Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The recent leak of a German military report on peak oil has generated much interest among peak oil analysts. This review examines the Bundeswehr report in the context of other publicly-available military analyses of peak oil and concludes that the new German report is highly significant for several reasons.
“Wouldn’t economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave?”
-Dan Ariely, in Predictably Irrational (HarperCollins), p. 239.
Given the prevalence of high quality content and thought of a few years ago, the blending and parroting of the major themes that a casual perusal of the resource/energy/finance blogosphere reveals today reminds one of the time shift in the movie Idiocracy. A psychiatrist might label this phenomenon ‘information anhedonia’. An economist would say we’ve reached ‘decreasing informational returns from the marginal blog entry’. I’ll just call it ‘clown-fest’.
Richard Heinberg came to Kalamazoo recently and his talk was the first peak oil discussion I’ve heard that didn’t discourage and depress me. Actually, I felt both inspired and energized to help create the next major era in our world’s history.
When Guy McPherson discovered peak oil, it became a cause for optimism, not pessimism.
– Watch Colbert’s statement before Congress on migrant farmworkers
– Colbert annoys press corps … again
– Food fight: a Kol Nidre call for sustainable consumption
– From vacant city lots to food on the table
– Localism vs globalism: two world views collide
– MarketWatch: The economy can’t grow forever
– A case for singletasking
We can strengthen our communities and ourselves to prepare for the uncertain world of failing economies, climate change, and oil depletion.
It’s time to transcend issue-oriented politics and build community… “I felt that I was glimpsing the future of community organizing in America—organizing based not on hot-button issues, but on building relationships through deep personal sharing and active listening. “
At Mt. Hood in Oregon there is a beautiful lodge, The Timberline. It was built during the Great Depression, under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration. Not only was it publicly funded, built, and operated, but the workers were trained to perform skilled crafts that they had never done. Form and function are magnificently combined. What a model this could have been for planners and builders.
The original Luddites were those who were angered at the notion that they ought to sacrifice their livelihoods and starve to death in order to serve “progress.” They demanded that technology be bounded by recognition of human needs.
The future can be a scary place. For many people, not being able to imagine a lower carbon world is a huge impediment to designing and realising it. If our communities suffer from a similar collective failure of the imagination, Transition will be impossible.
