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Your fossil fuel free garden

By August 27, 2012
scythe

It's the first season for our Transition group's community garden, but already we've taken to calling it the Fossil Fuel Free Garden. The tagline is an easy way for us to make the point that not only do we expect our fellow gardeners to stay organic (no chemicals, please) but that we have the additional requirement that no power tools be used at the garden. This may sound unnecessarily fussy, but most of our gardeners just work their own plots, so any inconvenience falls only on the small … [Read more...]

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Ten easy resolutions for 2012

By December 31, 2011
New Year banner

Here it comes, the scariest potential year since Y2k, if you buy the hype on 2012. Of course, the sages tell us that rather than ushering in an earth-shattering colossal end to the human experiment, what we can really expect in 2012 is an increase in human enlightenment, even if there are some growing pains along the way. In the spirit of thinking about what could be better in your life, community and the world, here are ten easy resolutions that you can adopt (or cherry pick) to help out … [Read more...]

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Top 10 peak oil books of 2011

By December 12, 2011
open book on stack of books

Welcome to our second annual list of the top ten peak oil books. Most of them are explicitly about peak oil, while others deal with energy depletion as a significant factor in the economy or the environment. A couple titles focus on responses to the myriad conundrums that Richard Heinberg has dubbed "peak everything" and that are now converging to create a perfect storm for global industrial civilization. Along with Heinberg, we list books by peak oil stalwarts John Michael Greer and Dmitry … [Read more...]

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Could gold become money again?

By November 11, 2011
gold bar

"There just won’t be enough gold coins to go around," said Gail Tverberg, known for years on the Oil Drum as Gail the Actuary, at the ASPO-USA conference in Washington, DC last week. "If you have gold, maybe you can find somebody who will sell you some piece of land. But otherwise it will have very limited use, unless you have some certificates that will go with it for denominations we need. And you need a safe place to keep it too." As the Great Recession drags on despite attempts by … [Read more...]

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For peak oil, these stars are shining brightly

By August 31, 2011
stars-of-peak-oil

We first launched Transition Voice nearly a year ago with two interviews: Transition Town founder Rob Hopkins and the late oil industry investment banker Matt Simmons. Since then, interviews with key figures in the peak oil movement, from James Howard Kunstler to Sharon Astyk to Nicole Foss, have become one of our most popular features. And we've kept 'em coming. Our latest was a discussion with Post Carbon Institute's Richard Heinberg about the questions he raises on the US economy in his … [Read more...]

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Reading the runes of my post-money future

By August 30, 2011
candles in glasses

Friday night, while strolling downtown after dinner, my wife and I came upon a young man seated on a Mexican blanket on the sidewalk offering instant readings into the future. I would've kept walking, as it was hot and sticky and I wanted to stroll off a full belly. But Lindsay, a fan of astrology and street entertainment, pulled quickly aside and engaged the busker. Runey tunes With looks like a younger, more emo version of the bald business correspondent on CNN, Ali Velshi (who recently told … [Read more...]

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Are electric cars a dead end?

By August 26, 2011
Electric car

Are electric cars a “dead end” as opined by James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency? Or will automobiles continue the long arc of personal transportation in the United States? Kunstler ees suburbia and its reliance on cars diminishing as energy descent and resource shortages ensue. Aside from the 383 million gallons of increasingly expensive gasoline used every day to power the US fleet of more than 200 million gasoline vehicles, it takes about 3800 gallons of oil to … [Read more...]

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No shirt, no shoes, no problem. Interview: Dmitry Orlov

By August 16, 2011
Dmitry

Though we've had Transition Voice for almost a year now, last month was the first time I talked to Russian-American peak oil and economic analyst Dmitry Orlov, whose popular website, Club Orlov, offers both his own thoughts, and a vigorous community of like-minded readers. Because Orlov takes a more skeptical, less forgiving look at collapse, I think I might have been tuning him out to a degree, considering myself not doomer enough for his club. Or maybe I had Panglossia when it came to … [Read more...]

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Smashing the melon of American complacency with the mallet of Russian grit

By August 11, 2011
Gallagher smashing a watermelon.

Dmitry Orlov scares the crap out of me. The relentlessly doomerish boss of ClubOrlov.com has become famous in peak oil circles for presiding over a kind of comedy club from hell where a rabid fan base celebrates the coming fall of the American Empire under the load of peak debt while devouring posts on such subjects as the future of sailing ships and ways for dead people to send text messages. The site's sidebar lists topic tags including cannibalism, ruins and Siberia. Even Orlov's name … [Read more...]

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Depending on the kindness of strangers

By June 6, 2011
world beachball upsidedown

"Most of what you have been and are being told about economics is simply wrong," says Dmitry Orlov. "It is ideology and fake religion, not science." In "The Twilight of the Antipodes and the Cultural Flip," a presentation he gave recently at a conference in northern California, Orlov offers a disturbingly rational picture about what's wrong with our economy and what we can do about it, given peak oil and its corollary, peak everything. And he adds a social analysis that's missing from many … [Read more...]

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