Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-No Country for Old Jobs: 10 Charts Showing the Fragile Recovery. Home Sales, Buying versus Renting, Unemployment, and Real Economy Data
-Ostrom first woman to win Nobel Prize for Economics
-Reinventing the firm
-Quarterly Review and Outlook – Third Quarter 2009
-The Sound of One Hand Clapping – What Deflationists May Be Missing
-Recession Is Over; Depression Has Just Begun
-Transforming Clean-Energy Industry Into a Local One
-National Grid plan for local waste-to-biogas plants
-Saving energy may generate billions, study says
-World’s airlines pledge to cut emissions by 2050
-Cars must be electric, says climate tsar
-Climate Change: Four Degrees of Devastation
During the past twelve months, it has been reassuring to see vast numbers of individuals in the United States awaken to the reality that life on this planet has profoundly shifted and will never be the same. Many have radically altered their career goals, spending and saving patterns, and their long-term priorities. When I witness such changes in human behavior, I am encouraged, and I become cautiously optimistic about our ability to read the signals and respond wisely.
I’m happy to have the opportunity to spend the next few minutes sharing some personal thoughts on the subjects that bring us together for this excellent event—thoughts based on my experience, during the past few years, of trying to get the message of Peak Oil out to an ever-wider audience.
It’s been a fascinating few days. Early in the week, Nate Hagens and Sharon Astyk were suggesting that perhaps the term ‘peak oil’ has outlived its usefulness, given that we have almost certainly peaked, and that the peak oil movement needs to shift its focus. It echoed something I wrote a while ago, likening ASPO and the wider peak oil movement to a Loch Ness Monster Society, dedicated to establishing the existence of this fabled creature. They organise conferences, scientific searches of the loch, write papers and journals, and then one day, an entire, intact Loch Ness Monster washes up on the shore. Then what? They have no reason to exist any longer, their whole raison d’etre vanishes overnight.
I have found an identity. Is that really such a big deal? The thing is, I didn’t realize I was missing one. There are so many things I could call myself: a human, male, a father, a husband, a writer, a thinker, a gardener, a campaigner… so many things that I feel pretty comfortable with, yet until a couple of weeks ago I didn’t realize there was something missing; something that yawned inside me, empty and lacking substance.
In October 2009, Deconstructing Dinner descended upon the Halifax Farmers’ Market. Founded in 1750, it is the oldest continuously running farmers’ market in North America. The first market vendors were Acadian – the original European immigrants to the land.
What if Obama told us the truth about our civilization? …In one illuminating sense, our civilization’s future is a probability distribution. Unfortunately, a host of not-so-nice futures are more probable than others at this point. …So trouble’s a-comin’ in what will likely be a many-act play headed downward over the next few decades — it just remains to be seen what costume it’ll be wearing in each scene. At some point the general public may be told the truth about our predicament — but maybe not. I suspect the revealing of the truth would be a sort of last-resort for those in power to try to keep things together. This speech is my take on “telling the truth.”
-Scrumping for apples
-Grass-fed beef: One steer’s organic journey from ranch to dinner
-In Search of Wildlife-friendly Biofuels: Are Native Prairie Plants the Answer?
-6 Facts About Native Bees
-Cuba Pins Hopes On New Farms Run for Profit
-The Other Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis in Global Land Use
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
A couple of weeks ago Jerry Mander and I were discussing the best word to use in the heading for the back cover copy of a new short book being co-published by International Forum on Globalization and Post Carbon Institute, Searching for a Miracle: “Net Energy” and the Fate of Industrial Societies (I wrote the main text, Jerry wrote the Foreword). Jerry liked the word “conundrum,” while I argued for “dilemma.” We were in basic agreement, though, about a word we didn’t want: “problem.”
