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Peak oil sf novel by R.C. Wilson
Annalee Newitz, io9
22nd Century Darwinians Challenge the Church in "Julian Comstock"
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Peak oil has left the world a churchy, early-industrial shambles in Robert Charles Wilson's new novel Julian Comstock. An engaging cross between post-apocalyptic series Jericho and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, it may be the best science fiction novel of the year so far.

Wilson has won the Hugo award, and written half a dozen other novels, but has yet to achieve a great deal of name recognition among SF readers. I think Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America is likely to change that. Ostensibly a tale of the brave wartime deeds and eventual presidency of Julian Comstock, written by his close friend Adam Hazzard, the novel is far more than that. It's a sprawling, gorgeous meditation on the inexplicable ways that history mutates culture, from its religious institutions to its pop culture.

... After peak oil, the world is plunged into a period of massive starvation (factory farms collapse without a steady oil supply), the population of North America is decimated, and a new government finally arises that absorbs Canada into America and rules by succession. The Supreme Court is abolished, indentured servitude reinstated, and the "Dominion Church" is a branch of government used to balance the power of the military.
(29 May 2009)

Post peak oil rock: Antioquia
Antioquia
Greetings, Human. We are Antioquia, an "AfroColombian Progress Rock" fusion band based in the San Francisco East Bay. We lovesto make you dance but we aren't the greatest fans ofusing fossil fuels to bring the music! So we've come up with a plan. Thanks for visiting - read on!

Here's how we'll take our music beyond "Peak Oil"

Instead of using gasoline in our sturdy but stinky band van Bessie, we will transport our musical equipment on a tour bus fueled by waste vegetable oil, and on cargo bicycles fueled by the food we eat! The cargo bicycles we're riding in the picture to the left are Xtracycles, made by Berkeley-based company Xtracycle Inc.

And instead of playing all our shows using coal-generated electricity, we will use electricity generated on-site by an array of bicycles pedalled by human generators

... "Pedal powered concerts turn the audience into performers... it was a total thrill to know that I was helping Antioquia make the music, and to know that we weren't drawing a single watt of coal-fired electricity in the process."

--Kendra, Pedal Power Generator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, October 30, 2008 (picture below)
(May 2009)
Recommended by Adam Grubb, EB founder. YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/antioquiamusic

Review: Stuffed! (PDF)
Sandy Irvine, Ecological Sustainability
Annie Leonard’s on-line film, The Story of Stuff and its linked resources provide a very valuable addition to the ‘green’ armoury. (The film can be watched at http://www.storyofstuff.com/international/ ). For a start, the film itself is quite compelling. It features Leonard herself, talking to the camera, with animation changing behind her. Her presentation is direct, lively and succinct, while the graphics have been assembled with equal effectiveness. Not the least of the film’s virtues is its humour and its comparatively crisp style, with more probable appeal to the ‘YouTube’ generation than the more plodding Inconvenient Truth and the rather wandering Age of Stupid .

Of course, there is the possibility that some audiences might find the format a bit too limited and the presentation patronising. Certainly the content is not exactly rocket science. But the style might just serve to reach those otherwise resistant to more earnest green propaganda. The film’s bright-eyed optimistic edge might not be objectively justified but, perhaps, it will prove more appealing to non-converts than doom-and-gloom, not that the film pulls its punches about the destruction wrought by consumerist excess.

... As its name suggests, The Story of Stuff is about the flow of resources through the economy, from initial extraction and harvesting to final disposal. It contrasts the picture painted in places like orthodox economic textbooks to what happens in the real world. It therefore spells out a host of environmental and social realities that abstract conceptualisations like the ‘firm’, the ‘consumer’, and the ‘marketplace’ ignore (including most TV reportage of economics). It makes it crystal clear that the system is highly inequitable and grossly unsustainable. It is a bubble destined to burst.

... The Story of Stuff does have its heart in the right place and, more importantly, it makes many telling points. So, overall, Annie Leonard and her colleagues do deserve a big vote of thanks for their efforts.
(April 2009)
Long review and backgrounder from a green perspective by Sandy Irvine, a teacher in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Many more of his essays are on his website. A recent green critique of Leon Trotsky garnered some attention. -BA