Consumption & Demand

Swingtime

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A lot of things started shaking loose last week, and not just in Haiti.  The Scott Brown senate seat victory in Massachussetts shook loose a Democratic “super-majority” that only had to be constructed because the US Senate stupidly turned the filibuster into standard operating procedure where it once was a seldom-used procedural dodge employed strictly by villains seeking to paralyze the chamber.  Thanks to the new system, the senate is now in a continual state of paralysis.

Peak Moment 160: A Young Couple Find Freedom in Simple Living

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Rather than follow the customary American dream, Tammy and Logan sold their home and car, and moved to a bikeable/walkable neighborhood in Sacramento, California. After reading Derrick Jensen’s writings, this couple used Your Money or Your Life as a means to get out of debt and, they feel, regain their lives and their future. While they recount the psychological challenges of facing a future of declining resources, the catalyst that continues to move them forward is a dream of living in an affordable tiny house within a supportive community).

So You Want to Cut Your Resource Usage?

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A friend of mine, Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man) once observed that cutting your energy usage should be as easy as rolling off a log – that as long as it is always easier to use more resources, and the path of least resistance heads towards taking the car or turning up the heat, we’re destined to struggle. And he’s right.

ODAC Newsletter – Jan 22

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Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.

Oilwatch Monthly January 2010

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The January edition of Oilwatch Monthly is now available: 1) Conventional crude production – Latest figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 592,000 b/d from September to October 2009, resulting in total production of crude oil including lease condensates of 73.12 million b/d…

Secret Handshakes

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Very little seems to connect the quest for community in today’s declining industrial societies with the mostly empty and mostly forgotten lodge halls that still dot America’s older cities and towns. Appearances deceive, though, for the old fraternal lodges — themselves the product of an earlier quest for community — offer some useful pointers for the present, as well as a cautionary lesson of no small importance.