Australia: Continent at risk of a dry tsunami
Ours may be remembered as the generation that allowed Australia to die, writes Paul Sheehan.
Overshoot
Why the West is riding for a fall
A little book with a big title, Dark Age Ahead, published last year, tracked the ebbs and flows of civilisations over centuries. It came to this chilling conclusion: “We show signs of rushing headlong into a Dark Age.” Not slipping towards a Dark Age. Rushing.
America’s Finite Future?
Near the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever,” John Travolta’s Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, “fuck the future!” To which his boss replies: “No, Tony, you can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain’t prepared for it!” Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros.
The Neurobiology of Mass Delusion
Because the scientists are challenging fundamental assumptions of our culture, such as the basis for “progress” and the consequences of “economic growth,” many cannot agree with the scientists without losing their identity. This threat to the mental model is simply too great to accept.
Energy and Human Evolution
Life on Earth is driven by energy. Autotrophs take it from solar radiation and heterotrophs take it from autotrophs. Energy captured slowly by photosynthesis is stored up, and as denser reservoirs of energy have come into being over the course of Earth’s history, heterotrophs that could use more energy evolved to exploit them, Homo sapiens is such a heterotroph; indeed, the ability to use energy extrasomatically (outside the body) enables human beings to use far more energy than any other heterotroph that has ever evolved.
How to succeed in history: Societies don’t die by accident – they commit ecological suicide
Why did once flourishing societies collapse and disappear? Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his career wrestling with this profound question.
World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition —Pimentel, Wilson
Increases in food production, per hectare of land, have not kept pace with increases in population, and the planet is running out … of arable land. As a result, per-capita cropland has fallen by more than half since 1960, and per-capita production of grains, the basic food, has been falling worldwide for 20 years.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The lesson of “Collapse” is that societies, as often as not, aren’t murdered. They commit suicide: they slit their wrists and then, in the course of many decades, stand by passively and watch themselves bleed to death. (Review of Jared Diamond’s new book.)
Barry Bonds is in Space
Watching Barry Bonds connect for a homer is a thrill. We are in awe of the distance he can propel a baseball, but we know the ball will land. Why? Gravity, of course. Barry Bonds lives on Earth, not outer space. If he were in space his homers would travel practically forever. What goes up doesn’t necessarily come down, in space.
A Midwinter’s Nightmare
A Peak Oil Nightmare
The End of Fossil Fuels: Part 2. Twilight or Dawn?
With the judicious employment of the technologies we have learned – and with a bit of luck – we may be able to create a more harmonious balance with the rest of the biosphere, but only at substantially lower population levels and less consumptive habits.
The End of Fossil Fuels: Part 1. How Long the Twilight?
This country and the world are in for profound change as the petroleum boom winds down. I find
that even specialists in the fields that will be most affected have not seriously considered what that
transition will be like or how they will handle it. This study is an effort to describe the transition and to
explore what lies beyond it.
