Education

Moloch’s Children: Do Climate Skeptics and Climate Change Activists Need to Agree?

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I’ve gottten literally dozens of emails begging me to weigh in on the East Anglia climate scandal, and for a while, I was reluctant to do so, because ultimately, paying attention to something so inane just gives it credibility. We’re back, again, to the old battles over climate change — attention to trivialities in the absence of the central issue.

Six Things We Know For Sure in the Wake of ‘Climate Gate’

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A few people have been in touch to ask whether, in the light of the recent illegal hacking into UEA’s emails, and the proposition by climate deniers that some of the emails that have emerged prove climate change is a scam, Transition Network now intends to renounce the absurd notion of human-induced climate change. Of course not.

Michigan Conference Envisions Local Future of Resilience and Sustainability

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Randy Udall, Dr. Robert Costanza, Albert Bates, Richard Douthwaite, Stephanie Mills, Michael Brownlee, Megan Quinn Bachman, and Thomas Greco tackle peak oil, climate change, and monetary collapse at the Conference on Michigan’s Future: Energy, Economy and Environment 2009.

Deconstructing Dinner: Linnea Farm – Ecological Gardening Programme

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In October 2008, Deconstructing Dinner had the pleasure of spending time on Cortes Island, British Columbia with a group of young enthusiastic adults who had just spent 8 months learning the intricacies of growing food using organic and permaculture principles…On this episode we meet those students and instructors to learn more about this unique programme, its impacts on the students, and perhaps for us as listeners, can act as inspiration to develop similar programmes in our own communities.

Peak Moment 155: Peak Oil: Adapting for Big Changes Ahead

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With a long-time eye to declining energy resources, Bart Anderson envisions a very different society in five years. The former editor of Energy Bulletin.net offers advice for post-oil living: Understand the problem. Prepare psychologically for big shifts and the unexpected. Find your niche and get good at it. See what your great grandparents did as a model for living well within limits. “Live poor and learn to do it well” as Bart did as a graduate student. Things will be very different, he said, but we’ll make it through.

The oil-economy connection

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Saudi Arabia’s oil production company is Saudi Aramco. Its former Vice President of oil exploration and production, Sadad al Husseini, recently made the following comment on oil prices at the 30th Oil & Money Conference, held in London on October 20-21: “…as you go up to say $90 a barrel, you’re consuming 4.5% of the global economy [for oil]. That in itself is a ceiling – you cannot go indefinitely into more expensive alternatives without destroying [the] economy and therefore destroying demand…”

Peak Oil and Agriculture (transcript added)

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During the month of October, CBC Radio’s political affairs show, The House, ran a four-part mini-series on peak oil, called “Going Local.” The third episode examined the implications of peak oil for the Canadian agri-food sector and was chosen as a CBC “Editor’s Choice” item. The episode includes interviews with two farmers near Ottawa, Ontario and a discussion with Rick Munroe, the energy security analyst for Canada’s National Farmers Union.

Deconstructing Dinner: Agroinnovations Podcast with Paul Stamets, Rob Hopkins, and Richard Manning

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Today’s episode features segments from Agroinnovations featuring well-known figures like Paul Stamets – a mycologist (aka mushroom specialist) from Olympia, Washington, the U.K’s Rob Hopkins who has popularized the Transition Town Movement and Montana journalist and author Richard Manning, who possesses a keen interest in the history and future of the American prairie and agriculture.