Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil are pleased to welcome Richard Heinberg to Vancouver as part of the CoDev World Community Film Festival. Richard is one of the world’s most effective exponents of the urgent need to move away from fossil fuels and towards a post-growth economy.

Author of 10 books, including 2010′s The End of Growth, his wry, unflinching approach addresses challenges such as climate change, peak oil, economic instability, and food insecurity.

He exposes the tenuousness of our current way of life, while exploring governmental responses and promising grassroots models in community resilience, including the Transition Town Movement and the Occupy Movement. Heinberg offers a radical vision for a truly sustainable future.

More information about Richard Heinberg can be found on his website: richardheinberg.com.

JOIN US – FEB 10, 2012 5pm – 7pm
Langara College – Theater 5, Room 130
100 W 49th, Vancouver, BC
Admission to the festival opening lecture is by donation
Please register thru Langara 604.323.5322 (CRN 50966) or RSVP here.

The event is cosponsored by Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil. You don’t need to attend the film festival to attend Richard’s presentation. (Though we encourage you to go – it’s a great festival!)

Village Vancouver and Vancouver Peak Oil are pleased to welcome Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh, of The Automatic Earth back to talk about the future of our economy. She packed a lecture hall at Langara College last year with tales of impending economic collapse.

Now, after the Occupy Movement launched last fall, she has a new upbeat tone and theme, The Storm Surge of Decentralization. This is the 99%’s reaction to what we now know about the Ponzi schemes embedded in our modern financial systems, and changes have already begun.

Nicole Foss is a globally-sought issues leader on transition and an expert on the macro-economics of resilience.

JOIN US TO HEAR NICOLE
Thursday Feb. 2, 2012
7pm – 9pm
Langara College – Theater 5, Room 130
100 West 49th Avenue, Vancouver, BC
By donation at the door.
Please register thru Langara 604.323.5322 (CRN 50965) or
RSVP here.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 1:27 AM
Mish Shedlock

Great summary of Peak Oil and Overpopulation in relation to each other. Vandy

“In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.” says Professor Stephen Hawking as reported by Edward Morgan in Looking at the New Demography.

Suffice to say the rate of population growth will not continue, and Morgan makes the case we are already in stage 5 of The Demographic Transition Model

Peak Oil Implications on Population Growth Read the complete Post.

by Dr.Jim Stephenson
NSUC 13 November 2011

This article helps us understand our unwillingness to change and how and why we must.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware that the path of our society is not sustainable in several ways.
We won’t be able to continue as we are. Sooner or later, stuff will hit the fan.

Naturally, I set out to help my society recognize the dangers and to make the necessary changes. Employing a naive view of the political process, I wrote articles, gave presentations, and ran for political office. It was encouraging having people like Bill McKibben, James Hanson, and Al Gore helping me.

However, as time went by, I noticed that this approach was not leading to the necessary actions. Citizens were not studying the issues, considering the tradeoffs, and electing politicians to do the right thing. Most people were not interested, thought the complexity was too great, fell for the most simplistic campaign slogans, and reacted emotionally.

Intrigued by this dysfunctional behaviour, I set out to explore the ability of humans to practice foresight. After all, one of the characteristics which distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species is an awareness of the future and an ability to plan actions today which affect tomorrow. Today I will share some of my findings about this ability and its past, present, and future use. Read the complete Post.

October 3, 2011

Economist Lester Brown, in the latest book of his Plan B series, states that “socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.” In its frenzy for more consumers and an apparently equal frenzy to ravage ecosystems, capitalism ignores the obvious truth that human overpopulation may already have reached plague status.

Dr. Alan Watt once told a New York City audience that, “You didn’t come into this world at all. You came out of it, in just the same way that a leaf comes out of a tree… Our world is peopling, just as the apple tree produces apples, and the vine grapes.” He explained that, if we are intelligent beings, it must be that we are the fruits of an intelligent Earth, symptomatic of an intelligent energy system, for one “doesn’t gather grapes from thorns.” We should realize that we are intelligent products of a sentient Earth. If we wish to “survive” in what is likely an intelligent cosmos, we must heal planet Earth, which we have been steadily maiming. Reducing our population is essential.

Today’s economic problems will remain unsolvable as long as the illusion is maintained that Earth can support an infinite number of people. Scientists understand that a species can remain healthy only as long as its population does not exceed the environment’s carrying capacity. World population five centuries ago, in 1500, was just 400 million. It quadrupled to 1.6 billion by 1900, and in little more than one century has now mushroomed to seven billion. Read the complete Post.

By Paul Kingsnorth

26 September, 2011
The Guardian

Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened

Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it’s a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled “growth” are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair. Read the complete Post.

A Three Way For The Real Third Way

By Jeff Berg

15 October, 2007
Countercurrents.org

You know how politicians are always talking about a third way? Bill Clinton and “Triangulation”, Tony Blair & “The Third Way”, even the Bush’s had “Compassionate Conservatism” as their third way. And we all know how sex sells. Which is why I call this piece written especially for you here today:

A THREE WAY FOR THE REAL THIRD WAY

“Science – Sustainability & Distributed Generation in the Information Age”

Two things to start: the first being, that by every measure we humans can agree on, moving as quickly as possible to get off of fossil fuels will leave ourselves and future generations the richest of all possible lives.

The 2nd is that i am not an environmentalist or even a socialist per se.

Now don’t get me wrong i completely accept that the weight of scientific evidence proves that anthropogenic factors are a major contributor to climate change & I too think Tommy Douglas was the greatest Canadian. Read the complete Post.

by Madeline Weld

Every so often policy wonks or talking heads hyperventilate about Canada’s need for more people. The growth boosters take the crude numbers for Canada’s land surface area (about 9.1 million square kilometers) and divide it by Canada’s population (34 million) and conclude that there’s a desperate shortage of people, a paltry 3.3 per square kilometer. In the summer of 2010, no amount of coverage seemed too much for a proposal by Irvin Studin that Canada could better meet its potential and have more international clout if there were 100 million of us. In January of 2011, Canada’s nationally read paper, the Globe and Mail, printed an editorial by Neil Reynolds called “Go forth, multiply and fill the provinces” which urged Canadians to do exactly that. Read the complete Post.