Culture & Behavior

Cloistered climate talks

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The UN Climate Conference (COP16) in Cancun is turning out to be both anti-climactic and anti-climatic. There will be no major agreement to stop global warming this week, despite the timed release of a number of reports that show that the phenomenon is advancing more rapidly than expected, with lethal consequences. There likely will be announcements of progress in schemes to allow contaminating industries and nations to continue with business as usual and add another lucrative area to their portfolios—trade in carbon offsets and credits. It’s a worst-case scenario for the planet.

The future’s further shores

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As peak oil moves toward the mainstream, some parts of the peak oil movement have begun to embrace respectability in order to engage political and economic institutions. This is essential, though it has its pitfalls; still, just as essential is a balancing movement in the other direction, toward a radically diverse exploration of options that could provide individuals and communities with critical tools as the crisis of industrial society deepens around us.

The power of positive

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One of the reasons I came to the Transition movement was that it seemed to me to be the most viable, most broad-based, deepest-thinking “second dimension” approach available. There simply aren’t any other organizations I have found which are Creating New Structures with as considered and informed and panoramic a scope…Joanne gives her take on adapting Transition for the US.

A critical response to Michael Brownlee’s call for ‘Deep Transition’

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I read Michael Brownlee’s recent piece “The Evolution of Transition in the US”, with a mixture of fascination and a sense of disquiet that increased the deeper I got into the piece. The concept of Transition has been regularly critiqued, a positive process which has helped to shape what it is today. Most critiques run along the lines of “Transition, nice idea, but it isn’t [ … ] enough”. So, for Alex Steffen, Transition isn’t technologically savvy or optimistic enough, for the Trapese Collective it isn’t politically savvy enough, for John Michael Greer it is guilty of “premature triumphalism”, for Ted Trainer it isn’t sufficiently rooted in alternative culture or focused enough, while for others it is too riven with New Age thinking and pseudoscience. Now, according to Brownlee, it is fatally flawed by not having the “Sacred” at the heart of what it does.

Reaping whirlwinds: Peak oil and climate change in the new political climate

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Political prognostication is a dangerous game, but one of the certainties of the latest election was that the US will not be enacting any significant federal climate legislation. If inaction is certain on climate change, it may be that all is not entirely hopeless if we reframe the terms to addressing our carbon problem. Peak-oil activism could accomplish many of the goals of climate activists. Unlike climate change, peak oil doesn’t carry the ideological associations with the left that climate change does. Could peak oil provide a framing narrative for political action to address both climate change and peak oil?

The amoeba of cultural change

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In the Q&A section of public presentations we often get asked “How do you tell people about Transition …” Then the questioner launches into a vivid description of how his attempts have failed to get through to his Hummer-driving brother-in-law, or his boss who vacations in the Bahamas, or his fellow churchgoers who rhapsodize over malls and “bargains” at big box stores, or his neighbor with the pristine, overwatered chem-lawn.

New threat to global food security as phosphate supplies become increasingly scarce

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A new report from the Soil Association reveals that supplies of phosphate rock are running out faster than previously thought and that declining supplies and higher prices of phosphate are a new threat to global food security….

Intensive agriculture is totally dependent on phosphate for the fertility needed to grow crops and grass. …. Recent analysis suggests that we may hit ‘peak’ phosphate as early as 2033, after which supplies will become increasingly scarce and more expensive.