April 1 round-up
– Home Grown Swiss Spaghetti
– “Everything is amazing and nobody is happy”
– McDonald’s scraps composting program because food won’t decompose
Staff
Say it loud: I’m childfree and I’m proud
Here’s the dirty little secret that we’re never supposed to say in mixed company: There are a lot of perks to childfree living, not to mention a lot of green good that comes from bringing fewer beings onto a polluted and crowded planet. [Also, Stephanie Mills video on her decision to remain childless]
World facing oil pricing uncertainty – “triple digit” oil predicted
At an International Energy Forum meeting in Cancun, Mexico, the world’s energy ministers and oil producers are trying to agree on ways to prevent oil price spikes in the immediate future – although at least one economist is predicting “triple-digit” oil later this year.
After Copenhagen: How can we save the world?
The December fiasco in Copenhagen has posed a major challenge to the left, indeed to everyone who wants to defend our world and humanity.
What works: 98.6 degrees
I invested a lot of time into finding our post-carbon landing pad. I tend to side with realtors on this one: location, location, location.
Pitching Manure
As a boy and younger man, I rejoiced when tractor front end loaders and skid loaders came into vogue to lift the manure and relieve us of long hours of manual labor. But there is something to be said for forking manure by hand. For some reason, it inspires philosophical meditation if you are alone, and philosophical conversation if you have company.
‘Britain’s Appalachia’ engineers a brighter post-coal future
The sparkling, sanitized waterfront of Cardiff, Wales, reveals barely a hint of the country’s grimy industrial past. Where one of the busiest ports anywhere once shipped Welsh coal out into the world, a complex of upscale shops, pubs, and restaurants now dominates the area. Out are the sailors, brothels, and seedy watering holes. In are tourist-friendly pubs, fusion restaurants with names like ffresh, and a circus carousel. The locally favored Brains brewery (“People who know beer have Brains”) has survived nearby.
Courtship, Cooperation & Negotiation: What Darwin Got Wrong about Human Emotions
Many social critics in the Peak Oil community are fond of saying “Men do what they do driven by the desire to please women.” But what if that notion is just plain wrong? Is there power in the narrative that redirects our energies away from helpful pursuits believing that such strivings are “against the laws of nature?”
Copper Peak
I found it fairly easy to model gold production both for the world and the main producers in my 2009 post The gold peak, easier to model than the oil peak (part II). In this post, I have tried to do the same for copper production.
Shale Gas Shenanigans
In the years leading up to the crash of the Housing Bubble in 2006 and the subsequent financial meltdown in 2008, there was no shortage of people telling us America’s continued prosperity was not in jeopardy. All that talk was nonsense, of course. In 2010, the situation is eerily similar in the natural gas business. We are told that we have 100 years of supply, implying that we will still be producing cheap shale gas long after the oceans are devoid of fish. As in the pre-Housing Bubble days, a few skeptics are crying foul. There are underground rumblings that things are not on the up & up with shale gas.
Deep thought – Mar 31
-The Tree That Changed the World
-Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?
-America’s Potemkin Village
-How slums can save the planet
Sustainability is the new American Dream (2010 post-recession consumer study)
Today’s consumer is emerging from the recession with a radically new definition of the American Dream and a renewed sense in their own resourcefulness and priorities according to a just released marketing study.
