Peak oil review – October 17
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Middle East
-China
-The Oil Market Report
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Media & Communications
Limits to Growth – Forty more years?
I contend that we, especially in rich countries, have reached the economic limit to growth but we don’t know it, and desperately hide the fact by faulty national accounting, because growth is our idol and to stop worshiping it is anathema.
Talk amongst yourselves
People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which work on solutions ourselves.
Occupy Wall Street’s consensus process [VIDEO]
This mini-doc shows in some detail how the general assembly – the heart of the occupy movement – operates. They make decisions by consensus and anyone can join the assembly. Through this process, the occupy movement models its own radically inclusive political economy and thus demonstrates that it’s more than a protest movement. It’s many things, but what may be overlooked is that it’s a social process through which people can experience being a fully heard citizen, and maybe for the first time. It gives an opening through which people can experience first hand what’s possible when a diverse citizenry works together.
Food & agriculture – October 17
-How India squared up to Monsanto’s ‘biopiracy’
-Study debunks myths on organic farms
-Planning reforms will threaten Britain’s ability to grow food
-Bitter harvest: migrant workers on UK farms ‘still exploited’
-Trees ‘boost African crop yields and food security’
-A New Approach to Feeding the World
Can Margaret Atwood’s environmental message reach a broad public?
Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood is a master work of environmental awareness. It would behoove all those who are searching for ways to reach the broader public about these important issues to read this remarkable work.
I believe it because it is absurd
When people lose wisdom, the easiest way out appears to them to find an enemy, Our new enemies seem to be the scientists. We haven’t seen yet climatologists being lynched by angry mobs, as it happened to Hypatia long ago – but we seem to be getting close to something like that.
#Occupy – NEWS – Oct 14
– Facing Eviction, Protesters Begin Park Cleanup
– Occupy Wall Street: More popular than you think
– Occupy Wall Street protests reveal liberal tensions
– Lech Walesa, former Nobel Prize winning and Polish president, warns of ‘revolt against capitalism’
– Mr. Walesa goes to Wall Street
#Occupy – VIEWS – Oct 14
– Bloomberg vs Occupy: tactical suggestions from John Robb (Global Guerrillas)
– Matt Taibb’s Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts
– Dave Winer: Did politics just change?
– Pham Bihn: Wall Street occupation ignites mass movement
Making sense of the protests through a post-growth lens
The world has recently seen protests on Wall Street, rioting in London, and tension in other parts of Europe as it deals with insolvent debtor nations. Mass confusion is in the air.
…Among all the mass confusion, steady-state theory might help us account for not only the the economic problems, but also the ideological divide.
The visitors – a Transition journey
I’m setting off today, catching an early train. I’m leaving Bristol Temple Meads, London Liverpool Steet, Macynlleth. I’m leaving Darsham by the marshes of my own home territory, crossing the city, negotiating bridges, underground tunnels, standing on a platform with schoolchildren, city commuters and old ladies going to the sea for a holiday. I’m on my way to visit the social reporters who live in different corners of the country, to meet the people I’m working with to create this new Transition communications hub. To find out how the places we live in influence our everyday lives and our initiatives, and how we all connect on a national scale.
Dear Occupy Wall Street
Right now, I know that things are tense. I know that you’re waiting for the word on whether or not you will be evicted from Liberty Plaza tomorrow, from the beautiful occupation you’ve built right in the the belly of the beast of global corporate power. I know that you are worried that there will be police violence, or another mass arrest. I know this because right now, I’m reading news reports about what you’re doing from across the globe, and talking to people sitting in the square, even though I’m thousands of miles away. You see? The whole world is watching. You did that. Whatever happens tomorrow, the whole world will be watching the New York authorities try to clean the people of America off the sidewalks of Wall Street.
