There's lots of talk of localization or re-localization in the Transition movement and among environmentalists and economic justice advocates generally. And for good reason. Today's global economy where big corporations, with security provided by the United States military, ship plastic crap from Chinese sweatshops thousands of miles to consumers around the world who don't need … [Read more...]
Star spangled collapse
Apparently, people who write titles for politico-military thrillers about nuclear brinksmanship find the language of The Star Spangled Banner just too good to resist. It must be the power of dark irony, to turn words of patriotic celebration into a warning for patriots. For example: Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 drama starring Burt Lancaster as a renegade air force … [Read more...]
Give me that doom time religion
I don't usually think of people interested in peak oil, climate change and economic collapse as particularly religious. "Spiritual" maybe -- Sufi dancing and Lakota Vision Quests are OK and agnosticism is better. But peak preppers are usually not the kind of folks you'd expect to see in the pews on Sunday at First Presbyterian. The Age of Limits conference held at the end of … [Read more...]
Twitter will set you free to Occupy
I'm pretty conflicted about computers and the Internet these days. On the one hand, I run an internet magazine, build websites for small businesses and local good causes alike and even get paid to help people use Facebook and Twitter. It's fun too, since we all know that the web is the ultimate instant gratifier. Where else can you write an article or make a change to a … [Read more...]
Top 10 peak oil books of 2011
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 … [Read more...]