Now there’s the reality of climate change. We’ve gone into overshoot and we are in economic trouble. We look to more economic growth, but once economics and population growth absorb all of the renewables and all of the efficiency, then what? The technological fundamentalist comes along and says, “We will solve the problem through technology.” […]
Despite its persuasive momentum, the green building movement signifies a mere initial advance toward a low-carbon future. Even as we acknowledge that green facilities must be the building blocks of the resilient cities of tomorrow, we face significant barriers to a wholesale shift in the industry. Several challenges dominate… This is a chapter from The […]
Economic localization offers the key to solving a growing number of global problems, including peak oil, climate disruption, and financial meltdowns. Yet the perception remains that this solution is very costly, because local goods and services supposedly are more expensive than their global alternatives. American consumers are convinced that “big-box” stores and bigger businesses mean […]
Successful post-carbon transitions will benefit from understanding the dynamics of transport revolutions. We define a transport revolution as being substantial change in a society’s transport activity–moving people or freight, or both–that occurs in less than twenty five years. This is a chapter from The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises (2010).
Climate change and the threat of energy scarcity now pose serious challenges to our “health system,” specifically health care services and public health services. This is a chapter from The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises (2010).
We in rich contries have almost lost the ability to supply our own needs through local manufacturing and agriculture–or even to extend the life of products through reuse, repair and repurposing. We rely on others, and on a system lubricated by cheap oil, to meet our needs as well as our wants. In the post-peak-oil […]
Community matters when we are looking for responses to peak oil and climate change because of the power that emerges from working together and creating meaningful change through shared action. In a world where social capital and a sense of connection to community are in decline, it is the taking of practical action that enables […]
The idea of a community food system is much larger than just urban farming. It deals with everything, all the components that are needed to establish, maintain, and perpetually sustain a civilization. Urban farming is key in the reclamation of an Earth and ecology-based value system, and it plays an important role: We need urban […]
When it comes to controversial issues, population is in a class by itself. Advocates and activists working to reduce global population growth and size are attacked by the Left for supposedly ignoring human-rights issues, glossing over Western overconsumption, or even seeking to reduce the number of people of color. They are attacked by the Right […]
Unlike conventional fossil fuels, where nature provided energy over millions of years to convert biomass into energy-dense solids, liquids, and gases–requiring only extraction and transportation technolgy for us to mobilize them–alternative energy depends heavily on specially engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion, essentially making it a high-tech manufacturing process. However, the full supply […]