Culture & Behavior

The downside of dependence

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Last week’s post suggested that any serious response to the predicament of industrial society has to start with using a good deal less energy and resources. The conventional wisdom in response to that suggestion is to insist that if person A doesn’t use a given resource, person B will, so person A might as well get his snout in the trough with everyone else. Plausible though this sounds, it misses one of the core issues at stake: what happens to those who are dependent on the trough when the trough runs dry?

How to kill a plant

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So let’s talk about how to kill plants, which is way easier, especially when you don’t intend to. I offer this information up for several reasons. First, I’m an expert. You might think this wouldn’t be true, since raising plants is a large portion of my profession, but in fact, that simply makes me better at it than you. Fortunately, the vast majority of my plants survive, but I have probably tested out just about every creative way to kill a plant not requiring the importation of elephants. I am a professional plant assassin, dammit.

Editor’s picks: April 2011

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Articles from last month that we found fresh or significant.

Articles on economic contraction, the ghost of ASPO-9 (climate change), the PUBLIC Library.

Plus: peak oil on Australian TV, Bathtubs: A theory of community relations, UK’s happiness movement, building a mass climate movement, sustainable ideas from religion, Octogenarian recalls the First Great Depression.

Peak Moment 194: Portland’s neighborhood tool sharing libraries

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Need a tool for a few days? Don’t have it? Neighbor doesn’t have it? Borrow it from your neighborhood tool library! No tool library? Check out Portland, where several neighborhoods have started successful tool libraries just in the last few years. Organizers Tom Thompson, Karen Tarnow and Stephen Couche discuss how they got started, stories of community generosity, and the enthusiastic response of all who stop by. In these neighborhoods, there’s no reason not to grab the tools you need and do that project!

Complaining about mosquito bites while a crocodile bites our leg

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I am not an oil industry apologist, but recognize that I live in an oil-centric world, own a car, enjoy air travel and partake in the daily smorgasbord of food, services, and novelty made possible in the cheap energy age. To me, given the problems our country and government face, blaming Exxon for high gasoline prices and excessive tax subsidies is akin to complaining about a mosquito bite on your arm when a crocodile has your leg in its mouth.

Bolivia: Nature cannot be submitted to the laboratory or the market

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The answer for the future lies not in scientific inventions but in our capacity to listen to nature. … Humanity finds itself at a crossroads: Why should we only respect the laws of human beings and not those of nature? Why do we call the person who kills his neighbor a criminal, but not he who extinguishes a species or contaminates a river? Why do we judge the life of human beings with parameters different from those that the guide the life of the system as a whole if all of us, absolutely all of us, rely on the life of the Earth System?

Happiness, simplicity and apocalypse – May 1

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– Happiness theory at center stage in Soros economic conference
– The ‘I’m-happy-I’m-green’ consensus won’t placate our lust for novelty
– Simplicity Institute report shows that less can be more
– Prophets of the Environmental Apocalypse
– Venezuela Comes Sixth in Gallup “Wellbeing” Survey