Editor's Picks

Once a year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) releases its World Energy Outlook (WEO), and it's our tradition here at ChrisMartenson.com to review it. A lot of articles have already been written on the WEO 2010 report, and I don't wish to tread an already well-worn path, but the subject is just too important to leave relegate to a single week of attention.

The waterwheel was seen as the most important power source in the world, from the Middle Ages to the end of the nineteenth century. When smaller streams became saturated, medieval engineers turned their attention to larger rivers, eventually leading to the development of the hydropower dams that still exists today. Lesser known are the intermediate steps toward that technology: boat mills, bridge mills and hanging mills.

- Phosphate: Morocco's White Gold
- The World Food Crisis: Causes and Solutions (Peter Rosset talk)
- Food prices may rise by up to 20%, warns UN
- Climate Change and Disease Will Spark New Food Crisis, Says UN

In order for humankind to resolve its ecological predicament, capitalism must be historically superseded. People who are aware of the system’s growth compulsion and the environmental destruction that results may well suspect that this statement is true. But carrying this train of thought forward is difficult. Why? Because currently the only well-known model for moving beyond capitalism is that of the socialist tradition. This model, however, arose in the context of class struggles rather than overshoot, and in my view it incorporates several grave errors. I therefore believe that an alternative model for the post-capitalist transition must be developed.

What we need is a money system that actually is connecting real resources with real needs, creating real community wealth at the community level. But that requires a financial system that is rooted in the community and accountable to community interest and that operates by life values rather than financial values.

Birk has just the right message to the bike community: Don’t get defensive, hold your ground and push ahead, because in the end even your opponents will come to appreciate the progress you make. ... “We’re driving a cultural shift where you trade off motor vehicle space for bike lanes. This is deep, fundamental change. It’s not like just adding a bike lane and Boom, you’re done.”

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Mark Shepard ‘s family permaculture farm in Viola, Wisconsin. Mark has planted an estimated 250,000 trees over the last 15 years on his 106 acre farm. Forest Agriculture Enterprises is known for its hazel nut, chestnut, butternut, nut pine and apple produce, scion-wood and value added products. Mark has a lot of wisdom on not only farm operation but also community and staff and intern economics.

- Steve LeVine: How to read today's big report on the future of energy
- National Georgraphic: Has the World Already Passed “Peak Oil”?
- Online Executive Summary of the report
- Energy inaction will cost us trillions
- IEA: “peak oil is an inevitability”

- "The Ultimate Roller Coaster Ride: A Brief History of Fossil Fuels" (Post Carbon Institute)
- "The Story of Electronics" (Annie Leonard)
- "Permaculture: The Growing Edge" (Starhawk and Donna Read)
- "The Economics of Happiness" (Helena Norberg-Hodge)
- "Collapsus" - what energy collapse might look like (interactive video)

Promoting the idea of local food production and the rollout of urban agriculture, whether in the form of market gardens, allotments or back gardening, will clearly struggle if no land is made available to make it possible. Many settlements, even if they are built to a high density, will have both land within them that could be used, and also land around them. Ensuring secure access to this land will be vital.

When people think of the 2001 Argentinean collapse, they automatically think of riots, looting and violent unrest. It’s true. Social cohesion did break down in large cities as they negotiated both the erosion of societal norms and the carrying capacity of the land beneath them. On the other hand, in rural Patagonia a different dynamic existed that allowed for the spontaneous emergence of barter markets. These markets self-organized to create a flow of trade in necessary goods and services when access to standard currency was radically reduced and even ultimately removed from society. Community cooperatives also formed to provide the means for a higher level of local function and, thus, greater regional stability.

We are developing the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – an advanced industrial economy-in-a-box that can be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world. The GVCS is like a Lego set of modular building blocks which that work together for creating sustainable, regenerative, resilient communities. Our prototype village aims to demonstrate that we can create a complete economy from local resources on ~1000 acres via regenerative resource use – for ecological living with modern-day comforts, minus resource conflicts.

"Financial crisis is going to make resource depletion much harder to address, because we are not going to have the money to replace highly energy-dependent infrastructure. Doing so would be staggeringly expensive and would take a very long time even if we did have the money. As it is, we will be forced to conserve both money and resources by going without."

"Large conventional oil production is increasingly no longer part of the future. We must expect to get along without what has been our critical energy source in expanding the world’s economy for more than half a century. But acceptance [of the idea of peak oil] by knowledgeable people is not enough.

"Our willingness, let alone our ability, to do anything serious about the impending inability to increase oil output is still a long way off. The political order responds to what the public believes today, not to what it may come to believe tomorrow."

Dr. Schlesinger has served as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1971-73), Secretary of Defense (1973-75), Director of the CIA and was the first Secretary of Energy (1977-79).

Keynote address to the recent ASPO-USA conference in Washington D.C. (transcript and video) .