Staff

Coal & Climate

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Recent reports on global coal reserves, surveyed in previous chapters, generally point to the likelihood of supply limits appearing relatively soon—within the next two decades (a contrary view is represented solely by the BGR report [“Lignite and Hard Coal: Energy Suppliers for World Needs until the Year 2100 – An Outlook,” 2007]).
These two trends are surely destined to interact, and the uncertain result will shape climate and energy policy in the years to come.

New online magazine “Hen and Harvest” – serious and sexy food production

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Sharon Astyk, the Submissions Goddess for this new online magazine, writes: “We’re all about serious food production and food security on every scale from container to acreage, from personal to community. And we’ve got food covered at every step of the process, from seed to table. Oh, and we’ll have some sexy stuff (I mean, how could gardening and eating not be sexy?)”

Urbanites in the edible forest

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“Farmers should not go to university,” Jo said, “what is taught there is not sustainable. What good is it for a farmer to have an education if he is not taught how to be sustainable?” I glanced at Jo’s boy Than wondering how this boy would be educated. … Yet I understood what Jo was saying. Perhaps an education was just another form of runaway consumerism training students to increase their needs and consume more resources in order to “succeed”. What, indeed, was sustainable about it? What was progress for a Thai farmer if the use of modern agriculture meant endless debt and health problems from pesticide use?

The coming re-becoming

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Everywhere you turn in this nation, you see a society primed for implosion. We seem unaware how extraordinary the American experience has been, especially in the last hundred years. By this, I don’t mean that we are a better people than any other society — these days, ordinary people in the USA make an effort to appear thuggish and act surly, as though we were a nation of convicts — but for decade-upon-decade, we were very fortunate. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s may seem like a relatively peaceful and gentle “time out” from a frantic era of hypertrophic growth, compared to the storm we’re sailing into now.

Peak oil review – August 4

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An executive summary of weekly news from a US peak oil perspective, featuring:
– Production and Prices
– Iran
– Nigeria
– China
– In the Congress
– Energy Briefs