Consumption & Demand

Review: Prelude by Kurt Cobb

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Kurt Cobb has just released a page-turner of a first novel titled Prelude, which uses a Grisham-esque tale of suspense and intrigue to educate the public about peak oil. Prelude’s main character is a young energy analyst who discovers a top-secret report shedding light on the true, precarious state of the world’s oil reserves….Allegorically named Cassie, she stands for all of the real-life Cassandras within the peak oil movement, who, like the Cassandra of Greek myth, are able to foresee disaster but so far seem cursed never to be believed.

The Queensland flood is coming to your neighborhood

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With the global oil markets tight and prices rising, any new source of demand could easily have an outsized impact on oil prices in the next few months, right down to what you pay for gasoline at your local pump. As the global energy markets become tighter and tighter, a flood on the other side of the world is enough to trigger off a shock wave that will be felt everywhere.

Peak oil and a changing climate

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The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world’s supply of oil runs out? In a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and other scientists, researchers and writers explain.

They’ll serve cocktails at the oil crash

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Douglas Coupland’s vision of an oil-crisis apocalypse in his novel “Player One” is so frightening because it seems so plausible. Would you like to be holed up in a tacky cocktail lounge of an airport hotel when oil hits $250 a barrel, the planes stop flying and the power goes out? And that’s just the beginning.

Building collaborative lifestyles

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A recent study found that a quarter of people have no one to turn to in times of crisis, and another quarter have only one person. The growing effort to build a collaborative culture can help change that — particularly the new technology available for neighborhoods, technology that allows people to share with each other.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the stress-disease connection, addiction, attention deficit disorder and the destruction of American childhood

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Interview with the Canadian physician and bestselling author Gabor Maté: “The normal basis for child development has always been the clan, the tribe, the community, the neighborhood, the extended family. Essentially, post-industrial capitalism has completely destroyed those conditions. People no longer live in communities which are still connected to one another.

Top 10 peak oil books of 2010

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Having read enough books with Hubbert curves and charts of barrels-per-day to last us until the second Bristol Palin administration, we’re now into powerful stories that explore peak oil through suspense, romance and humanity. But so you won’t feel guilty having so much fun at the expense of the whole premise of industrial civilization, we’ve thrown in some more fact-y tomes too. Peak oil stalwarts from James Howard Kunstler to Richard Heinberg to Robert Hirsch made the list along with some surprising newcomers.