Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In the last few months, the vigorous debate over the future of world oil supplies has hit the mainstream radar screen. The optimists closed ranks—they have to because their numbers are shrinking—and launched a barrage of misleading reports and opinion pieces, suggesting that supplies will grow from today’s 85 million barrels a day to as much as 115 mb/day by 2030.
While apocalyptic stories may seem as if they are about our collective path, for the individual they are really about an inward journey. That is why they can be quite good at filling movie theaters, bookstores, and churches. And, that is why appeals to the apocalyptic strain in culture are a wrongheaded strategy when attempting to move people toward actual concrete steps that can improve our collective prospects amid the unfolding calamities of the 21st century.
-Go forth and multiply a lot less
-The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)
-Urban farms a fertile idea
-Summary Presentation for Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
-The next Industrial Revolution will be people-powered
-Sustainability and Social Justice: Do the Math
-Greening Portland – Your City How To
John Michael Greer has officially established himself as an institution within the peak oil community. Truly one of the finest minds working on the predicament of modern-day industrial civilization, he is so well-read in so many fields that he regularly gains access to insights that utterly elude his contemporaries. For this he is treasured by a growing number of loyal readers—and, I suspect, hated by equally many fellow bloggers who wish that they could be half as good.
One of the most rarely used resources for relocalization projects is the fact that our species has been this way before — the twilight years of many other civilizations featured the breakup of centralized economic arrangements and the rise of a new localism. Can insights from past examples offer us guidance in the present case?
-Leaders plan a ‘two-step’ environment deal
-The psychology of climate change
-Greenland’s Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Ever
-Rainforests could be traded on world market
-Leaders agree Copenhagen will focus on principles, not concrete goals
-World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists
This past week I read with fascination the posts by Sally Erickson on “The Culture of Pretend: How Psychotherapy Keeps our Communities Sick” and Kathy McMahon’s response “Bozos On The Couch: What Is ‘Good Therapy’ In A Time of Collapse?” As I’ve pondered these posts, I’m compelled to respond to several incongruities and offer missing pieces that I believe must be added to the discourse.
In the Happiness Hypothesis , psychology professor Jonathan Haidt compares human brain/behavior to a man riding an elephant. There exists a complex choreography between our newer rational cortex (the ‘man’), and our older, more primitive brain structures (the ‘elephant’).
I read Sally Erickson’s post on Energy Bulletin, and as a clinical psychologist, I gotta tell you, I found it sort of depressing. It wasn’t her criticism of psychotherapy. I understand her point about psychotherapy not healing a sick culture. James Hillman made the same point in “One Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World’s Getting Worse.” But golly, if we’re here anyway, shouldn’t we have some role as Peak Shrinks while the world as we know it collapses around us?
According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes, the Iraq War cost three trillion dollars. While much of the money used to conduct the war was borrowed (most notably from Chinese institutions), ultimately American taxpayers will be responsible for many years to come for footing the bill, including the high interest payments on the funds loaned.
-Building With Whole Trees
-From TED: Edward Burtynsky photographs the landscape of oil
-Straight Talk for the Planetary Era: A Trio of Book Reviews
-Eric Sanderson pictures New York — before the City
-Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate
The global food crisis has prompted various rich countries to start buying up land in the poorer world to secure their food supplies. As well as affecting domestic food supplies in the countries affected, Sue Branford says it could be a time bomb for the world’s ability to cope with climate change.
