Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If the end of industrial society proves to be a slow decline rather than a sudden catastrophe, we stand to lose more of today’s cultural heritage and knowledge base, not less. What can be done in the face of so challenging a future?
If your jaw still is on the ground after paying $4.19 for a gallon of gas, an upcoming conference in Michigan is calling your name.
Gail Tverberg: Peak oil overview
Nate Hagens: Peak oil – whom to believe?
Sharon Astyk: Peak energy overview
Energy Bulletin: Peak oil primer
U.S. military launches alternate-fuel push (some officers embrace PO planning)
Hirsch on CNBC: PO problem ‘as massive as one can possibly imagine’
Defying the experts
Three raging bulls as oil barrels higher
The Sigmoid Fraud
Among the most challenging dimensions of the crisis of industrial civilization is the task of preserving its immense cultural heritage into a future where today’s technologies of communication and information storage will likely no longer be available. The emergence of cultural conservers — individuals who make the preservation of some part of our cultural heritage a personal mission — offers one option for dealing with this challenge.
“A good place to learn about peak oil, energy conservation, energy efficiency, global warming—get it all in one spot.” (U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers) The conference is scheduled for Friday, May 30, through Sunday, June 1 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
A crucial role in shaping the future will be played by cultural conservers – individuals who choose to take on the task of learning and preserving some part of the cultural legacy of the past, and passing it on to the future.
Prices may fall later this year, but will not likely dip below the $110/barrel floor price. It is actually more likely that the price will continue to rise this year, as Goldman Sachs believes, because 1) stuff happens, e.g. deepwater project delays, project cost inflation, blown-up pipelines, and 2) we are now living in Flatland.
The post-oil novel began as a little-known aberration within the speculative fiction genre. But it’s now hitting bestseller lists, generating comment in major papers, and garnering increasing acceptance from the mainstream of speculative fiction. Frank Kaminski takes a spirited, authoritative look at this blossoming subgenre
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?
Richard Heinberg, Dr. David Goodstein, Megan Quinn Bachman, Julian Darley, Pat Murphy, Albert Bates, Sharon Astyk, Katie Alvord, Aaron Wissner, Randy White, Kurt Cobb and dozens of others tackle gasoline prices, food prices, mortgage rates and the future of the global economy at peak oil, climate change, and sustainability conference.
OPEC and peak oil
Hamish McRae: We will never have cheap oil again
Gwynne Dyer: Climate change could fend off peak oil crisis
Guardian’s science course covers energy
