Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-Fukushima nuclear disaster: PM at the time feared Japan would collapse
-Fukushima disaster: it’s not over yet
-Switch from nuclear power would cost Japan $280 bln-Greenpeace
-UK joins laser nuclear fusion project
-Thorium advocates launch pressure group
-Blast at French Nuclear Site Is Said to Kill 1 Person
The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline.
The US tropical storm season joined the economy and Libya as a factor driving oil prices this week. Gulf oil installations have escaped damage so far, but a lively storm season has led to platforms being evacuated, causing production delays and depressing US inventories…
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
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.
We do not really cease being drivers when we step from our vehicles. Like television, automobile travel strengthens some of the more pernicious habits of the egoic mind. Bottom line: motor travel is addictive, and the effects of the addiction are likely to persist even if we can no longer afford to drive.
This beautifully drawn 5-minute video provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy.
A two part conversation between Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler. The conversation covers peak oil, financial dysfunction, political convulsions, generational conflict, techno-grandiosity, the fate of industrial agriculture and the suburban living arrangement. Heinberg also reacts to being labeled a “Doomer.”.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Exxon deal
-The Marcellus gas estimates
-Dangers in the Middle East
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
A midweek update of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Exxon, Moscow, and the Arctic
French translation of the animation Who Killed Economic Growth?.
One of the hardest concepts for many Americans to absorb is this – that technical feasibility rests on a complex bed of other feasibilities and never stands alone. Thus, simply observing that it is technically possible to, say, create zero impact cities or to run our cars on corn waste does not usefully tell us whether we are going to do so or not. This historical reality stands in stark contrast to the perceptions that many of us have, which is that technology operates as a kind of vending machine into which one puts quarters and gets inevitable results.
