Oil

The Transition Town Movement: Embracing Reality and Resilience

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For several months I have been meaning to write a review of Rob Hopkins’ The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, but other things got in the way-like a planetary economic meltdown and out of control climate change that exceeds some of the most dire predictions by climate scientists. I should have spoken out earlier in support of this movement, but I didn’t. Now, as we commence this new year, I am.

I will begin this book “review” by telling you that I find nothing-absolutely nothing wrong with The Transition Handbook. If that then makes this article into a commercial for the book instead of a review, so be it.

With twig and dung

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From the hills of the Deccan Plateau in western India’s state of Maharashtra, the world of export fuels is unimaginable. In these hill villages firewood is still the primary fuel. In the hour before the sun goes down over the hills and the temperature drops, women bearing head loads of bundles of light branches head back to their simple homes. What these families have in common with many hundreds of thousands of households in rural India is their continued reliance on wood as fuel, whether for cooking or, as in these windswept hills, for keeping warm.

Energy in the real world

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As fossil fuels become less available, judicious use of the remaining reserves becomes even more important. We must come to realize that fossil fuels (as well as concentrated sources of minerals) are a gift from the earth and previous to life. To mistakenly call solar or wind energy renewable and include the capturing mechanisms leads to both false hopes and perhaps poor allocation of limited fossil fuels and funds.

Peak oil, prices & supplies – Dec 30

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Crude oil rises as Israeli attacks on Gaza roil Middle East
Robert Rapier’s top 10 energy stories of 2008
Gwynne Dyer on peak oil and the transition from oil
Byron King: Whither the oil markets
What will make headlines in 2009
Tumult in the life of a Calgary oil trader

Comments on $37 oil

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Just as the world does not work too well at $147 oil, the energy industry does not work well with oil at $37. If $147 oil was a problem, then $37 oil is actually NOT the solution. Cheap oil might even be worse for the world over the long term.

Forecast for 2009

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The big theme for 2009 economically will be contraction. The end of the cheap energy era will announce itself as the end of conventional “growth” and the shrinking back of activity, wealth, and populations. … My hope for the year, at least for my own society, is that we will transition away from being a nation of complacent, distracted, over-fed clowns, to become a purposeful and responsible people willing to put their shoulders to the wheel to get some things done. My motto for the new year: “no more crybabies!”