Oil

Local-food activist makes the farm-bike-sailboat connection

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Jan Lundberg moved to Portland a year ago because it seemed like the best place to pursue his intersecting passions for food security, peak oil, bicycles, and sailing. These passions will be coming to fruition later this month when the oil analyst’s brainchild, the Sail Transport Network, will launch into its first major, ongoing local venture.

A book review of Harry MacCormack’s “The Transition Document: Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture”

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The recently published and expanded fourth edition of The Transition Document: Toward a Biological Resilient Agriculture by Harry MacCormack is arguably his most important work in a long and winding career of poetry, politics, farming, writing, and spiritual discovery.

Copenhagen begins – Dec 7

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-Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’
-The Physics of Copenhagen
-Earth More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than Previously Thought
-Cap and Fade
-‘Climategate’ at centre stage as Copenhagen opens

Was Volatility in the Price of Oil a Cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis?

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A cause for the financial crisis of 2008 is described that differs from conventional wisdom. It is proposed that in the early 2000s, an increase in the volatility of oil took place…The oil shock of 2008, when price doubled over less than a year (peaking at ~ $140 a barrel), is shown not to be an isolated event. Instead, the oil shock of 2008 is the largest in a series of 7 prominent spikes in oil price variance that began some 7-8 years ago.

What It Looks Like When a Local Authority REALLY Gets Transition…the Monteveglio story…

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So what might it look like when a local authority really gets Transition? Earlier this week I received a very excitable email from Cristiano Bottone, one of the movers behind Transition Italia, and the Transition of his own town, Monteveglio, near Bologna.

These Revolutionary Times

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The language of revolution should be used as a last resort and against odds that can be beaten only with radical thought and action. It requires justification or, at the very least, explanation.

Reserves are bunk

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Henry Ford is famous for having once said, “History is more or less bunk.” He was, in fact, attacking tradition in an age of rapid technological and social change. Almost a century later we have a less ambitious observation which may not achieve the broad visceral appeal of Ford’s statement, but one which may turn out to have a good deal of importance, to wit: Oil and natural gas reserve numbers are more or less bunk.

Food & agriculture – Dec 4

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-Todmorden’s Good life: Introducing Britain’s greenest town
-Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture
-Farming with Far Fewer Fossil Fuels at Tillers International
-Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food