Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Artists, we need you. We need your vision and your courage to tell the truth. We’ve got plenty of “analysis,” and enough punditry to last us forever. What we lack are the gut-wrenching stories that put a human face on the collapse that is upon us.
Social ecologist Murray Bookchin dies at 85 / Redefining American beauty, by the yard /
The environmental benefits of vegetarianism / Sustainability Network Newsletter #60
In May 2006, Portland City Council created a Peak Oil Task Force to develop recommendations on appropriate responses to uncertainties in the supply and affordability of oil. City staff developed this 94-page set of background materials intended to provide an overview of the peak oil issue.
Anyone concerned about the burning of fossil fuels and resultant climate change is scared beyond words because of the prospect of coal usage growing or continuing. (Also: a discussion of Earth First! and its anti-coal protests.)
If you really want to understand the danger that Peak Oil represents, don’t think about your investment portfolio. Think about what happens when these millions of flat broke, disenfranchised, exhausted fellow citizens finally catch on that the dream has become a lie and an absurdity.
Last month, oil “peaksters” seemed to break out of their policy doldrums when they journeyed to the banks of the Potomac for what may have been their first mainstream conference in the nation’s capital.
‘Green chemistry’ pays off / Think globally? Act domestically. / ‘How green Is my conscience?’ / Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gas – 3,145 mpg / A slow-road movement? / A waste of energy (NYT on Congress inaction)
The federal government has stopped work on more than a dozen wind farms planned across the Midwest, saying research is needed on whether the giant turbines could interfere with military radar. But backers of wind power say the action has little to do with national security. The real issue, they say, is a group of wealthy vacationers who think a proposed wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod would spoil the view at their summer homes. (Several articles)
Thanks to Energy Bulletin readers who responded to earlier essays on gender, Peak Oil and culture. Responses came from Singapore, London, Sydney, and Canada, as well as from both American coasts, the Southwest and the Midwest.
I’ve been covering the oil industry for a long time. There is a new breed of economists who are now debating the consequences of a world with reduced petroleum supplies. They are asking, “Why can’t we start preparing for the time when we probably won’t have it?”
The importance of social capital / Why sustainability is important to you / New green/labor alliance brings Sierra Club and Steelworkers together / Le Monde profile of Jerome a Paris / Bryant Terry, food-justice activist
What might a Geo-Green third party platform look like? Its centerpiece would be a $1 a gallon gasoline tax, called “The Patriot Tax,” which would be phased in over a year.
