Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Richard Heinberg Just when you thought weird weather and dying oceans might get us all thinking about how to reduce human impact on this little planet we call home, along comes Breakthrough Institute to propose a “solution” worthy of the Army Corps of Engineers: “We screwed it up, so we should take charge of it.”
Just in time for summer grilling season, Brentwood sweet corn from G & S Farms returns to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market this week. Although the United States leads the world in corn production, growing about 80 million acres (roughly as much land as New Mexico), only a tiny fraction of that corn is the summer treat you know and love.
Nate Hagens speaks at the ASPO 2012 International Conference. Nate overviews the fundamental flaws in current economic thinking – the elephants in the room.
Last week the 2012 BP Statistical Review of World Energy was released. I always look forward to the release, because the data represent the most comprehensive, publicly available database on energy consumption and production statistics. I have now read through this year’s report, picking out what I believe are important trends and data points.
If you still know anybody who thinks the economy is in “recovery,” just lay this one single statistic on them: one in two recent U.S. college graduates today is unemployed or underemployed, unable to find work in his or her chosen field.
So what happens, in this time of economic starvation, when one of those remaining corporate businesses wants to buck the trend, and instead of leaving town, actually wants to come in?
The Tällberg Forum is a gathering like no other. For over 30 years, leaders have come at the invitation of the Tällberg Foundation, to talk about what is going on in the world. Everyone brings her/his own experience to the talks. In one sense, we can view this as one single, continuous conversation. Participants have varied. The themes have evolved and the times have moved on. But some things remain constant: the culture of the village that hosts us has not altered much. Conversations at Tällberg have been, and continue to be, based on systems thinking, humanistic values and on an unrelenting curiosity and desire to have one’s reasoning, assumptions and world views shaken.
We are witnessing an epochal shift in our socio-political world. We are de-evolving, hurtling headlong into a past that was defined by serfs and lords; by necromancy and superstition; by policies based on fiat, not facts.
Much of what has made the modern world in general, and the United States in particular, a free and prosperous society comes directly from insights that arose during the Enlightenment.
Too bad we’re chucking it all out and returning to the Dark Ages.
-Energy expert Byron King on peak oil, natural gas and rare earth [video]
-Chart of the week: a picture of world oil
-Europe shale push shaken by Exxon’s Poland pullout
-‘Carbon capture’ too risky, earthquake prone: US study
A weekly review including:
– Oil and the Global Economy
– Europe at a turning point
– The Iranian confrontation
– An IEA appraisal
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
Gifts have the function of bonding communities together. … If your entire life is nothing but money transactions, … then you don’t have community because you don’t need anybody. — Charles Eisenstein
My dad just gave me a brand-new sawzall reciprocating saw. Yesterday its maiden voyage helped to repair the rainwater harvesting tanks at the community garden. In the spirit of gifting (in Maori they call it hau), with this “second giving” the sawzall entered into the gift economy.
By now skeptical readers may have concluded that we are cherry-picking the evidence to confirm our hypothesis that global growth is ending. An argument against that hypothesis would surely start with data from China, whose economy has continued expanding at about 9 percent per year in recent years even in the face of deepening worries elsewhere.
But China is slowing too. And its problems may end up being just as deep as those in Greece or the US.
That’s when you see the past and the future in your own hands. How everything hinges ultimately on our own efforts: Who will dig the land, who will shape the land, what is it worth, and in what spirit will this work be done? Up until the 1950s half the population in Suffolk worked on the land; now it’s 0.5 percent. The country has become something we understand at arm’s length, a Suffolk of industrial agriculture, fringed with nature tourism and leisure. And yet in our hearts, somewhere, we know there is a deeper relationship we have with our homeland, and if we were wise, we would be seeking it out.
