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Data: Local government responses to peak oil
Daniel Lerch, PostCarbonCities.net
This constantly-updated table lists all known local government actions made specifically in response to peak oil, whether internal (e.g., staff report, internal vulnerability assessment) or external (e.g., official resolution, community task force).
Since oil prices started climbing beyond 15-year highs in 2004, a growing number of municipal and regional agencies have acted to address the threat of peak oil, or at least recognize that the threat exists. To date the jurisdictions range in size from rural Franklin, New York (population 2,546) to the Los Angeles-area Southern California Association of Governments (population 17.8 million).
Help us keep this list current and accurate! Please send any updates or new information to Post Carbon Cities Program Manager Daniel Lerch. ..
(29 May 2007)
If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural
Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post
“You gotta see this!” Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.
As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, “Whoa — wait a minute!”
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, “For it is in giving that we receive.” But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.
…The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognize — even experience vicariously — what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behavior. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.
…Joshua D. Greene, a Harvard neuroscientist and philosopher, said multiple experiments suggest that morality arises from basic brain activities. Morality, he said, is not a brain function elevated above our baser impulses. Greene said it is not “handed down” by philosophers and clergy, but “handed up,” an outgrowth of the brain’s basic propensities.
Moral decision-making often involves competing brain networks vying for supremacy, he said. Simple moral decisions — is killing a child right or wrong? — are simple because they activate a straightforward brain response. Difficult moral decisions, by contrast, activate multiple brain regions that conflict with one another, he said.
…Neuroscience research, Greene said, is finally explaining a problem that has long troubled philosophers and moral teachers: Why is it that people who are willing to help someone in front of them will ignore abstract pleas for help from those who are distant, such as a request for a charitable contribution that could save the life of a child overseas?
“We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn’t face the other kind of situation,” Greene said. “It is comforting to think your moral intuitions are reliable and you can trust them. But if my analysis is right, your intuitions are not trustworthy. Once you realize why you have the intuitions you have, it puts a burden on you” to think about morality differently.
(28 May 2007)
Take away point: “generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex”. -BA
Vatican goes green with solar roofs
UPI
The Vatican’s traditional colors of white and gold are starting to look green with a new solar energy project.
A rooftop garden of solar panels is set to be installed on the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall. The solar energy project will begin next year and, when completed, will create enough electricity to heat, cool and light the entire building year-round, the Catholic News Service reported. atican goes green with solar roofs
(29 May 2007)
Chinese activist praises Oregon’s green ways
David Austin, Portland Oregonian
The fledgling environmental movement in China is growing, but a leading activist and journalist there says personal practices for “living green” often are overshadowed by development methods that are harming the Earth.
Sheri Xiaoyi Liao, the president and founder of Global Village of Beijing, told a packed crowd Tuesday night at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall that Portland and Oregon set good examples that could change the minds of millions of Chinese about strengthening the environment.
“I believe a lot of people already know about Oregon,” Liao said. “We need to show that any individual here or in China can make a difference.”
Liao spoke as part of the World Affairs Council of Oregon’s International Speaker Series, which features diplomats and other leading figures. Her focus was that how China views the environment need not be exclusive from how Americans see the world.
China, with 1.3 billion residents, has been a global force in changes in business matters. But it’s also forcing change because of its consumption of fossil fuels and other natural resources.
Liao pointed to the dust storms that are sweeping over Beijing and other cities. She cited the deserts in China that are growing at a quickened pace. She added that if most Chinese people wanted two cars, the country would soon slurp up the world’s supply of oil.
Some villages in China are piled high with garbage. Rivers and other waterways throughout the country run black with toxins and algae. And every two days, she said, there’s a serious environmental accident in China.
(30 May 2007)
Economist Tom Greco on reinventing money (Audio)
Global Public Media
Community and monetary economist Thomas H. Greco, Jr. gives a presentation in Sebastopol, California about creating alternative currency and exchange systems.
Greco is also a writer, networker, and consultant, who, for almost three decades, has been working at the leading edge of transformational restructuring. A former college professor, he is currently Director of the non-profit Community Information Resource Center, a networking hub, which provides information access and administrative support for efforts in community improvement, social justice, and sustainability.
He is regarded as one of the leading experts in monetary theory and history, credit clearing systems, complementary currencies, and community economic development. He is author of many articles and books, including Money: Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (Chelsea Green, 2001).
(29 May 2007)
‘Deep Economy’: ideas for a better world
Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
Bill McKibben envisions a new economy more attuned to environmental harmony and human satisfaction.
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Small Is Beautiful” has been a counterculture mantra – indeed, an important thread in American thought – ever since British economist E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 book of that title. Much further back than that if you count Henry David Thoreau.
In recent decades, many writers and deep thinkers have taken up the twin causes of living more communally and reducing human impact on the environment: Hazel Henderson, Lester Brown, Herman Daly, Wendell Berry, Jonathan Rowe, Sarah van Gelder, Duane Elgin, and Vicki Robin, among others.
Have they had much impact? Well, the Green Party is as irrelevant as ever, but “sustainability” has become at least the stated goal of the corporate world. Some sociologists say there now are upward of 150 million “cultural creatives” in North America and Europe – people with a more spiritual bent who espouse a “post-materialist” lifestyle.
Yet it all seems so tenuous. Houses and cars are bigger than ever. Energy consumption and landfills grow inexorably. Fewer people sense true “community” amid the suburban sprawl. Into this scene writer Bill McKibben – a remarkably jolly Jeremiah, it seems – now leaps.
If anything, the situation he addresses in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future is more dire than ever. Two reasons: peak oil and human-induced climate change, both connected directly to the Iraq war (as well as growing violence, social unrest, and political instability throughout the Middle East).
(29 May 2007)
Manufactured Landscapes
Louis Proyect, The Unrepentant Marxist
The first five minutes of the documentary “Manufactured Landscapes” consists of a long tracking shot down the aisle of an immense Chinese factory as thousands of workers sit at long tables assembling goods of an indeterminate nature. Most wear company-color yellow shirts or jackets suggesting worker bees in some enormous hive, where one works until one dies. The scene will also remind you of the concluding moments of the documentary “In the Pit,” which consists of a lengthy aerial view of the mammoth elevated highway construction project in Mexico City. “Manufactured Landscapes” shares the Mexican film’s sense of awe over large-scale capitalist development projects but is mixed with dread over their ultimate impact on humanity and nature.
“Manufactured Landscapes” was inspired by the photographs of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian who specializes in landscapes of the most sterile and industrialized places on earth, particularly in China where the government is on a forced march to “modernize”. The documentary follows Burtynsky and his crew around China, as we see some of the most dramatic examples of the hyper-growth that is attracting investor dollars from around the world. As a skilled artist (we see many examples of his work throughout the film), Burtynsky manages to draw out the beauty of vast piles of coal, rusting ships, construction projects, factory interiors, etc. But as becomes clear in his travels around China, he feels that the impact on the environment ultimately threatens the “modernization” project itself.
(31 May 2007)
