Posted By DavidJones On March 18, 2012 @ 9:59 pm In Economic Growth,Environment,Steady State Economy,Sustainability | Comments Disabled
by David A. Jones

There’s an old question in theology: “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” The supposed answer is “as many as you like.” A pin is a physical object, whereas angels are non-corporeal beings.

I consider mainstream (neoclassical) economics a kind of modern day theology, and the question about angels is akin to the question, “How much economic growth (GDP growth) can our ecosystems cope with?” For the economic “theologians” the answer is once again “as much as you like,” because economic growth can supposedly be decoupled from physical impacts.

First a reminder about what GDP is. GDP stands for gross domestic product. It’s a measure of the total market value of the goods and services produced within a nation’s borders during a year. The basic formula for calculating GDP is:

GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

One way to calculate GDP in practice is to track the monetary exchanges that occur when final goods and services are purchased. GDP, therefore, measures how frantically money is flowing among people, companies, banks, and other players in the economy. And so the dancing angels become monetary exchanges, the pin becomes the Earth, and the “theological question” becomes, “How many monetary exchanges can fit on the Earth?” Read the complete Post.

by Jon Cooksey
Jan. 21012

READ THIS – Concise explanation of oil pipelines and oil tankers and why we must oppose them.
Vandy

Media around the world have been paying a lot of attention to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from the Alberta tar sands down to multiple destinations in the United States, and the proposed Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, BC, which has hit an “unbroken wall of opposition” from more than 130 First Nations bands that have signed the Save the Fraser Declaration. Both of these pipelines are officially stalled until at least 2013, and we believe that enough opposition is in place on the ground that neither of those pipelines will ever be built.

But there is a third existing pipeline that currently runs from the tar sands to the Burrard Inlet, otherwise known as the Port of Vancouver: the TransMountain pipeline, owned and operated by a company called Kinder Morgan Canada, and so little known that (as you can see from the link) it doesn’t yet have a Wikipedia entry. The pipeline has been in existence for decades, but – up until 2005 – moved a minimal amount of oil, which for the most part was refined locally and used for local needs. Read the complete Post.

Posted by Anders79 – 11 February 2012 at 3:50pm

A discussion between Anders Lorenzen, from SW London Greenpeace, and Rex Weyler one of the early Greenpeace pioneers, who’s still active today.

When Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, it was heralded as a victory by people the world over including myself. But as I looked more into the issues, I found they were more complex than I initially expected. Several important questions still remain, especially on the issue of what happens next? One thing is certain Trans Canada is not going to give up their agenda and will continue to push for the Keystone XL pipeline, both in terms of the existing proposed US route and other alternatives.

An informed individual on this issue is Greenpeace International co-founder Rex Weyler who has worked tirelessly behind the scenes on this campaign alongside Greenpeace Canada. I took the opportunity to contact him to gain some insider knowledge on what I feel the most pressing questions and challenges facing us now are.

Anders Lorenzen: What would you advise we do now, what’s the most powerful thing we can do from here?

Rex Weyler: In the Tar Sands, climate battle, we have to keep pressure on Canada to close the Tar Sands, keep pressure on all the pipelines and tanker routes. But simultaneously, we’ll need to address the globalized industrialized nations — US, EU, Russia, China — who are still trying to burn more hydrocarbons and build giant industrial infrastructure. We need to choke off the demand for hydrocarbons by resisting and replacing the systems of consumption, with lower-consumption communities. Read the complete Post.

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.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

John Michael Greer

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-peak-oil-looks-like.html

There are times when the unraveling of a civilization stands out in sharp relief, but more often that process makes itself seen only in the sort of scattered facts and figures that take a sharp eye to notice and assemble into a meaningful picture. How often, I wonder, did the prefects of imperial Rome look up from the daily business of mustering legions and collecting tribute to notice the crumbling of the foundations on which their whole society rested?

Nowadays, certainly, that broader vision is hard to find. It’s symptomatic that in the last few weeks I’ve fielded a fair number of emails insisting that the peak oil theory—of course it’s not a theory at all; it’s a hard fact that the extraction of a finite oil supply in the ground will sooner or later reach a peak and begin to decline—has been rendered obsolete by the latest flurry of enthusiastic claims about shale oil and the like. Enthusiastic claims about the latest hot new oil prospect are hardly new, and indeed they’ve been central to cornucopian rhetoric since M. King Hubbert’s time. A decade ago, it was the Caspian Sea oilfields that were being invoked as supposedly conclusive evidence that a peak in global conventional petroleum production wouldn’t arrive in our lifetimes. Compare the grand claims made for the Caspian fields back then, and the trickle of production that actually resulted from those fields, and you get a useful reality check on the equally sweeping claims now being made for the Bakken shale, but that’s not a comparison many people want to make just now. 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.