Consumption & Demand

Bye bye nukes in Japan by 2012

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A new report from Greenpeace calls for the complete closure of all Japanese nuclear power plants by 2012. The report was released at the same time as the new Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, was making his first policy speech to parliament calling for the restart of all reactors that are currently offline due to routine safety checks and maintenance.

A lesson in practical magic

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It seems remarkably hard for people nowadays to remember that ours is hardly the first society to find itself teetering on the edge of catastrophic change. In this next installment of The Archdruid Report‘s discussion of the interface between peak oil and magic–that is, the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will–another society in much the same situation provides the stage, and one of the most improbable figures in 19th century history is the main character. His insights have an uncanny relevance to some elements of the crisis of our own time.

Community renewable energy finance 2.0

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In a world where income disparity is increasing and social regression is inherent in the current structure of the UK’s Feed-In Tariff (FIT), we need to rethink how community renewable energy projects are structured & financed to ensure full community benefit lies at the heart of the process and that energy reduction is still focused upon as part of a community “power down” process.

Review of Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil

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Peak Oil predictions range from the year 2000 to 2100 with the highest concentration of forecasts from 2005 to 2016. Confidence in international oil reserves data is lacking. As such, different forecasters make different assumptions about future undiscovered oil amounts and oil reserves, resulting in a wide range of peak oil estimates. Viewing this wide time disparity in forecasts as problematic, the research objective was to look for an economic cross-check indicator, metric, or alternative data-based means to corroborate or refute existing peak oil estimates.

Pluto’s Republic

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One of the enduring tropes of Western intellectual culture, dating back to Plato’s time, is the notion that there must be some way to force people to make the right collective decisions whether they want to do so or not. Magic — the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will — is one of many resources that have been applied to this end. The thought of doing this as a way of dealing with our society’s abject failure to respond intelligently to peak oil, though, leads into a thicket of overfamiliar problems.

When will we admit that our corn ethanol policy is immoral?

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Having just returned from a trip to Eastern Nebraska, I feel as if I participated in a movie set for “The Road” or its equivalent. It’s all about ethanol in this region of the country and it’s not a pretty sight. Because of our unbridled and unquenchable thirst for liquid fuels, this policy is creating a vast environmental ruin not so different from that of the tar sands areas of Canada. In recent years, this land which was a prairie a short one-hundred-and-fifty years ago has become a region that produces primarily only two industrial agricultural crops, corn and soybeans.