Culture & Behavior

Marshall Auerback: “Many years of economic stagnation” interview: excerpt

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…I don’t know if Baker’s statement reflects an “eternal truth”, but oil is undoubtedly a very important component of the global economy and energy (along with food) is a key non-discretionary essential without which we couldn’t sustain our current standard of living.  Unlike Europe, the US is still addicted to cheap oil, so the impact of price spikes tends to be felt much more acutely here than it does in the EU or UK…

Scale

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Within the span of a couple generations, we abandoned a durable, finely textured, life-affirming set of living arrangements characterized by self-sufficient family farms intermixed with small towns that provided commerce, services, and culture. Worse yet, we traded that model for a coarse-scaled arrangement wholly dependent on ready access to cheap fossil fuels.

Deconstructing Dinner: The Local Grain Revolution X (Retail Supported Agriculture? / Sprouting Grain)

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What is Retail Supported Agriculture? As far as the North American local food movement is concerned, it’s not a concept that has yet been coined in any notable way. The Kootenay Grain CSA (community supported agriculture) project located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia is now changing that.

The Power of People

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A common refrain today is how ‘the government’ needs to do something; the openly voiced belief that those in authority hold all the power, while the ‘common folk’ are merely cogs who have no strength to change anything…It is the power of people – not ‘the’ people, merely people in general, as a whole, who are willing to stand up in defiance of this short-sighted and greedy behavior. It is their courage in the face of an oppressive, world-straddling civilization, one built upon exploiting the poorest to benefit the richest, that now stands as the battlefield in the age-old struggle between the kingmakers and the common folk.

When the Great Correction Comes

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Former oil and gas analyst Jan Lundberg says declining energy and climate ends globalization. It’s time to launch the lifeboats of localization and sustainable energy. Why big government can’t fix it — and why do we need big government at all? Lundberg sees an inevitable rebuild from his website culturechange.org.

“Peak Civilization”: The Fall of the Roman Empire

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This text describes the presentation that I gave at the “Peak Summit” in Alcatraz (Italy) on June 27, 2009… It is not a transcription, but something that I wrote from memory, mostly in a single stretch, while I had it still fresh in my mind. The result is that my 40 minutes talk became a text of more than 10,000 words, much longer than a typical internet document (but still less than Gibbon’s six volumes on the same subject!)

The Almighty Dollar

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Each week I look at the economic and energy data. While there are indeed some actual green shoots in the monthly reports, I can not escape the feeling that our society is like Disneyland, a magic kingdom where life is a fairy tale and dreams really do come true. I call it Disneyland because the crazy rise in the S&P 500 and the oil price in recent months has happened despite, not because of, fundamentals in the economy.

Real People, Real Preparation Part 4, with Sarah Edwards

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From the STTP website: In the next few months, Truth to Power will be featuring interviews with individuals who are consciously transitioning to a post-carbon lifestyle…Everyone’s story of preparation is different; there is no one-size-fits-all model. This series of interviews with real people preparing for collapse will honor the uniqueness of those individuals and the methods of preparation that serve them in their particular situations.