Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Do you remember the furor over drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge a few years back? The whole country was up in arms. At various times some 50 to 60 percent of Americans favored drilling in the area as they were told this would result in lower gas prices.
“There are people who have bought into what I would consider a very inappropriately optimistic idea of the future, and they insist I am a doomer. People who are hard core doomers insist I am a blind optimist. Because we in Western civilization these days tend to be thinking in terms of two and only two categories.”
For peak oil devotees, When Oil Peaked is a special treat, an eminently welcome update from a heavyweight within the field. For those who are new to peak oil or who just want a general overview, however, it’s a little more of a mixed bag. The sections on logistic versus Gaussian curves and other technical matters get awfully involved and esoteric, and casual readers may lack the fortitude to wade all the way through them. But the less involved parts on solutions, recommendations for policymakers and steps that each of us can take will hold the rapt attention of serious and casual readers alike.
Should we be thinking about the number simultaneously alive or the cumulative number ever to live?
– What will future generations condemn us for?
– Policy at Its Worst (dysfunctional US)
– Why I was wrong about population
– Living off our capital
Terminal depletion of the world’s mineral energy reserves looms imminent – or certainly within the first quarter of this century. It may well signify the end of industrial civilization as we know it, and synchronous failures could permit a convergence of energy, food, and economic crises as early as 2018. But study after study proves that we know what we can do to forge a more sustainable world. It is high time for a great transition – a ‘post-carbon revolution’.
When Guy McPherson discovered peak oil, it became a cause for optimism, not pessimism.
We are running out of time. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse.
The Witch of Hebron picks up a couple of months after World Made by Hand ended. Returning to the small upstate New York town of Union Grove, the new book further defines the post-apocalyptic setting, adds depth to characters who played only minor parts in the first story, ties up loose ends from the previous book and introduces some all new dilemmas. And it does all of this against the backdrop of a full-moon Halloween, lending a delicious sense of foreboding to the proceedings.
– The environmentalist’s paradox: we do better while the earth does worse
– Smile, You’re an Activist!
– The Weirdest People in the World?
– A Short History of Progress
I wake up every morning in a state of profound grief. We humans have been given a privileged place in a world that is beautiful beyond description, and we are destroying it and destroying each other. I cope with that by building temporary psychological damns and dikes to hold back that grief. … If I weren’t politically active, I would lose my mind. The only way I know how to cope is to use some of my energy in collective efforts to try to build something positive.
(Interview with journalism professor at U of Texas)
As a college junior I frequented a website (www.dieoff.org) where prognosticators observed that with accelerating rates of environmental destruction, overpopulation and fossil fuel depletion, modern civilization was on the verge of collapse. I kept my new-found realization that life as we knew it was coming an end to myself, for fear of being labeled a “Cassandra.” Only that’s exactly what I would soon become.
