Oil

Who Will Grow Your Food? Part I: The Coming Demographic Crisis in Agriculture

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This is the beginning of a multi-part series on agricultural education, the farming demographic crisis and the question of who will grow our food – what the problems are, how we will find new farmers, how they will be trained. To me, this is one of the most urgent questions of our time.

The Meaning of Copenhagen

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It was the pivotal international conference of the new century. Tens of thousands showed up, including heads of state, officials at all levels of government, representatives of environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens from nearly 200 countries. Scientists had warned that, without a strong agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the consequences for civilization and the world’s ecosystems would be cataclysmic.

The problem of induction and the blindness of fools

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One does not have to know anything with certainty in order to decide on policy. In fact, policy is always based on incomplete information about the past and guesses about the future. What policymaking requires, especially in critical areas such as future energy supply, is humility and therefore caution.

The Peak Oil Year 2009

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At the start of the 21st century Peak Oil was not an issue. During the 1990s the oil price fluctuated around $20 per barrel and that the price would increase was unthinkable. The International Energy Agency (IEA), the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), the World Bank and others all had prognoses showing that the price would be around $20 per barrel in 2020.

Hope, hopelessness and faith

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For those involved in issues of sustainability, peak oil, climate change, and relocalization it might be better to feel a certain hopelessness in our situation. For hope implies dependence on forces outside ourselves. Once we abandon that hope, we can get down to the tasks at hand, the tasks that need to be done–for which we need to ask no politician or government official permission–tasks that we can get started on today. In this way hopelessness concerning the current political and economic arrangements becomes an ally.