The Energy Bulletin Weekly 20 December 2021
Futures posted a weekly decline after a few volatile days that saw traders grow more concerned about the demand impact from the omicron variant and tighter monetary policy.
Tom Whipple
It’s time to decolonise our multilateral system for climate justice
Outside the confines of the current multilateral system, a plurality of knowledge is thriving. It is knowledge that will swell and flow through all the lands and rivers it can reach until it can no longer be ignored.
Veterans target US military’s outsized impact on the climate crisis
The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest institutional user of fossil fuels in the world and, consequently, the world’s largest institutional producer of greenhouse gas emissions.
Fascine Mattresses: Basketry Gone Wild
Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. These “fascine mattresses” were weighted with rocks and sunk into canals, estuaries, and rivers.
Saturnalia
Io, Saturnalia! Today we cast off the orders imposed on us from our parasitic overlords and do as we will. Well, we would if our overlords would allow it.
The age of energy disruptions
We have entered the age of global energy disruptions, and the “energy transition” that we are inevitably headed for is unlikely to be the one we expect.
Henry David Thoreau, philosopher of post-traumatic growth
Thoreau’s masterpiece Walden, in fact, can be read as a manual for post-traumatic growth (i.e., personal growth in the wake of traumatic experiences).
Indigenous lands have less deforestation than state-managed protected areas in most of tropics
In a recent study, myself and fellow researchers compared tropical deforestation rates and found that less deforestation occurs on Indigenous lands than in non-protected areas across the tropics.
The climate response cliff
Thus any solution must come bottom up from ordinary people making the lifestyle changes governments should be directing, prefiguring the world we want to live in…and creating community in the process.
Reconfiguring Food Systems Governance: The UNFSS and the Battle over Authority and Legitimacy
By replacing multilateralism with multi-stakeholderism, the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is advancing a vision of food systems governance that sets the foundation for stronger corporate influence both of the UN and food systems at large.
Citizen-led retrofitting – how the poor relation of climate policy is becoming its secret weapon
Citizen-led retrofitting, long the poor relation of climate policy, could now be its secret weapon in accelerating rapid transition.
Glasgow communities showing COP leaders the way
Plugging in to a wider network of other groups also developing grassroots climate responses can help our local ideas and projects to flourish, help us learn and share with others that have the vision of more sustainable and equal communities where we have control over our day to day lives.
