Culture & Behavior

Cassandra’s curse: how “The Limits to Growth” was demonized

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There is a legend lingering around the first “Limits to Growth” book that says that it was laughed off as an obvious quackery immediately after it was published. It is not true. The study was debated and criticized, as it is normal for a new theory or idea. But it raised enormous interest and millions of copies were sold. Evidently, despite the general optimism of the time, the study had given visibility to a feeling that wasn’t often expressed but that was in everybody’s minds. Can we really grow forever?

Emperor of What?

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KMO welcomes Charles Eisenstein back to the C-Realm Podcast to discus his new book, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition. Charles talks about interest and the economic imperatives that it fosters. If the value of money decreased over time rather than growing via interest, then it would be clear to everyone that the best thing one can do with one’s money is to spend it quickly and close to home. In times of chaos and potential collapse, the best way to preserve wealth is to give your money away to those in need.

Learning from China: Why the existing economic model will fail

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What China is teaching us is that the western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—will not work for the world. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2035 is projected to have an even larger population than China. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.” And in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, the western economic model will no longer work for the industrial countries either.

The Glass Bead Game

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The search for constructive visions of a world in the wake of peak oil can lead in strange directions, and one of the more unexpected is a science fiction masterpiece from the first half of the 20th century that few readers have even recognized as science fiction at all, offering a vision of the future that, however appealing, flies in the face of some of the most cherished claims industrial society makes for its own superiority. Unpacking a box of books from his own college days, the Archdruid explains.

Growing through the storm

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How can we adapt mentally, and socially to Peak Oil, climate change and an economic bust at the same time? 3 interviews with solutions: interviews: “Peak Oil Shrink” Kathy McMahon from Vermont on unexpected lessons from Hurricane Irene. Urban homesteader Jules Dervaes – food self-sufficiency on a city lot. Richard Heinberg on coping with the End of Growth – will fertilizer shortages mean “Peak Food”? What are Common Security Clubs and “Resilience Circles”?

Teaching peak oil to preteens

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What will our cities look like from a preteen’s perspective in the not-too-distant future when peak oil pushes gas and food prices to new heights? No rides to the mall? No eating out? City-wide blackouts? Catastrophic! It was to Luz and her friends at first, but through a little bit of creativity and preteen gumption they discover the hidden potentials of an abandoned lot in their neighbourhood. Claudia Dávila’s debut graphic novel, “Luz Sees the Light,” sets Luz and her friends on a path to transform their fossil-fueled world.

Living right on the “wrong” side of town

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Since the bottom dropped out of the economy in 2008, my family has gone from affluent suburban living to life below the poverty line, in a shabby house in the “wrong” part of town—with no car. We’ve given up most luxuries, and sold many of our possessions. We’ve become admirably “green,” as a benefit of paring down to the simplest needs. We have chickens, a vegetable garden, and a front door that is always open and ready to welcome a neighbor. People often comment on how we are living with a softer impact upon the earth. But if I am honest, I have to acknowledge that the most dramatic changes we have made were those that were forced upon us.

Invasion of the space bats

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One of the challenges the peak oil movement faces just now is a lack of visions of the post-peak future that portray our species dealing with the end of industrial civilization, rather than evading it on the one hand or crumpling into fashionable despair on the other. It’s important to recognize the existence of that lack, but even more important just now to begin to fill it — even if that involves confrontations with alien space bats. Clutching an old copy of Analog Science Fiction Magazine in one hand and a can of bat repellent in the other, the Archdruid plunges ahead…

KunstlerCast: The end of growth

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A two part conversation between Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler. The conversation covers peak oil, financial dysfunction, political convulsions, generational conflict, techno-grandiosity, the fate of industrial agriculture and the suburban living arrangement. Heinberg also reacts to being labeled a “Doomer.”.

From crushing distance to opening space – a meditation on speed and local consciousness

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We do not really cease being drivers when we step from our vehicles. Like television, automobile travel strengthens some of the more pernicious habits of the egoic mind. Bottom line: motor travel is addictive, and the effects of the addiction are likely to persist even if we can no longer afford to drive.