Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I don’t believe we can keep from becoming addicted to something. Once we accept this fact of life, the issue becomes whether we can work on controlling what we are addicted to–making it healthy and inexpensive rather than destructive and costly.
The failures of understanding that so often stymie communication in discussions of the future of industrial society unfold from the most basic models we use to make sense of our experience. Maybe it’s time to address those models and their implications directly, instead of assuming — incorrectly — that those who talk about the future are all talking about the same thing.
Clothes-Minded? Wear Your Earth Day Suit!
Best In Show: Solar Clothing
Luxury-Goods Makers Embrace Sustainability
In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, there’s a lengthy article on the relatively recent arrival of the Transition Town movement to the United States, focusing on organizing efforts in the small, town of Sandpoint, in the very northern tip of Idaho. Despite some flaws, I think the article is quite valuable, and for one reason… the descriptions of what I believe are very healthy, very human tensions between hope and fear.
A lesson from the trains in Spain
Transformers: Protecting Pedestrians From Killer Cars
China Influence Grows With Car Sales
Is conflict prevention “green”?
Lose weight to help the planet, researchers recommend
Are the Life-boats Sinking
D.C. Area Families Take Green to the ExtremeHow Green Is My Bottle?
Whatever methods of restraint we eventually enact – and I think we will enact them, so let them be good ones, that lead to a justice and honorable society – we must begin from this – every child that we have, every birth is a gift, and if our gifts are fewer than in past years, we must only treasure them the more.
The end is near! (Yay!) (NY TImes on the Transition Movement)
Why we forgot how to grow food (UK Times)
Homer-Dixon: A doomsayer, and a father, with a heart of faint hope
Are there demand limits to growth?
Why isn’t the brain green?
This paper investigates the link between population growth, energy resources and carrying capacity at a global level, to determine if there might be dependencies and if so, how they could be modelled. Different qualities of energy resources may interact differently with population growth. Finally the implications of a peak in energy resource availability on population growth are examined.
1) Don’t invest in something that could become a stranded asset 2) Focus on strategies that reduce emissions and oil constraints 3) Have the highest energy productivity 4) Keep radical options open
Sunday Times: Review of Holmgren’s Future Scenarios
Peggy Noonan: Goodbye bland affluence
Carolyn Baker: Economic recovery? No thank you
Drastic Energy contraction ahead
New book from Michael Ruppert: A Presidential Energy Policy
Charles Hall in American Scientist: Revisiting the Limits to Growth after peak oil
Matt Simmons video
The “peak oil disruptor” – 4 rules to address the “global energy transition”
North Sea protection: U.K. oil industry seeks aid
