Transport – Mar 26
-Beijingers get back on their bikes
-Travelling the sustainable path
-Illinois passes bill creating HSR Commission
-Heathrow judge slams runway policy
-Beijingers get back on their bikes
-Travelling the sustainable path
-Illinois passes bill creating HSR Commission
-Heathrow judge slams runway policy
DARK OPTIMISM How do we handle Peak Oil AND climate change? Shaun Chamberlin from UK Transition Towns, energy writer Kurt Cobb, plus Richard Heinberg on renewable hope, with Lester Brown.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Venezuela’s Power Crisis
-UK Peak Oil Summit
Earlier this week, the UK Telegraph reported: Oil reserves ‘exaggerated by one third’
The world’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by up to a third, according to Sir David King, the Government’s former chief scientist, who has warned of shortages and price spikes within years.
Bolivia is watching its glaciers melt, early casualties of a changing climate. As communities struggle to adapt and the government tries to pioneer an alternative way forward, rural Bolivians believe the answer lies not in consumerist striving to live better, but in learning to live well.
-Is this the Birth of a Nation?
-‘Even War Is Good for Economic Growth’
-Is It Time for a Green Tea Party?
-The Broken Society
-Merkel May Emerge Victorious in EU Battle over Greece
-Portugal to wield axe after downgrade
-The euro: beggar-thy-currency
-Europe markets rattled as Fitch lowers Portugal’s credit rating
-Opinion: America in 2050 — Where and How We’ll Live
-Mayor Menino Kicks Off the Largest Public Housing Energy Efficiency Project in Nation’s History
-For green homes, should energy trump everything else?
Last spring, when hundreds of alums and faculty of the nutrition program of Columbia University Teachers College gathered to commemorate the department’s 100th anniversary, one speaker riveted the audience. Shoulders back, patrician chin jutting forward, Joan Gussow strode toward the stage. A recent octogenarian, she remains in remarkable shape.
Severine von Tscharner Fleming is the director of the forthcoming film The Greenhorns and founder of the crucial new young farmer organization of the same name. Here’s her no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners perspective on the young farmers movement. Make no mistake, this woman is dedicated and smart — and she’s recruiting.
Can we bridge the divide between the activist and the interior / personal side of ourselves? I think we’ll need to if we’re to deal with the intense challenges we now face. The intense challenges are the steps in the transition to a low-carbon future, steps we must collectively take, willingly or no. The problem isn’t a lack of technology so much as a lack of evolutionary preparedness in us. Integrating the activist and the interior / personal side of ourselves is a challenge we’ve scarcely considered. We’re going to.
On Monday Peter Lipman and I represented Transition Network at an event which could potentially be the day people look back to as the day when UK government finally starting to ‘get’ peak oil. Fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, the event, “Policy Response to potential future oil supply constraints”, was billed as “a half-day workshop hosted by the Energy Institute in partnership with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, under Chatham House Rules”. For those who don’t know what Chatham House rules are, it means that the contents of what was said can be discussed, but none of it can be attributed to anyone.