Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Alex Smith Why are we “the Doomers” for thinking oil is limited? Clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon (“the Peak Shrink”) finds people all over the world are worried about our fossil civilization collapsing. In this hot new speech, she has answers for our own sanity, in a crazy world.
At the ASPO Conference in early October 2007, Robert Hirsch presented his view of the impact of peak oil on the economy and society. While most of his assertions are readily supportable, the historical record is nevertheless perhaps more nuanced and deserves consideration in thinking about future events.
Throughout the United States in urban and suburban settings and in small towns, lawns and massive amounts of non-native flowers, shrubs, and trees dominate the landscape. Such an unhealthy landscape is hardly surprising within an economy obsessed with growth. We lay out grass lawns as fast as possible and throw down landscape arrangements with very little concern for ecological consequences. In contrast, a more thoughtfully designed and ecologically sound landscape fits hand in hand with the framework of a steady state economy.
Americans have difficulty even recognizing loneliness, let alone accepting it as a problem. It’s just not in our world view. We think we’re depressed and that consuming a pill will cure us, but in fact, we may just need more time with people.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that today is November 1, and I’m supposed to be starting the Whole-Life Redesign Project. In fact, I am starting it – I’m taking the opportunity created by my kids being out of the house to move all the food storage around and clean under things and get rid of things (hmmm…should there still be baby cereal in the back of my food storage, given that the baby turned 5 on Friday…ummm….) and otherwise make a giant mess in my house in the general hope of making it better afterwards.
-Medieval Italian Town Blows Hot On Wind Power
-The Humanitarian Water and Food Award
-Navajos Hope to Shift From Coal to Wind and Sun
-Pennsylvania Township Declares Freedom from Fracking
“Financial crisis is going to make resource depletion much harder to address, because we are not going to have the money to replace highly energy-dependent infrastructure. Doing so would be staggeringly expensive and would take a very long time even if we did have the money. As it is, we will be forced to conserve both money and resources by going without.”
– Soup swaps help stock your freezer and foster friendships
– The mellow Monbiot: How to make apple juice that doesn’t cost the Earth
– Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone”) on Social Capital and Happiness
– Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood talks about livable communities
– A conservative vision: bring back the streetcars
– Cable cars: back to the future to help combat peak oil?
– Electrification and Expansion of Railroads as a Response to Peak Oil
– Can space tourism be green?
– Goodwill and compromise: Nagoya biodiversity deal restores faith in UN
– The UK’s great forest sell-off
– Bat disease threatens ecological catastrophe
– Growing Calls for Moratorium on Climate Geoengineering
– Monbiot: The Tea Party movement: deluded and inspired by billionaires
– NYT: Coal Industry Spending to Sway Next Congress
– New book confirms greed, power and cover-up are BP trademarks
Suburbia is a favorite whipping boy, especially when the topic of peak oil or energy descent comes up. It was a bad idea, a short-sighted endeavor made even more tragic by our then less complete understanding of energy and environmental constraints. Everyone take ten seconds and think about how terrible suburbia is.
Great. Now drop it. Suburbia happened. Is there value in articulating exactly why it was a bad idea? Yes, especially to the extent that we should stop building more of it in its current form. But that’s not the conversation I’m interested in having. The question we should focus on is what to do about it. And the answers, perhaps not surprisingly, can be easily divided into three categories: do nothing and pray; abandon it for something better, transform it.
