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ALTERNATIVES

Obituary: Jay Hanson, early populariser of the converging crises

26th April 2019

Ron Patterson writes: Jay Hanson was the founder of multiple energy resources or peak oil lists from the 1990s, starting with the incredibly popular Dieoff website and Dieoff list which looked at peak oil, population numbers, and scarcity. He was probably more responsible for starting the whole Peak Oil Awareness Movement than any other person….

Economy

Thermodynamic Failure: Phase 2

11th April 2019

“Most people aren’t paying attention. Most people have no idea what’s going on. Industrial civilization is already having serious health problems and heart palpitations. By 2020, industrial civilization’s going to suffer a massive stroke. By 2025, it will be in hospice. By 2030, it will be dead,” writes the anonymous author of Articulating The Future….

Development/Growth

Nafeez Ahmed: This is how UN scientists are preparing for capitalism’s demise

19th December 2018

From The Independent: Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources….

Conflict/Dispossession

Special Feature: Three views from the global economy’s energy cliff

10th July 2018

Here are three leading observers on the world’s increasingly shaky energy situation. Minqui Li presents a through-going analysis of the global energy scenario from 2018-2050 based on the latest data, Kurt Cobb suggests that ‘peak oil’ maybe a process, rather than a event, while Chris Martenson issues a stark warning on the coming oil crash….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

The Age of Peaking Resources: A Personal Take

2nd July 2018

During my first encounter with resource depletion issues I thought re-localisation would be a strategy to defy the odds. One relocates to a resource abundant small geography and maintains it through a community driven process. But then, I never pursued it. However, the recent news of India’s looming water crisis has got me thinking again….

CLIMATE CRISIS

The incredible story of how (and why) Big Oil conquered the world

12th June 2018

Oil. The 20th century was shaped by it. The 21st century is moving beyond it. But who gave birth to the oil industry? What have they done with the immense wealth and power it granted them? And what are they planning to do with that power in a post-carbon world? The Corbett Report finds out….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Gail Tverberg: Our energy problem is about quantity, not just quality

31st May 2018

Reading about energy today, it’s easy to get the impression that our energy problem is a quality problem—some energy is polluting; other energy is hoped to be less polluting. There’s a different issue that we are not being told about. It’s the fact that having enough energy – quantity – is extremely important, as well….

ALTERNATIVES

Seven lessons on starting a worldwide movement for change

22nd February 2018

“There was no name for what we were proposing. It was bold, imaginative, and beyond what most folks thought of as environmentalism. It wasn’t environmentalism, it was much more than that.” A blog by Naresh Giangrande Co-founder of Totnes, the world’s first Transition-Town, as he signs off after a ten-year adventure in global social change….

Mural by 'Green Flower'

Culture/Cognition

Ecologise Foundation course in Energy and Energetics of Nature and Human Society

9th February 2018

Most courses on energy deal with it in an instrumentalist manner, as if it were another substance that humans can tap and use for their benefit. Platform for Sustainability and Equity and Ecologise are pleased to announce an online course that places energy at the centre of all transformations— abiotic, biotic and in human society….

Development/Growth

Gail Tverberg: Nine reasons why globalisation can’t be permanent

4th February 2018

We know that economies need to grow, or they collapse. The wage disparity that high-wage countries have been experiencing in recent years is evidence that the world economy is already reaching energy limits. There are no longer enough jobs that pay well to go around. Any drop in energy supply will likely worsen the situation….

Author’s view of the situation we are facing. World leaders look at their video screens and adjust their controllers to try to make the world economy fly at ever-higher levels.

Gail Tverberg

Conflict/Dispossession

Understanding the world’s economy-energy conundrum as a video game

8th December 2017

Gail Tverberg writes: World leaders manipulate the world economy like a giant video game. The object is to keep it growing, but what do they do when the economy hits limits? They could take their foot off the throttle operated by low interest-rates and more debt. Or they could “take the wings off” the economy….

ALTERNATIVES

Totnes: The world’s most forward-thinking eco settlement?

25th September 2017

From The Guardian: Totnes has been called ‘Britain’s town of the future’. This month, the small town which kick-started a worldwide movement of sustainable urban living, completes 11 years of being a Transition Town. As fossil-fuel reserves dwindle and the economy contracts, will resident-led Transition Towns prove to be a viable model for the future?…

Development/Growth

Nafeez Ahmed: Inside capitalism’s slow-burn energy collapse

2nd September 2017

New scientific research is quietly rewriting the fundamentals of economics, showing decisively that the age of endlessly growing industrial capitalism, premised on abundant fossil fuel supplies, is over. The long-decline of capitalism-as-we-know-it, the new science conclusively shows, began some decades ago, and is on track to accelerate well before the end of the 21st century….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Get ready for peak oil demand

23rd June 2017

From The Wall Street Journal: While most big oil companies foresee a day when the world will need less crude, timing peak oil demand has proven controversial. Most Big European producers predict that a peak could emerge as soon as 2025 or 2030, and are overhauling long-term investment plans to diversify away from crude oil….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Is it the beginning of the end of oil era?

19th June 2017

From Deccan Herald: There’s a great deal of disagreement between those who predict the end of oil era and those who believe in the need to look for more oil reserves. Since India’s ready to invest a huge amount in transforming its economy, there’s an urgent need to find out which scenario will pan out….

ALTERNATIVES

It only takes a few countries to kickstart a decarbonisation revolution

9th June 2017

From The Conversation: This latest study looked at the trends driving decarbonisation in three key sectors of the global energy system – power, transportation and buildings. It found that, in these fields, it has taken only a few players to set in motion the kind of transformations necessary to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s targets….

Consumerism/Lifestyle

Regardless of lifestyles we’re too numerous to be sustainable

1st May 2017

Lionel Anet writes on Countercurrents.org: The ultimate way to reduce our footprint on the planet is to reduce our population, a near impossible task in any civilisations but particularly capitalist ones. That’s the reason it’s shelved before it’s planned, except for the cruel Chinese example. Nevertheless, it must be done if we are to survive….

Bookshelf

Red alert: A timeline for global collapse

11th April 2017

This review by Alice Friedmann of Nafeez Ahmed’s new book has 3 parts: 1) Why states collapse for reasons other than economic and political 2) How Bio-Physical factors contribute to systemic collapse in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria 3) Predictions of when collapse will begin in Middle-East, India, China, Europe, Russia, North America…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Gail Tverberg: Twelve reasons why globalisation is a huge problem

24th March 2017

Globalization seems to be looked on as an unmitigated “good” by economists. Unfortunately, they miss the point that the world is finite. We don’t have infinite resources, or unlimited ability to handle excess pollution. So we’re setting up a “solution” that is at best temporary. Here’s why globalization is, in fact, a very major problem….

ALTERNATIVES

10 years of Transition Network: A look back at the early days

6th March 2017

The Transition movement refers to grassroot community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of energy depletion, climate destruction, and economic instability. The UK-based Transition Network, founded in 2006, inspired the creation of many of the projects. Here, Rob Hopkins, one of its founders, looks back to when it all began….