Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What is the difference between soil and dirt?
Soil is alive. Dirt is dead. A single teaspoon of soil can contain billions of microscopic bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes. A handful of the same soil will contain numerous earthworms, arthropods, and other visible crawling creatures. Healthy soil is a complex community of life and actually supports the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet.
-The Impending Peak and Decline of Petroleum Production: an Underestimated Challenge for Conservation of Ecological Integrity
-How Much Does a Gallon of Gas Cost?
-Offshore Oil Drilling and Hurricane Risks
-BP’s Tony Hayward ‘set to step down’
Naresh Giangrande is the co-founder of the world’s first Transition Town, in Totnes, UK. The goal of Transition Towns is to transition from oil dependence to community resilience. He was visiting in Vermont last week, and we’ll here what he had to say about how the project is going back in England, plus what he’s learned from other Transition Towns around the world.
Fossil fuels are currently an essential component in the global economy and the growth of the human population. The fossil fuel production projections from this study suggest that many of the IPCC fossil fuel projections appear overly optimistic. Based on the assumed URR values, it is predicted that global fossil fuel production will peak before 2030. For this reason, it is imperative that appropriate action be taken as early as possible to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel decline, to avoid energy shortages in the near future.
Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.
– Sustainable P talk (video) [new]
– American Scientist: Does Peak Phosphorus Loom?
– Scientist urges government to address ‘peak phosphate’ risk
– Sustainable Phosphorus Initiative at Arizona State (video)
– Nitrogen and Phosphorus: The Future of Toilet Design Hangs in the Balance
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-China
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
A roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-Venezuela continues nationalizations
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
The future most people are living into is beginning to disappear. The financial crisis threw the first punch, but oil depletion will deliver the knockout blow. The moment people realize that the society they have known their whole life can no longer function the same way without the energy provided by oil, it will become glaringly apparent that the future will be very, very different.
An agriculture student from a small North Indian village writes home to his sister about the bizarre way of life he encounters during a stay in America. (An updated “Gulliver’s Travels”)
The U.S. political economy is failing across a broad front—environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. Deep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities. Policies are available to effect this transformation and to temper economic growth and consumerism while simultaneously improving social well-being and quality of life, but a new politics involving a coalescing of progressive communities is needed to realize these policies.
One view is that energy prices will rise, substitutes will be found, and prices will come back down again, perhaps settling at a somewhat higher equilibrium reflecting the cost of producing the substitute energy source… Another view, popular among those concerned about peak-oil, is that oil and energy prices will just keep rising. If scalable substitutes aren’t found, some expect that oil prices will rise from their current price of $75 barrel, to $100 barrel, to $200 barrel, to $300 barrel, and eventually to $1,000 barrel or more.
