Energy Bulletin -

Equality and inequality in a shrinking economy--strategies and consequences: INTERACTIVE VIDEO CHAT

simoneosborn — Fri, 11 May 2012 04:50:59 -0700

AN INTERACTIVE VIDEO CHAT

May 22 - 2 PM PST /5PM EST/ 21.00 GMT

Engage and interact with Post Carbon Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg and political economist, activist and writer Gar Alperovitz as they discuss 'Equality and Inequality in a Shrinking Economy--Strategies and Consequences'.

This is an important conversation that will take a unflinching look at the global consequences--both obvious and surprising--of shrinking resource pools. From the classic Global North/South divide to the stresses around the family dinner table, Gar and Richard will talk with you about our shared and rapidly approaching future.

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Peak Oil Review - May 21

simoneosborn — Mon, 21 May 2012 03:30:09 -0700

A weekly review including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-The EU Crisis
-Iran
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs

How the fracking mess is about to make the mortgage mess worse

kurtcobb — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:37:22 -0700

One fact ought to tell you all you need to know about the risks faced by homeowners signing leases for natural gas drilling on their property: Wells Fargo & Company, both the largest home mortgage lender in the United States and a major lender to the country's second largest producer of natural gas, Chesapeake Energy Corp., refuses to make home loans for properties encumbered with natural gas drilling leases.

Oil report from the ”Diplomatic Council on Energy Security”

Kjell Aleklett — Sun, 20 May 2012 06:30:35 -0700

It feels as though we now have the first informed American report on the oil issue. One is struck by how well they describe the problem that ASPO and my research group have attempted to raise awareness of during the last 10 years. That this group of Americans perceive reality in a different way than is common in the USA is presumably because they are diplomats who have been outside the USA’s borders and have studied their nation from a different perspective.

Thoughts on Richard Heinberg’s book "The End of Growth"

cjs2285 — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:27:08 -0700

Sounding the alarm early is far better than not sounding the alarm at all. In fact, those who do are the true pioneers of ecological conciousness. Heinberg may be early, or he may not be, yet he has engaged us all in a very necessary conversation, arguably the most important conversation my generation will have in our lifetimes.

Poisoning people in Apollo: all in a day’s work

bart — Fri, 18 May 2012 17:50:25 -0700

Apollo is a small town in western Pennsylvania, part of the old coal and steel belt that surrounds Pittsburgh. The people who grew up there have learned what harm the corporations who employed them and their relatives and friends have done and continue to do. Men, women, and children were poisoned by that uranium fuel plant and that glass plant. Yet, for the most part, they ignore this, content to contemplate instead their “warm and fuzzy” memories, as one person put it.

The shadow of fascism

Damien Perrotin — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:42:58 -0700

Our capacity to bring about collective change decreases with every passing year – at least the kind of collective change the French people can accept. It is quite possible to simplify the French society, but that means accepting, even embracing, poverty, not something we as a people are likely to do.

Authoritarianism is therefore bound to fail, and become more and more authoritarian with time as, unlike democracy, failure is not something it can accept. Its normal way of dealing with it is not handing power to the other side, but finding somebody to blame.

Oil - May 18

simoneosborn — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:55:34 -0700

-Dump the pump: could peak oil be voluntary?
-Shell's Majnoon deal highlights Iraq oil target verdict
-Insight - Peak, pause or plummet? Shale oil costs at crossroads

Food industry named world’s worst

kristinsponsler — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:58:59 -0700

Dangerously low levels of sustainability in the food industry may skyrocket to the top of the to-do and worry-about lists of business executives, government officials, and perhaps even environmentalists and shoppers.

Transition Money – the need to scale up and get real

kristinsponsler — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:46:12 -0700

Could we really feel that the Transition movement's responses were adequate in the face of the suffering being inflicted by the crisis? Would speaking of local currencies feel sufficient in comforting the family of the pensioner who shot himself in front of the Greek Parliament last month after his pension was cut to nothing (described by Greeks not as suicide, but as "financial murder")?

Transitioning Money means building narratives and economic structures that empower people to step away from the crumbling mainstream and learn to trust in each other again, instead of in money.

Occupying the Future, Starting at the Roots

dianapeiwu — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:10:07 -0700

“In the first world, we have been fed a false sense of security that is imploding,” says Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan, recounting her family’s experience with the militant experiment in collective governance and self-sufficiency. “On Earth Day, our families were a part of manifesting a collective vision for a better way forward—that the land be a community educational center. We have planted strawberries in the children’s garden and feed the chickens with snails that we collect from our own garden. My partner, a cook, brings us food regularly. We are making that vision real.”

Conceptualizing post-capitalist economics

kristinsponsler — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:23:52 -0700

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein is a well-researched discussion of the history of money, capitalist economics and the worldwide movement for economic relocalization. Part I explores the profound effect the institution of money has on human thinking and psychology, as well as direct links between our monetary system, the current economic crisis and the impending global ecological crisis. Parts II and III explore possible alternatives to a debt-based monetary system that has outlived its usefulness.

ODAC Newsletter - May 18

simoneosborn — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:53:43 -0700

The prospect of weaker oil demand in the face of the Euro crisis was balanced this week by warnings from the IEA and Saudi Arabia. Sadad al-Husseini, the former head of Exploration and Production at Saudi Aramco, wrote that "$100 for Brent is quite a correction and it will be a challenge to sustain such a low price beyond the short term"...

How small groups can power big change

bart — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:53:41 -0700

As a nation, we seem to be constantly better at keeping each other at a distance. That means we aren’t so good at the skills required to live in community and use consensus: real listening, compromise, self-awareness, personal reflection. In this context, it’s radical simply to try and make connections with each other—to get closer rather than farther apart.

My town in Transition (transcription)

bart — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:11:18 -0700

My role in Transition started in 2005 when a friend and myself started showing some films about peak oil, about the idea that we are reaching the end of an age of cheap energy and all that that has made possible. We’re entering a time of increasingly volatile energy prices and that what we need to do with focus, determination, optimism and a sense of possibility is design the way that we’re going to get away from that.

When we started, I was imagined it was an environmental thing. More and more I see it as a cultural thing. [Transcription of a TEDx Talk]