Media & Communications

Transition and the cuts: a report from Camden

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It was heartbreaking to be at Camden Council last night. Because of the government-imposed cuts libraries, playgroups, breakfast clubs and after school care are being swept away in a borough that has always prided itself on its public services, especially for the young. Protests outside the council turned into chaotic and ugly scenes and the police prevented demonstrators entering the building on public order grounds. A few made it in and loudly berated councillors for cutting services. Council had to be adjourned at one point.

 

‘Fracking’ comes to Europe, sparking rising controversy

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As concerns grow in the U.S. about the environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract natural gas from shale, companies have set their sights on Europe and its abundant reserves of this “unconventional” gas. But from Britain to Poland, critics warn of the potentially high environmental cost of this looming energy boom.

Oil versus light: Jeremy Leggett

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This civilization uses oil for its blood. Almost everything we make, buy, and use has oil in it’s food chain. You know that. Never mind that we are bleeding carbon into the sky and the ocean, or the developing climate shift. Even if oil was lily white, we are still running out of the cheap stuff – that we need for a global economy feeding billions of humans. And we are determined to drive right off that cliff, without a Plan B.

Did Saudi Arabia really raise its oil production?

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As we begin another week of turmoil in the Middle East, and countries further afield batten down the hatches in an effort to preclude being next, here are some of the things we don’t know: — Whether oil prices are going up to $220 a barrel (and $5 at the pump), or down to $70 a barrel and more like $2.50 for a gallon of gasoline in the United States; — Whether Saudi Arabia really increased its oil production last week, or if the truth is a bit different; — And, finally, whether Russia’s gentleman president, Dmitry Medvedev, has been rummaging through Vladimir Putin’s archive of paranoid off-the-cuff remarks, and truly does not grasp what is happening around him.

Cairo in Wisconsin

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The call reportedly arrived from Cairo. Pizza for the protesters, the voice said. It was Saturday, February 20th, and by then Ian’s Pizza on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, was overwhelmed. One employee had been assigned the sole task of answering the phone and taking down orders.

Ingredients of Transition: Peak oil resolutions

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Local and regional authorities aren’t planning strategically for peak oil, and it is not a concern reflected in their policy making. They may not even understand it. Without a clear statement of concern about the issue, any further steps or actions on the issue will not have a foundation.

Food: Getting fossil fuels off the plate

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My grubby little town was full of young men in big trucks and muscle cars who had come north to make their fortunes in the oil fields. During oil booms they kept the bars hopping and the hookers busy, dropping hundred dollar bills like candy…When the wells ran dry the young men disappeared, shops shuttered their windows, and the town shrank. New oil discoveries brought them back, with all of the goldrush excitement and disarray that accompanied them.

A liberating (but damned uncomfortable) conversion

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What do we economists have to learn from Wendell Berry? Many things, but here I will mention only two. First is a definitional correction regarding the basic nature of our subject matter—exactly what reality matters most to our economic life and why? Second, what mode of thinking does this reality require of us in order to understand it as well as possible, without seducing us into spurious substitutes for honest ignorance?