Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Michael Kumhof Michael Kumhof explains the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Research Department’s new, strikingly more accurate, oil supply/price/demand prediction model, and says that according to the model oil prices will need to double in a decade to grow world oil production by 0.9%, in line with published EIA predictions
What’s happening that will change the world for better or worse? What do we need to know now to build a better future? The Millennium Project releases the 2012 State of the Future report – the annual “Report Card on the World.”
The world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected, and people are living longer; yet, half the world is potentially unstable. Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime are increasing, environmental viability for our life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity are increasing, climate change continues, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen dangerously.
Jorgen Randers is professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School, and among many other things, was coauthor of The Limits to Growth in 1972, Beyond the Limits in 1992, andLimits to Growth: The 30-Year Update in 2004. He has recently published 2052: a global forecast for the next forty years. I had the great honour of interviewing Jorgen recently, via Skype from his study at his home in Norway.
Building things by yourself, especially with leftover material, has this air of post-peak self-reliance. But, often, that supposes the existence of industrially made products. When you need wood, for instance, you can get planks or beams from a store or, more in a post-peak style, you use material taken from discarded furniture. But in both cases, the wood you use has been industrially processed.
Suppose, instead, that you live in a remote village in the mountains, a place like Valboncione, in Italy.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Shale oil everywhere… for a while
-Fracking Hazards Obscured In Failure To Disclose Wells
-Carbon Briefing: The coming PR battle over shale gas
Darwin tells us we must evolve or die, and current circumstances bring that choice into stark relief. A lot of people evidently think that fitness and selfishness are the same…Yet it is our abilities to innovate socially and to cooperate in order to increase our collective fitness that have gotten us this far…
Following the recent launch of their new site peakprosperity.com, Chris Martenson and Adam Taggert take a moment to revisit and renew the mission behind this movement.
STIR – is an online magazine that promotes the most inspiring and innovative community-led responses to the financial crisis, climate change and other contemporary challenges.
While I’m sure this is true of some of the workers and strivers of the present, the overwhelming justification for education at every level is that you will need it to get a job – education will cost you now in loans, time spent doing activities that look good on college applications, tutors, SAT prep, etc…. but it will return to you your investment many times over. The problem of course, is that as education’s costs have risen and the economy has been less stable, this has become less and less true for most people.
In August 2012, the Center for a New American Dream presented a free webinar about how to start up a new tool library in your community. Topics included obtaining funding, finding a location, tracking tools, navigating through legal issues, and more. The webinar featured speakers from successful tool libraries around the country.
We don’t see it, smell it or hear it, but the tragedy unfolding underground is nonetheless real – and it spells big trouble. I’m talking about the depletion of groundwater, the stores of H2O contained in geologic formations called aquifers, which billions of people depend upon to supply their drinking water and grow their food.
