Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Alex Kennedy For only one more week as a part of our SummerFest online Film Festival, the award winning documentary film “The Age of Stupid” will be available to watch for free at SnagFilms.com or in embedded form at Energy Bulletin.
And so we have it. At noon today (PST), we saw the predictable collapse of Democrat resolve to address the most serious crisis of our times…We can point fingers at Washington, DC, but we should be pointing them at ourselves.
Much of the content of Deconstructing Dinner revolves primarily around the practice of agriculture; from examining the downsides and challenges of current agricultural systems to the opportunities and alternatives to those challenges. However, most of those alternatives that we examine are ‘agri’cultural alternatives, and so from time to time it’s important to step back and deconstruct that very focus… asking the question; “Are ‘agri’cultural alternatives an adequate response if they’re rooted within that same ‘agri’cultural box”? On this episode we listen to a talk Toby Hemenway delivered in February 2010 when he suggested that ‘sustainable agriculture’ might very well be a misnomer.
Those who learn about Peak Oil, climate change, and economic hard times show a series of short-lived symptoms of stress over several months, but these are normal and expected reactions to these stunning findings. Roughly 50-60% of adults in North America are exposed to traumatic events, but only 5% to 10% develop maladjusted PTSD and related problems. What sorts of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors promote the development of longer-term traumatic reactions?
-The Impending Peak and Decline of Petroleum Production: an Underestimated Challenge for Conservation of Ecological Integrity
-How Much Does a Gallon of Gas Cost?
-Offshore Oil Drilling and Hurricane Risks
-BP’s Tony Hayward ‘set to step down’
An amazing thing has happened. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China has now surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest energy consumer.
Cafés are full in Athens, and droves of tourists still visit the Parthenon and go island-hopping in the fabled Aegean. But beneath the summery surface, there is confusion, anger, and despair as this country plunges into its worst economic crisis in decades.
Food production is moving toward decentralization, and that is good news. With all the toxins and varmints and contrary weather and disintegration of the economy, our best bet, maybe our only bet, is to spread out the risks of food production to the largest number of people possible and that is happening.
Naresh Giangrande is the co-founder of the world’s first Transition Town, in Totnes, UK. The goal of Transition Towns is to transition from oil dependence to community resilience. He was visiting in Vermont last week, and we’ll here what he had to say about how the project is going back in England, plus what he’s learned from other Transition Towns around the world.
-As demand grows for locally raised meat, farmers turn to mobile slaughterhouses
-Prince of Wales launches new fund to save the countryside
-AgriLife Research Economist: Manure Provides Higher Returns Than Chemical Fertilizers
-AM Launches Allotment Report
-Food Conference on food production, human health and landscape health
-Revenge of the Weed
-Raids are increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs—here are 5 tips for surviving one
Export of natural gas from Russia to the EU is decisive for the EU’s energy security and a decisive link for the future is the gas pipeline North Stream that will be laid along the bed of the Baltic Sea from a landfall in Vyborg outside St Petersburg to Lybmin in Germany. The pipeline is 1,200,000 meters long and its diameter is 1.2 meters. Using that information I estimate that every pipe segment is 10 meters long. That means that they will weld together 120,000 segments.
This pair of items will illustrate BP’s extraordinary confidence during its planning for the Macondo well. The first item consists of selected quotes from BP’s Initial Exploration Plan (Feb. 2009). The second item is a review of the recent presentation by two veteran drilling specialists from Shell. The primary purpose of their presentation was to contrast the differences between the way Shell designs its deepwater wells and the way BP designed the Macondo well. An underlying theme of both items is the fact that the various aspects of the BP plan were conducted under the oversight of senior industry administration and federal regulators.
