Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff US oil and gas reserves grew faster than at any time in the past 35 years according to figures released this week by the EIA. The numbers are for 2010 with the increase credited to fracking technology and high oil prices leading to more exploration and development. While the report will be used to provide further confirmation of a new era of energy abundance, there is growing evidence that the realities when it comes to actual production are not as rosy…
Conventional wisdom might suggest that as oil prices rise, developing countries would be less able to afford oil, leaving wealthier countries to bid against each other for increasingly higher-priced supplies. But that is not at all what happened over the past decade, and the trend may give developed countries a reason for concern.
-New San Francisco legislation will jump-start urban farming
-Soil Microbes Help Save Plant-growing Input Costs
-Help Us Weave the Food Web!
-Should we forget about growth?
-The cooperative turn – building the right kind of autonomy
-Economic Growth Idea: Forgive or Restructure Debt U.S. Citizens Hold
Andy Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England, has been hailed as a new type of policy expert and intellectual. In this interview, for our Uneconomics series, he sets out his vision for the future of economics and economic policy-making. It is a future where central banks are humble, “listen as often as they speak”, and own up to their mistakes.
When you go to the mountains, you go to the mountains. When it’s the desert, it’s the desert. When it’s the ocean, though, we generally say that we’re going “to the beach.” Land is our element, not the waters of our world, and that is an unmistakable advantage for any oil company that wants to drill in pristine waters.
Sustainable healthcare is achievable now, at (relatively) little cost and with existing knowledge. It is being demonstrated all over the world currently and has been demonstrated historically. Is it easy? No, it is challenging, but why would that be a reason not to do it? What we have is unsustainable, and more importantly, does not generate health.
In Extraenvironmentalist #46 we speak first with Paul Kingsnorth on why he’s withdrawn from the mainstream environmental movement and its discussions of sustainability…Then, Michael M’Gonigle joins us to talk about the importance of creating an exit-environmentalism that allows us to leave a global system which is falling apart…Finally, John Michael Greer takes root in a new recurring and irregular segment to talk about denial and his take on the environmental movement…
Yesterday, Mr. Angelino Alfano, leader of Italy’s “People of Freedom” (PdL) party, publicly presented a plan aimed at saving Italy from economic collapse. I listened to the whole thing. And I was horrified.
In the US we may be staring at our own fate in India’s crisis. I’d suggest getting ready for it to come to a neighborhood near you sooner rather than later. Even the recent derecho was a reminder that, in fact, electricity doesn’t come from the switches on our walls, and that even our grid can look like spit balls and duct tape when an angry Mother Nature comes calling.
Last summer I was inspired by the film ‘Paths Through Utopias’ – documenting a road trip around Europe visiting communities who are already living post-Transition futures, to varying degrees – to make my own journey to see some real-life examples of the world we’re trying to create. Having spent the last decade or so with pictures in my head of how I’d like the world to be, and trying to work towards building a new world in the shell of the old with very few tangible reference points, I needed real life visions, sustenance and some confirmation I was on the right path. I was also about to initiate Transition Dartmouth Park and felt like I needed some inspiration.
Cooking with a Sun Oven is never easier than in the summer months, when the sun is intense and the days are long. Temperatures inside my Global Sun Oven can easily reach 350 degrees within around fifteen minutes, and so I can cook a wide range of dishes – sometimes several in one day.
