Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Mark Bittman in NYT: A Food Manifesto for the Future
– ‘The Soil Solution’ Film Preview
– Global Food Prices Hit New Record High
– Obesity Has Nearly Doubled Worldwide Since 1980: Report
– Oysters disappearing worldwide: study
– Peak cocoa
We have always assumed that we can have cheap and available ingredients for our societal “recipe” for how our current economy functions. Now this assumption is coming into question.
– Water: On Women’s Burdens, Humans’ Rights, and Companies’ Profits
– Peak Water: What Is it — and Are We There Yet?
– Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The El Arish explosion
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
He’s finally done it. Barack Obama has taken the tantalizing trail to a notoriously slippery slope. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal last week, the President promised, “federal agencies (will) ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.” In other words, we will have our cake (the environment) and eat it too (for economic growth), and federal agencies will be there to dish it all up.
– “Walk like an Egyptian” – the Egyptian Revolution: Jan 25, 2011 (video)
– Oil falls on unfounded Egypt report, profit-taking
– Civil unrest in Middle East, concern among investors
– We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?
– Clinton rings alarm bells about Middle East – oil reserves running out
– Egypt and the Global Oil Market: Geopolitics Is Back
– Jan Lundberg: Arab World’s Turmoil May Spell Sudden Petrocollapse
Is there a global permaculture revolution rising now? Well, there better be. The other kinds of revolution aren’t pretty. Revolution, I believe, is going to become an increasingly popular word. But often revolutions merely pull things down, without offering meaningful replacements. Over the last few years the level of interest in permaculture has skyrocketed. People are increasingly realizing the world is running out of options, but many are also realizing that this is exactly what permaculture gives to the world – options.
When people list history’s most world-changing inventions, they usually include fire, or guns, or computers. Rarely do people mention something so ubiquitous to us that it has become, literally, invisible – glass and transparent plastic. In the Renaissance, though, when glass began to be sheeted and shaped in quantity and with skill, it created a boom in civilisation; microscopes and telescopes opened up the breadth of the world to science, spectacles doubled men’s intellectual lifetime, and windows allowed for the creation of the first greenhouses.
Would my closet be in danger of unsustainable growth headed for collapse? I could not tell yet whether my new obsession, despite having been a doorway to my intuitive self, would prove to be a distraction from serious spiritual work or money making endeavors. Sometimes you just get what you need.
– NASA climate chief: Labor’s targets a ‘recipe for disaster’ (Australia)
– David Spratt: A carbon tax … and then?
– Mass Tree Deaths Prompt Fears of Amazon ‘Climate Tipping Point’
– Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth
– Climate Communications and Behavior Change
– Reckless practices in the banking and oil industries
We are cultivating a hunter-gatherer garden, modifying but not eradicating the forest ecology. Not so different from what the Wampanoag and Narragansett did, but more suited to our greater numbers. We are growing wildlife and insects and biological diversity. We are bringing wilderness home. We buy less food. We need fewer fields. Who will say to us or our children or our grandchildren in 50 years that this place isn’t wilderness?
In a world where tap water is catching fire near hydrofracking sites from Colorado to New York State, natural gas drillers say it’s not their fault. And when the provocative documentary GASLAND got an Oscar nod in January, the drillers were livid. But whether you believe the film is inspired expose or a putrid pile of propaganda, it may be a villain who doesn’t even make an appearance in the story — resource depletion — that winds up bursting today’s gas bubble.
