Media & Communications

The fruit of sharing

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In our local neighborhood in Los Angeles, for the third year running, we are hosting a group purchase of bare root fruit trees.  It started on a whim.  I was ordering bare root fruit trees for my own yard, and thought perhaps a few others might wish to piggyback on my order.  I posted it on our local Transition email loops and suddenly my order had exploded to 21 trees!  We qualified for extra volume discounts at the supplier, and the box that arrived on my doorstep the following January was so big that it could easily have contained one of the Lakers basketball players!

 

The ascent of Middle East food and energy demand

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At the EIA’s International Energy Outlook (IEO) presentation this May the issue of future oil exports from OPEC nations came up, and in an interesting way. Readers may be familiar with the phenomenon of declining net exports, from major oil producing nations, as a result of internal demand from growing, domestic populations.

Waste not: Seattle’s road to zero trash

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A key strategy that contributes to Seattle’s carbon neutrality work was approved by the Council in 2007, when my Zero Waste Initiative was adopted as City policy. The things we throw away not only generate carbon as they decompose—they also carry the embedded carbon that was used in creating them. Zero Waste is a strategy that addresses both of those aspects.

The “other” carbon problem — ocean acidification

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Humankind’s assault on the oceans continues apace. A short time ago, we considered the loss of 40% of the phytoplankton in the oceans since 1950. In my post How We Wrecked The Oceans, marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson explains why he believes the sea will be devoid of fish and other large marine organisms sometime in the 2040s. And now comes the “other” carbon problem—acidification of the oceans.

Peak Everything: Preface to the paperback edition

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A good case can now be made that the year 2007, when this book originally appeared, was indeed the year, if not of “peak everything,” then at least of “peak many things.” Since then we have begun a scary descent from the giddy heights of consumption achieved in the early years of this century.

On the death of Matthew Simmons

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In the days following Simmon’s death some 400 obituaries appeared on the web, on television broadcasts and in hard copy publications around the world. Some of these were written by people and organizations who understand the threat of peaking world oil supplies and praised Matt for his leadership in analyzing and publicizing the issue. Others were written by hostile skeptics who sought to play down his significance or focused on those instances in his voluminous pronouncements where he was wrong.

OPEC’s spare crude oil capacity – will it disappear by the end of 2011?

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In this post I present an analysis of how OPEC oil supplies have responded to changes in crude oil prices during the last 10 years. My objective was to estimate OPEC’s probable marketable crude oil capacities as of May 2010, based on responses of OPEC oil supplies to price changes.

Crop to Cuisine: Garden cocktails, Pakistan flooding, and From Crop to Cup

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This week on Crop To Cuisine, we go into the garden in search of cocktails with Paul Abercrombie, Author of “Organic, Shaken and Stirred”. Pakistan is in the midst of the worst flooding disaster in history. The WFP speaks with us about the realities on the ground and what people can do to help. And our series on the most popular beverage in the world continues, From Crop To Cup. All of that, headlines in food and farming, and more.

Die Post Carbon Reader Serie: Grundlegende Konzepte

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This is a German translation of the essay Beyond the Limits to Growth by Richard Heinberg which will appear in the forthcoming Post Carbon Reader. Im Jahre 1972 erkundete das inzwischen klassische Buch “Grenzen des Wachstums” die Konsequenzen des exponentiellen Wachstums von Bevölkerung, Industrialisierung, Umweltverschmutzung und Ressourcenverbrauch.# Dieses Buch, bis heute unangetastet der Bestseller unter den Umweltbüchern, berichtete über die ersten Versuche, Computer zur Modellierung der Trends bei den Interaktionen von Ressourcen, Verbrauch und Bevölkerung zu nutzen.