Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
U.S. city dwellers flock to raising chickens
The war over GM is back. Is the truth any clearer?
Is a food bank answer to the crisis?
Supermarkets urged to reduce choice and meat sales
Peak phosphorus: Quoted reserves vs. production history
Plastics ingredient linked to smaller penises
Interview: “Bottlemania”
Water treatment firms help industry close the water loop
Measuring your water footprint
The program for the upcoming VII Annual International ASPO Conference is now available.
A digest of news and commentary from a UK peak oil perspective
Duke Energy’s New Solar Concept Has Potential to Supercharge Solar & Smart Grid Companies
Physicists release report pushing for greater efficiency in transportation and building sectors (video and transcript)
Ethanol Makers Hit by Cash Crunch, Corn Prices
Berkeley council to vote on solar tax district
Many positive visions of a post-peak future portray a world of bright new options. The impact of today’s legacies, though, makes it much more likely that we will have to work within the limits of existing infrastructure. The concept of retrofitting, briefly famous during the energy crises of the Seventies, may turn out to be a key concept in the future ahead of us.
For bicyclists, a widening patchwork world
IATA: Airlines forecast to buckle under £5.2bn of losses
An Inside look at the Boeing plant at Everett
UK car sales stall to lowest level since 1966
Driven: Shai Agassi’s audacious plan to put electric cars on the road
For coal, the future of both extraction and consumption depends on new technology. If successfully deployed, innovative technologies could enable the use of coal that is unminable by gasifying it underground; reduce coal’s carbon emissions; or allow coal to take the place of natural gas or petroleum. Without them, coal simply may not have much of a future. Are these technologies close to development? Are they economical? Will they work?
Brazil: Deforestation rises sharply as farmers push into Amazon
Can engineering the earth save it from catastrophe?
Australia’s coal emissions are worst, says global study
Reflections on “An Inconvenient Truth”
The Internet writings of John Michael Greer—beyond any doubt the greatest peak oil historian in the English language—have finally made their way into print. Greer’s searingly perceptive blog entries on peak oil, which for the past several years have enjoyed a robust online following, have now been incorporated into a single bound volume from New Society Publishers titled The Long Descent.
Energy price prediction `more difficult,’ EIA’s Caruso says
Bioplastic – better living through green chemistry?
Could $100 oil turn dumps into plastic mines?brScrapping fuel subsidies can help climate: U.N. study
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: “One of the things that makes our culture’s reliance on the utopian myths of progress and apocalypse so problematic as we approach the end of the age of cheap energy is that both narratives claim to explain the entire universe.”
Tools for the Transition: “One of the most hopeful features of this side of our predicament is that the revitalization of old technologies can be done successfully by individuals working on their own. It’s precisely those technologies that can be built, maintained, and used by individuals that formed the mainstay of the economy in the days before cheap, abundant energy…” (paean to the slide rule)
