Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jeremy I’ve really enjoyed the last three books to come out of the Transition Books stable, so I was pleased to see the latest instalment was out: Local Money – how to make it happen in your community. It’s another big square book, following Local Food, and it’s got the same practical, inspiring, can-do approach. This time, it’s all about creating local money networks.
Fossil fuels are currently an essential component in the global economy and the growth of the human population. The fossil fuel production projections from this study suggest that many of the IPCC fossil fuel projections appear overly optimistic. Based on the assumed URR values, it is predicted that global fossil fuel production will peak before 2030. For this reason, it is imperative that appropriate action be taken as early as possible to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel decline, to avoid energy shortages in the near future.
-Andrew Nikiforuk Is Tyee’s First Writer in Residence
-Unist’ot’en leadership takes to the streets to assert their rights and stop the Enbridge pipeline
-Powering up Canadian prosperity
-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.
Many American cities—mostly in the Midwest and Northeast—have seen serious continuing shrinkage in recent decades and are now beginning to face up to it. A few have tentatively tried to craft measures that accept the persistence, even permanence, of their smaller size. As these cities search for answers, one of the few models they can turn to comes from, of all places, the buffalo country of the Great Plains states. There, communities that fought population decline for decades are now preparing for the realities of a smaller, but not necessarily worse, future. Through our work with these communities over many years, we believe that they have experience that can help guide shrinking cities in what we have called “smart decline.”
Let’s face it, we, the civilized, educated, enlightened part of humanity like things to be straight. Let primitive tribesmen live in picturesque and practical round huts–we require abstract boxes of steel and concrete clad in plate glass, with plenty of nice straight lines, true vertical and horizontal planar surfaces and lots of ninety-degree angles to please the eye.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-Demand projections
-Briefs
-Quote of the week
Even if the good times were going to roll again, in the sense of our having more consumables, how well has that worked as a formula for happiness? And if it turns out that we have even less stuff in the future, can we find a source of felicity other than the mall? The good news is that alternatives are available. The more challenging news? Alternatives may emerge not where we normally look, but as the hidden complements of some of our dominant virtues.
If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and just know that you’re not alone. In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.
Lloyd’s hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business. It seems to me that this new report gets quite a few things right, but it misleads in the direction of thinking things are better than they really are, when it comes to timing and alternatives.
