New currencies

Passing the world oil peak has had, and doubtless will continue to have, relatively little impact on the long-term price of gasoline. The economic implications of getting through the first half of the Oil Age have been much more significant, a trend that seems likely to continue until the collapse is complete.

-Will the Brixton pound buy a brighter future?
-Stroud Pound unveiled
-The Stroud Pound Hits the Tills

The least popular of the laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics -- better known as the law of entropy -- is also the key to understanding the problems with modern economics. There's an inevitable mismatch between the production of goods and services, which are subject to entropy, and the production of money through interest, which in theory drives infinite growth -- but this mismatch is resolved in an unexpected way.

When caring is kept in the family
How retiring has made me more resourceful
Complementary Currencies Are Ushering In a Vibrant Local Economy
What’s Wrong with a 30-Hour Work Week?

Since the first edition of the Transition Handbook was published, huge and far-reaching changes have begun unfolding in the world economy. For many, they are seen as the outcome of the end of the age of cheap oil ... What are the assumptions we have made thus far about the economy. Do they still hold after the events of recent months? Did they ever actually make sense in the first place?

How hard is it to live plastic-free?
Bartering is a modern trade
Third-World stove soot is target in climate fight
California wants to pull plug on energy-guzzling TVs
The Ethicist: It's okay to absorb neighbor's heat

How Americans spend now: thrift nation (TIME)
When you’re flush, but acting flat broke
Economic survivalists take root
No cash? Barter for services with "dibits"

Democracy Now: North Carolina town prints own currency
Boulder's Transition movement
An urgent call to 'buy local'
Entrepreneurs building living economies - Colorado conference in May

Theory of oil-shock recession
Communities print their own currency to keep cash flowing
Chris Cook: Banking on Energy
Oil As Money and the Decline of Energy Earnings

Innovating for a low-carbon age
Minimalist living in Silicon Valley
Jason Bradford: Household and community food security
Maggots as good as gel in leg ulcer treatments
Reuse stores make use of refuse

With superb insight, wisdom and erudition—one is almost tempted to say omniscience—Alexis Zeigler’s Culture Change charts an ambitious course for the future of our civilization. The book calls for a revolution to bring about what Zeigler terms a “conscious culture” capable of responding intelligently to our ecological crisis. (Full book title: Culture Change: Civil Liberty, Peak Oil, and the End of Empire)

A new set of high definition videos are now online: Richard Heinberg on peak oil, Thaddeus Owen on permaculture, Ellen Brown on financial collapse, Tim Husdon on the four futures, and Kim Hill on the auto industry crisis, and more.

Monbiot: If the state can't save us, we need a licence to print our own money
Russians hoard cash as fear of crisis takes hold
Financial crisis shows how economics can threaten democracy

As I sip my morning espresso, I have a brief moment of longing for an earlier time when I could make my stovetop coffee quickly on a gas burner. It takes a lot longer using this electric one. Little did we know that gas was right behind oil in peaking. Fortunately we finally have plenty of solar-produced electricity and, once again, access to coffee. So it's a minor inconvenience, but just another reminder of things we used to take for granted.