Stories archived in 2010

Consuming less doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice freedom or walk around in grey smocks and eat gruel, as many free marketeers would have us believe. Capitalism can foster innovation, but as the dearth of truly ecologically sane consumer choices reveals, capitalism also hinders innovation when it’s not profitable enough.

Economist Paul Krugman almost addressed the Limits to Growth in his recent article "The Finite World", but pulled back before reaching the brink of suggesting there may be physical limits to economic growth. A Nobel Prize may await whomever finds a workable model to prosper human welfare under conditions of depleting resources. Will economists solve this problem, or ordinary people who are learning to live better in The Finite World?

Many of the implications of peak oil can be summed up in one simple if highly unwelcome way: most of us in the industrial world are going to be much poorer for the rest of our lives. That bleak prospect, however, opens up unexpected possibilities; poverty is a familiar condition, and ways to cope with it are within reach. The Archdruid sketches out one option.

- Want a safe place to raise kids? Look to the cities
- Turning Failed Commercial Properties Into Parks
- Road rage in India growing along with economy
- Paris To Test Banning Gas-Guzzlers (Yes, SUVs!) In City Core

- Iran's Energy Subsidy Reductions: Upon Whom Will the Costs Fall?
- Canada Discovers Trickle-Up Economics
- Policy Cures for China’s Post-Stimulus Hangover

- The electric car age just got a little closer (Deutsche Bank on peak oil)
- Robert Rapier's Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2010
- EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2011: Don’t Worry, Be Happy
- Renewable and fossil electricity generation costs compared

With the final surge in the world's production of fossil fuels coming to an end the outlook for the global economy changes dramatically. ... If much of the 5 or 6 million b/d of productive capacity that OPEC claims to have in reserve does not really exist or cannot be opened in a timely manner, then much higher oil prices seem likely by spring. This, of course, will reduce demand again and we are off on another cycle of falling demand, more economic damage, and eventually lower prices.

We learn our lessons more by chance than by deliberation. Or maybe it is more to the point to say that we learn by living. For sure, what we learn from experience sticks with us longer than what we think we learn in classrooms. I can’t remember how to do algebra problems involving two unknowns but I will never forget what happened when I was dumb enough to touch a frosty piece of iron with my tongue.

- Paul Krugman: The Finite World
- Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet (oil price bet with Matt Simmons)
- TIME: Can We Run Out of Oil and Other Natural Resources?
- The Dark Side of Young Adult Fiction: Craving Truth-telling
- New peak oil book: "Peak of the Devil"

Many individuals involved with Transition, including Rob Hopkins, have become fascinated with the work of Christopher Alexander and his development of pattern language. [He noticed] that any built environment is like a language in that the patterns communicate problems we confront in our environments but also contain within them the solutions. ... Often overlooked is what Alexander calls the “luminous ground” on which the pattern language theory is built.