Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It should come as no surprise then that efforts to create a sustainable society will require a lot of trial and error. This is true in part because we are still only starting to understand what practices in areas such as building, farming, transportation and energy production might be sustainable in the long run.
I was watching the movie Apollo 13 recently for what was probably the fifth time, consuming it in the manner of a guilty pleasure. I say guilty pleasure because this movie is the paradigmatic technofix movie. And, I have little faith that the mounting challenges of resource depletion and climate change can be addressed by technology alone
When asked about the future of, say, nanotubes, or nuclear fusion, or genetic engineering, all technologists and scientists will predict that it’s bright, and continue to say so until the day their grants are canceled, their salaried positions eliminated, and their labs shut down for political and macroeconomic reasons they are ill-equipped to try to comprehend.
Discussions on the role of technology in the future usually focus on those new and flashy enough to attract attention. History shows, however, that it’s the technologies that have become an unnoticed part of the texture of everyday life that determine, by their survival or disappearance, the fate of societies.
Total’s de Margerie says oil output near peak
The Economics of Volatile Oil Prices
German “Peak Oil Briefing” now in English
Explorations – Environmental collapse (interview with Richard Heinberg)
New German-language peak oil-aware newsletter now online
U. S. refinery delays may spur su?pply crunch
Mechanics of Future Oil Price Volatility (A Flubber Cobweb)
Does a Big Economy Need Big Power Plants?
Small is ugly if it means we keep burning coal
Big Gav’s smart grid round-up
The breathtaking expansion of the Internet and the sources of information now available on it have served to conjure a cybernetic vision of unlimited growth–growth that can never be slowed for long by lack of physical resources because it is mostly virtual.
Dark Days for Green Energy
Wyoming wind power
Mark Rodgers talks about the Cape wind off-shore wind project
Sainsbury’s to send unsold food to UK biomass plant
The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol
Trees, Grass May Produce Ethanol Without Poisoning Gulf
Social Movements 2.0
One cord per acres: thoughts on sustainability
How the city hurts your brain
Iceland: “It will fix itself”
‘Food Security’ in Boise
Top 7 alternative energies listed
