Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As the age of cheap abundant energy comes to its end, making meaningful plans for the future depends on a vision of the future we can expect. Many of the supposed answers to the challenge of peak oil, however, have been proposed in response to many other crises, real and imaginary. How much of our thinking about the future is defined by the attempt to find plausible problems for culturally favored solutions to solve?
BBC: Do you need to stock up the bunker?
Natural born survivors
Why are the mean girls picking on World Made By Hand?
1. We became aware of the extent to which our present lifestyle is deeply dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels and that these will run out.
2. We came to believe that only by giving up fossil fuels and all the modes that require them, do we have the chance of long term sustainable survival and eventually to thrive in harmony with nature.
The gospel of consumption and the better future we left behind
The coming collapse of the middle class
Middle class on the precipice
Asian leaders issue poverty warning
My favorite advice to homesteaders has always been not to do anything that can be put off until tomorrow because tomorrow you might not have to do it at all. Add to that the following: Don’t do anything that you can get nature to do for you.
One thing about survivalism: it isn’t pretty but it can be fun if approached in the right frame of mind. Many people fear the possibility of survival in difficulties like we had. Yet they were not all that great a challenge if one felt strong of mind and body. I got up at 5 am to start the fires, bake the bread and feed the livestock before sending the boy and the husband out the door.
Peak water
Desalination using solar thermal power
The natural right to water (privatization)
An unlikely way to save a species: serve it for dinner
No easy access to fresh groceries in many parts of Seattle
TOD Book Review: World Made by Hand
Darley: The day the gas dried up
Food, fuel, finance: crises are intertwined
Longtime environmentalist Speth: capitalism need a radical transformation
Demise of civilisation may be inevitable
Green is the new neurotic
Eco-anxiety: a call to action
Astyk: Kindergarten ethics and disasters
We can survive but can we communicate?
Rethinking our food and fuel systems
Rob Hopkins: eco worrier
Totnes – their own currency
McKibben assesses environmentalism
Natural born survivors
Heinberg on resilient communities
The threat of what we face is huge and relentless. All who awaken to the enormity of the challenges before us still slip and slide somewhere along this continuum at times. One day we may feel encouraged with our forward action, the next we may be back to despairing.
