By Eric Holthaus, Grist
It’s a telling social phenomenon of late capitalism that we are willing to construct elaborate computer networks to conduct secure transactions with each other — and in the process torpedoing our hopes at a clean energy future.
By Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
According to most observers, the speculative bubble-of-the-year award for 2017—had there been one—would have gone to Bitcoin, the value of which soared from under $800 in January of last year to almost $20,000 by mid-December.
By Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine
Because energy fuels both human development and environmental damage, policies that encourage energy demand reduction can run counter to policies for alleviating poverty, and the other way around. Achieving both objectives can only happen if energy use is spread more equally across societies.
By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry
Instead of boiling water by lighting a fire and putting a kettle on the stove, for example, we might blow up the oldest mountains in the world to mine the remains of forests older than dinosaurs, set those old forests on fire to boil water, and then use the steam to turn turbines to send electricity through miles of cable to an outlet on your wall to power a kettle to boil water.
By John Thackara, Doors of Perception
The bigger story now unfolding seems to be one of system transformation – a peak-car tipping point – that’s been slowly ‘brewing’ for a very long time. For the physicist Ugo Bardi, the decline of a complex system can be faster than its growth – an insight he attributes to the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who wrote: “Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid”.
By Kris De Decker, Low Tech Magazine
The information society promises to dematerialise society and make it more sustainable, but modern office and knowledge work has itself become a large and rapidly growing consumer of energy and other resources.
By Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine
Artificial cooling and digital equipment are the main drivers behind the quickly growing energy use of modern office work.
By Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine
Cooling people by increasing local airflow is at least ten times more energy efficient than refrigerating the air in a given space, and it also adds the benefit of a personally controlled thermal environment.
By Tom Murphy, Do the Math
Sometimes considered a taboo subject, the issue of population runs as an undercurrent in virtually all discussions of modern challenges.
By Mumtaz Soogund, The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
Energy is closely linked with sustainable development (or not). Without energy, there is no possibility for development, but if you pay too much for energy, we’re stuck anyway and development suffers, becoming a victim of constraints and instabilities. The country must have a very clear idea of sustainable development, tied to a plan for producing and consuming energy. The two go together. And even if you use “clean” energy for the purposes of unsustainable development, you will win nothing.