Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Janaia Donaldson Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown, makes plain the dire situation we’re in as declining oil supplies fail to meet demand. He notes there are no easy “supply side” solutions (like substitute fuels): we must reduce demand, initially through conservation and efficiency. Julian Darley, president of Post Carbon Institute observes that while personal action is very important, individuals can only do so much.
One response to the global crisis that is gaining enthusiastic momentum is the Transition Towns movement. Jennifer Gray, a pioneer in the Transition Initiative in the UK and cofounder of Transition US, describes it as “a community-led response to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change. It’s … positive, pro-active [and] engages the whole community in building resilience into their world.”
Population Australia’s ‘big threat’
Japan workers urged: Go home and multiply
Peak oil? Global warming? No, it’s ‘Boomsday!’
Three generations of our family have worked, played, fought (the only verb that properly describes our hockey games), picnicked, swum, camped out, made out, and celebrated holidays around The Pond. Most of all it has been a haven where any of us could come when the need to be alone hit us, to sit and slip out of the consciousness of self and into the arms of a little wilderness that thrums and hums with enough activity to keep a naturalist occupied for a lifetime or two. It is not an accident that Thoreau gained inspiration for his best nature writing on the shores of a pond.
Utility Shut-Off Deaths Begin
For a spiffier electric grid: $11 billion
DOE report paints bleak picture of our electric future
A weekly update including:
– Prices
– Curbing emissions and consumption
Price Trends: Gasoline and CPI Are Twins
Davos confronted by peak of distrust
Putin and Wen, ‘Cocky’ No More, Pay Davos Price for Recession
It is clear that oil depletion will overwhelm our economies and global warming may overwhelm much more But for people who are newly unemployed, impoverished, homeless and don’t have enough to eat, the President and Congress must hold out the promise of near-term help.
Prospects for constructing a pipeline that would make Europe less dependent on Russian gas and Gazprom’s disputes with Ukraine seem only marginally better after the conference.
Russian oil production reaches its peak
EU spending spree brings carbon capture closer to reality
UK gets biofuels research centre
Britain’s energy industry is nosediving into a dark, uncertain future
Wind power set to decline under Obama?
Reactivating Nuclear Reactors for the Fight against Climate Change
Advice to Pres. Obama (#6): Beware the Hungry Ghosts
Most current efforts at social change, in and out of the peak oil community, take their direction from ideologies that claim to point the way to a better world. Is an approach drawing on the insights of human ecology potentially a better gamble?
