Culture & Behavior

Frugal is the new black

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This new year brought another new feeling for me too, of having come to the end of a long string of questions. I’d spent so many years in hot pursuit of answers that I was suddenly at a standstill looking around wondering where I was headed or had I, in fact, arrived?

Peak Moment 115: Calm Before the Storm

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Richard Heinberg, author of “Peak Everything”, reviews the accelerating events since mid-2007, including the credit crunch and fossil fuel price volatility, noting that we’ve missed most of the best opportunities to manage collapse. He asks, “how far down the staircase of complexity will our global civilization have to go until we’re sustainable?” His answer: when managed properly, with deliberate simplification, not as far as we might otherwise.

Peak Moment 129: Meeting the Energy Challenge

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Richard Heinberg, author of Powerdown, makes plain the dire situation we’re in as declining oil supplies fail to meet demand. He notes there are no easy “supply side” solutions (like substitute fuels): we must reduce demand, initially through conservation and efficiency. Julian Darley, president of Post Carbon Institute observes that while personal action is very important, individuals can only do so much.

The Great Squeeze (review)

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This Great Squeeze: Surviving the Human Project is the latest film from Colorado-based Tiroir a Films. This sequel to their 2006 offering, Energy Crossroads: The Burning Need to Change Course, looks to dig deeper into how the concurrent processes of resource depletion, climate change, ecosystem destruction and our consumption-oriented economic model are threatening to destroy both our planet and possibly our very civilization. I would say in large part that it succeeds.