Editor's Picks

Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling have coauthored a new publication, this time a book called "The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is and What It Means to You," a book to be released by publisher Apogee Prime late this month...He has spent his entire career working in the energy realm, from the oil sector to numerous forms of electric power generation. In 2005, this team published "The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management." Steve Andrews caught up with Bob Hirsch last week for Steve's last interview and final work with the Peak Oil Review.

So long as we see ourselves standing on a cliff’s edge, we’ll keep swinging unproductively between visions of full spectrum catastrophe and wishful thinking—a kind of circular paralysis—while real opportunity goes unnoticed. It feels a little like motion, but never gets us anywhere.

-I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly
-A benign extravagance
-The water footprint: the hidden cost of our meat consumption

There’s a palpable sense of expectation as we cruise down the canal. Two dozen people and barely a word passes between us. It’s not the roar of the triple outboard engines, nor the forced camaraderie of strangers thrust together, with only their environmentalisms in common. Rather, it’s the sense that we’re travelling towards something—not a place, but a phenomenon, an event—whose name we know but whose face we have not yet seen.

As the effects of Peak Oil make themselves felt, they will go far beyond gas prices.

The Canadian auto industry employs around a half million people directly and indirectly, almost all of which is in Ontario. This isn't just building and selling cars - there's a massive manufacturing empire needed to mine the ore, make the steel and machine the parts that extends well beyond Ford or Toyota. So what do we do with two of the nation's largest steel mills? ...

If cycling is going to catch on as a major means of transportation, somebody's going to have to start building new affordable and practical bikes. That's where steel comes in.

As part of its focus on action in the present--the moment at which oil is peaking--as a time of opportunity for decisive action of historical consequences, the Transition Movement embraces the act of telling stories; stories are a crucial tool for this monumental change--as important, perhaps, as our new-found ability to darn socks and grow Kale. (Part 2 of "Existential Comfort in the Age of Hopkins and Greer")

This week a study on peak oil by a German military think tank was leaked on the Internet. The document shows that the German government is closely studying the issue of peak oil, and is aware of the potential for serious consequences as oil production declines. The study is reminiscent of the Hirsch Report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, that warned of the risks posed by peak oil. ... Below is a friend's translation of the major points in the report.

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. (excerpts)
Update: English translation of table of contents and lead paragraphs.

While North gives a good overview of the most sophisticated portions of the local-finance spectrum, he is writing about local money, not community finances in general. The scope of his book does not include the low-hanging-fruit -- the easy to set up, free to establish vehicles which hold enormous community-building potential. Group purchasing, garden sharing, carpooling, tool libraries, seed swaps, barter fairs and more – these fill in the most intimate, colorful portion of the spectrum in the vision of a multifaceted local financial infrastructure.

Go to where people are at, not where you want them to be. Stay far away from "knowing what is best for people". If people in your neighborhood don't care about growing food, don't force it. Maybe people feel more excited about an after-school program teaching photography to youth? If so, try to integrate your food-based ideas into programs that the community actually wants. Unite your interests with those of whom you work with; don't patronize.

"Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the 'progressive' left." A personal, twenty-year journey through the world’s wild places and the movements to protect them is also, for Paul Kingsnorth, an education in the limits of a project that has forgotten nature and lost its soul.

The leftist parties seek economic growth, arguing that only in this way will the standard of living of their citizens be enhanced and greater world equality achieved. The indigenista movements say their objective is not economic growth but coming to terms with PachaMama, or mother earth. They say they do not seek a larger use of the earth's resources, but a saner one that respects ecological equilibrium. They seek buen vivir - to live well.

Both for households and firms, shifting to sustainability opens up new possibilities, and intersects with ongoing changes in the economy. In Plenitude, I lay out a number of principles that should inform our thinking about how to solve the climate and eco-crises. These include re-thinking the question of scale, knowledge transmission, the role of informal economies and social capital, new consumer patterns, and the relation among productivity growth, output and hours of work.

In a “powered down” future—the one almost certain to follow the end of the era of “Hydrocarbon Man”—the practical size of my collapsed world (and yours) could well be defined like this: How far can we walk away from home and back again in a single day?
My own answer? About ten miles. And that’s optimistic...This is the pivotal moment when the story of my life officially becomes the story of this place.

-Feeding the City series intro
-The history of urban agriculture should inspire its future
-The New Agtivist: Urban farmer Annie Novak aims sky high
-Smart city governments grow produce for the people