Enough for Everyone
We have available a wide variety of strategies that can help societies ask, answer, and act on the questions, “What is enough?” “What is too much?” and “How can we keep the Earth livable and achieve sufficiency for all?”
powering down
Questions to Richard Heinberg from a 15-Year-Old Student
In the best case, we will go through a transitional period in which we shrink our population and energy/materials usage while minimizing casualties and preserving the best of what we humans have achieved in these last few decades of anomalous energy abundance.
Some inconvenient questions: An open letter
I am writing to you with the intention of raising a series of relevant questions regarding the current effort to undergo an Ecological Transition that must achieve the total decarbonization of Spain and Europe by 2050.
Review: Life After Fossil Fuels by Alice Friedemann
While many of the above facts are well known among those who follow the subject of fossil fuel depletion, they aren’t often presented as accessibly or concisely as in Friedemann’s book Life After Fossil Fuels.
Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy
This book makes the case that the deadliest crisis facing our civilization is energy decline. Peak oil production may have already occurred.
Net Energy and Sustainability, or… the Story of the Overstuffed Strongman (Episode 44 of Crazy Town)
All of humanity’s feats, whether a record-setting deadlift by the world’s strongest man or the construction of a gleaming city by a technologically advanced economy, originate from a single hidden source: positive net energy.
The idea of ‘green growth’ is flawed. We must find ways of using and wasting less energy
As countries explore ways of decarbonising their economies, the mantra of “green growth” risks trapping us in a spiral of failures. Green growth is an oxymoron.
The Most Colossal Planning Failure in Human History
But let’s assume there is indeed enough time, and that we suddenly get serious about planning. What should we do?
To What End?
Humans have acquired the power to radically change the world. Great power should ideally be wielded only by those capable of great responsibility.
Sir David Nails It
Our outsized power as a species bestows on us a grave responsibility to prioritize nature above ourselves, which ironically is the best way to prioritize our own long term happiness on this marvel of a planet.
The Hydrogen Myth: Technology and Religion in the Decline of Civilizations
Thinking of hydrogen on a grand scale as supporting a society as complex and wasteful as ours is simply a dream. Nevertheless, hydrogen remains popular nowadays just because of this impossible promise…
Are Environmentalists No Wiser than Monkeys Reaching for the Moon?
If the moon is a symbol for true sustainability, it may be out of environmentalists’ reach—no matter what they try. We may have already crossed too many tipping points to prevent a massive ecological state shift.
