Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Matthew Wild The race is on: can we extract the last remnants of Western oil from such unlikely places as the ocean floor before the global economy picks up enough to test out the hypothesis that supplies have already peaked?
The BP oil gusher should remind us that our civilization relies on unseen, not very well understood forces, especially energy and the environment, for our day-to-day economies.
With both Labour and the Conservatives attempting to appeal to left-leaning voters by encouraging the use of co-ops to provide public services, interest in these once-fashionable methods of organisation has been reignited. But are they microcosms of the democratic society that we crave?
Jan Spencer didn’t stop with a permaculture makeover of his suburban home in Eugene, Oregon. Now he’s taking on the neighborhood! Jan Spencer didn’t stop with a permaculture makeover of his suburban home in Eugene, Oregon. Now he’s taking on the neighborhood! As a result, his neighborhood association is teaming up with city programs like Neighborhood Watch and Emergency Response to empower neighbors to work together. They’re transforming lawns and abandoned lots into edible gardens, and sharing knowledge about energy efficiency, permaculture, and preparedness. These grass roots endeavors help people feel more secure in their homes, because they’re connected with neighbors they can rely on.
Last month in The Daly News, I promised to update readers on the pending establishment of GDP National Park in Montana. First I had to re-designate another acronym. “BP” became Beyond Probabilities due to the certainty of environmental disasters occurring while economic growth is the policy goal. Sure enough, the past month has seen an outpouring of news on various spills, leaks, and blowouts. Reporters’ antennae are tuned in to such mishaps in the wake of the Deepwater spill.
Josh Fox’s film Gasland has stirred up a lot of controversy over the environmental damage caused by shale gas drilling. Shale gas reservoir rock lies many thousands of feet below the surface, with the depth depending on the location. In order to get the gas to flow up to the wellhead, operators drill down to the shale rock layer, and then apply a process called hydraulic fracturing to “open up” the rock.
Many energy experts contend natural gas is the ideal fuel as the world makes the transition to renewable energy. But since much of that gas will come from underground shale, potentially at high environmental cost, it would be far better to skip the natural gas phase and move straight to massive deployment of solar and wind power.
In this series’ previous post, we discussed making wine at home as a possible solution to wine availability in an age of declining cheap energy. In this the final post of this series, we will discuss in some detail the advantages of home grape growing and wine making. Along the way, we’ll mention organic viticulture methods and briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of specific grape varieties that might be considered for a home vineyard.
“Everybody gets peak oil in some sense because, you know, what’s BP doing drilling in a mile of water at the Macondo well, or planning to develop the Tiber field which is much deeper below the ocean floor? Or for that matter, what’s Suncor doing in the tar sands? We’re there because that’s all that’s left. They may not want to articulate it as peak oil, but their actions speak louder than their words.”
A roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-Venezuela continues nationalizations
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
The future most people are living into is beginning to disappear. The financial crisis threw the first punch, but oil depletion will deliver the knockout blow. The moment people realize that the society they have known their whole life can no longer function the same way without the energy provided by oil, it will become glaringly apparent that the future will be very, very different.
Boris Yelnikoff is a self-described “Nobel-level thinker” who feels beseiged by “microbes,” one of his many terms for people who don’t see “the big picture.” And, what’s the big picture? He tells us in the first five minutes of Woody Allen’s latest movie, “Whatever Works,” when he says, “On the whole, I’m sorry to say, we’re a failed species.”
