Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In early October, the eco-village, Änggärdet, Sweden, hosted two days of Live Action Role-Play (LARP) along the theme of life 2016-2027, post peak oil and post economic collapse. Players got the opportunity to explore what various scenarios would be like, including being commaned into a work detail bu the military to harvest the last remaining potatoes by hand, and by joining a self-organised, worked-by-hand co-housing combi-farm.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news.
-World Energy Outlook Special Report 2012 – Iraq Energy Outlook [press release]
-IEA sees Iraqi oil output doubling to 6.1 mil b/d in 2020
-Awaiting the Iraqi oil rush
-Will Iraq’s energy boom postpone peak oil yet again?
This second part of a five-part series uses the tools of narrative fiction to explore some of the ways in which America’s current global empire might come apart. As war begins in East Africa, the United States finds itself abruptly thrown on the defensive by China and its African allies, and attempts by Washington to retake the initiative trigger a spiral of international crisis that threatens to spin wholly out of control.
News of Turkish military retaliation to a mortar round fired from inside Syria spooked oil markets this week. Former Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan has warned that there is a danger that the Syrian conflict could spread and destabilise the region, although the Turkish Prime Minister said on Thursday that his country had no intention of starting a war…
It’s easy for discussions about future crises to remain stuck in a realm of abstractions that never quite get down to talking about the lived reality of events as they happen. The toolkit of narrative fiction is one of the few useful ways to get past that roadblock of the imagination. This week’s post, therefore, is the first of a five-part series providing, in fictional form, a glimpse at one way the American empire could go the way of Nineveh and Tyre.
Democracy, individualism , liberalism and many of the dimensions of modern societies that we most cherish and take for granted, emerged on the back of high energy throughput and growth. The pacified, individuated personality structure which allows the ‘I’ to be partially dissociated from the ‘We’ is itself historically and metabolically specific. It is very difficult for people with such an elaborated sense of self even to imagine the worldview of other people living in the past, or in those very few simpler societies in the present which have not been forcibly integrated into the connected modern world.
It is equally difficult to imagine the values, predispositions or likely attitudes of our children’s children’s children, living in a world which, if James Kunstler and Richard Heinberg are correct, will have become larger, more closed and less connected. But one thing does seem clear: degrowth is not a liberal prospect [excerpts from a to-be-published paper].
A weekly review including:
– Oil and the Global Economy
– The Middle East
– Slowing economies
– Quote of the Week
– Briefs
Oil prices were once again oscillating between the price depressing effects of economic uncertainty and the price enhancing effects of Middle East political uncertainties this week…Saudi Arabia has promised to keep oil markets supplied in the event of shortfalls elsewhere, but Deutsche Bank, and others question whether the kingdom is really in a position to make good on the promise. The IEA now estimates Saudi spare capacity at just under 2 million barrels/day.
-Land grabbing and food sovereignty in West and Central Africa
-Africa: Land, Water and Resource-Grabbing and Its Impact on Food Security
-Antonio Trejo, Honduras rights lawyer, killed at wedding
-Chinese villagers protest at slow progress over land dispute
-The global need of non-violent struggle around land rights: a path for change?
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Middle East
-The EU
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
A mid-week round-up of peak oil news.
