Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Many scientists have long complained that standard economics fails to account for the biological and physical systems that form the basis of the economy. In short, the economy is a subset of the environment and governed by the same biological and physical laws as every other system on the planet.
Interested in Energy? Like to rock out? Well, three rockin’ peak-oil/energy related songs are included here with lyrics: Peak Oil Blues, Americium, and Energy Matters. A brief commentary on each song is also provided to improve your listening experience. Rock on.
For Queen Elizabeth, 1992, the year Windsor Palace caught on fire and several of her kids separated, was an annus horribilis, for the rest of us the coming year may well turn out to be horrible too. While our leaders and the media continue to tell us that we have turned an economic corner and that all will be well soon, the underlying data, for those willing to look, tell a far different story.
Nobody wants to be the last person into a community in disarray. Nobody wants to come skating in, unknown by the neighbors, when the food and water are running low. Nobody wants to be known at the new kid in town, regardless of her age. So there’s the central issue of building community in the community. As if that’s not difficult enough, in a culture anathema to community, there’s more.
Pollyanna, a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter, might well be the best model we have for describing the deeply-held set of mythologies that underpin our current economic structures. Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centered on what she called “The Glad Game”, consisting of being eternally optimistic, finding something to be glad about at every turn.
…Now I know that cultural assumptions, even well-established ones, can be overturned, which is why I am excited about State of the World 2010. It calls for one of the greatest cultural shifts imaginable: from cultures of consumerism to cultures of sustainability…It advocates rethinking the foundations of modern consumerism—the practices and values regarded as “natural,” which paradoxically undermine nature and jeopardize human prosperity.
On December 2, 2009, the Bloomington City Council overwhelmingly approved the report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force entitled Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience (PDF 13.36 MB). The report is the product of a seven-member task force and outlines the community’s vulnerability to a decline in cheap oil and proposes numerous mitigation strategies.
Taped in late 2005 before Peak Moment began, this conversation feels eerily prescient about the effects of the 2008 financial collapse. William Stewart reflects on the shadow side of the fossil fuel bonanza, which enabled hyper-individualism and mobility that have shredded our connections to community and place, along with increased violence and dysfunction. Likening our oil-dependent culture to an addict who must first bottom out, he suggests there may be a silken lining after collapse: the possibility of more communal and connected ways of life.
-Earth-Friendly Elements, Mined Destructively
-Loans to Boost Nuclear Industry Seen Coming Soon
-Wood Heating and Energy Literacy
In former times slaughterhouses, bakeries, breweries and dairies were small, numerous and more or less evenly distributed across the country. Today they are big and located in only a few places. They are hubs with many long transports going to and from them. This is a consequence of the relationship between the cost of energy versus the cost of labor.
When visitors ask what our main crop is on our little farm, they look a bit startled when I reply “wood.” They look even more startled when I say the reason wood is important to us is that it brings tranquility to our lives.
This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.
