Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Congress expects cellulosic ethanol to fulfill the renewable fuels requirement. Catering to an uninformed public, our politicians have laid out a road map for failure. Cellulosic ethanol is not a silver bullet that solves America’s oil dependency.
The fallacy of reversibility: why peak oil actually helps industrial agriculture
OPEC Secretary-General : ‘International oil companies are the real dinosaurs’
Not “peak oil” but “trough oil”!
Review: Shell Game by Steve Alten
“How to Boil a Frog” on peak oil
Warning on rising Med Sea levels
Water crisis: Turkey’s disappearing lakes
German farmers and global warming
Farming is itself an art and a whole lot more artists than you might imagine draw their early or late inspiration from it. And I don’t mean just sentimental, sugary, artsy-fartsy, pretty stuff about farming, but the guts of it, the tragedy and heartbreak a farmer must sometimes endure, as a true artist often endures, when he pits himself against the tyranny of greed and the indifference of nature to produce good food.
Debate over biofuels continues
Jamaica: Debate heats up as food prices rise
Biofuels, at what cost?
Biofuels: an alternative to U.S. Air Force petroleum fuel dependency
NY Times: Global oil quandary: costly fuel means costly calories
Is this the end of cheap food?
WorldChanging on high food prices
West Africa: food prices climbing, crisis feared
India: Situation on food front alarming
Pakistan: Food riots feared due to shortage of quality wheat
Over 1 million Afghans face food shortage
An executive summary of weekly news from a peak oil perspective, featuring:
– Production and Prices
– Peak Oil — Pro and Con
– Kashagan
– Food versus Fuel Again
– Energy Briefs
A gracious fall is better than a bitter, ballistic, hostile one. The flexibility of bamboo would be a better model for our fall than rigid, fossilized bones likely to break and shatter. Then we may come back up, though hopefully in a different, more mature way.
Australian grain farmer: “Cellulosic ethanol will stretch fertilizer resources and drive farmers even further away from sustainability.”
Europe takes Africa’s fish, and boatloads of migrants follow
Roadkill and sustainability
Should we be eating insects?
Farmer Jay Martin on CSAs
Community Solutions: Food, health and survival
All the stereotypes of Rutland, Vermont as “backward” and “too conservative” to relocalize its economy through local agriculture are fading into the dustbin of history. (Interview with Greg Cox of Boardman Hill Farms.)
Chinese and US demand drives commodities surge
Drain on the Mediterranean: rising water usage
Europe’s appetite for seafood propels illegal trade
Goodbye helium, goodbye brainscans
