Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Dmitry Orlov’s Book – Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
Dmitry Orlov’s new book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, was published very recently. I pre-ordered a copy because Dmitry has had first hand experience with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he believes, as I do, that economic collapse is likely to come first, if a society is on an unsustainable course. The great mystery to me is what lies on the other side of an economic collapse.
In this book, Dmitry gives his view of what may be on the other side, and how one might prepare for it. Dmitry starts with a recipe for collapse of a modern military-industrial power:
The ingredients I like to put in my superpower collapse soup are: a severe and chronic shortage in the production of crude oil (the magic elixir of industrial economies), a severe and worsening trade deficit, a runaway military budget and ballooning foreign debt. The heat and agitation can be provided most efficaciously by a humiliating military defeat and widespread fear of a looming catastrophe.
He then goes on to explain how the Soviet Union followed this recipe in the late 1980s, leading to its collapse, and how the United States, with its conflict in Iraq, may be following a similar course.
(2 June 2008)
AIHce: Futurist Jeremy Rifkin and the Future of Work
Sandy Smith, Occupational Hazards
Although the opening session of the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exhibition (AIHce) in Minneapolis on June 2 was called “The Future of Work,” it just as easily could have been called “Power to the People.”
Futurist Jerry Rifkin, president of the Foundation or Economic Trends in Washington, D.C., painted a bleak picture of the future of the world unless almost immediate steps are taken to reduce global warming and the carbon footprint the human species has left on the earth. While other ages have been known as the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, Rifkin said our age will be the Fossil Fuel Age. We will be known as the Fossil Fuel People, he says.
According to Rifkin, climate change, increasing inflation and debt, increasing political instability in oil-producing countries and the growing divide between the very rich and the very poor is contributing to a species – ours – that is on the brink of extinction unless the mindset of every citizen of the world begins to change.
(3 June 2008)
Peak Everything: 8 Things We Are Running Out Of And Why
Lloyd Alter, Treehugger
Why is everything running out at the same time? We did a series on Planet Green where we looked at why those basic things that we take for granted, like water, food and fuel are getting expensive and scarce, all at once.
Peak Corn:
Blame Earl Butz. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Agriculture brought in the Farm Bill that dramatically increased the amount of corn produced in America. He encouraged farmers to “get big or get out,” and to plant crops like corn “from fence row to fence row.” Further billions in subsidies to farmers encouraged production, and soon America was awash in cheap grain, and with it cheap meat. Food costs as a portion of the American diet dropped to the lowest level in history; we became corn. Michael Pollan writes: “If you eat industrially, you are made of corn. It holds together your McNuggets, it sweetens your soda pop, it fattens your meat, it is everywhere. It is fed to us in many forms, because it is cheap- a dollar buys you 875 calories in soda pop but only 170 in fruit juice. A McDonalds meal was analyzed as almost entirely corn.” ::More
Peak Oil
In 1956, American geophysicist M. King Hubbert calculated that the rate of production of fossil fuels would peak in the United States in about 1970 and then start declining. He was laughed out of the conference room. However, ultimately he was proven correct; now we are probably at the worldwide Hubbert’s Peak. A hundred years ago you just stuck a pipe in the ground and the oil rushed out; now it is not so easy, and America’s oil comes from deep under the ocean, is cooked out of rocks in Alberta, or is purchased from nations with security issues. Now the United States, Canada, Norway, and the United Kingdom are well past their peak, while Saudi Arabia and Russia are approaching it. Oil is still being found (there was a recent big hit in Brazil, and there are thought to be big reserves in the Arctic.) but it harder to get at and a lot more expensive. ::More
(2 June 2008)
Localtion, location, re-location
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Power
For approximately ten days last month I traveled across the United States from my former home in New Mexico to my new home in Vermont. My journey has been the culmination of years of researching and soul searching in response to the odyssey of my species and the earth community which has now entered an irreversible trajectory of collapse.
At the completion of this transition, I feel compelled to clarify a number of issues around my relocation and relocation in general. Obviously, for the past two years on this website I have been talking about relocation as one piece in the complex tapestry of collapse preparation. Therefore, I feel that I owe it to regular readers and subscribers of Truth To Power to let you know that I’ve taken this enormous step since many of you have relocated long before I did, and many more of you are contemplating doing so. I believe that where we choose to stay or move to is monumentally important in terms of how we prepare or do not prepare for collapse. I do not believe that everyone should relocate, and I certainly do not believe that everyone should relocate in Vermont since relocation is a highly individual decision encompassing myriad factors, and one size definitely does not fit all.
… Relocation involves much more than logically choosing a geographical area inside or outside the U.S., taking into consideration the climate, access to arable land, water, wood, and other resources for living sustainably-a decision requiring most individuals to carefully weigh the assets and liabilities of any given place and then acquiring the financial resources necessary to make the transition. Just deciding where one wants to live is challenging enough; equally stressful for most people is finding the means to relocate, and as the price of gas and just about everything else soars, it feels as if the sands of time are running out and against those who have not yet made their move.
What seems to get less attention when the topic of relocation is discussed is the emotional factor-that is, the goodbyes, the myriad feelings that surface as one leaves a place and people-perhaps even immediate family members, in order to relocate in an unfamiliar venue. What is already an emotionally challenging experience may become more agonizing as family and friends living in denial of collapse perceive one’s decision to relocate as extreme, bizarre, or dangerous. But the emotions associated with leaving are usually rivaled by those one experiences when arriving at the new destination-feelings of unfamiliarity, disorientation, ungroundedness, anxiety, paranoia, and disconnection. None of us is an expert in relocation even if we have moved many times in our lives. After all, relocation engendered by one’s awareness of collapse is not the same as simply moving to another state or country under pre-collapse circumstances.
(2 June 2008)
