Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Go forth and multiply a lot less
-The new wave of urban farming (and fresh food from small spaces!)
-Urban farms a fertile idea
-Summary Presentation for Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
-The next Industrial Revolution will be people-powered
-Sustainability and Social Justice: Do the Math
-Greening Portland – Your City How To
We’ve recently heard more veiled threats from Putin about Ukraine being unable to pay for gas (thus presumably leading to new attempts at cutting them off), which suggests that Russia is getting itself ready to start a new crisis.
-Gazprom defends rigid contract terms with Europe
-Gazprom dismisses warnings of lengthy gas glut
-EU seeks Russian energy boost
Our current food systems are precarious and vulnerable to external ‘shocks’. A combination of one or more external factors, such as extreme weather conditions, global conflict or trade disputes could easily disrupt the continuity of food supplies unless we make fundamental changes to the way we farm, process, distribute and eat our food over the next 20 years.
These are merely my notes from the conference. I hope they will be useful to others as an index to the volumes of material that were covered.
-Will rising oil prices derail the recovery?
-Banks Hasten to Adopt New Loan Rules
-Finite Resources: One Possible Explanation for the Financial Crisis
-What Is Inflation and How Does One Measure It?
-They can make this rally last for years
Not many years from now, there will be a huge uproar over who missed the coming of peak oil. There will be Congressional hearings and much finger pointing and protestations that the peaking of world oil production was impossible to predict.
One of the features of many models that are used to predict future events is that they focus on target years. Decadal years are the most common target years, so that whether talking of climate or the amount of oil or natural gas available, models focus on, for example, the amount that will be available in 2030. The problem with this approach is that it leaves the public to think that a problem is not yet serious.
-UN links climate with hunger
-Hungry for change
-The Links Between Food Security And Climate Change
-Agriculture in the Climate Change Negotiations, Platform Issue Paper
-The one thing depleting faster than oil is the credibility of those measuring it
-Promoting climate-smart agriculture
A recent front-page report by the British newspaper, The Guardian, is the latest reason why Canada needs a top-level analysis of global hydrocarbon supplies. The Guardian’s November 9th story is headlined “Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower.” The story focuses on the world’s top energy monitoring and forecasting body, the International Energy Agency (IEA).
A weekly review including:
– The day of the whistleblower
– A New focus for the World Energy Outlook
– Production and prices
– Oil and the recovery
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
For several years, Gazprom has had surpassingly bad PR — worse even than Exxon, which since the 19th century heyday of John D. Rockefeller has almost proudly disdained the opinion of the world at large. The main problem has been Gazprom’s intrusion into the lives of its neighbors — its routine shutoff of gas to Georgia in the 1990s, for example, and its long reluctance to lease pipeline space for the export of natural gas from land-locked Kazakhstan, both actions that happen to coincide with the desire of Moscow to keep a foot on the throat of these former Soviet republics.
