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Tilting at Windmills
Rob Hopkins on "Transition Towns" and Peak Oil
For the First Time In Human History, the North Pole Can Be Circumnavigated
9 Sq Mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose In Canada
The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age by John Michael Greer
Review of The Long Descent by Frank Kaminski
Tilting at Windmills
The Gristle, by TIm Johnson, Cascadia Weekly
...The politics and economics of energy shift as states - particularly across the West - create renewable energy mandates and the federal government moves glacially toward limiting carbon emissions. Some advocates guage the Northwest coast as "ground zero" for looming energy debates. Offshore, winds blow strong and steady, and could potentially produce 900,000 megawatts of electricity...The U.S. Dept. of Energy rates the Northwest coast as "outstanding" for wind generation...
Pages 6 and 7 of this pdf file: http://www.cascadiaweekly.com/pdfs/issues/200834.pdf
Rob Hopkins on "Transition Towns" and Peak Oil
Scott Carlson, Urbanite Baltimore
Sustainability expert Rob Hopkins talks about “transition towns” and explains how to brace ourselves for life without oil.
For someone who believes that world oil supplies are about to begin an inexorable decline, possibly dragging down civil society in the process, Rob Hopkins is a rather cheery fellow. Hopkins, a 40-year-old doctoral student at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, is the founder of the Transition movement, which encourages people to wean their neighborhoods, communities, and towns off oil and nudge them onto a path of self-sufficiency in an increasingly energy-scarce world. “The change we have seen over the past hundred years will be nothing compared with what we will see over the next twenty,” he says. But it’s not a dire warning; it’s an adventure. “This is an extraordinary time to be alive. I feel really fortunate to be around-it’s going to be a fascinating time in history.”
Hopkins was teaching permaculture design, or the design of sustainable human settlements, when he stumbled across the idea of “peak oil,” which holds that an irreversible decline in global oil production is imminent. That led him to create “Transition Towns”-among them the village of Totnes in southwestern England where he now lives. Hopkins and his colleagues have encouraged the planting of gardens and nut trees for local food sources, the establishment of gas-free transportation (including a rickshaw service), and the support of local businesses and local skilled labor. Totnes also has its own local, transition currency, the Totnes pound.
http://www.urbanitebaltimore.com/sub.cfm?ArticleID=1032&IssueID=64&SectionID=4
Buy the book: The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins Read Hopkins' Masters' thesis: Energy Descent Pathways Read the Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan by Rob Hopkins and his students Read Hopkins' response to Transition critics
For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated
Melting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously. Scientists warn Arctic icecap is entering a 'death spiral'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, The Independent,Sunday, 31 August 2008
Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.
http://www.independent.co.uk
9 sq mile Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Canada
A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_re_ca/arctic_ice_shelf
The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
By John Michael Greer
259 pp. New Society Publishers – Sept. 2008. $18.95.
Americans are expressing deep concern about US dependence on petroleum, rising energy prices, and the threat of climate change. Unlike the energy crisis of the 1970s, however, there is a lurking fear that now the times are different and the crisis may not easily be resolved.
"The Long Descent" examines the basis of such fear through three core themes: Industrial society is following the same well-worn path that has led other civilizations into decline, a path involving a much slower and more complex transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by so many social critics today.The roots of the crisis lie in the cultural stories that shape the way we understand the world. Since problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them, these ways of thinking need to be replaced with others better suited to the needs of our time.It is too late for massive programs for top-down change; the change must come from individuals.
Hope exists in actions that range from taking up a handicraft or adopting an "obsolete" technology, through planting an organic vegetable garden, taking charge of your own health care or spirituality, and building community.
Focusing eloquently on constructive adaptation to massive change, this book will have wide appeal.
John Michael Greer is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, and scholar of ecological history. The current Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), his widely-cited blog, The Archdruid Report (thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com) deals with peak oil, among other issues. He is a WWU graduate and lives in Ashland, Oregon.
Buy The Long Descent Now at Village Books Review: 'The Long Descent' by John Michael Greer
by Frank Kaminski, Seattle Peak Oil Awareness
The Long Descent is one of the most highly anticipated peak oil books of the year, and it lives up to every ounce of hype. Greer is a captivating, brilliantly inventive writer with a deep knowledge of history, an impressive amount of mechanical savvy, a flair for storytelling and a gift for drawing apt analogies. He is perhaps the most spiritual out of all the current thinkers on peak oil, as well as one of the most eclectic and wryly humorous. No other peak oil writer possesses his same blend of aptitudes, and only a few approach his cunning. His new book presents an astonishing view of our society’s past, present and future trajectory—one that is unmatched in its breadth and depth.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46454
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