the paradigm is the enemy

“Perhaps the greatest flaw in the Peak Oil movement’s current operating paradigm is that, a part of the movement at least, instead of building lifeboats in the face of an immediate disaster, is delusionally focused on trying to build alternative-powered luxury liners that operate just like the paradigm we as a species need to be abandoning.

Not only is this a futile effort, it may well be responsible for killing or destroying the lives of people who at least partially understand Peak Oil and who are trying to find the best courses of immediate action for themselves and their families.”

Michael Ruppert, THE PARADIGM IS THE ENEMY, Speech delivered at the Local Solutions to the Energy Dilemma Conference, April 29, 2006

CO2 - We call it life

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two 60-second television spots focusing on the alleged global warming crisis and the calls by some environmental groups and politicians for reduced energy use.



The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace. Since its founding in 1984, CEI has grown into a $3,000,000 institution with a team of over 20 policy experts and other staff.

We are nationally recognized as a leading voice on a broad range of regulatory issues-from free market approaches to environmental policy, to antitrust and technology policy, to risk regulation...

Follow the money.

conversation and dialogue

From Transition Culture, yet another poignant article/interview. . .

What are the skills we need to learn and the training & education we need to put in place to respond to peak oil?

We really need to understand the value, and give a value, to loosening up our minds, becoming curious rather then certain, being interested beyond the polarities of the differences, being really interested in how someone else experiences this issue, or any issue. You can educate people into becoming more curious, but it's a serious process. We're certainly not doing in our schools, we're not doing it in our organizations where we just want people to make snap decisions, we want children to give instant simplistic answers…

If you are interested in the subject of effective dialogue, you can read an excerpt and download a full 80 page document here.

food security

Unfortunately it may take catastrophic change before people ask themselves the most important question of the 21st Century: "“How are we going to eat" Michael Kane, a writer From The Wilderness

Does this look to you, like something
that will continue into the coming decades?

World Grain Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption:
Grain Prices Starting to Rise

by Lester R. Brown - Earth Policy Institute
June 15, 2006

This year's world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand. As a result of these shortfalls, world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices.

Further comment on this issue is very telling, and comes from Energy Bulletin, one of my favourite energy sites:

World grain consumption has risen in each of the last 45 years except for three—1974, 1988, and 1995—when tight supplies and sharp price hikes lowered consumption (See Figure). Growth in world grain demand, traditionally driven by population growth and rising incomes, is also now being driven by the fast growing demand for grain-based fuel ethanol for cars.

Roughly 60 percent of the world grain harvest is consumed as food, 36 percent as feed, and 3 percent as fuel. While the use of grain for food and feed grows by roughly 1 percent per year, that used for fuel is growing by over 20 percent per year.

Grain is one of the basic calorie crops which make up a large part of the Western diet. We have become used to shelves stocked with long distance foods. While we can relatively easily grow a few veges, learning to grow our food, in particular the larger volume of calorie crops will be the challenge in a low energy future. We will need to devote larger areas of land to organic production - this will mean more effort and labour especially in the early phase as we regenerate the soil which has been made effectively dead through the use of fossil-fuel chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers.

culture change

The Whole Human Being: a "new" and savvy citizen for our times
Written by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #133 - June 20, 2006

In this time of mounting threat to our species and the entire biosphere, our weakness seems to come down to individualism and materialism.

. . . Our idea of what is necessary to survive has broadened materially and technologically. So not only is happiness no longer achieved by pursuing selfishness as individuals and materialists, our very survival is in question if we keep going with today’s extreme forms of individualism and materialism.

. . . Meanwhile, amassing knowledge of sustainable living is only prudent in a time of overspecialization and high vulnerability to complex systems and unaccountable, distant authorities. Although consumers may be too dense and lazy today to change proactively to deal with the fact that local food production is wise when the average piece of food travels 1,500 miles, we may have to write off these unfortunate folks for the moment as we go about preparing our own closer relationship with nature. We are too fragile and out of touch, much like those in a 1960s song who have "arms that can only lift a spoon." We must also work on our relationships with each other:

The reforming of tribes has been going on right under consumer society’s nose since the 1960s; a few aware people are biding their time. So, we must continue trying to come together as neighbors, families, band members, comrades, and communitarians. The answers are not waiting for us on the desks of government officials, nor in corporate advertising campaigns or news programs.

Every decade the modern man is appreciably weaker. He is more dependent on technology and has less wild nature around him. He is less likely to use basic, traditional skills to accomplish something for himself. Instead, he can buy it. He has less family around to participate in an activity, as other family members can be elsewhere being good consumers, students, workers or soldiers. He is more likely to be alone and is surrounded by plastic claptrap. What he thinks he needs to know is less likely to be found in his head or in others’ heads such as his elders’; he gets it from a computer...

It goes on and I cut out a lot, but I gotto get out of this computer and go and grow some veges!!

waiheke cinema rocks

If you are in Auckland or Waiheke (New Zealand) you may want to diary these films that are screening on the 4th and the 18th of July at the Waiheke Island Community Cinema.

Three important and relevant films will screen two weeks apart, at the cinema. The first two address some of the problems associated with Peak Oil. The last film offers inspiring examples of some solutions and opportunities which will arise from it.

-------- Tue July 4th, 7:30pm --------

The End of Suburbia
We are witnessing one of the major
societal changes of a lifetime,
brought on by the end of cheap oil.
78 mins

--------------------------------------

-------- Tue July 18th, 7:30pm --------

Peak Oil - Imposed by Nature
Condenses a lot of important and
compelling information into a clear
introduction to the global oil decline.
30 mins

Followed by...

The Power of Community
Shows how Cuba responded to its
"peak oil" and economic collapse
which occurred suddenly in 1989.
60 mins

--------------------------------------

You can be certain of some lively disussion
following the screening of these films.

climate change is out

Investors Seek Climate Change Information

By The New York Times
Thursday, June 15, 2006

Investors worried about the possible financial fallout from greenhouse gas emissions have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to require that companies disclose their financial vulnerability to changes in climate.

Yesterday, a group of 27 investors who collectively manage more than $1 trillion in assets sent a letter to the S.E.C. chairman, Christopher Cox, asking that financial risks linked to climate change issues be included as part of routine corporate financial reports.

The letter, whose signers included several state officials, including the New York Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, defines risk broadly.

"Investors have a right to know if a company's buildings are in the path of hurricanes that might be exacerbated by climate change, or if it will face high costs when greenhouse gas emissions are regulated," said James Coburn, a policy adviser at Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups that sent the letter. "They need that information to reduce their portfolio risk."

Just as important, Mr. Coburn said, companies that are forced to quantify and disclose their vulnerabilities are far more likely to address them. "What is measured is managed," he said.

Mr. Coburn said Ceres faxed the letter to Mr. Cox, and sent e-mail copies to several staff members. It has also mailed copies to the chairman and commissioners.

A spokesman for the S.E.C., John Heine, said the agency had no comment at this time.

Shanghai surprise

Shanghai - with a population of 17,000,000 at 2000,
I can imagine why they might be getting nervous
about securing energy supplies.

At the one day annual summit of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on June 15, more limelight fell on the leader of an observer country than on any of the main participants. That figure happened to be the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Despite the lowly observer status accorded to his country, Ahmadinejad went on to publicly invite the SCO members to a meeting in Tehran to discuss energy exploration and development in the region. And the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, proposed that the SCO should form an "energy club".

While making a plea that his country should be accorded full membership of the SCO, the Pakistani president, Parvez Musharraf, highlighted the geo-strategic position of his country as an energy and trade corridor for SCO members. "Pakistan provides a natural link between the SCO states to connect the Eurasian heartland with the Arabian Sea and South Asia," he said.

Given this, the old adage "money talks" ought to be modified to "oil talks".

Late addition to this story: The US has been refused observer status to the SCO.

It goes on, but you get the idea. The following comment to this article was rather succint, and I thought you might enjoy it...

Everybody's far too busy watching football or bashing Muslims. Meanwhile, Japan and the SCO are arm-wrestling for the destiny of 4 billion Asians and over $18 trillion of GDP. ASEAN countries are preparing for an Asian currency. By the time the US and EU finally tire of their crusade against Muslims, they will find that they have become largely irrelevant in world affairs.

We might be well advised to look at more local currency options.

a new, healthy money system

LET US WORK TOGETHER

The CES did start out as a new software package for a single trading group in Cape Town, South Africa. Its success soon attracted the attention of others and similar groups were set up all over South Africa. Later it got adopted in New Zealand and now it is operating in seven countries worldwide. Our vision is that CES should become a co-operative project and that it should do what its users want it to do.

Although I have prescribed above how LETS groups that have adopted CES should operate, there are no rules. CES can be used as a software package to run a single group in the traditional way, or we can develop it together to create a really effective, new money system.

This document is meant as an appeal to those attending this conference to adopt the grand vision of the founders of CES. That is, we are doing this because we believe the present global money system is at the root of most of the social, economic, political and environmental problems that confront us today. We can only begin to tackle these problems if we have a money system that places the ‘money power’ in the hands of the people who use it. We can build this new money system if we work together and share resources. That way we will ensure that we build something adaptable and scalable, that caters for all our needs and achieves the ultimate goal of creating a new, healthy money system.

Tim Jenkin, CES

politics or self help

A friend wrote last night expressing his, understandable frustration about the slowness of the political leaders to respond to the facts of Peak Oil,and their failure to begin paving the way for new means of providing for the necessities of life. It grew out of a conversation around some documentary films on Cuba (The Power of Community, and The Greening of Cuba), who had their Peak Oil moment back in 1989.

The films tell how the average Cuban lost several pounds of body fat before their food growing efforts yielded fruit, but they came through and met the challenge in creative and innovative ways. They moved away from fossil fuel dependent agriculture and turned to permaculture and organics. There is much we can learn from them. One of these films is being screened at the Waiheke Community CInema on July 18th.

This is my letter in response to my friend's outpouring of frustration:

The Greens, Labour, ACT, National, and any others that may come along are part of an old system that I have been saying for some time is broken and is not supposed to be fixed. It is based on old models of working which don't (work) anymore. They assume a top down management model that wont work.

I dont waste my energy supporting or fighting them, but prefer to channel it into creating the bottom up foundational systems which will grow and thrive as the old systems collapse. As people wake up and see the extent to which they have been lied to by their leaders, they tend to express anger first, but then they look for other ways to function, operate, interact, live and get their needs met.

I dont believe that pointing fingers at Bush, or Cheney, Clark or any other 'leader' does anything more than postpone the inevitable moment when we wake up and realise that we are the responsible party. Looking to someone in a 'leadership' position and demanding they fix things is a form of giving away power. Me weak, you strong, you big powerful person fix this problem for poor powerless me.

The entire system that is consuming the final supplies of oil is being encouraged by those people, yes to be sure. But it is we the people who are filling our tanks, buying the produce which has travelled around the globe to get to our table, after being fertilised and pesticided and packaged to get there. As we wake up and do things differently we buy out of that system and withdraw our suppport for it.

Now it could move faster if 'leaders' got on board and helped educate the masses, who are asleep, because they continue to be fed world cup football and told that everything is fine - just keep consuming. But then those people would remain in the same position of being manipulated by whatever the latest message is. And this moment seems to be about awakening from the slumber and becoming self-aware and aware of our inter-dependent place in the totality of humanity.

My reading of the situation is that there will be a significant die-off of the human population. We have found a food/energy source that has enabled us to explode our population - it has doubled in my lifetime. Now that food/energy source has peaked and we are on the downward slide, and with it will surely come a reduction in the population that depends on it.

Some realise this, and are stepping back from dependence on oil as an energy/food source, and I would rather put my time into supporting and working with those people, than struggle to wake up those who are fast asleep.

Good news about the thermette - thanks for the prompt, I will put this on my preparedness list.

Gently,

James
--
www.yesterdaysfuture.net