Energy companies – Sept 9
-Shifting Alliances Define Energy Debate
-British energy firm in the dock over Amazon project
-Arizona firm in deal to spread sun power to China
Staff
Deep thought – Sept 9
-The beauty and terror of science
-Human Resource Use: Timing and Implications for Sustainability
-Crisis and Hope
Peak oil, prices, and supplies – Sept 9
-Oil Spin
-Oil still has us over a barrel
-Maribynong Peak Oil Contingency Plan
Transport – Sept 9
-Wanderlusting No. 4: Copenhagen Cycle Culture
-Zipcar – The best new idea in business
-A Hitch For Rail Riders: Getting To Final Destination
Transition dialogue – Sept 9
-The Transition Towns Movement; its huge significance and a friendly criticism
-Responding to Ted Trainer’s Friendly Criticism of Transition
The Labor Day Blues
One national moment-of-nausea this Labor Day weekend struck Sunday morning, when CNN’s John King led off his 10 a.m. State of the Union show with a valentine to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, on her becoming anchor of that network’s evening news. (This was the most important news of the week???) The old legacy networks have taken on the role of dishing out reassurance to an anxious and insecure public as job number one, and the subtext of the Sawyer lede was that a Mommy figure would soon be in place to soothe the multitudes even as the nation free-falls into bankruptcy and disorder.
Health Care in a Phantom Democracy
Low cost health care, or rather medical care as it really is constituted, is not a benefit if healing is not the purpose. “Getting better” perhaps — through treatments purchased — is what’s hoped for, even for the rich. In their case, life is sometimes extended through great expense, but is it worth living hooked up to machines? Democracy has come to mean the poor too are on multiple legal drugs, with side-effects requiring still more drugs.
Peak Oil – Economy and Climate on the path down from the peak
On any ordinary day your body temperature is 37 oC while the world’s average temperature is 15 oC. This means that we must supply our bodies with fuel (i.e. energy) so that we do not cool down and therefore die. Our biological engines require the same amount of energy no matter whether we are rich or poor…The primary requirement for all of us is that we feed our bodies 2,500 kilocalories per day. This means that the world’s 6.7 billion inhabitants need to eat a large amount of food…
Marshall Auerback: “Many years of economic stagnation” interview: excerpt
…I don’t know if Baker’s statement reflects an “eternal truth”, but oil is undoubtedly a very important component of the global economy and energy (along with food) is a key non-discretionary essential without which we couldn’t sustain our current standard of living. Unlike Europe, the US is still addicted to cheap oil, so the impact of price spikes tends to be felt much more acutely here than it does in the EU or UK…
Scale
Within the span of a couple generations, we abandoned a durable, finely textured, life-affirming set of living arrangements characterized by self-sufficient family farms intermixed with small towns that provided commerce, services, and culture. Worse yet, we traded that model for a coarse-scaled arrangement wholly dependent on ready access to cheap fossil fuels.
Deconstructing Dinner: The Local Grain Revolution X (Retail Supported Agriculture? / Sprouting Grain)
What is Retail Supported Agriculture? As far as the North American local food movement is concerned, it’s not a concept that has yet been coined in any notable way. The Kootenay Grain CSA (community supported agriculture) project located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia is now changing that.
An Offbeat Way To Make Good Hay
An intrepid new garden farmer has been asking me lately about the details of making hay. I can tell by his questions that he is very intelligent but has never experienced the culture of the hay field. Until now, it had never occurred to me how difficult the situation has to be for him. I was unceremoniously handed a hay fork about seventy years ago, and in a sense never let go.
