Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Next week sees the publication of the next book in the Transition Books series, ‘Local Sustainable Homes: how to make them happen in your community’ by Chris Bird. More details to follow (including how to order your copy), but as a taster, here is my foreword to the book…
I teach at a prestigious (high-on-ranking-lists) Swedish technical university, but when I mention peak oil, the students just don’t “get it”, or refuse to contemplate it. I have thus had to think about starting points I personally take for granted and emphasize these in my talks so as to increase the likelihood of my audience “getting it”. These 4+1 assumptions are interrelated and they form a logical chain that is easy to follow but hard(er) to refute.
Despite the volumes of material that have been written on peak oil, there still did not exist (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) a single online reference that presents this very complex topic in a form that’s both accessible to newbies, and that links to the deeper data and theory. So I built one, on contract with ASPO-USA, based on some of their existing material and my old “Peak Oil Media Guide” from 2008. It’s still a fairly skeletal first draft, comprising only 16 web pages, but hopefully it will grow, and serve as a useful guide to the public, the media, and others.
As economists focus on the Sacred GDP number, which must remain positive to maintain the statistical recovery myth, there is another crisis brewing in the world of crucial resources. In yesterday’s post Energy Consumption And Progress, I alluded to the Age of Resource Competition. Today this competition is most evident in the production of rare earth elements—
This paper has two goals. First, it provides a systematic review of oil depletion models produced to date. This serves to make obscure past works (often difficult to find) available to a wider audience so as to limit repetition of past efforts. Second, this paper provides synthesizing critique of previous modeling efforts, with the aim of improving future oil depletion modeling.
Transition Culture is back! After a month of Cornish beaches, hemp lime plastering, wood store-building, cinema visits, catching up with friends, storytelling festivals, campfires and wrestling with cabbage white caterpillars, normal service is resumed. Nice to see you again, you’re looking well. I’m kicking off again with some reflections on John Michael Greer’s “green wizardry” concept, which he calls “the current Archdruid Report project”, which will no doubt generate some interesting debate.
Too much to read? Try these picks from the EB co-editors.
Not long ago, most socialists had little to say about environmental issues, and the environmental movement was focused on individual (change your light bulbs) and capitalist (create a market for emissions) solutions to the ecological crisis.
Discussion: Perceptive readers have probably wondered about the strange mix of topics we’ve covered — ranging from floods and fisheries to tourism development and drug production. What is the relationship between these issues and their significance to this voyage’s “theme of exploring the effects of climate on Mexico’s coastline?” This might be a good opportunity for a bird’s-eye view, using island examples and past societies for perspective.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-China – the costs of growth
-Macondo – the blame game
The question now is how much longer humanity will choose to sit on the double yellow line as the consequences of runaway growth scream down the road at us doing a zillion miles per hour. Or to paraphrase, are people smarter than chipmunks?
I’ve written lately that economists are the high priests of Progress. I don’t subscribe to the doctrine of Progress, which is a faith-based view of our future. Apparently, for most people all of the time, the alternative is simply unthinkable. The truth is that we had wars 4,000 years ago, and we have wars now. The large majority of human beings were poor and disenfranchised 4,000 years ago, and the large majority still are today.
