Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Monday night I was having drinks in downtown San Francisco with some seriously smart people—top-level IBM scientists and strategists involved in Big Blue’s Smarter Planet initiative. Given the room’s collective interest in creating smart electrical grids, smart water systems, advanced electric car batteries and other green technologies, the talk naturally turned to how to create sustainable cities.
The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now.
The Story of P(ee)
-Forest Carbon Scheme Gains Support, Faces Hurdles
-Warming Water Spurs U.S. to Consider ESA Protection for 82 Coral Species
-Rewilding’ the World: A Bright Spot for Biodiversity
-War at Home: The Local Eco-Warriors Making a Big Noise
-Brock Dolman on water: “Basins of relations: reverential rehydration revolution”
-Pathways to Re-Localisation with Joel Salatin
-Die Transition Towns-Bewegung – Städte und Menschen im Wandel
-Environmentalists launch low-carbon ‘churches in transition’
-Could chicken manure help curb climate change?
-Saudi Arabia Says Peak Demand for Oil Is an ‘Alarm’
-Virgin’s Richard Branson takes on peak oil
-Oil groups mount legal challenge to Schwarzenegger’s tar sands ban
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-China’s Growth
-India
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
At this juncture in the industrial age, we have two tired, one-armed lifeguards and a handful of victims. All eyes are on Greece — fittingly, the birthplace of western civilization — but Greece, which naturally turned to Goldman Sachs to try to hide its debt, is one tiny canary in a coal mine the size of Earth.
-America’s Food-To-Fuel Problem
-EU biofuels significantly harming food production in developing countries
-Burn Up the Biosphere and Call It Renewable Energy
-Palm oil deal ‘a threat to the rainforest’
As a matter of public policy, it would make perfect sense to provide seed money for what is bound to become a new high-growth industry segment: serving the needs of the permanently unemployed.
-Richard Branson Gives Peak Oil Street Cred
-The next crisis: Peak oil
-Oil shortages by 2020 due to Western ‘profligacy’, says energy boss
My disappointment in government leaders is matched by my admiration for a new influential group of Americans, whom I call lifestyle leaders — those who take matters into their own hands, by building gardens, weatherizing their homes, getting rid of their cars… Believing this group may hold the key to the rapid dissemination of low-energy lifestyles, I conducted an online survey of 2,005 of them in late 2009.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The Iranian situation
-Asia still growing
-UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security: 2010 Update
