Fossil Fuels

“A Nighttime Letter to the Grandchildren”

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My dear ones, your generation will face a series of environmental challenges that will dwarf anything any previous generation has confronted. I’m hoping to add some insights of my own based on things I learned as a policymaker in the 1950s and ’60s, when I observed and participated in some monumental achievements and profound misjudgments. As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was super-abundant and would always be available.

Quacks like a duck…

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According to an article in Le Monde on March 25, the US Department of Energy “admits that ‘a chance exists that we may experience a decline’ of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 ‘if the investment is not there.'” This bombshell emerged in “an exclusive interview with Glen Sweetnam, main official expert on the oil market in the Obama administration.”

Peak Moment 169: The Sacred Demise of Industrial Civilization (transcript added)

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As a historian, Carolyn Baker has a keen eye for current events that are indicators of the collapse we’re seeing all around us. But she’s also a psychologist concerned about how we personally navigate the turbulence and find meaning within it. The author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, she describes the old story that isn’t working anymore (humans are separate from nature), and the new story we must live by for real sustainability.

What works: food

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When we started this endeavor, about two years ago, I could barely distinguish between a hammer and a zucchini. And that tells you all you need to know about my construction skills as well as my gardening skills. As I’ve pointed out many times before, if I can do this, I can hardly imagine somebody who can’t. But you’d better get cracking. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry.

Oil, man! – Mar 27

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– Washington considers a decline of world oil production as of 2011
– The Oil Drum: Was that really five years?
– China, $165 million, and Kazakhstan’s second son-in-law
– U.S. to reap fruits of deepwater labor

An Interview with Neil Adger: resilience, adaptability, localisation and Transition

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Professor Neil Adger is a lecturer and researcher at University of East Anglia. He is a researcher and teacher who specialises in social vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to environmental change; on justice and equity in decision-making; and the application of economics to global environmental change. He is a member of the Resilience Alliance, and is involved in a range of climate change research projects, including the IPCC and work for the Tyndall Centre.