Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I was speaking to a friend by phone recently who is very active in sustainability efforts where he lives. He’s noticed that many of those who were showing interest in cooperating with his efforts last year have now withdrawn into concerns about their own immediate future.
“The Great Squeeze” – film review
Interview: Matthew Stein, author of “When Technology Fails”
Homer-Dixon: Our Panarchic Future
Zero-Sum Game
British and American cultures are often thought of as mirror images of one another…The UK is a small country, and, as Hopkins points out, there is no room to “run and hide.” In contrast, vast sections of the US are virtually empty….We have different gun cultures…We will need to explore this important cultural difference in detail, in order to understand the phenomenal rise in popularity of the American “survivalist” movement, and TI’s-UK’s (culturally based?) aversion to it.
If there is one thing that I would like to claim as my own, it is the comparative theory of superpower collapse. For now, it remains just a theory, although it is currently being quite thoroughly tested. The theory states that the United States and the Soviet Union will have collapsed for the same reasons, namely: a severe and chronic shortfall in the production of crude oil (that magic addictive elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening foreign trade deficit, a runaway military budget, and ballooning foreign debt. I call this particular list of ingredients “The Superpower Collapse Soup.”
Rarely in the specialized milieu of industrial civilization does one encounter a Renaissance man or woman-someone who is well-versed in a wide spectrum of disciplines and who can expound upon them in writing that is both articulate and engaging. So when I discovered Mat Stein’s phenomenal When Technology Fails: A Manual For Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving The Long Emergency…
How to Save the Suburbs: Solutions from the Man Who Saw the Whole Thing Coming
Casa De Botellas: Turning Waste into Modular Construction
Good design makes for better communities
For a community to thrive in a complex environment, it must strike a delicate balance between planning proactively and remaining alert to emergent, unexpected changes.
The fight to get aboard Lifeboat UK
Population growth: the forgotten worry, though crisis continues
Candles In The Darkness
The Spike and the Peak
The rhythm of rest and excess
Downward Spiral’s Silver Lining: End of Lonely Plastic Culture
Is This The End Of Wealth Creation?
The Icelandic Volcano Erupts
¡Que se vayan todos! – that’s the global backlash talking
Climate Wars
Transition Network’s ‘Who We Are and What We Do’ Document Available
Adapting In Place: Whether, Why and Wherefore Ought Thou
Buried treasure: Vermonters rediscover root cellars
Amish help neighbors left without electricity
Obama orders new rules to raise energy efficiency
Why shovel-ready infrastructure is wrong
Fight against Big Coal hits Kansas legislature – national repercussions
