Mon. Oct. 24, 2011
San Francisco Chronicle

This is a long article, but I think it’s worth your time to read it.
Vandy

What was the real cause of the Great Recession? More importantly, in a country accustomed to robust rebounds from burst bubbles, why is our economy stuck in neutral?

In his latest book, The Third Industrial Revolution, economist and author Jeremy Rifkin argues that the crash of the US housing market was not the proximate cause of the Great Recession, but was instead an aftershock of crude oil hitting a price of $147 per barrel oil in July 2008 – 60 days prior to the crash of the financial markets.

Mr. Rifkin makes a compelling case that our economy reached the end of the second industrial revolution in the 1980’s, and has been largely sustained by debt and the consumption of savings ever since. He argues that the kind of growth witnessed after the first and second industrial revolutions will be impossible to achieve without a third energy-communications revolution – one that leverages Internet-esque smart grids to transition from a centralized “elite” energy paradigm to a highly granular, lateral model. He contends that, as was the case with the first two industrial revolutions, the third revolution will be the foundation of the next great wave of economic growth.

Our energy infrastructure may not be the only thing that requires a rethink. In his book, Mr. Rifkin takes on Adam Smith, challenging classical economic theory with the contention that it does not take thermodynamics into account. The Third Industrial Revolution presents economic theory that incorporates entropy and the relationship between commerce and the planet. Read the complete Post.

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.

Published on Saturday, September 3, 2011 by ClimateStoryTellers.org

Tar Sands Action organized a civil disobedience sit–in at The White House to oppose construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline that began on August 20 and will culminate in a big rally on September 3rd. On August 29 I joined 60 religious leaders and other fellow protestors. I was arrested that day. But before I was handcuffed, I addressed fellow activists who had gathered outside The White House with these words:

Let us return for a moment to the election night in 2008. As I sat in our farmhouse in Pennsylvania, watching Barack Obama’s victory speech, I turned my head aside so my wife would not see the tears in my eyes. I suspect that millions cried. It was a great day for America.

We had great hopes for Barack Obama — perhaps our dreams were unrealistic — he is only human. But it is appropriate, it is right, in a period honoring Martin Luther King, to recall the hopes and dreams of that evening.

We had a dream — that the new President would understand the intergenerational injustice of human–made climate change — that he would recognize our duty to be caretakers of creation, of the land, of the life on our planet — and that he would give these matters the priority that our young people deserve.

We had a dream — that the President would understand the commonality of solutions for energy security, national security and climate stability — and that he would exercise hands–on leadership, taking the matter to the public, avoiding backroom crippling deals with special interests.

We had a dream — that the President would stand as firm as Abraham Lincoln when he faced the great moral issue of slavery — and, like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, he would speak with the public, enlisting their support and reassuring them.

Perhaps our dreams were unrealistic. It is not easy to find an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill. But we will not give up. There can be no law or regulation that stops us from acting on our dreams. Read the complete Post.

By Richard Heinberg

09 August, 2011
Post Carbon Institute

Memo to politicians: Stop promising to grow GDP and start targeting social benefits you can actually deliver—or prepare to face angry mobs. Nothing grows forever on a finite planet, not even the US economy.

It’s not surprising that everyone from President Obama to Michele Bachmann is assuring the electorate that he or she can deliver more GDP growth. When GDP numbers are up, more jobs appear and investments reap higher returns. When GDP is down, economic mayhem ensues.

Yet there are signs that more GDP growth may not be in the cards, regardless whose economic remedy is chosen. In fact, the day may have arrived when GDP itself has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had.

Read the complete Post.

A letter from Helmut Lubbers, ecological psychologist, environmental scientist, to Mr. Orbach, Director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
March 6, 2011

Dear Mr Orbach,

I went to the "Science Magazine" site because of a report on the
destruction of the Amazonas. Then I hit on your editorial on research
for growth.

In the below part of your editorial there are a few points that require comment.

1. Economic Growth is material - always, including so-called "Green
Growth". Humanity has overshot the earth's carrying capacity manifold.
We are at Peak Oil levels, which factually signifies the maximum of
humanity's productive activity. The impending Post-Peak-Oil downslope
will lead to the much needed reduction of humanity's numbers
(population size) and GDP per person. Given the continued policies of
growth, the PPO downslope will most probably take the form of famines,
resource wars and die-off of humanity to a fraction of its present
size.

2. Promoting further growth on a planet that is hugely overloaded and
which has finite resources is unscientific ideology. One may wonder
why your words can serve as a editorial for "Science" magazine.

3. Research is expected to produce new technologies, with the hope
that these may allow us to deal with environmental problems and thus
continue Business As Usual. However, no matter which technology we may
develop, it cannot recreate lost resources, nor revive extinct
species. In this sense your endeavours are serving the illusions that
we could maintain our standard of living, our exuberant lifestyles, as
some call it. Read the complete Post.

Monday Oct. 18, 2010

SFU 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, Room 1400

Cost: By donation – Register for this event here.

Peak Shrink – Kathy McMahon

In a small liberal town in Massachusetts’ Berkshires, Kathy McMahon, Psy.D, makes her living spicing up people’s sex lives. But arguably her most prescient work is not as a couple’s therapist; it’s as an online advice columnist for people who are freaked out about the coming peak-oil crisis. Her nom de web is Peak Oil Shrink. With humour and insight, clinical psychologist Kathy McMahon addresses a few of the major challenges of our time and discusses why “all or nothing” thinking is cutting short a more serious conversation about what we value, how our values dictate our behavior, and what we need to do to prepare for a future that may be very different from what’s being predicted.

Sponsored by:
Vancouver Peak Oil
Village Vancouver
Board of Change
Cool North Shore
How to Boil a Frog

Vancouver Peak Oil Meet-up Group

There is no doubt that the wealthy have become wealthier and that the poor have remained poor.

By Toby Reid VPOE

In human history, the gap between the rich and the poor has never been wider. While this imbalance among our species is currently at its peak, it is happening precisely as our long-term viability and sustainability appears in its darkest hour.

Some have suggested that the wealthier part of the human spectrum are ‘hoarding for the apocalypse’, a grim future of depleted resources that will turn humans on themselves, ultimately collapsing our species, and likely precipitating the collapse of thousands of other species in the process.

The apocalyptic part may very well prove to be true, but to suggest that the wealthier people are somehow foreseeing this calamity and acting in a way to get ready for it is simply giving them too much credit (plus, you can’t eat gold).

We are in this evolutionary mess because we have been hell bent on amassing as much wealth as we can. We have falsely bought in to the ideology that more is better and that growth, no matter the cost, is good. It’s our state of being that has brought about a devastatingly harsh looking world, not the other way around. Read the complete Post.

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on February 19, 2009, Printed on February 19, 2009

http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/

It turns out that you don’t want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.

As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It’s already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. “The great drying,” Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere.

In fact, everything’s been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180 people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:

“It was as if a great cremation had taken place… I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I’ve watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself… I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was different from anything seen before.”

Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing breadbasket for the world and its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought. Read the complete Post.