By Charles Eisenstein
09 September, 2011
Theoildrum.com
When theorists approach the peak oil problem from the perspective of finding a substitute that will allow us to maintain our present energy infrastructure, their conclusion is one of despair. There may be many substitutes for oil as a concentrated form of storable energy, but none of them are nearly as good as oil itself. Those invested in the status quo would, quite understandably, like to maintain it, but it is becoming apparent even to the most highly invested that the status quo is doomed; that it can be maintained only temporarily, and at a rapidly accelerating environmental cost. The transition before us is not merely a transition in fuel types. It is also a transition in the whole energy infrastructure, both physical and psychological; a transition away from big power plants, distribution lines, and metered consumers; away from capital-intensive drilling, refining, distribution, and consumer fueling stations. More broadly, it is a transition away from centralization, concentration, and all the social institutions that go along with it.
Both the energy system and the money system are based on accumulation and the concentration of power. Not only our energy infrastructure, but our dominant yet invisible way of thinking about energy, presupposes a centralized system of distribution based on a highly concentrated energy source. Many alternative energy technologies have made little headway, not because they are technologically unfeasible, but because they don’t fit into our present physical, financial, and psychological infrastructure. Read the complete Post.
Posted on June 5, 2011, Printed on June 11, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151201/3_massive_world_events_that_will_change_your_life
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Here’s the good news about energy: thanks to rising oil prices and deteriorating economic conditions worldwide, the
International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global oil demand will not grow this year as much as once assumed, which may provide some temporary price relief at the gas pump. In its May
Oil Market Report, the IEA reduced its 2011 estimate for global oil consumption by 190,000 barrels per day, pegging it at 89.2 million barrels daily. As a result, retail prices may not reach the stratospheric levels predicted earlier this year, though they will undoubtedly remain higher than at any time since the peak months of 2008, just before the global economic meltdown. Keep in mind that this is the
good news.
As for the bad news: the world faces an array of intractable energy problems that, if anything, have only worsened in recent weeks. These problems are multiplying on either side of energy’s key geological divide: below ground, once-abundant reserves of easy-to-get “conventional” oil, natural gas, and coal are drying up; above ground, human miscalculation and geopolitics are limiting the production and availability of specific energy supplies. With troubles mounting in both arenas, our energy prospects are only growing dimmer. Read the complete Post.
Author, ‘Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why’
Posted: 05/25/11 08:38 AM ET
Many Americans are already concerned about China’s growing economic challenge to the United States. Indeed, the challenge itself is hardly news anymore. But a new book, Red Alert by Stephen Leeb, argues that Americans have radically misunderstood just what this challenge consists of.
Everyone who has “woken up” to the problem (i.e. not the administration, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or the Republican leadership) understands the threat posed by China’s cheap labor and low standards for everything from child labor to environmental protection. Most people who aren’t hopeless laissez-faire ideologues are twigging to the fact that China’s state-directed capitalism is running rings around America’s private-sector capitalism right now. But what few people realize is that China has an even more radical economic strategy up its sleeve, a strategy that aims not just to equal the United States but to surpass it and quite possibly shut America out of the economic future. Read the complete Post.
All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet’s real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much
George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 19.30 BS
Photograph: Daniel Pudles
All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet’s real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much.
You think you’re discussing technologies, and you quickly discover that you’re discussing belief systems. The battle among environmentalists over how or whether our future energy is supplied is a cipher for something much bigger: who we are, who we want to be, how we want society to evolve. Beside these concerns, technical matters – parts per million, costs per megawatt hour, cancers per sievert – carry little weight. We choose our technology – or absence of technology – according to a set of deep beliefs: beliefs that in some cases remain unexamined. Read the complete Post.
ANDREW MIALL
From Friday’s Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Apr. 22, 2011 2:00AM EDT
Well, Earth Day Canada® is now a “brand,” like your toothpaste.
It’s supposed to be about “empowering Canadians to achieve local solutions.” Its mission is “to improve the state of the environment by empowering and helping Canadians to take positive environmental action.” Its vision is that “Earth Day will remain Canada’s strongest positive voice in promoting constructive and sustainable environmental values, actions and solutions.”
Its website boasts a list of corporate sponsors. The sponsored activities seem to be mostly about picking up garbage on roads and the correct disposal of household chemicals. And there’s going to be a gala this summer: “Join us and a capacity crowd of 500 corporate and environmental leaders as we show you just how cool going green can really be.” Read the complete Post.
Sent to me from Rex Weyler – VPOE
A FILM from the Post Carbon Institute – an animated journey from then to now.
Plus a peak into the future and some advice on what we should do next. I’d like to see more emphasis on having a reduced global population and empowering women, but alas, one can see from the animation and voice-over that this is a male written, produced, and directed film. Still it’s a fine quickie for the under informed. I suggest sharing this with friends.
300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds
vlsavage
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Agriculture, Alternative Energy, Economics, Energy supply, Environment, Food, Housing, News, Peak oil, Skill Building, Social effects, Transportation, Urban Agriculture
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Mar 18 2011
March 18, 2011
Instructions for saving our butts in a Post Oil low energy future.
Co-written by VPOE Richard Balfour and Eileen Keenan
Cost $10.00 for full color pdf downloadable file or $35.00 for a hardcover edition.
Want one? Click here to go to Plan Canadahttp://plancanada.com/
While focused on Vancouver as an example this is about global impacts on any city or culture from peak oil and climate change, and in an effort to deal with cultural adaption, not cultural melt down.
• Peak Oil
• Sustainability Workshops
• Canadian Institute of Planners
• Narrow Streets and Houses
• City Lands opportunities
• Farmland
• Miscellaneous – you won’t believe the topics covered in this section
• Links
For agreements for multiple use for education uses, please contact oldcityfoundation@telus.net.
Thanks to Charles Dobson in help making this alternate access available.
Richard Balfour and Eileen Keenan
Richard Balfour Architect & Co.
Balfour & Associates • Strategic Planning
Vancouver 6047310206
balfourarch@telus.net
www.plancanada.com
Who’s super serious about renewable energy and repelling climate change? The US military, of all people.
By Andrew Nikiforuk
Dec. 20, 2010
[Editor's Note: Here begins The Tyee's latest New Ideas for the New Year, our popular annual series highlighting creative ideas for improving our lives and communities. We'll publish a new one starting today until Dec. 31.]
One of these days, Ottawa’s oil patch salesmen might want to sit down with the U.S. military and have a real “man-up” talk.
By any standard, the guys and gals in uniform now make Greenpeace look like the Boy Scouts.
In fact admirals, generals and colonels have seen the enemy, and it’s oil. They don’t care if the stuff is bloody or dirty; they just want to get off pricey crude, asap.
They also believe that climate change, another byproduct of the Oil Age, poses a serious security threat to civilization, as we know it. Not surprisingly, people call these tough hombres, “the Green Hawks.” Read the complete Post.
December 10, 2010
The New York Times
ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity.
But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.
But this area in southern, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines. Read the complete Post.
