Alternative Currencies

Peak oil, the web of debt, & our local future

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A new set of high definition videos are now online: Richard Heinberg on peak oil, Thaddeus Owen on permaculture, Ellen Brown on financial collapse, Tim Husdon on the four futures, and Kim Hill on the auto industry crisis, and more.

Collapse +11 years in the Napa Valley

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As I sip my morning espresso, I have a brief moment of longing for an earlier time when I could make my stovetop coffee quickly on a gas burner. It takes a lot longer using this electric one. Little did we know that gas was right behind oil in peaking. Fortunately we finally have plenty of solar-produced electricity and, once again, access to coffee. So it’s a minor inconvenience, but just another reminder of things we used to take for granted.

Finding Main Street good in the Wall Street crash

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Going forward into the peak oil decline years, strong local economies are all that stand between us and collapse… When people shift their money from trans-continental banks to local banks and credit unions, their money goes to work in their own neighborhood and strengthens the real, local economy where they live and work.

Organic Money

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Surrounded by shade trees and gardens, about 200 people, a surprising number for such a rural setting, stood around in little knots talking spiritedly about subjects that all came under the heading of Home Economics: local food; natural medicine; home-based alternative energy; home birthing; home schooling, even, get this, home churching.

The end of money?

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What could wreck the world’s currencies is a desire to offset the effects of the ever-tightening noose of resource scarcity caused by the approach of peak oil, the march of climate change, and the rapid industrialization of the Far East. The desire to offset these effects is already expressing itself through easy money policies and the financing of government expenditures through borrowing rather than taxation.