Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Allan Stromfeldt Christensen So don’t let a title like When Trucks Stop Running give you the impression that Friedemann’s book is simply one about the energetic options for the trucking industry, since what it actually does is use trucks as an interesting starting point for how to understand the viability of the various energy options available to our declining industrial way of life.
All over the world, bicycles from renewable materials are gaining ground. Egyptian Karim Creta is experimenting with a local variety: palm midribs.
As societies and economies transition away from high net energy resources such as ‘conventional’ fossil fuels and towards lower net energy resources such as unconventional fossil fuels or renewables, either voluntarily (e.g. to fight climate change) or due to resource constraints, a number of researchers and analysts have argued that we might be approaching the “net energy cliff”…
Let us openly and loudly declare our commitment to our own eventual material poverty, and in this declaration find moral and spiritual wealth. Let us begin to proclaim the unthinkable and think it every day.
Ultimately what sustains me is a rather heady cocktail of stubbornness, optimism, a strong faith in the human spirit and in other people, rage, a deep wish to live a life of service to others, the thrill of seeing people step up and take their lives into their own hands, all coupled with a deep sense of urgency. It works for me.
So those who claim that Malthusian limits don’t apply to humans are effectively assigning our species the status of permanent evolutionary winners.
With atmospheric levels of CO2 recently jumping at a rate of 3ppm per year, CO2e levels could soon be increasing at 4-5ppm per year. A level of 550 ppm CO2e, consistent with a 3 degree centigrade rise in temperatures, would then be reached in the early 2030’s.
Proyecto Plato Lleno counts 439 food rescues in Buenos Aires, a total of 46,269 kilos of food saved from the dumpster. According to their calculations, this equals 92,538 “full plates” across 60 shelters, foundations, and schools.
Traditionally, smallholder farming communities worked together, sharing localized innovations and best practices with one another in a horizontal and collective spread.
While politicians fiddle, citizens are again being left to suffer–perhaps none more than the nearly 23,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and elsewhere, facing the loss of healthcare benefits.
It can’t be like “We need a policy for a rewilded childhood”, because we could be waiting forever, and that ain’t going to happen. And we haven’t got time to wait forever I don’t believe. So it’s what do we all do to rewild our own family, our own community, our own school?
Maintaining a civilization is always a delicate balancing act that is sooner or later destined to fail.
