Stories in topic "Environment/Sustainability"

How Will Knowledge of Collapse Impact Collapse?

I just watched an excellent and thought provoking lecture by Noah Raford at London School of Economics (hat tip Jason Bradford): (Note: you can play around with these models on Netlogo online HERE)


Collapse Dynamics

The lecture was about various examples in nature, financial markets and civilizations where previously correlated patterns were eventually sharply disrupted by small critical changes leading to phase transitions. We've had essays on the failure of networked systems, the ecological framing of collapse, and similar topics on TOD before, but while watching the 2 video lectures, I started to wonder: what impact does detailed knowledge of collapse dynamics have on collapse dynamics? This is the topic of tonight's Campfire.

Campfire and Human Capital - What Do You Want to Learn?

It has been about six months since we started the Campfire series on The Oil Drum. The intent was to host an outlet for those who were reasonably convinced that peak oil and energy descent begin now. The schedule is on Wednesdays to have 'practical' guest posts from 'experts' on various aspects of human capital (skills and knowledge) that might be useful for the community to learn and discuss. The Saturday slot was for some of the larger and more difficult questions we face as a society in an overshoot situation.

The 'guest post' larder since the start of Campfire has been on the bare side (with some stellar exceptions). Tonights post is a blank slate for you to articulate what 'practical' topics you would like covered in future posts. Since peak oil likely means more localization and a move towards self-reliance, essays and expertise on food/water/energy will clearly be of interest. But information on health, psychology, leisure, etc. in a post-peak world will be equally interesting.

A Message to the Nearly Converted

I was recently asked to give a talk at "The Generation Green Tent" during the Summer Arts and Music Festival at the Benbow Lake State Recreation Area. Here's the text and supporting images for that talk.

Thanks for coming to my presentation. I am going to say some challenging things today. I don't know if you are going to be validated or view me as a heretic. In any case, if you are taking notes I am going to have eight main points to cover. Here it goes!

My wife is a physician and has a Masters in Public Health, and so I am going to start with an analogy inspired by her profession that I believe all of us can follow. A very telling study was done on the health of Native Americans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border. The Mexican population was quite fit, while the U.S. population had high rates of obesity and associated diseases, such as diabetes. I am going to make some judgments about the society that produced this discrepancy, and perhaps we can primarily assign the blame for the illnesses of these people on their sick environment. However, I don’t want to absolve individuals of all responsibility for their predicament because that is a disempowering thing to do.



Overcoming the obesity crisis of humanity requires paying off our ecological debt. This means accepting certain job losses and developing job gains in other areas. See full article for discussion.

What I am going to argue is that you are all capable, powerful individuals and that you are responsible for making great changes.

Walkscore: Now With Added Features & Analysis

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Walkscore as a handy tool to estimate the walkability of a specific address anywhere in the US. There are a few limitations to the tool, but by and large it hits the mark in determining which areas have the potential to be great walkable communities where you don't need to own a car versus totally auto-dependent areas.

Now they have added a whole lot of new features, analysis and commentary to the site and it's worth a look.

The Fifth Problem: Peak Capital

The five main elements of the world model developed in "The Limits to Growth" study according to Magne Myrtveit .

Report Review: Prosperity without Growth

This is a guest post by Luís Queirós. Luís is a member of ASPO Portugal. Prior to his retirement, Luís led Marktest, a market and opinion research firm he created in 1980.


Two years ago, when I started visiting The Oil Drum, the main subject of posting and discussion was peak oil: why?, when?, how?. Now, peak oil seems to be in the past, and is less an object of discussion. Other factors are becoming more important, including "growth" and "sustainability". We take care to avoid the word "collapse".

The purpose of this post is to introduce a recently published report which is a notable contribution to the subject of growth and sustainability.

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100...

… In short, this report challenges the assumption of continued economic expansion in rich countries and asks: is it possible to achieve prosperity without growth?

Ecological Economics and the Food System

With another round of spring planting underway, we thought it might be helpful to bring back and update slightly a post I did over a year ago.

Not included in the article below is a new paper by Weber and Mathews of Carnegie Mellon University on the energy intensity of the U.S. food system. For those of you wanting to get into the details of life cycle analysis and food, that is the article to read. Mike Bomford of Kentucky State University recently reviewed it on his blog too. A key graphic from that paper is shown below.

This is a post that combines theory and practice. The first part is like a typical Oil Drum post with numbers and graphics. The second part is more like a Campfire post, and encourages you to get busy planting food.

"Can we rely on it that a ‘turning around' will be accomplished by enough people quickly enough to save the modern world? This question is often asked, but whatever answer is given to it will mislead. The answer "yes" would lead to complacency; the answer "no" to despair. It is desirable to leave these perplexities behind us and get down to work." E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

Live Local

A new social media site for "experiments in local living" has been launched called "Live Local" which should be of interest to those of you interested in relocalisation and related ideas like the Transition Towns movement.

The site aims to be "a place to share stories and ideas about improving your community", with the user generated ideas and stories being dubbed "experiments".

live local is a project which we’ve developed as a joint social venture with Piers Dawson-Damer. The website is a place to share stories about improving our communities. It makes it easy for local residents to document their experiences and adventures meeting neighbours, discovering neighbourhoods, supporting local economies, saving energy, water and much more.

At its heart the project encourages people to take more time to connect and engage with their community. I think its clear the alternative; working crazy hours to earn more money to more buy ’stuff’ while leaving us little time to get to know our neighbours and spend time with family and friends, has spectacularly failed. Many of us crave a smarter way of living; one that makes us happier.

Dealing with Climate Risks: Adaptation

The Earth system is currently under going changes associated with climate change. Changes are of rates and magnitudes not previously experienced by today’s globalised industrial society and so present a new and unique challenge to industry, settlement and society.

On a timescale important to today’s globalised industrial society the Earth system has experienced a significant forcing resulting from the very activities of this society. These forces arise from agriculture, industry, energy, transport and settlement based activities and apply pressures with resulting changes to the Earth system. As nothing can exist in total isolation from the Earth system industrial society must then cope with these changes.

This post considers adaptation with a comparison of a recent publication from the UK’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers and Rob Hopkin's Transition Handbook.

Livable Streets and Reclaiming Public Space for People (Instead of Automobiles)

One of clearest ways that cities and towns can start to de-couple their economic fates from the addiction to oil is to create alternatives to automobile centric lifestyles. One way that New York and other cities are adapting their land use policies is to reclaim space from automobiles to encourage a rich pedestrian environment that attracts people to sit, relax, walk around their neighborhood or commercial districts

For anyone who is down in the dumps and thinks that nothing can be done to change the car-culture where you are, I hope this post offers a glimmer of hope, optimism and inspiration on what can be done when we re-think our public domain.