Energy Bulletin -

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That the real, physical world is the source of our own lives, and the lives of others. A weakened planet is less capable of supporting life, human or otherwise.

Thus the health of the real world is primary, more important than any social or economic system, because all social or economic systems are dependent upon a living planet.

- My Decade of Being "Peak Oil Aware"
- Peak oil educator Richard Heinberg challenges “binary thinking”
- U.S. Oil Fields Stage “Great Revival,” But No Easing Gas Prices
- Robert Rapier: Peak Oil & Carbon Emissions (video)

It is an article of faith that global trade will be an ever-growing presence in the world. Yet this belief rests on shaky foundations. Global trade depends on cheap, long-distance freight transportation. Freight costs will rise with climate change, the end of cheap oil, and policies to mitigate these two challenges.

... In addition to the corporate response, there is a second, more local, noncorporate response. This response is found in the Relocalization and Transition Towns movements now springing up in many developed countries. It is a bottom-up response that includes individuals and municipalities planning for a post-peak-oil future and altering their way of life.

In order to achieve sustainability, we need scenarios of where we want to go: not only warnings and plans, but also reports as if we'd already made the transition. Who would have suspected they'd come from the South Pacific?

There is a realization that it is no longer enough to denounce globalization or rail against capitalism. Realistic alternatives must be set forth. For many, it would appear that the commons can provide a useful framework and vocabulary for starting a very different conversation – one that at once addresses politics, economics, culture and our individual aspirations and energies.

‘Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude’ was the title of one of the lead articles in Bloomberg’s newly launched ‘Sustainability’ section this week. The report echoes a growing number of press reports announcing the end of the “myth” of peak oil. So what gives?

That conventional oil has peaked and will be in decline over the next decades is no longer controversial – so in that sense peak oil has been and gone, and the economic consequences are evident.

Even if we buy certified organic or fair trade marked products it is still very hard to avoid long and large retail chains which contribute to the pressure to industrialise and exploit human and non-human alike somewhere along the line.

How can we combine local, fair or ethical, and organic together in a way that at least has half a chance of caring more for human and non-human alike?

For nearly four decades, industrial hemp advocates have extolled the virtues of hemp (cannabis sativa, variety sativa), a plant whose cultivation is still banned in the US, thanks to its scandalous distant cousin, cannabis sativa, variety indica. The latter is the source of the illicit drug marijuana. The former produces good quality fiber and has a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC – the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) concentration of 1% or less. The latter produces negligible usable fiber and has a THC concentration of 4-20%.

So why can't we legalise hemp in America?

Connecting food to the local economy can provide more people with greater access to local foods.

Making it happen is another story since the necessary infrastructure was gradually dismantled over the past 70 years in favor of a national/global food system that promises low prices, year-round accessibility of products and convenience.

A flurry of new mainstream media articles telling people not to worry about Peak Oil and hydrocarbon depletion have begun appearing on financial sites like Bloomberg, Forbes or The Wall Street Journal. I though it would be worthwhile to analyze some of their arguments. At least some media outlets are willing to even discuss peak oil at all—most remain completely silent.

The Obama administration's renewable energy stool, with its three legs of biofuels, solar, and wind, has now tipped over, as all three legs start to crumble. The final push came from the recent closing of Range Fuel Corp.'s cellulosic ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga.

When economists Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti were parachuted in as Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy respectively in November of last year, this heralded a new era in the power of the economics profession. With questions still being asked about the failings of economics and economists in the build-up to the financial crisis, this technocratic rebuke to democracy was further evidence that this crisis is entrenching existing elite power, rather than weakening it. Not that you would hear any of this being discussed in an economics classroom.

‘The Impact of Community Supported Agriculture’– has found that CSA schemes are providing multiple benefits to thousands of members, their communities, local economies and the environment. CSA offers an innovative approach to reconnecting people with their food, and helps to build strong partnerships between communities and farmers.

Last week, I had an audit of our house's energy use done and I wanted to share a few impressions of the process. Partly I hope to inspire a few readers to do the same, and partly I figure some of my readers know a lot more about this than me and can answer some of my questions.  The audit was performed by Jon Harrod of Snug Planet, a local energy efficiency firm here in the Ithaca area of upstate New York.

Americans live in a country in which bigger is often supposed to be better. Perhaps this is why our homes, like our food portions, waistlines, and debt, continue to expand...But the rise of the McMansion--and its attendant conspicuous consumption--has also helped to create the burgeoning tiny house movement, which extols the virtues of living smaller. Like Henry David Thoreau, who built his own 150 square-foot cabin on Walden Pond in the 1840s, most tiny house aficionados cite the sheer satisfaction of paring down to the basics, choosing, as he put it, "to front only the essential facts of life."