Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Was I surprised that last issue’s column, Can Renewables Outshine Fossil Fuels?, elicited a strong reaction, with written responses of support and derision? Not at all. It’s an issue that continues to divide the environmental community, and one which keeps us from moving forward as quickly as possible to conserve resources and relocalize as an era of cheap, concentrated, easy-to-get energy comes to an end.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently released its Index of U.S. Energy Security Risk: Assessing America’s Vulnerabilities in a Global Energy Market, 2011 Edition (80 pgs). This is an update of last year’s inaugural edition and is published by the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, headed by Karen Harbert.
This week saw riots on Britain’s streets and in world markets. The IEA monthly oil report referred to the oil market as a ‘big dipper ride’ as Brent oil dropped below $100 for the first time since early February, before regaining some of the losses later in the week. Pundits compared the turmoil with 2008, but in some ways it looks far worse…
The real purpose of an economic system is to guarantee to every person in its circle the fundamentals of physical existence (food, clothing, shelter) and the tools of meaningful work so that they can get on with the business of living together and working out our common destiny. This was Gandhi’s vision, among others’. We can no longer afford to ignore him in this sector any more than we can ignore his spectacular contributions to peace and security.
-An open letter to David Cameron’s parents
-Why we need to stop trying to ‘save the planet’ and just realise our place in it
-New Zealand quake: Christchurch ‘to be garden city’
-Riots are no reason to surrender our rights
-Shopocalypse Now
-The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom
-Can the Aftermath of Disaster Be Beautiful?
-The Secretary of Energy Advisor Board Shale Gas Production Subcommittee Ninety-Day Report – August 11, 2011
-Gas Fracking Poses Serious Environmental Risks, Panel Finds
-Panel Seeks Stiffer Rules for Drilling of Gas Wells
-Growing Cities Movie
-Something’s Growing at Riverpark
-Picturing World Agriculture
-National Farmers Market Week: Why the Feds Should Support Family Farms
-Creating a sustainable world: An interview with Barton Seaver
-“And The Echo Follows” Brings the Food Sovereignty Movement to Life
-Algae-Based Transportation Fuels Comes At A Cost
-Algae Could Solve World’s Fuel Crisis
-Ethanol-loving bacteria accelerate cracking of pipeline steels
-3 things you need to know about biofuels
In both the entrepreneurial and the financial pyramid scams, the magic ingredient is confidence. The investors believe in the financial guru or in the person who initiates them into the marketing chain. And, of course, the investors are confident that they’ll make lots of money. In some cases, as in the pyramid schemes that ripped through the former communist world in the 1990s, many investors even knew about the fraud but believed that they could get in and get out with a bag of money before the whole thing collapsed.
If the analogy holds, then the U.S. economy is…a giant pyramid scheme?
England’s cities burn, the financial system continues its inexorable slide towards the pit, taking the real economy with it, socio-economic chaos stalks the declining West, and I am reading a poem.
To get past the wall of potential financial-monetary collapse, governments would have to resort to extraordinary emergency measures. In the best instance, this would create time and space to begin coming up with long-term, infrastructural responses to declining energy supplies and climate change—responses involving the redesign of transport systems, power generation and transmission systems, food systems, and so on. Of course, there is no guarantee that time, once gained, will be well spent. Nevertheless, in principle the wall can be traversed.
There are signs that more GDP growth may not be in the cards, regardless whose economic remedy is chosen. In fact, the day may have arrived when GDP itself has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had…If the “recovery” was all smoke and mirrors, we’ve just run out of mirrors.
