Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
New Zealand will inevitably make a transition to a steady-state economy. The onset of energy descent — having less and less energy to use with each passing decade — will push it to do so sooner rather than later. The critical question is whether the transition to a steady-state economy will be by design or disaster.
Thomas describes changing attitudes to the natural world in early modern Britain, a time period that he sets at approximately 1500-1800. A great many things happened in the relationship between Britons and their natural environment during this period: enclosures of common land, increasing urbanization, the birth of scientific taxonomy, early attempts at conservation, and many others. I read a few pages, saw that Thomas was an engaging writer, and decided to take a first step towards dispelling my massive ignorance of the human past.
– New documentary: “The Crisis of Civilization” with Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
– Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism
– Coming to terms with Nature, (Spanish and Italian)
– Boom and doom: Revisiting prophecies of collapse (New Scientist)
What about the Faustian bargain? It remains deeply hidden from view because its exposure by the high priests of modern economics would force us to rethink how we live and why we live this way, as well as what we’re planning to leave for future generations. The Faustian bargain goes something like this: Thanks to the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels, humans (really just a small minority of them) are able to live richer lives today than even the queens and kings of yore could have dreamed of.
Our ability to imagine the future is shaped, and too often limited, by the habitual narratives of our culture. These days the two narratives about the future that have dominated our thinking for centuries–the narratives of progress and apocalypse–do a very poor job of relating to what’s happening around us. There are more useful alternatives, some of them from a very unexpected source. Blowing the dust off an old paperback, the Archdruid explains.
The return of interest in “The Limits to Growth” continues. After decades of ridicule and insults, the value of the 1972 study and of its sequels is more and more recognized. The latest item in the series of revisitations is an article published by Debora McKenzie in the latest New Scientist magazine.
From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a new–and perhaps unprecedented–phase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earth’s climate becomes less stable, the world’s nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water.
The fact that you can’t make something from nothing, that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, is really a matter of common sense. Or it should be. The problem is that common sense is not very common any more. It’s been vanquished by disingenuous marketers, truth-bending politicians, and scholarly “smart-dummies” (generally smart, specifically dumb on technological progress) who have legions thinking there is no limit to economic growth. But surely it’s not far below the surface. Surely there is latent common sense to invoke.
The Japanese government is launching a large-scale cleanup of the fields, forests, and villages contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. But some experts caution that an overly aggressive remediation program could create a host of other environmental problems.
The Occupy movement represents not only a stand against the tyranny of finance capitalism, but also a revival of the role of the commons for a vital civic life. People are once again coming together face-to-face and shoulder-to-shoulder to confront their common challenges and craft new ways to meet them. They are exploring what kind of life they can share with which to create a free, just, sustainable society.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks immersed in a pile of texts on what actuaries, physicists, and mathematicians have to say about the relationship between the economy and energy. [My homework is a talk I’m giving in Philly at the end of the month at a seminar about architecture and energy.] I haven’t finished the talk yet but I thought, as an exercise, that I’d share with you (and Mr Monti) the ten best writers of my reading list.
– Climate Change – Our Real Bequest to Future Generations (climate trumps debt)
– Austerity Reigns Over Euro Zone as Crisis Deepens
– Nobody Understands Debt
– The Danger Debt Poses to the Western World
