Food & agriculture – Feb 7
Fermentation and food: The revolution will not be microwaved
Farming the Amazon with a machete and mulch
Homogeneous horror in agriculture
Bob Waldrop on local food systems
The birth of a farmers’ market
Building Community
The near-ice biking experience
It took a near-ice experience and tomorrow’s potential challenge of an early, icy, 11-mile trip to get me to do a simple thing with immediate rewards like change out my bike tires. What, then, does it take to get people to make much bigger changes in their lives to prepare for a world with less abundant energy?
Peak oil – Feb 2
In depth report on San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force
Energy Roundtable: Simmons, Hirsch, Rubin
Understanding the current energy crisis in South Africa
Up from dysfunction – Jan 31
Move it, you just might get younger
California to probe development of ‘green’ chemicals
From buses to blogs, a pathological individualism is poisoning public life
Asking better questions
The discussion at The Oil Drum takes a more personal nature with me; much of my own history involves looking back toward a simpler time in agriculture. (The account of a “recovering energy engineer.”)
Housing & urban design – Jan 30
Abu Dhabi’s zero-carbon ‘ecotopia’
Berkeley envisions ambitious energy plan
Address climate change through land use
Making the transition
Peak oil – Jan 29
TOD blockbuster: “Powering civilization to 2050” by Stuart Staniford
Will peak oil drive relocalization?
Investment guru Jim Rogers: $90 to $100 oil not high enough to slow demand
Barclays Capital: Triple digit oil price regardless of peak
Peak oil – Jan 28
Peak oil activist in the Wall Street Journal
Shell: Fuel crisis looms by 2015
US petroleum supply, ethanol, and state of the industry
Housing & urban design – Jan 25
My other car is a bright green city
Daniel Lerch on post carbon cities
Mayors climate protection summit
Lawn to farm: suburbia’s silver lining
I look at the empty countryside around our farm and can’t help but wish it were as thick with people as when my grandparents made a living here.
Mental – Jan 24
U.S. voters show darker mood than in 2000 – unsettled, powerless
I’m a brilliant scientist and I fear for the world’s fate
Public vs. private commitment
Peak oil as obsessional neurosis
Davos 08: Reasons to be anxious
Biofuels, transition and divergent visions of the future of farming
It was fascinating to see the enthusiasm among the farmers for a more localised approach to farming. Perhaps the National Farmer’s Union should be figuring out how it can best support their wish to create and sustain local markets rather than continuing to focus on an approach whose benefits to the climate are questionable at best, and which at worst, would continue the erosion of soil, resilience and the local economies we will become increasingly dependent upon.
