bombing (slide show)
-The antidote to apathy (video)
-“Sustainable Development vs Historic Preservation” Is A False Dichotomy
-Projects: Small is Successful (report)
Knowledge stands at the beginning of everything purposefully created. It takes knowledge to build farms and machines, to build firearms, or to steward the land. Having knowledge often means having power. Inequalities in access to knowledge often lead to power-inequalities.
