Rob Hopkins

Some Transition reflections on George Monbiot’s announcement that “we were wrong on peak oil”

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George Monbiot announced in the Guardian on Monday “We were wrong on peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all”, an article which concluded “peak oil hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen for a very long time”. Several people have written, and even stopped me while I’ve been out shopping, to ask for my take on his piece, so here it is. It has been a tricky thing to write, as in the time it took me to compose it, so many other interesting analyses of it have been posted, many of which I have tried to reference here…What he does prompt is a rethink in terms of how we present peak oil.

The Home Energy Handbook: an interview with Allan Shepherd

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The Centre for Alternative Technology has just published a new book called “The Home Energy Handbook: a guide to saving and generating energy in your home and community”. It is a great resource for Transition groups, and Transition features strongly through the book. I spoke to Allan Shepherd, one of the book’s authors/editors, and asked him to tell us more about the book.

The last ASPO conference

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While I feel this conference [in Vienna] was disappointing in general, the organisers are not to blame. They did their best and produced the programme that had to be, with ASPO opening itself to the wider society. But after 10 years of activity ASPO’s message has failed to pass. Policy makers, climatologists, the energy industry, by and large are all yet to fully acknowledge the problem and its implications.

Low Carbon Cookbook – Peak Beans

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…food is not just a different way to toss your salad; it’s the reworking of a diet in the face of ecological and economic change. No matter how much the media and politicians deny climate change and peak oil, future cooks are thinking ahead, reworking their larders, gaining some knowledge, learning to glean, preserve, bake and grow. We’re prepping for the long term in our kitchens, knowing that the global industrial food system is highly unsustainable, unethical and unkind to man and beast. And that to use nearly 60 percent of the world’s agricultural land for beef production that accounts for less than two percent of the world’s calories is not the way forward.

Food & agriculture – July 3

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– NYT: Small Farmers Creating a New Business Model as Agriculture Goes Local
– The Conversation: David Holmgren, co-founder of permaculture movement
– Factory-Fed Fish: Monsanto and Cargill’s Plan for the Ocean
– Mainstream India television show: Toxic Food – Poison On Our Plate?
– The Global Diabetes Epidemic, Brought to You by Global Development (new)

Peak oil – July 3

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– Monbiot: We were wrong on peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all
– David Strahan on Peakonomics: why the oil price slide is temporary
– Peak Plastic: One Generation’s Trash Is Another Generation’s Treasure
– Peak Blame (interview with Mark Robinowitz of OilEmpire.us)
– Der Energieforscher Ferdi Schüth über die Energiewende und die Zeit danach (interview)
– Peak oil and the lost message of the carbon tax in Australia

Can humus save humans?

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I feel like getting naked and running though the streets, yelling eureka, eureka! By George, I think I’ve got it. And I wasn’t even looking. It all began a few days ago, when I started on a post about creating soil from scratch. A radical notion in its own right, to be sure. So let’s begin with the story there.