Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Albert Bates is an expert in: permaculture, biochar, agriculture, law, politics and probably a few areas I’ve forgotten to mention. He’s been a leading thinker and practitioner of sustainable living since he became a resident of The Farm in 1972. This wide-ranging interview will explore his thoughts on many topics – a must hear interview!!
At the end of February, The Oil Drum published an article I wrote called Efficiency and Resilience: After Jevons Paradox, the Piggy Principle. Its content was a strictly theoretical discussion of energy efficiency and its impact on the consumption and resilience of societies.
“If we refuse to take into account the full cost of our fossil fuel addiction—if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and national security costs and true economic costs—we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”
–President Barack Obama, Carnegie Mellon University, June 2, 2010
In all of the descriptions of perilous situations that I have studied, arising during adventures on the high seas or in the high mountains, or during armed conflict, a single mistake rarely proves fatal. More often than not, death comes as a result of a sequence of bad choices which reinforce each other. These choices may not appear bad at the time–but they certainly do in retrospect! The end result is a situation in which no further steps can be taken that would not be either harmful or futile. This is the essence of checkmate: no moves left. At that point, none of the previous moves can be undone. Nor do they even exist, really: they have gone off to an imaginary universe populated by the regretful ghosts of those who didn’t make it.
The Transition Network conference 2010, held at Seale Hayne Agricultural College, was an extraordinary few days. It is a mark of how far the organisation and the concept has come in its 4 year life that it can bring 300 people together for such a deep, challenging and nourishing 3 days. I left feeling deeply honoured to be part of such a dynamic movement, and also of the team that organised the event, an incredible bunch of people.
President Obama triumphantly entered office with the popular promise of moving the United States to a cleaner energy basis, but his actions to date, along with those of the Congress, have promoted two types of dangerous energy developments: off-shore oil drilling and nuclear reactors. Nuclear expert Harvey Wasserman highlighted the dual dangers by noting, “As BP’s ghastly gusher assaults the Gulf of Mexico, a tornado has forced a shutdown of the Fermi 2 atomic reactor at the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes Region.”
But our cultural ignorance concerning basic energy numeracy, as well as an understanding of the economics of oil and energy allows otherwise intelligent and well-informed people to participate in outrage towards BP without reflecting for a moment on their own attitudes, habits, or behavior.
When press releases are made about new discoveries, ask yourself: “how much energy will be used to get that energy, or what will be the energy profit?”
Mahatma Gandhi is widely regarded as the father of the Indian nation, which he was. But the founding of the nation was not his only aim. He was, as he freely admitted, using India to demonstrate to the whole world how nonviolence could change history. The swell of mostly nonviolent revolutions that has followed in the last 30 or so years would seem to indicate that his bold scheme worked.
-Energy Use in the US & Global Agri-Food Systems: Implications for Sustainable Agriculture
-Advisers walk out in fury over £500,000 GM food PR exercise
-UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
-Incredible Edible: Supporting Food Independence in Todmorden, England
-Fossil-Fuel Use and Feeding World Cause Greatest Environmental Impacts: UNEP Panel
-San Quintín and Brackish-Water Farming
-GM lobby helped draw up crucial report on Britain’s food supplies
Here’s the president on March 31st,announcing his plan to lift a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling: “Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs, and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy.”
Given what a sweeping category sustainability is, author and noted sustainability expert Andrés Edwards is to be commended for distilling it down into two easily digestible volumes for lay readers: The Sustainability Revolution and Thriving Beyond Sustainability.
