Culture & Behavior

2009 Japan prize honors lead author of ‘”The Limits to Growth”

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Dr. Dennis Meadows, lead scientist and co-author of The Limits to Growth (1972) and its subsequent updates, is the winner of this year’s Japan Prize from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan for “Transformation towards a sustainable society in harmony with nature.” This prestigious award is given once a year to people from all parts of the world whose original and outstanding achievements in science and technology are recognized as having advanced the frontiers of knowledge and served the cause of peace and prosperity for humankind.

Fuel Emergency Part 1

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Preparing for a liquid fuels emergency does not appear to be on the radar screens of most government officials and emergency planners. This is a very worrying situation in light of emerging energy supply realities (accelerating oil-field depletion rates, plummeting exploration and development, rusting infrastructure, and greying workforce). All of these factors put together mean there is an increasing potential for fuel supply emergencies in the years ahead.

Hope and fear

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Mr. Obama’s first task taking stage in the lonely Oval Office should be to get right with his own credo of “change,” meaning he’ll have to persuade the broad American public that the “change” required to salvage this society runs much deeper, colder, and thicker than they’d imagine in their initial transports over hallelujah-Bush-is-Gone. Many of the familiar touchstones of the recent American experience have got to go.

Peak-oil activist approach for the coming change in culture

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To live with as little petroleum and other non-renewable resources as possible right now is to embrace a new world of localized economics and a lower-tech set of practices and processes formerly termed Appropriate Technology. But if we instead hope for as little change as possible in the near future, we will probably bring on the worst consequences of recent decades’ energy gluttony.