Media & Communications

BP: Running the odds during the planning stages

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This pair of items will illustrate BP’s extraordinary confidence during its planning for the Macondo well. The first item consists of selected quotes from BP’s Initial Exploration Plan (Feb. 2009). The second item is a review of the recent presentation by two veteran drilling specialists from Shell. The primary purpose of their presentation was to contrast the differences between the way Shell designs its deepwater wells and the way BP designed the Macondo well. An underlying theme of both items is the fact that the various aspects of the BP plan were conducted under the oversight of senior industry administration and federal regulators.

Naresh Giangrande, Co-Founder of the World’s First Transition Town

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Naresh Giangrande is the co-founder of the world’s first Transition Town, in Totnes, UK. The goal of Transition Towns is to transition from oil dependence to community resilience. He was visiting in Vermont last week, and we’ll here what he had to say about how the project is going back in England, plus what he’s learned from other Transition Towns around the world.

Permaculture ethics: Why permaculture is different

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I was originally attracted to permaculture because it was the only system that made sense—that could begin to reverse and repair the damage we are doing. Among many things, permaculture is a shortcut to older wisdom. Daniel Quinn calls this Leaver wisdom, the wisdom that enabled humanity to thrive in harmony with the earth for three million years up until the agricultural revolution where we lost our way.

A cooperative approach to renewing east Kentucky

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Models of transition in eastern Kentucky must simultaneously address a host of interrelated regional challenges in order to bring sustainable success. The region’s economy is under-developed, with extremely high poverty and unemployment rates; housing stock is inadequate and energy-inefficient; and rural electric cooperatives are more than 90 percent dependent on coal, increasing the vulnerability of their customers in the face of rising prices.

Learning from the Ancients

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Gazing at the famous Mayan pyramids of Chichén-Itzá, it’s hard not to be mesmerized by the colossal limestone structures rising out of an expansive green lawn. It makes for a great photo, although the scene is missing a key feature from when those pyramids rose: a tropical rainforest canopy.

Thinking in straight lines

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Let’s face it, we, the civilized, educated, enlightened part of humanity like things to be straight. Let primitive tribesmen live in picturesque and practical round huts–we require abstract boxes of steel and concrete clad in plate glass, with plenty of nice straight lines, true vertical and horizontal planar surfaces and lots of ninety-degree angles to please the eye.

Are we happy yet?

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Even if the good times were going to roll again, in the sense of our having more consumables, how well has that worked as a formula for happiness? And if it turns out that we have even less stuff in the future, can we find a source of felicity other than the mall? The good news is that alternatives are available. The more challenging news? Alternatives may emerge not where we normally look, but as the hidden complements of some of our dominant virtues.

Big Oil makes war on the earth: The Gulf Coast joins an oil-soiled planet

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If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and just know that you’re not alone.  In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.