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Pick Up Your Hat (Response to John Michael Greer) by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
The Next Crisis: Peak Oil, by Jeremy Leggett, Forbes
See also The Wall Street Journal: Prepare for Peak Oil.
Jeff Rubin at the Business of Climate Change Conference in 2009, Energy Bulletin/YouTube
Climate Change Deniers and Human Nature by Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
...The reason such sloppy critiques of climate science have gained so much traction with the public has less to do with their scientific logic--which is almost nonexistent--and more to do with human psychology. Humans tend to be heavily influenced by recent events and by their social milieu. For example, they tend to give more credence to something they heard last week at a party with friends than something published in a scientific journal last year even if it was given broad media play. Hence the effect on the public mind of the not-so-coincidental release of the above mentioned hacked emails right before the Copenhagen climate summit--and the ongoing viral campaign on the Internet, perfect for getting people to transmit disinformation person to person: "I read on the net that..." Tribalism and a Place at the Table by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
...I think of this when I think about the adaptations that will be necessary in the coming decades - the tribe, I think, is due to come back. There's too much work for one person, or even a nuclear family. Sometimes the tribes will be biological in nature. Sometimes they will be mostly chosen. Most often, I think they will be odd intersections of both, of ties that are formal and informal, broken and whole. Not everyone with a title will be connected - some ties will be lost in the mists of time and space. But it seems that the big tribal tent is a place to start teaching my kids about how they are tied to other people - that a wide range of possible connections all matter. That you can be tied by love, or liking, by biology or by someone else falling in love. That you can tie and untie, but not necessarily undo relationships - that breakups and divorce, death and the failure of formal acknowledgement do not mean there is nothing there. Pick Up Your Hat (Response to John Michael Greer) by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
In Depletion and Abundance I write about the difficulty of committing to a lifestyle change in a world where you always seem to have more time, where defining events are always on the horizon but never present. I use the phrase "time to pick up your hat" which I take from a short story by Robert Heinlein, as a way of thinking both about how difficult it is to change and how necessary... The Next Crisis: Peak Oil, by Jeremy Leggett, Forbes
“The next five years will see us face another crunch--the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well… Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don't let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.” So wrote the CEOs and Chairmen of the companies involved in the U.K. Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy--Richard Branson of Virgin, Ian Marchant of Scottish and Southern, Brain Souter of Stagecoach, Phillip Dilley of Arup and I--in the forward of our second annual report, released on Feb. 10. See also The Wall Street Journal: Prepare for Peak Oil. Jeff Rubin at the Business of Climate Change Conference in 2009, Energy Bulletin/YouTube Video and Transcript. Hard nosed peak oil, economics and carbon pricing. Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada’s top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. Here, he discusses the pendulum swinging away from globalization (started doing so in 2007), a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency. He argues for the unavoidability of relocalization and the logic of transitioning away from our fossil fuel addictions. He’s the guy who’ll make the industrialists sit up and take notice – and probably you too! Climate Change Deniers and Human Nature by Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
...The reason such sloppy critiques of climate science have gained so much traction with the public has less to do with their scientific logic--which is almost nonexistent--and more to do with human psychology. Humans tend to be heavily influenced by recent events and by their social milieu. For example, they tend to give more credence to something they heard last week at a party with friends than something published in a scientific journal last year even if it was given broad media play. Hence the effect on the public mind of the not-so-coincidental release of the above mentioned hacked emails right before the Copenhagen climate summit--and the ongoing viral campaign on the Internet, perfect for getting people to transmit disinformation person to person: "I read on the net that..." Tribalism and a Place at the Table by Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book
...I think of this when I think about the adaptations that will be necessary in the coming decades - the tribe, I think, is due to come back. There's too much work for one person, or even a nuclear family. Sometimes the tribes will be biological in nature. Sometimes they will be mostly chosen. Most often, I think they will be odd intersections of both, of ties that are formal and informal, broken and whole. Not everyone with a title will be connected - some ties will be lost in the mists of time and space. But it seems that the big tribal tent is a place to start teaching my kids about how they are tied to other people - that a wide range of possible connections all matter. That you can be tied by love, or liking, by biology or by someone else falling in love. That you can tie and untie, but not necessarily undo relationships - that breakups and divorce, death and the failure of formal acknowledgement do not mean there is nothing there.
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