Abundance!
It is that time of year again here in the northern temperate climate of Minnesota when we start to see the abundance that pours forth from a well loved and tended garden.
Andy Russell
Are fracked oil and natural gas really “snake oil”?
In his new book Snake Oil, Richard Heinberg takes on overblown claims from both the oil and gas industry’s salesmen–its top executives, industry trade groups and PR firms–and its shills–fake think tanks, paid consultants, and captive analysts who are often quoted and interviewed (mistakenly) as independent experts.
Well and Truly Fracked
Heinberg makes four points in the book, each of which could usefully be put on the business end of a branding iron and applied to the tender backsides of pundits and politicians alike.
Our Clean Energy Future
Following on my recent post bidding Farewell to The Oil Drum, I’d like to have a look at what I view as our longer term future for energy production and consumption.
Review: The Blood of the Earth by John Michael Greer
It was as an inquisitive young man during the 1970s that John Michael Greer—now an accomplished author and an indispensable source of wisdom on things both worldly and otherworldly—began to question the world around him.
The hype cycle: How the oil and gas industry manipulates investors and the public
What would you expect them to say? That’s the question you should ask whenever spokespersons for the oil and gas industry (or fake think tanks funded by the industry or analysts whose bread is buttered by the industry) announce a new find that is going to be a "game-changer.”
The Ritual Theater of Progress
This habit of drafting my ideas on the future of industrial society right out here in public has its disadvantages, to be sure, but there are benefits as well.
The Social Implications of Energy Return
The energy returns that fuels offer have broad social and economic implications, as does their decline. This article offers readers a background on energy return as a measure of a fuel’s production efficiency, and explores the metric’s broader social and economic significance.
America: Exporting our way to energy independence?
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. That’s the credo of the oil and gas industry as it continues to lobby for increased oil and natural gas exports from the United States.
Not Written in the Stars
When Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God—in less metaphorical terms, the collapse of the Christian faith that had provided the foundations for European social life since the Dark Ages—he saw that event as a turning point in human history, a shattering and liberating transformation that would open the road to the Overman. That hope turned out to be misplaced, and it’s worth keeping in mind that any equally grandiose claims that might be made about the consequences of the death of progress will likely face disappointment along the same lines.
Gauging the urban appetite
The agendas that are set so solemnly for international (or global) food and hunger problems cannot be used at the sub-national or local administrative level, which must analyse its own problems and find practical solutions, All too often, catering sensibly to the food needs of urban populations is ignored by policy makers, while economic ‘development’ (more infrastructure, more financing, more consumption, more personal mobility at the cost of public transport) is welcomed. The provisioning of food and the planning for shortening and localising food supply chains is usually abandoned by public administrators to the ruthless methods of the market
Path to a Renewable Future: Distributed or Centralized?
To what degree is it necessary, possible or desirable to rely on a massive, state, national or global-scale infrastructure build-out to save us from climate catastrophe and energy depletion?
