Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A two part conversation between Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler. The conversation covers peak oil, financial dysfunction, political convulsions, generational conflict, techno-grandiosity, the fate of industrial agriculture and the suburban living arrangement. Heinberg also reacts to being labeled a “Doomer.”.
We have within us, the very innate altruistic qualities needed to work our way back to that simpler, communally-focused way of life– the 75% reduction that Dr. Rees said was possible–that will bring us back to our senses. It is happening already.
Locally. Methodically. Little by little. Step-by-step.
In Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences and Addressing the Challenges, uthors Henk-Jan Brinkman and Cullen S. Hendrix illustrate clearly that food insecurity is a “threat and multiplier for violent conflict”. Based on their fairly broad review of the research, in which more than 100 sources were referenced, “[f]ood insecurity, especially when caused by higher food prices, heightens the risk of democratic breakdown, civil conflict, protest, rioting, and communal conflict.”
If Transition is the village, Dark Mountain is the shaman.
“Is the world a better place because you were born?” asks author Derrick Jensen. He contrasts sustainable indigenous cultures who enrich their habitat with the current “dominant culture destroying everything.” He explores how industrial civilization is inherently violent, turning people into objects and the earth into stuff. His books include A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, What We Leave Behind and Endgame. [Part 1]
Now that the financial and political components of the present system have discredited themselves, a fluid situation exists that might allow more viable options to emerge. Local green initiatives, in particular the Transition Towns movement, are gaining in strength and number(s), but do they have the potential to develop the capacity needed at a national level to transform societies’ energy and transport infrastructures?
Humans may pride themselves as being the best evidence for intelligent life on Earth, but an alien observer would record that the (un)sustainability conundrum has the global community floundering in a swamp of cognitive dissonance and collective denial…
“We’re writers with dirt under our fingernails” states the manifesto, and what strikes you is that the new narrative is not some urban dystopia, a tale told by cynical city novelists, it’s directly rooted in the materials of nature. It shares a lineage with English visionaries, dissenters and poets, and yet feels new and modern, planetary, something we are all inventing together.
In Sacred Economy, Charles Eisenstein poses the seemingly outrageous idea that money should be sacred. In this he means that a good bit of the mess we’re currently in is because we have lost this sense of the sacred and the special – the connected and interdependent nature of transactions between people.
Predictions about the future very often turn into a force shaping the future they try to predict, and not always with the expected results. A glance back over the trajectory of an older movement that thought it knew which way the future was headed has lessons of some importance for the peak oil movement. Brushing the dust off a stack of old pulp science fiction magazines, the Archdruid explains.
“Imagining a world without oil” describes in stark detail what might happen if one day the world decided to decommission all its oil tankers, rigs, pipelines and strategic reserves. The authors, environmental scientist Steve Hallett and journalist John Wright, expect that we’d initially see sky-high prices and long lines at pumps. After a few weeks, fuel wouldn’t be had at any price and even first-world citizens would struggle to stay fed and out of the elements. This is no Hollywood doomsday scenario—it’s a levelheaded extrapolation from current trends in the fast deteriorating world energy situation. [An essay prefiguring the book originally appeared in The Washington Post.]
The September issue of the American Journal of Public Health is now available online featuring 8 studies and articles by an interdisciplinary set of experts, each examining the health risks posed by peak petroleum and what can be done to mitigate and protect against the onset of a major spike in energy prices.
