Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff Energy secretary pick argues for new fuel sources
A Past President’s Advice to Obama: Act With Haste
Obama starts filling energy team
Hurdles, opportunities for ‘green’ stimulus
Browner to get the nod as Obama’s top energy and climate adviser
Christine Todd Whitman talks about greening the GOP and running the EPA
Stiglitz: Capitalist fools
Price Trends: Gasoline and CPI Are Twins
The attack of the Invisible Hand
Netherlands Plans Massive Road-Pricing Scheme
The transportation story at the heart of a history-making crisis
Traffic Accidents Top Cause Of Fatal Child Injuries
John Michael Greer has written a fascinating and engaging, but also contradictory and perplexing account of how he sees the industrial age ending. His primary thesis is that collapse will not come as a sudden, abrupt End Of Days or Die Off scenario.
Following on last week’s discussion of the lessons of evolution, the Archdruid explores the need for organic processes in preparing for the end of the industrial age, and the value of dissensus — the deliberate avoidance of consensus as a way to broaden options and foster creativity.
Climate change experts ‘lose faith’ in renewable technology
Solar’s future doesn’t look quite so sunny
Floating Offshore Wind Power
Indonesia: New energy scheme not a load of bull
Sweet Answer to a Fuel Problem
Bolivian president: Save the planet from capitalism
Liquefied Natural Gas and Fossil Capitalism
Where Are All The Socialists? Here, There and Everywhere
The Age recently had an article on the emerging practice of “guerilla gardening”, taking a look at the “Gardening guerillas in our midst”. This concept seems to have steadily increased in popularity in recent years (admittedly from a very low base) as the permaculture movement’s ideas have been propagated through the community.
Unlike the usual approach taken when trying to grow food in the suburbs – converting spare land on your own property (as discussed by aeldric previously and, more recently, in Jeff Vail’s series on A Resilient Suburbia) – guerilla gardening involves cultivating any spare patch of urban land that isn’t being used for another purpose, which could provide a substantial addition to the food growing potential of suburbia.
A midweek update on Peak Oil:
– The markets wait
– The struggle in OPEC
Chris Nelder talks peak oil at the UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Dept.
End of oil could worsen warming, study finds
Oil and OPEC: Can the Cartel Possibly Cut Production Enough?
Planning the Future
Copenhagen, Melbourne & The Reconquest of the City
Cultivating a new food culture
So what do we do with Detroit? As now seems likely, its future course will be increasingly controlled by the federal government. Currently the plan is for this control to be exercised by an auto czar tasked with making sure that the multi-billion government loans are not used to pay for excessive executive compensation or dividends on worthless stock, and that the companies move expeditiously to “restructure” so they will not become permanent wards of the state. It is only a matter of time however that, no matter how well intentioned, the government’s involvement in “restructuring” expands to corporate decisions about what to make and how to make it
