Economics

The net energy of pre-industrial agriculture, taken as a whole energy-gathering system, must have been low, with EROEI probably on the order of 1.1-1.6 depending on place and time.

The "Peak Oil" concept -- that the world’s petroleum-production rate will soon reach its maximum and commence an inevitable decline, with negative economic consequences — has been around in scientifically articulated form at least since 1998; long enough to see it confirmed in significant ways.

-Bees in the City? New York May Let the Hives Come Out of Hiding
-Produce to the People: Collaborating for Food Access
-Is Goat the New Cow? Why American Foodies and Environmentalists Are Reviving the Old-World Staple
-Ankeny forum to examine agricultural concentration
-New York rolls veggie carts into food deserts; can other cities follow?
-How guerrilla gardening took root
-New report reveals the environmental and social impact of the 'livestock revolution'
-'I'm not a slave, I just can't speak English' – life in the meat industry

OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna this week caused no surprises in deciding to keep production quotas unchanged. Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi described current prices as "beautiful". Indeed as the group met the oil price rose to $82/barrel, close to its 2010 high despite only 53% compliance by OPEC to its quotas and low US demand.

“Hundreds of job-creating projects are still on hold because Michigan businesses and entrepreneurs cannot get bank financing. We can break the credit crunch and beat Wall Street at their own game by keeping our money right here in Michigan and investing it to retool our economy and create jobs.”

One of the foundational challenges of any social movement is “changing the conversation.” That is, transforming an existing paradigm (say, some people are less than human and can be enslaved) to a new paradigm (all people have an inherent right to liberty).

A collapse in demand for petroleum products happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s. JD, proprietor of the blog Peak Oil Debunked, examined this briefly in this 2007 post about what he termed ”The Big Glitch”...

-Money spent on tar sands projects could decarbonise western economies
-China's oil demand increase 'astonishing', says IEA
-OPEC sticks to its guns, demand rising

-Smile now, cry later
-Perils of the Stationary State
-Erik Assadourian: our society needs some serious cultural engineering
-Who negotiates for nature?

-Outer Ring Suburbs and the Permanent Foreclosure
-Designing Cities for People: Farming in the City
-Cleveland’s Comeback
-The secret mall gardens of Cleveland
-10 Land-Use Strategies to Create Socially Just, Multiracial Cities

The most telling sign that the United States is well down the road to ruin is the jobs situation. I'm about to tell you some seriously depressing stuff, so get ready.

In January of this year, American political consultant Dr. Frank Luntz released a 17-page talking points memo titled “The Language of Financial Reform,” in which he urges opponents of bank reform to reframe the effort as a mishmash of bailouts, loopholes and bureaucracy. In short order, Luntz-listening legislators lined up to shout “BLACK” at the kettle, before returning to their work crafting endless loopholes to bail out campaign contributors in their home states. I read the memo upon its release and promptly tossed it in my compost bin (I’m always short on browns).

A little while ago, Alex Steffen of World Changing offered a critique of the permaculture-inspired Transition Towns initiative--a grass-roots, peak oil/climate change adaptation movement that has gone viral around the world in the past three years . . . Steffen would describe these people as “dark greens,” a brand of environmentalist who emphasizes local community action but can tend toward collapse-thinking or doomerism.

The United States Joint Forces Command regularly (about every two years) issues its “perspective on future trends, shocks, contexts and implications for… the national security field.”...Amid the multitude of security threats, energy has moved rapidly to the forefront, and it is the oil supply issue which is the focus of this review.