Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Shepherd Bliss Widespread bans on at least gas-operated leaf blowers are likely in the future. But why wait until gasoline prices go up the predicted $5 to $10 a gallon? Since we do not really need such blowers–given that brooms and rakes do fine—why waste our precious declining petroleum supplies and further cause chaotic climate change?
Comparing the cost and results of the Manhattan and Apollo projects with that of US energy research since 1975 — it’s not a pretty picture. There is widespread confidence among Americans that we need not prepare for peak oil because a crash program will produce a breakthough solution. This appears unrealistic, unless we wish to trust our luck.
We need public policies that help people become happier — things like national health care, social security, and shorter work hours. But we also need to discover things we can do as individuals
This past week at the Transition Network Conference 2010 in the UK, the speaker Stoneleigh rocked everyone’s paradigm with her talk “Making Sense of the Financial Crisis in the Era of Peak Oil”.
Last September I attended the Prairie Festival at The Land Institute in Salinas, Kansas. At the institute, Wes Jackson and his colleagues are undertaking one of the most important agricultural research projects in the world. They have gone back to first principles and are breeding new grain crops that are perennials rather than annuals…They have taken the long view.
For a whole host of reasons – demographic, economic, energy-linked and environmental, giving care is going to be a more important job in the future. More of us will have to care for one another, where institutions could once do so. More of us will have to rely on people we know, rather than our savings. More of us face the terrible fragility of those questions – who will care for me, how will I manage to care for them?
A new narrative reverberating in right-wing political circles blames the Deepwater Horizon disaster on a favorite scapegoat: the federal government.
Hurricane Alex, the first hurricane of the season, hampered the Macondo oil well disaster clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and resulted in the precautionary closure of 25% of crude oil production in the area. Reports indicate however that it didn’t cause any delay to the drilling of relief wells on which so much hope rests…
On the morning of the 18th of May, the prime minister and deputy prime minister held a meeting in the cabinet room of 10 Downing Street. This event – occurring as it did on the morning before Parliament re-assembled following a government-changing election – brought together state and community leaders to discuss the new coalition’s Big Society programme.
But here’s what I really want to say, as a psychologist, to all of you: Sociopaths lack something 95% of us have: They lack a conscience. They lack the capacity to feel empathy, to feel guilt, to feel bad about doing bad. When you lack Vitamin E(mpathy), you hate people who have it. You walk around with an expensive suit and you have a black card to pay for an expensive dinner, and you buy and sell people and marry the hottest mates around, but it’s all for nothing. You can’t attach to other people, even though you know it is something you should want to do.
-Exclusive: Was disregard for industry standards on BP rig worse than we thought?
-Deep Water Oil The Final Frontier
-Senate Panel Ends Liability Limits for Offshore Spills
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Deepwater Horizon
