Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Recently, writer Bill McKibben issued a call for artists to grapple with the epoch-making topic of global warming. “If the scientists are right,” he wrote, “we’re living through the biggest thing that’s happened since human civilization emerged.” In order to wrap our minds around the enormity, he said, we must engage our most creative and dramatic sensibilities. We must create art.
Despite opposition from some of their colleagues, 86 evangelical Christian leaders have decided to back a major initiative to fight global warming, saying “millions of people could die in this century because of climate change, most of them our poorest global neighbors.”
Wendell Berry: We went to the mountaintop but it wasn’t there /
Trading our birthright for a wide selection of bathmats /
Reflections on energy and our future /
Ian Lowe: Stealing from the future (or how to destroy the planet in seven easy steps)
Entrepreneurial optimism and a positive attitude have been the seat of success for visionaries in this land of opportunity, so where does the bad news of the planet fit into this be-positive, ever uplifting, inspirational, don’t-bum-me-out chatter?
The right to travel when and where we please will be eroded over the next 50 years as the shortage of cheap oil and environmental concerns force us to lead more local lives, according to a government report.
Incompatibility of automobility-centric lifestyles with a healthy, resource-frugal future
Proposed solutions are often so big and general that we feel helpless. What can one person do about the Kyoto protocol? Permaculture brings a unique emphasis on what can be done by individuals and small groups, fostering a sense of empowerment. This article describes how a classic permaculture technique — zone and sector analysis — can be adapted to deal with peak oil and climate change.
For those who have begun planning for a low-energy future, the main concerns are rightly food, transportation, heat, health care and local production of goods of all kinds. On a recent trip to Chicago, however, I began thinking about the fate of our great artistic and cultural institutions
We are faced with an impending shortage of the source of energy which is hardest to replace – liquid fossil fuels. And we are faced with the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel burning which has permitted us to be standing here now. The structure, the complexity, the diversity of our lives, everything we know, everything that we have taken for granted, that looked solid and non-negotiable, suddenly looks contingent.
Comedian Richard Pryor, who passed away last week, was famous for saying, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” In a way, those who believe that a peak in world oil production is not far away (or possibly already here) are asking the American public the same question.
With the amount of shopping days until Christmas fast running out, consumers who would like to make ‘green’ choices are often helpless to change their behaviour, according to research at the University of Surrey. The project, which was funded by ESRC, warns policymakers that eco-taxes and information campaigns have only a limited impact on how people behave.
Neither the mega-cities nor the survivalist’s bunker will be viable in a post-oil future. The places with the best chance of surviving an oil peak will be cities of less than a million people, ranging down to well-placed smaller cities and towns.
