Culture & Behavior

Heads in the Sand? Or, Why Don’t Governments Talk about Peak Oil?

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There is a train crash about to happen from an energy point of view. But politicians everywhere seem to have entirely missed the scale of the problem… [G]overnments and multilateral agencies have failed to recognize the imminence and scale of the global oil supply crunch, and most of them remain completely unprepared for its consequences.

Peak Moment 158: A New Paradigm for Development (transcript added)

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The corporate capitalist system is destroying people and the planet. Can we imagine alternatives? Ravi Logan and Jason Schreiner’s model is based on valuing our interrelatedness and interdependency within the natural world. It replaces profit-driven with cooperative enterprises, and emphasizes a balance between local self-reliance and bioregional networks, with some global structures to meet global needs like telecommunications.

Healing Transition Trauma in the New Decade

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Ten years ago this moment, America was awaiting the inauguration of a new President. We knew that the new Bush administration would bring at least four years of darkness, but we had no idea how dark, nor that a second hijacked election would follow the first, nor the extent to which the influence of Bush II would extend into the future. Certainly, we had no inkling of 9/11 and that terror-both a politically and psychologically would overshadow every day of the coming decade.

Who Will Grow Your Food? Part I: The Coming Demographic Crisis in Agriculture

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This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Praising Leaves/Condemning Leaf Blowers

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Leaves are one of nature’s most miraculous creations. They tie it all together. They rise from the ground, reach to the sky, and bring life to the Earth. Leaves do many good things—manufacture food for trees and other plants, use the sun’s energy to transform carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, and decompose water (H2O) into oxygen and hydrogen.

Economics and Limits to Growth: What’s Sustainable?

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Much of the way that we conduct ourselves is based on habit. For example, we get into the habit of crossing our arms with our right hand (or left hand) on top. It is not that putting the right hand or left hand on top is better or worse. We have just developed a habit of crossing our arms in a particular way.

The Meaning of Copenhagen

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It was the pivotal international conference of the new century. Tens of thousands showed up, including heads of state, officials at all levels of government, representatives of environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens from nearly 200 countries. Scientists had warned that, without a strong agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the consequences for civilization and the world’s ecosystems would be cataclysmic.

Of Coal Stoves and Goat Herders: Getting Out of the Vicious Circle

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Energy Bulletin ran this excellent piece from the New York Times on a crisis facing Mongolian Goat Herders who are attempting to deal with unstable world markets, climate change and overgrazing. I was fascinated by the clear way that the author of the piece lays out the vicious circle that they’ve entered into, and I was struck by how useful an example it is of the kind of ecological vicious circle that we face all the time…

Hope, hopelessness and faith

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For those involved in issues of sustainability, peak oil, climate change, and relocalization it might be better to feel a certain hopelessness in our situation. For hope implies dependence on forces outside ourselves. Once we abandon that hope, we can get down to the tasks at hand, the tasks that need to be done–for which we need to ask no politician or government official permission–tasks that we can get started on today. In this way hopelessness concerning the current political and economic arrangements becomes an ally.