Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
How do we create a worthwhile future without a way of visioning it? Rob Hopkins compares environmental disaster movies to some permaculture teaching techniques, and suggests we may need a new superhero to lead us into a post-oil-peak world.
Neither the mega-cities nor the survivalist’s bunker will be viable in a post-oil future. The places with the best chance of surviving an oil peak will be cities of less than a million people, ranging down to well-placed smaller cities and towns.
Perhaps the world’s first local action plan intentionally designing a way down the oil peak is now available online. It should provide great inspiration for other local Peak Oil initiatives. [updated]
Urban permaculture /
Dorm room showcases eco-friendly living /
Basel and the 2000 Watt Society /
Electric cars get another jolt of interest /
Gas prices push some to torch their SUVs /
Julian Darley and The Relocalization Movement
San Francisco’s clean-tech report card /
Cool idea helps save energy, environment /
When cleaner air Is a biblical obligation /
Sweating the big stuff at Grist Magazine /
Bill McKibben: Curitiba as a global model for development /
To save endangered butterfly, become a butterfly /
Interview: Sir Jonathon Porritt – a carbon-constrained world
Second of a series on emergency preparedness in the Willits area.
The most effective responses to our energy predicament will be place-based and community-supported. This wide-ranging report surveys the communities and political leaders preparing for a post-petroleum world.
Of all the earth-building methods, cob building embodies a mystery in its sensuous curvy walls. How does it work? How does it get built? …cob building is [best] understood as pottery or sculpture.
Not even the staunchest public transit advocates believe that the bus or train will become the dominant way to get around Northeast Ohio – even with sharply higher gas prices. Too much is stacked in favor of the car.
Acres of chard and lettuce in Golden Gate Park? The Marina Green with community gardens? Wind turbines on top of the Bank of America Building?
There was an economy that loved SUVs /
To haul all its workers far from the cities. /
The cars pushed the economy to depend on more oil. /
But I dunno why it depended on oil; perhaps it will spoil. (To the tune of “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”)
Rob Hopkins talks us through how he helped turn one small town onto the problem of Peak Oil, and how together they created a profoundly positive and practical community plan to deal with it.
