Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Rob Hopkins of Transition Culture recently asked, could pervasive peak oil pessimism be the result of men realizing we are ill-equipped to handle what is coming? The answer is yes. We need new skills and new tools.
I have come to think that part of the reason behind the “die-off” perspective … is in fact that a generation of men are coming to realise on some level that they are almost entirely unequipped to face the challenge that peak oil creates.
My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse.I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.
As the biosphere presses its limits upon us in the areas of energy, climate, water, soil and pollution, the neoclassical economic view that human ingenuity will allow the species to ignore every other species on the planet and grow the world economy indefinitely has become life threatening, even civilization threatening.
A second narrative exploration of the future after peak oil, set fifty years and several cycles of catabolic collapse after “Christmas Eve 2050.”
Why had I became an environmentalist in the first place? To find out I would have to go back to that other life, the one with no catchy slogans, no rousing mission statement, no words at all even, only pictures flickering in my mind.
More about the post-peak scenario presented in “Christmas Eve 2050,” the first of three snapshots of life in a deindustrial future.
Taking On Goliath (gas industry) in the West
China’s Yellow River in crisis
China’s environment dangerously degraded: official
Japan shrinks
The first of three glimpses of what life might be like for an average American family in the post-peak deindustrial future.
The approach which is hardest to sell seems like the safest. It relies on the concrete, concerted actions of people everywhere doing things that require no miracles of technology, no rosy assumptions about the future availability of critical resources, and only limited faith in the marketplace. It is an approach that one can get started on today without the enactment of any big government program.
A drop-sized way to bring clean water to a thirsty world /
Toilets underused to fight disease: U.N. study /
China – threat of 60 million obese citizens
The transformation of American democracy into an elective oligarchy funded by the profits of empire was one consequence of the petroleum-fueled prosperity of the 20th century. As cheap oil and American empire meet a common end, the renewal of civil society offers one option to begin rebuilding a viable society in the twilight of the industrial age.
