Peak oil notes – Feb 17
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Budget struggles in Washington
Activism
Urge Obama to say “peak oil” on April 20
Several prominent organizations dealing with peak oil, have just launched a petition drive urging President Obama to mark the anniversary of the Gulf spill with a major speech to the American people on the subject of peak oil.
Deep thought – Feb 14
-How to build a left-wing Tea Party: A guide for Americans
-Life in the Water
-Paradox: Linchpin of the Long Emergency
Making change – Feb 13
– How Cyber-Pragmatism Brought Down Mubarak
– Another Step Toward Mainstreaming Nonviolence
– How to Build a Progressive Tea Party
– Wendell Berry Joins Retired Coal Miners and Residents in Kentucky Capitol Sit-in
Power and powerlessness in global cities
All is not rosy in global cities where inequalities reach record levels and put such cities at risk. There may consequently be more cycles of disorder and violence if the financial and economic sectors continue to dominate the cities’ agendas.
Crop to Cuisine: Food in Egypt, feeding the birds, and food advertising
Crop To Cuisine discusses food in Egypt, as the standoff between protesters and government continues. The World Food Programme’s Abeer Etefa joins us over the phone from Cairo. We hear from Carol O’Meara on feeding the birds this season. And we turn food advertising on its head. All of that, headlines in food and farming from around the world, and more.
Corporate control? Not in these communities
These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology.
Review: Localisation and Resilience by Rob Hopkins
The dissertation is a case study of the first official Transition Town, the English market town of Totnes, long a popular tourist destination known for its alternative culture. Using interviews, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and other social science research methods, the study examines the degree to which the Transition ideals of localization and resilience have become a reality in Totnes. (Transitioners endorse a number of upbeat definitions of a resilient community, a popular one being “[a] culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its own limits, and able to thrive for having done so.”*)
Water – Feb 7
– Water: On Women’s Burdens, Humans’ Rights, and Companies’ Profits
– Peak Water: What Is it — and Are We There Yet?
– Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’
Egypt and the thirst for oil – Feb 7
– “Walk like an Egyptian” – the Egyptian Revolution: Jan 25, 2011 (video)
– Oil falls on unfounded Egypt report, profit-taking
– Civil unrest in Middle East, concern among investors
– We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?
– Clinton rings alarm bells about Middle East – oil reserves running out
– Egypt and the Global Oil Market: Geopolitics Is Back
– Jan Lundberg: Arab World’s Turmoil May Spell Sudden Petrocollapse
The Gross National Happiness Survey
This survey offers you an enjoyable way to learn just how well you are doing in the nine domains of happiness identified by researchers around the world. Groups like Transition can use the survey to asses community well-being now and in the long term.
Is the modern anti-tax movement a product of increasing complexity?
The historical animus that Americans supposedly have toward taxes has been largely manufactured to facilitate the propaganda machine of the modern anti-tax movement. This means that the long hiatus between the Whiskey Rebellion and Proposition 13 must be considered the norm in American history and that some recent change in American circumstances must be responsible for the modern anti-tax movement.
