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Climate change: Obama needs to turn talk into action

By December 5, 2012
OSAKABIKE19

Something's been troubling me ever since I listened to President Obama's first post-reëlection press conference. Perhaps as a result of Hurricane Sandy, the now two-term president was finally asked a question about global warming, a topic conveniently avoided by both sides throughout the seemingly interminable campaign. The question came from New York Times White House correspondent Mark Lander: "What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Eros and economy

By December 4, 2012
Eros

Everybody loves a good story. Especially this time of year. In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima recounts the story of Eros. She tells us that on the day of Aphrodite’s birth, the gods had a banquet. Penia—that is, “Poverty”— came begging at the end of the meal. There she espied Poros — that is, “Wealth” — drunk on nectar and asleep in Zeus’ garden. As a way out of her destitution, Penia decided to have a child by Poros, so she lay with him while he slept, and conceived … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy Tagged With: , ,

The Capitalism Papers: Fatal flaws of an obsolete system

By November 29, 2012
register

Self-interest lies at the root of capitalism. This self-interest is a thoroughly predictable, steadily consistent feature of the human landscape and can reasonably be viewed as a solid foundation upon which to build. Self- interest can serve as both motivation and a salve for weary spirits. Kept within commonly-accepted bounds, it acts as a spur against laziness, and a hopeful haven for unrealized dreams. When happiness is the goal, self-interest makes an unerring guide, almost never … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Books, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The rust-bucket reactors start to fall

By October 31, 2012
Toy

The US fleet of 104 deteriorating atomic reactors is starting to fall. The much-hyped "nuclear renaissance" is now definitively headed in reverse. The announcement that Wisconsin's Kewaunee will shut next year will be remembered as a critical dam break. Opened in 1974, Kewaunee has fallen victim to low gas prices, declining performance, unsolved technical problems and escalating public resistance. Many old US reactors are still profitable only because their capital costs were forced down … [Read more...]

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Upcycling at its best: Review of “Sewing Green”

By October 11, 2012
Bike Bag

In his 2009 book The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World, brilliant peak oil commentator and Archdruid John Michael Greer argued that the coming energy and economic collapse would lead less to a dramatic nightmare implosion with mutant zombie bikers driven by insatiable cannibalism and more to a steady decline in which we'll live off of the detritus of industrial civilization's long orgy of abundance. It would be a salvage economy that was most likely, he said, in which we turned … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Arts, Re-skilling Tagged With: , , , ,

Waste not, want not

By August 16, 2012
gDiapers

If you take a long hard look at a landfill you’ll see both tremendous need (where do we continue to put all this waste?) and undertapped opportunity (how can we redesign, reuse, and repurpose to avoid the landfill altogether?) We’ve been exploiting natural resources at an unsustainable level for nearly a century to create material goods for our well-being and pleasure. Over that time we’ve become a consumer society, increasing our demand for goods and pushing the limits of our … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Conservation, Economy Tagged With: , , , , ,

Indian grid failure offers lesson to us all

By August 1, 2012
US electricity at night

A Washington Post story yesterday about the (so far) two-day electricity blackout that affected 600 million citizens was a study in trying to find an answer to the acute predicament facing Mother India. Numerous officials are cited in the article, mainly scratching their heads, baffled over the cause of grid collapse. Yet one paragraph stood out for its more definitive take on the problem. Indian industry leaders blamed the incident on a large and growing gap between electricity demand and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Energy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Growth in global oil market slows

By June 27, 2012
Dying oil fields and pump jack carcasses. Photo: David~O via Flickr.

Global oil consumption increased by 0.7 percent in 2011 to reach an all-time high of 88.03 million barrels per day, according to new research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute for its Vital Signs Online service. This rate of increase was considerably slower than in 2010, when oil consumption rose by 3.3 percent following a decline of 1.3 percent in 2009 due to the global financial crisis. China’s oil consumption increased by 5.5 percent in 2011, and China accounted for about 85 percent … [Read more...]

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Money can’t buy you love

By May 23, 2012
MacroPaperMoney

Guy McPherson and Sherry Ackerman are back with us to continue dialoguing about individual components of sustainable living. In this dialogue, they take a long, hard look at money. Ackerman: Guy, I can’t seem to get past the fact that human beings are the only species that have to pay to live on the Planet. Every other species lives on Earth for free. What do you make of this? McPherson: It seems we’re too clever by half, to employ the ancient idiom. And it’s a recent phenomenon at … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Transition Tagged With: , , , ,

Human health: return of the four horsemen?

By May 14, 2012
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

In the arena of human health, living in the post-industrial Stone Age will force us to deal with the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And I’m not thinking metaphorically. During the time of Christ, in the Mediterranean region, the population of humans was viewed through the same lens as other populations. As such, human deaths often occurred in large numbers, as a result of war, conquest, famine, and pestilence -- these are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as described in the … [Read more...]

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