Education

We need freedom of action to confront peak oil

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In the third video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth productions, co-editor of The Automatic Earth, Nicole M. Foss, explains how energy relates to the economy and what our impending energy crisis will look like. Foss discusses the issues associated with peak oil in financial rather than environmental terms, because she finds that peak oil has much more to do with finance than it does with climate change.

Art, activism, and permaculture

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The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination is not an institution or a group, not a network nor an NGO, but an affinity of friends who recognize the beauty of collective creative disobedience…Creation and resistance are the entwined DNA strands of the Lab’s practice. It sees art and activism as inseparable from everyday life. Its experiments aim not to make art but to shape reality, not to show you the world but to change it together.

An epidemic of ignorance

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I was at my local watering hole one night talking to a professor at Carnegie Mellon University when, after several libations, I suddenly heard myself exclaiming when did everybody get stupid? By stupid, I did not mean mentally slow or impaired. Rather, I meant ignorant or untrained to think. As with so many other things, I believe you can lay this at the feet of a culture dominated by corporations, aka. the “consumer” society.

Fictitious “facts” spur students to liquidate the planet

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One reason that we have a culture dedicated to the myth of perpetual economic growth (a dedication that produces a pile of consequences such as climate chaos, financial fiascos, ecosystem eradication, and dismal disparity between the haves and have-nots) is that students are learning fictitious “facts.” College students in the most common majors are repeatedly told that unlimited economic growth is a good thing, with no thoughtful analysis of the costs of growth.

TEQs Tradable energy quotas: A policy framework for peak oil and climate change

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A report launched today by the Lean Economy Connection, commissioned by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, calls for a nationwide system for ensuring fair and equal access to fuel as energy scarcities develop. The report, entitled Tradable Energy Quotas, sets out a detailed proposal for a scheme which would ensure fair and equal entitlements to fuel and energy under conditions of scarcity, while also guaranteeing that the government meets its commitment to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050.

Freaked out by fracking – Jan 17

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-Shale gas: a provisional assessment of climate change and environmental impacts (report)
-Shale gas moratorium in UK urged by Tyndall Centre
-Warning over UK shale gas projects
-Opponents to Fracking Disclosure Take Big Money From Industry (NEW)

Commentary: On not jumping the gun

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I’m sure we all have our own pet scenarios, and many experts have excellent and credible reasons for believing one of those is more likely than others. I would argue that as a movement, however, peak-oil activists do better to focus on the common outcomes of high, low or fluctuating oil prices, than to try to predict which path energy prices will take. The end-results matter most.

Peak Moment 187: Filmmaker Jon Cooksey (“How to Boil a Frog”)

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Filmmaker Jon Cooksey is one funny guy, even while presenting the most serious problems facing humanity. In this fast-paced conversation, he gallops all over the map with five big problems, five big solutions, and a playful and heartfelt approach. Wacky, sobering, full of animations, with Jon in dozens of personas, “How to Boil a Frog” is a film to view and discuss with friends.

Cool food, cool fuel, cool climate

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“Painting the choice as a harsh dichotomy between your current standard of living and something resembling that of a prisoner on Devil’s Island is a blown meme. Stick a fork in that. The future will be one of more conscientious design: more food with net carbon and fertility soil gains; warmth, light, mobility and other energy services based on solar income, not distilled dinosaurs.”

Passionate ambivalence and conspicuous indifference: The case against (but also for) renewable energy

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I am a little surprised, then, to find myself feeling passionately opposed to a new experimental wind project being proposed in Milwaukee and will at some point need to sit on my hands to stop some unadvised posts from flying from my computer out into the world of public mis-conception. Using federal funds, the city of Milwaukee is proposing a 20 to 100 megawatt system on the lakeshore, in a prominent, yet unobtrusive location.