Deep Thought – March 1
Remembering Deep Ecologist Arne Naess
Peak oil means sooner or later we’ll wake up to a new normal
What is UNsustainability?
Education
Book review: Culture Change by Alexis Zeigler
With superb insight, wisdom and erudition—one is almost tempted to say omniscience—Alexis Zeigler’s Culture Change charts an ambitious course for the future of our civilization. The book calls for a revolution to bring about what Zeigler terms a “conscious culture” capable of responding intelligently to our ecological crisis. (Full book title: Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil, and the End of Empire)
Renewables & efficiency Feb 12
Wind Turbines in Europe Do Nothing for Emissions-Reduction Goals
New study praises corn as source for ethanol
A line in the green sand
Agency and community resilience
For a community to thrive in a complex environment, it must strike a delicate balance between planning proactively and remaining alert to emergent, unexpected changes.
United States – Feb 10
Recession sending more students to comm. colleges
Some Thoughts on the Obama Energy Agenda from the Perspective of Net Energy
Stupid Senate tricks
The power of community
Community” is often dismissed as a romantic notion, “harking back a golden age that never existed”. Traditional rural communities tended to be held together by the absence of choice: you were your mother’s daughter or your father’s son, and the range of possible futures – opportunities for travel, education, and employment- were limited.
Energy industry – Feb 6
Exxon: Juggernaut or Dinosaur?
Time to toll the warning bells
Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy
A deindustrial reading list
After fielding multiple requests for a reading list on the end of the industrial age, the Archdruid suggests ten books that might just cast a necessary light on the crisis of our time.
Peak oil, the web of debt, & our local future
A new set of high definition videos are now online: Richard Heinberg on peak oil, Thaddeus Owen on permaculture, Ellen Brown on financial collapse, Tim Husdon on the four futures, and Kim Hill on the auto industry crisis, and more.
Peak Moment 125: An Engineer Examines a Town’s Energy Future
How much energy does a town consume? Brian Corzilius sleuthed that out for Willits, California, and got a big surprise: in this community of 13,000 people, nearly 25% of after-tax revenue leaves town to pay for energy–gas, diesel, electricity and natural gas.
Housing & urban design – Jan 30
A City Made of Waste
Independence vs Splendid Isolation
EntropyPawsed Uses “A Pattern Language”
Peak Moment 126: A School Garden Brings Learning to Life
Come along on a tour with team-teachers Glenda Berliner and Jeralyn Wilson, as they show us their elementary school garden bearing many fruits. It’s an important part of the curriculum: children make mason bee boxes, grow colonial medicinal plants, learn of other cultures, and put science to work.
