Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The world – and of course the US – now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future.
Community Service, Inc., has produced a proposal for a prototype housing development in response to Peak Oil that promotes energy-efficient building techniques, a sense of community, economic sustainability and local food production.
An impoverished American middle class will no longer be able to afford theme park vacations and the airlines that used to shuttle them down to Florida will be out-of-business. The new theme in 21st century America will be staying where you are…
Highly centralized generation of electrical power is a paradigm that has outlived its usefulness. Decentralized generation could save $5 trillion in capital investment, reduce power costs by 40 percent, reduce vulnerabilities, and cut greenhouse gas emissions in half.
One of the surprises in the oil world in 2004 was the success of an underground documentary on the perilous state of world energy. [New film coming from a maker of the End of Surburbia.]
For all our technical advances, says the noted thinker, we’re forgetting a lot of crucial stuff.
Where do people get the idea that Las Vegas is America’s city of the future?
Cities may survive peak oil better than rural areas. A personal account.
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year had a famous father who famously remarked a decade ago that “the American way of life is not negotiable.” To keep the suburban expansion going indefinitely we will need to continue using one-quarter of the world’s oil every day.
At at time when energy resource depletion is widely acknowledged, many housing developments continue in soon-to-be-disfunctional patterns. Ronald Cooke, author of Oil, Jihad and Destiny, writes that the development plan for Martis Valley in California is a really good example of this type of obsolete public policy.
Alarmed by the pace at which consumer-driven lifestyles are destroying the planet’s resources, a leading environmental body has set its sights on creating a green-friendly haven replete with houses, restaurants, shops and hotels.
North Carolina researchers are heading a national study to find the best ways to redesign communities so that Americans get out of their cars and travel by foot or bicycle.
