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About Erik Curren

Erik Curren is the publisher of Transition Voice. He co-founded Transition Staunton Augusta in December 2009 and serves as managing partner of the Curren Media Group. He is also partner in a solar energy development company.

Better living through fluoride

By May 4, 2012
Spraying DDT on Jones Beach, Long Island, 1953.

Before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring came out in 1962, America was a simpler place where "Better Living Through Chemistry" wasn't an album by Fat Boy Slim or a snarky T shirt for urban hipsters. It was a DuPont corporate slogan that became an optimistic motto for promoting everything from spraying kids directly with DDT to  marketing food that didn't spoil. According to The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics … [Read more...]

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Today, I’m running for city council

By May 1, 2012
vote for your future poster

I'm a guy who's into the global Transition movement, who worries about peak oil and even thinks that Occupy Wall Street makes some good points. That's why I'm running for public office (see my campaign website). And today is election day. But don't expect to see anything about my race on MSNBC or even in one of those emails asking you to give five bucks to some candidate in another state who used to be an environmental or labor activist but still, somehow, has a chance to win. Even the … [Read more...]

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Factory food is making us dumber and dumber

By April 26, 2012
wonder bread ad

In the film Idiocracy, the decline of America comes not through an oil shock, a debt crisis or even the rise of China and India. Instead, a kind of reverse eugenics, where yuppies defer childbearing until it's too late while guys in wife-beater T shirts keep on multiplying themselves generation after generation, brings the nation to a sad place in the year 2505. The average IQ has declined to well below 100. Water is only used for flushing toilets but a power drink called "Brawndo, the Thirst … [Read more...]

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Deepwater what?

By April 20, 2012
peak oil chart

How soon we forget. Today marks the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But don't expect to hear much about it. The largest environmental disaster ever in American history, the BP oil spill dumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and its consequences continue to reverberate in the area. But unless you're a Louisiana shrimper or a fan of dolphins -- more than 700 have washed up on Gulf shores since the spill -- does it really … [Read more...]

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Historic preservation vs. clean energy

By April 18, 2012
historic facade in Louisville

After years of enduring energy-wasting apartments in various big cities -- Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC -- I feel blessed to be able to inhabit my own house in a very cute, well preserved small city in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Apartment living, with its drafty windows, walls and ceilings free of any shred of insulation, and shared utility bills split equally among tenants regardless of who turns down the heat and who doesn't, galled the energy geek in me. But since I didn't … [Read more...]

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The debate over American Exceptionalism: We’ve finally hit bottom

By April 6, 2012
Eagle flag

Patriotism may be the last refuge of scoundrels in countries around the world, but American Exceptionalism stands out for its unique degree of stupidity and hubris. If there's one way the United States is truly exceptional today, it's that we've become perhaps the dumbest, proudest country on Earth. After all, more than 40% of our citizens believe in the Rapture. We act as if  two dollar gas is our God-given right. And you can be pretty sure that, at this very moment somewhere in … [Read more...]

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The daily grind, Amish style

By April 3, 2012
what spikes

For people who are into re-skilling and building household resilience, an essential source of non-electric and hand-cranked gadgets is Lehman's. With a store in Ohio's Amish country, Lehman's sells thousands of old-timey implements online for use in the kitchen, around the house and out in the garden. Lehman's is the place to go for canning jars and supplies as well as Aladdin oil lamps, wood cook stoves and even hand-cranked laundry machines. We ordered their Hand Cranked Grain Mill … [Read more...]

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Tired of waiting for the barbarians

By March 30, 2012
Planet of the Apes shot

Ever since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, Hollywood has fed movie audiences on a steady diet of end-of-the-world thrillers. And from The Time Machine and The Planet of the Apes to The Road and The Hunger Games, for half a century moviegoers have hungrily gobbled up this fare like so many baskets of greasy apocalpytic curly fries. It may seem that people always and everywhere have thrilled to dramatic stories of the end-times. After all, the mother of all apocalypses comes not from Armageddon … [Read more...]

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No more excuse to wait on going solar

By March 27, 2012
solar panel on kitchen mitt

Even before I began working with a company that develops solar energy projects, I was fascinated by solar panels. Though I had lots of science toys as a kid, I always wanted a kit to build my own solar panel, but somehow I never got one. And as I got interested in the environment and energy in college and grad school, I vowed that someday I'd "go solar" myself. But getting my first job -- and my second, third and fourth -- out of school, I found myself moving likewise from one city to the … [Read more...]

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Why won’t Obama mention peak oil? Blame Rush Limbaugh

By March 20, 2012
Obama speaking

Earlier this month, the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident came and went with barely a whimper. Now, with the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill coming up in April, the media probably won't do much better. Instead, all the talk these days seems to be about drill-baby-drilling our way back to the $2 per gallon gas promised by Newt, Rick and Mitt. But even before the start of the season of extreme pandering on oil prices that precedes any presidential … [Read more...]

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