Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
James Howard Kunstler Author, blogger and social critic James Howard Kunstler opens up on two circumstances he sees running neck and neck “that are going to put us out of business as an advanced industrial civilization”—the “fiasco” in banking, money and finance and the unfolding “energy predicament.” He explains that the crises are really all about “capital” and that we need to look at how wealth has been accumulated and deployed for productive purposes.
– CNBC anchor implies US must support dictators to keep cheap oil flowing
– Oil prices climb on unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Yemen
– Gail Tverberg: What’s behind Egypt’s Problems? How do they affect others?
Twenty six (26) units of fossil fuel energy goes into producing one (1) unit of food energy in the form of beef. While fossil fuels provide us with tremendous labor efficiency, we can no longer say we have an energy efficient way to make food since food production is now an energy sink.
– One Commodity to Rule Them All: Oil (WikiLeaks cables)
– The Will to Drill
– Cuba doesn’t share our oil concerns
Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi hinted this week that OPEC might move to increase oil production to satisfy rising demand. Both OPEC and the IEA are anticipating demand growth this year, and with Brent crude close to $100/barrel the pressure on OPEC is growing…Many of the OPEC nations face serious threats of their own as they struggle to generate jobs for their growing populations. No doubt the house of Saud and other OPEC leaders will be casting a wary eye at the recent uprising in Tunisia and the riots in Egypt.
Suddenly, with the turn of the decade and the latest World Economic Forum opening, we’re awash with projections of how the world economy might look in 2050, produced by economists, and each as implausible as the other.
Certainly conservationists of all persuasions should be more vocal about challenging the growth machine that is chewing up wild nature. But for Murray to turn his wrath on protected areas, and suggest that preserving places for wildlife and wild processes to thrive unmolested is futile or even counterproductive as a conservation strategy, is a dangerously misguided idea. I hope it will be rejected by everyone who cares about the health of the biosphere.
If humans were smart, we would bet on our ignorance.
In a brief but revealing cable included in the vast WikiLeaks “CableGate” trove and published last week by the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, US embassy officials report that the Nordic nation opted to divest its sovereign wealth holdings from companies violating “humanitarian principles” and “fundamental ethical norms.”
As we suffer under the cosh of the Tories’ austerity, many are casting envious eyes across the Atlantic and asking whether our government could, like the US government, create money to help our economy out of the many and mutually reinforcing problems we are now facing. The answer seems to be ‘no’ and ‘yes’.
The co-originator of permaculture is upbeat on the prospects for apiculture as a sustainable and resilient livelihood in the future. Bees are livestock that free range up to 2km from home across all boundaries and barriers, harvesting nectar and pollen sources using their own amazing intelligence and communication. Honey is a compact, self preserving store of wealth that makes an excellent tradeable surplus in any economy that might survive or emerge in an energy descent future.
Recent media tributes to the late Jack Lalanne edited out his historical context with an alacrity reminiscent of those Stalin-era Politburo photos from which former members kept disappearing. Behind this erasure of history lies a forgotten social movement with some surprising lessons to teach today’s peak oil scene.
