Energy Bulletin

Those who learn about Peak Oil, climate change, and economic hard times show a series of short-lived symptoms of stress over several months, but these are normal and expected reactions to these stunning findings. Roughly 50-60% of adults in North America are exposed to traumatic events, but only 5% to 10% develop maladjusted PTSD and related problems. What sorts of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors promote the development of longer-term traumatic reactions?

Food production is moving toward decentralization, and that is good news. With all the toxins and varmints and contrary weather and disintegration of the economy, our best bet, maybe our only bet, is to spread out the risks of food production to the largest number of people possible and that is happening.

Those who learn about Peak Oil, climate change, and economic hard times show a series of short-lived symptoms of stress over several months, but these are normal and expected reactions to these stunning findings. Roughly 50-60% of adults in North America are exposed to traumatic events, but only 5% to 10% develop maladjusted PTSD and related problems. What sorts of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors promote the development of longer-term traumatic reactions?

-As demand grows for locally raised meat, farmers turn to mobile slaughterhouses
-Prince of Wales launches new fund to save the countryside
-AgriLife Research Economist: Manure Provides Higher Returns Than Chemical Fertilizers
-AM Launches Allotment Report
-Food Conference on food production, human health and landscape health
-Revenge of the Weed
-Raids are increasing on farms and private food-supply clubs—here are 5 tips for surviving one

I’ve really enjoyed the last three books to come out of the Transition Books stable, so I was pleased to see the latest instalment was out: Local Money – how to make it happen in your community. It’s another big square book, following Local Food, and it’s got the same practical, inspiring, can-do approach. This time, it’s all about creating local money networks.

The first thing you need to know about my farm is that it is huge. I mean enormous - by world standards. The vast majority of the world's farms - more than 80%, are very small farms, of less than 2 hectares (about 5 acres), and they produce the majority of the world's staple crops and calories.

I was originally attracted to permaculture because it was the only system that made sense—that could begin to reverse and repair the damage we are doing. Among many things, permaculture is a shortcut to older wisdom. Daniel Quinn calls this Leaver wisdom, the wisdom that enabled humanity to thrive in harmony with the earth for three million years up until the agricultural revolution where we lost our way.

Many American cities—mostly in the Midwest and Northeast—have seen serious continuing shrinkage in recent decades and are now beginning to face up to it. A few have tentatively tried to craft measures that accept the persistence, even permanence, of their smaller size. As these cities search for answers, one of the few models they can turn to comes from, of all places, the buffalo country of the Great Plains states. There, communities that fought population decline for decades are now preparing for the realities of a smaller, but not necessarily worse, future. Through our work with these communities over many years, we believe that they have experience that can help guide shrinking cities in what we have called “smart decline.”

Sometimes it seems as if little is happening and then suddenly a major shift occurs. This seems true of the Department of Energy (DOE) when it comes to energy use in buildings. The DOE is beginning to take big strides in supporting the reduction of energy use in existing buildings. Retrofit costs are still high and funding difficult to obtain but this should change over the next year. The nation’s consciousness is moving away from new green buildings to impressive energy retrofits of the existing stock.

And then *POP* just like that, my back-to-the-land bubble bursts. I rub the sleep from my eyes and blink: Ah yes, here I am. Back in Brooklyn, in school full time, pursuing a masters degree, racking up the loans.

Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.

Gazing at the famous Mayan pyramids of Chichén-Itzá, it’s hard not to be mesmerized by the colossal limestone structures rising out of an expansive green lawn. It makes for a great photo, although the scene is missing a key feature from when those pyramids rose: a tropical rainforest canopy.

Even if the good times were going to roll again, in the sense of our having more consumables, how well has that worked as a formula for happiness? And if it turns out that we have even less stuff in the future, can we find a source of felicity other than the mall? The good news is that alternatives are available. The more challenging news? Alternatives may emerge not where we normally look, but as the hidden complements of some of our dominant virtues.

We are a species with a short history--perhaps at most 500,000 years. Our natural way of living--hunting and gathering--has been superseded by agriculture only in the past 10,000 years. And, our industrial way of life might be said to have begun a little over 200 years ago. And, yet we imagine that the least tested of our human systems of adaptation is somehow the most robust.

These days, whenever I introduce myself, I say I'm a professor, a freelance writer, and a volunteer on a non-commercial organic farm and goat dairy. Although this last identity is not a typical academic endeavor, learning how to garden and farm was a conscious and deliberate choice that came out of several considerations.

The Transition Model has advanced a pathway towards ‘local sustainability’ distinct from previous sustainability models in a clear and important way: it is a grassroots, non-governmental model and also a networking movement. Still in its infancy, and with little academic attention so far having specifically focused on it; there is a clear gap in understanding of the Transition Model’s role in relation to (local) sustainability, which this research has sought to bridge.
(Highlights from a paper recommended by Rob Hopkins as "high quality research.")