Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Striking in its omission is debate about the largest creations of our species: cities. Could it be the most basic solution is redesigning them for people instead of cars? Presto, both [global warming and peak oil] solved in the same stroke and in a more fundamental way than by just trying to tune up the same old infrastructure, always trying to get a little more juice out of the planet, a little more sprawl-inducing mileage out of our cars.
We are all on this Petroleum Tour in most ways, every day of our lives. We are oblivious that our daily support system of petroleum props up our lifestyles and survival — or we pretend otherwise.
Thackara is interested in more than analyzing efforts and predicting trends. He wants design to help create a better future. But many trends and opportunities to build what’s necessary for that future converge in the local.
Social critic James Howard Kunstler has railed for years against the twin evils of bad urban design and suburban sprawl. Based in Saratoga Springs, the author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere warns that our beloved cars — and the subdivided landscape they drive us to — are leading American culture down a four-lane highway to destruction.
When you combine the seven deadly sins with high technology, you get some really serious problems. You get turbo-sins. It’s dreadful to imagine what goeth after turbo-pride.
Audio interview with David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept, and Barry Jones of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA).
A permaculture response to Peak Oil. There’s hope for the suburbs yet!
Can you really generate all your own energy for the home? Of course, say a couple who built an eco house to prove it. Dominic Murphy hears their recipe for bringing power to the people.
The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work.
The quest for a sustainable, ecologically sensible society in the Pacific Northwest. (Special edition, with several articles, including a long interview with Ernest Callenbach, author of Ecotopia.)
Today’s oil rise to back over US$51 per barrel is a critical factor as Australia is depleting its reserves faster than many other countries.
Ernest Callenbach, the author of Ecotopia, holds forth 30 years later on the difficulties of creating a utopia in the era of George Bush
