Education

Re-envisioning and transforming the built environment

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The leap from seeing the water tower as a background object, a simple industrial structure, to imagining its possibilities gets at the question of transformation, of seeing with new eyes. We have the resources, the technologies, the skills, and the vision to create a greener world, so why haven’t we succeeded? What is missing in our applied knowledge? How can we shift our thinking so that moments like this will occur as a matter of course?

Straight Talk with James Howard Kunstler: “The world is going to get rounder and bigger again”

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The world is going to get rounder and bigger again. We’ll discover — surprise! — that the global economy was a set of transient economic relations that obtained only because of a half century of cheap energy and relative peace between the big nations.

Enough is enough

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I have a running dialogue with my steady state friends and colleagues. The subject is best described with the metaphor of a horse and cart. I say, if we want to succeed in replacing the outdated goal of economic growth with a steady state economy, we have to put the horse before the cart. The horse is the public opinion and political will needed for this change. Without this horse, I say, we have little hope of pulling a cart of steady state policies into the economic policy arena.

January selection for the Post-Apocalyptic Novel Reading Club: “Prelude” by Kurt Cobb

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There are simply too many people out there who will never sit through a talk or read a book of non-fiction about our energy situation, but who would read a novel that lays the issues out clearly in the language of fiction. Cobb took on this project, not to write a best-selling novel, but to write the kind of book you can give to your sister-in-law who won’t read the other books you want to give her!

A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it – A review of Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed’s latest book

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Anyone who has spent much time discussing peak oil, the collapse of civilizations, climate change or modern security issues eventually confronts the issue of historical antecedents. The [Insert choice of vanished civilization here] collapsed because of X, and that’s the same thing that is happening now . . . . For those who have delved more deeply into such lines of argument, one thing becomes abundantly clear: historical civilizations did not collapse for a single reason. Fast-forward to present, and there is no shortage of commentary forecasting crisis or collapse of our modern civilization. But these analysts have failed to advance a comprehensive systems-theory approach to our civilization’s troubles. Enter Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed.

Review: The Impending World Energy Mess by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling

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In The Maltese Falcon a character tells detective Sam Spade, “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are! Yes, sir, there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”* I’m telling Bob Hirsch the same thing. There’s no denying the man’s considerable credentials within the energy industry, nor his contribution to peak oil scholarship as principal author of the first major U.S. government report to take the issue seriously. But neither is there any predicting what outlandish thing he’ll propose next in his efforts to spread the message.

Brazilian peak oil site thanks authors who appeared in Energy Bulletin

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I am the editor and developer of the first Brazilian website focusing exclusively on Peak Oil – Pico do Petróleo – which was launched in the beginning of 2010. The site is a non-profit initiative and its content consists almost entirely of Portuguese translations of posts found on the Internet. My main source is the Energy Bulletin, which I have been following since 2006, when I first learned about Peak Oil.

Mark Shepherd’s 106 acre permaculture farm in Viola, Wisconsin

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I recently had the pleasure of visiting Mark Shepard ‘s family permaculture farm in Viola, Wisconsin. Mark has planted an estimated 250,000 trees over the last 15 years on his 106 acre farm. Forest Agriculture Enterprises is known for its hazel nut, chestnut, butternut, nut pine and apple produce, scion-wood and value added products. Mark has a lot of wisdom on not only farm operation but also community and staff and intern economics.

Online Course: Building Sustainable Health Systems: The Essential Role of Public Health

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In spring semester 2011 the Institute for Sustainability and Post-carbon Education at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts will offer an online course titled, “Building Sustainable Health Systems: The Essential Role of Public Health.” The premises of this course are that 1) the structure and content of public health, medicine and nursing will be deeply transformed as society reaches the limits to growth and 2) public health is critical to all socioeconomic localization and community building.