Rob Hopkins

Tim Kasser on Consumerism, Psychology, Transition and Resilience. Part Two

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Here is Part Two of an interview I did with Tim Kasser a couple of weeks ago while he was at Schumacher College. He is a psychologist, author of the seminal High Price of Materialism, as well as other useful writings such as a great chapter in the State of the World Report 2009 about consumerism and climate change. The interview raises some fascinating areas for research and thoughts about Transition and psychology, and I think you’re going to enjoy this one….

The US in a high emissions scenario

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I ended up spending much of my weekend going through Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, and I have to say I’m pretty gutted by the experience. The report is written by a large collaboration of 30 or so authors, and a slew more reviewers, drawn from a variety of US agencies, with NOAA as the lead. So it’s in the character of an official US government assessment of the science. It seems worth while really understanding humanity’s best guess about what the situation is.

Growth versus development

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One of the authors of Limits to Growth, talks about growth, peak oil, and the possibility of collapse at the World Resources Forum. He says: “The current growth in population and in material use cannot continue–absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions. The longer we wait to do social measures, like birth control, or voluntary simplicity, the more likely it will be that physical measures will cause this decline.”

Playing to Win Universal School Gardens

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When I started volunteering this winter as a garden science teacher with Washington Youth Garden, entering one 3rd-grade classroom every week to help instill knowledge and enthusiasm by the children for the wonders of nature, I had no idea that this experience would inspire me to initiate a national call for Universal School Gardens.

Commentary: Drawing the lower and upper boundaries of future oil supply

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The oil supply challenge is often summarized in terms of the production volume equivalent of Saudi-Arabia’s that needs to be replaced. This popular metric is based on in-depth studies of global decline rates that show a decline range between 4.5 and 6 percent over the current 73 million barrels of crude oil produced per day.

 

ODAC Newsletter – Feb 26

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The world is heading for a renewed oil crunch as soon as 2013 due to shrinking production capacity and growing demand in the emerging markets, according to reports from two investment banks. Both BofA Merril Lynch and Barclays Capital conclude non OPEC production is close to peak, meaning a shift back to reliance on OPEC for new capacity…