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Worldchanging and The American Future
Alex Steffen, Worldchanging
Here at Worldchanging, solutions are our business. We've spent the last five years exploring the world's most innovative ideas for addressing the planet's most pressing problems. Today's our birthday, so we thought we'd take this chance to let you know about our new plans.

Until now, we've largely focused on discrete innovations.

... But people need a new future. In fact, one could reasonably argue that people need a new future now more than any time in the history of the species. Our present way of living is an ocean liner colliding catastrophically with the iceberg of ecological and economic reality -- a collision that threatens to essentially destroy civilization -- and yet we cling to it with white knuckles, in large part because we can't really imagine another way of living. Given the choice between a sinking ship and dark uncertainty, most of us tend to hold tight to the rails and hope for the best.

If we are going to convince large numbers of people to embrace the kinds of creative, large-scale change sustainability demands, we need to offer them something more than scattered, loosely connected possibilities. We need to show them a new, brighter future, a plausible, inspiring, achievable -- and sustainable -- future towards which people can aim their aspirations. We need to invite people to abandon that sinking ship and swim for a future that works.

Imagining that future still strains our foresight, but more and more clearly it lies within the boundaries of possibility. We have much of the toolbox of solutions we need to build a bright green future: designs, technologies, policies, practices and insights that we can use to ratchet down the ecological impacts of nearly any aspect of our civilization. Some large gaps remain -- no one has yet invented a realistic sustainable model of the aviation industry, for instance -- but between solutions that already exist and new innovations leaping off the drawing boards now, we can at very least trace a plausible path from here to a bright green future.

That future is simply unattainable without America's wholehearted commitment. To begin with the obvious, we Americans are intimately connected with the causes of much misery, from our climate emissions and runaway resource use to our rogue-state diplomacy, and the simple cessation of that stupidity would go a long way towards making possible the good. But that's not the limit of the leadership the United States can offer.
(1 October 2008)

Nashville's Gas Crisis: Inside the Metro Bunker? (video with subtitles)
Jim Ridley, Nashville Scene
Whoever produced this deserves a MacArthur genius grant. Watch it all the way through, unless you start to hyperventilate.
(22 September 2008)
Satire about what happens when gas runs out. NOTE: The subtitles have four-letter words. Based on the German movie "Downfall." -BA

Recommended by Rob Hopkins, who writes:
Albert Bates pointed this out to me, and here in Transition Towers it has had us all giggling most of the afternoon…. very good… . It tends to start automatically though, so here is the direct link to it, rather than you getting fed up with Teutonic rantings every time you open Transition Culture…

Receding Horizons for Alternative Energy Supplies
Kurt Cobb, Scitizen
When energy optimists tout the huge supply of oil that is still available to us in the form of tar sands and oil shale, they forget to mention that costs are rising so quickly for producing that oil that these alternative sources may prove to be of limited value. The same cost problems are occurring in the renewable energy field as well. What is behind this phenomenon sometimes referred to as the problem of receding horizons?

Those who claim that we will have plenty of energy and perhaps enough oil for a hundred years or more have so far failed to understand why the rising price of oil is making it more difficult both to extract new sources of oil and to deploy renewable energy from wind and solar.

First, it is helpful to understand how complex energy systems actually work. For this task we turn to the humble tree which gathers energy in ways that are very much like those of human societies.
(23 September 2008)

Richard Leakey: the end of the world as we know it
Matt Graham, Willamette Week
And you thought you had a lot to live up to: Richard Leakey is the son of Louis and Mary Leakey, the pioneering researchers on human origins in Africa. Although he initially decided not to follow in his parents’ footsteps, Richard Leakey eventually became an accomplished paleoanthropologist in his own right. Then he followed that up by becoming a African political activist, and later a high-ranking official in the Kenyan government. A lifelong fighter for nature conservation, he’s set up programs in Africa to stop the poaching of elephants.

... WW: What are the biggest problems facing the planet today?
Richard Leakey: I think the population crisis is a big one, particularly in the poorer parts of the world. If everybody lives the way that we live in the West, it’s going to be a serious problem for the planet. That, set against the backdrop of climate change, is going to have a huge impact on things such as water. We’re going to see difficulties expressed in greater famines, more serious floods and larger periods of drought. [It’ll have] significant implications for the state of the planet even 50 years hence.

How do we negotiate the fact that there’s a population problem, yet all of our efforts are pushing us toward ever longer lives with expanding uses of resources?
We’ve got to create a future philosophy where we all wish to live well but we don’t measure how well we live in terms of what we throw away at the end of each day. Secondly, we’ve got to address poverty, because it’s the people who live in the poorest parts of the world who have the largest families. Part of the reason for that is the old adage that if you have one child who doesn’t do well, nobody supports you. If you have 10, you’ve got a one-in-10 chance that somebody’s going to support you in old age. It could take a long time to slow population growth to the point where it starts reducing, but there’s no reason for it to continue to increase as it has been over the last 50 years.
(1 October 2008)

The slow erosion of heart and soul
Christopher Ryan, The Localizer
Unlike some who were anticipating with dread the full impacts of peak oil and its associated economic domino effects, I expected evidence to be less stark and sudden. As with most transitions like the Great Depression, while there were events such as the 1929 stock market crash, the full effects of the crash, bank failures, and business closures took several years to fully play out. As it occurred in slow motion and brick by brick, people's lives became incrementally more difficult and sometimes hard to detect if your own circumstances were less acute.

Quiet desperation is a good cliche to apply to the situation we face today. We see many people go about their business as if nothing serious were the matter. Yet even the comfortably ensconced middle class are going out to dinner less, shopping at the discount grocery instead of the upscale natural food store, and taking less day trips over the weekend. Here in Massachusetts, we received word from the Attorney General that this winter will be devastating to the low and moderate income populations related to heating and even the middle class will be severely impacted. But typical polite conversation doesn't include these concerns as we continue to talk about the baseball playoffs, the admittedly crucial election, and of course the economic bailout plan. Little consideration is given to the car sleepers in Santa Barbara, the people who use their stoves to heat their homes, abandoned children and pets, and the many who use one credit card to pay another or their mortgage or the baby food.

Of course one problem is the immense pride that most of us have to not be identified as in need or in trouble. How many people are found mummified or frozen in their homes because they were too proud to ask for help and, of course, because they did not have anyone checking on them. I personally wonder how people and families can go homeless if they have a living sibling or parent who could take them in. Even a friend, cousin, or aunt should be considered fair territory in seeking temporary assistance in a life threatening crisis. Certainly personal independence is a hallmark of American identity but in many ways, this is unnecessary individualism and anti-community. It does not build in the resilience needed in a crisis and leads to far greater problems in the end. We will need to reconsider the model of isolated two generation families and reconsider the merits and resilience of extended family households. Concurrently, our concepts of empathy, patience, and understanding will also need to be remolded to facilitate these changes. Instead of marginalizing grandparents (and other family members), research shows they can have a stabilizing impact during economic hard times. They also can add a richness to the experiences of the children in a household.

In the coming weeks and months, provided the economy does not totally implode and oil shortages do not become more acute, we will be facing a difficult winter but one that will allow us to begin establishing a stronger community. We can use this time to build networks, engage in emergency preparedness, and get to know our neighbors better. We are going to need this network because, as I have previously noted, civility and community will be a vital element in a future that will give new meaning to the term hardship.
(2 October 2008)

Implications of fossil fuel constraints on economic growth and global warming
Willem P Nel and Christopher C Cooper, Elsevier
Abstract

Energy Security and Global Warming are analysed as 21st century sustainability threats.

Best estimates of future energy availability are derived as an Energy Reference Case (ERC). An explicit economic growth model is used to interpret the impact of the ERC on economic growth. The model predicts a divergence from 20th century equilibrium conditions in economic growth and socio-economic welfare is only stabilised under optimistic assumptions that demands a paradigm shift in contemporary economic thought and focused attention from policy makers.

Fossil fuel depletion also constrains the maximum extent of Global Warming. Carbon emissions from the ERC comply nominally with the B1 scenario, which is the lowest emissions case considered by the IPCC. The IPCC predicts a temperature response within acceptance limits of the Global Warming debate for the B1 scenario. The carbon feedback cycle, used in the IPCC models, is shown as invalid for low-emissions scenarios and an alternative carbon cycle reduces the temperature response for the ERC considerably compared to the IPCC predictions.

Our analysis proposes that the extent of Global Warming may be acceptable and preferable compared to the socio-economic consequences of not exploiting fossil fuel reserves to their full technical potential.

Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, Institute for Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg
(27 September 2008)
Article is not publicly accessible. It mentions peak oil. -BA