true The [Together campaign](http://www.together.com/) have come up with a clever one, maybe you would like to help Dan Power and [Energy Wasting Day](http://www.energywastingday.com/) get to number one in the charts. It's a bit of a giggle!! <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/K1_O6NDTbvw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/K1_O6NDTbvw&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2009-03-26T23:43:40+00:00 1058 15 2009-03-27T15:46:15+00:00

true In this post Richard talks about the realities of population growth in an economic decline, as always he hits with hard truths and positive outlooks. Re-posted with permission. Original article from [The Post Carbon Institute](http://www.postcarbon.org/zero_sum_game) Oops!—bad timing. The announcement that California taxpayers will have to pay most of the costs for raising the famous octuplets born recently near Los Angeles is provoking widespread indignation about what is often taken to be a fundamental human right—i.e., the right to reproduce ad infinitum. The story might have raised eyebrows a year ago or five. But the fact that the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother’s plight is capturing headlines at the very moment when the State of California is in effect declaring bankruptcy (and laying off teachers and other state workers) not only provides grist for irate radio call-ins, it also highlights a profound shift taking place just beneath the surface of our collective awareness. For most of the last century or two, economic growth has lifted all boats and temporarily increased Earth’s effective carrying capacity. Though the human population was growing relentlessly and at an unprecedented rate, few worried: every year there were more jobs, more opportunities, new careers. The pie was expanding, so the fact that there were always more people at the table was perceived as a plus. With more folks to talk to, life was becoming richer! Whatever area of skill you might be interested in, you could see records being broken, unheard-of achievements being made: there were better pianists and violinists than anyone had ever heard before, better athletes than anyone had ever seen, more brilliant mathematicians, surgeons—you name it—just because there were so many people competing with one another to develop excellence in their areas of expertise. What a time to be alive! Now suddenly the game has changed. The pie has stopped getting bigger. As more people arrive at the table, everyone nervously eyes the remaining crumbs, anxious to avert a free-for-all but also keen to avoid being left out. Welcome to the post-peak economic meltdown! A lot is going to change due to the fact that we have reached the end of economic growth as we’ve known it. One non-trivial item concerns our attitude toward population. Environmentalists like Paul Ehrlich have for decades been pointing out the obvious truism that the Earth can support only so many humans, and that the more of us there are, the more likely we are to undermine our planetary life-support systems, perhaps eventually triggering a humanitarian as well as an ecological crisis of apocalyptic dimensions. Some listened; most did not. Efforts were made world-wide to reduce fertility through family planning; in China a one-child policy successfully reduced (but failed to end) population growth. However, on the whole our species continued to pursue its opportunities for expansion, and our numbers continued to grow (current total: 6.7 billion and counting). Without more cheap energy, without cheap credit, and without economic growth, feelings will change. Are changing. Fewer people will want to bring a large family into the world knowing that economic opportunities are dwindling—but some will still do so. Attitudes toward parenthood are deep-seated, culturally sensitive, and controversial. But they are not immutable. Here’s the rub: Unless previous beliefs about the sacredness of unlimited fertility (and the corresponding proof-of-masculinity afforded by the siring of many offspring) can be openly questioned and honestly discussed in these new circumstances, the cognitive dissonance between long-held beliefs and deep-seated biological urges on one hand, and the painful awareness of ecological and economic limits on the other, is likely to lead to a kind of societal explosion that will take the forms of heightened demographic competition and intercultural violence. It doesn’t have to be that way. The discussion about the octuplets now taking place in the popular media is a good thing if it can help us collectively process new information and let go of old thinking. The point is not to blame the single mom; the point is to use this current news trivium as a mirror by which to see ourselves and reassess and change what we observe. 2009-02-26T01:36:00+00:00 1019 15 2009-02-26T01:36:00+00:00

true I prefer not to focus on disaster stories like this but I do believe its good to hear them. In this video PBS NEWS HOUR Interview [Nassim Nicholas Taleb](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/), famous economist and author of ["The Black Swan"](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515) and Dr. Mandelbrot, professor of Mathematics. Both say that the present economic downturn is more serious than the Great Depression, and the economy during the American Revolution. Whatever the outcomes are, this type of information tells us that it is time for change. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/H3zZ6qNWeGw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/H3zZ6qNWeGw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2009-02-12T12:48:22+00:00 993 15 2009-02-12T18:50:30+00:00

true Its all about perception and how you frame the picture. The recession, the energy and climate crisis,all the challenges we face are massive and we need to stand up and fight for our existence. Bring it on, sitting still is boring!!! <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/42E2fAWM6rA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/42E2fAWM6rA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2009-02-02T20:28:18+00:00 967 15 2009-02-02T20:28:18+00:00

true In this piece Richard Heinburg explains the inevitable meeting of our industrial society and the "Wall". Apparently there are limits to growth, an interesting concept and one we should embrace! Re-posted with permission. Original article from [The Post Carbon Institute](http://postcarbon.org/slo_mo_splat) Remember the wall that environmentalists (like the 1972 "Limits to Growth" authors) have long been saying that industrial society would eventually hit? Permit me to make the formal introduction: Industrial society, meet wall; wall, meet industrial society. It's understandably taking a while for the recognition to seep in. We are not accustomed to seeing every indicator of economic well-being, in virtually every country in the world, slam into reverse over the course of a few short months. I still have random conversations with businesspeople and bankers who say we've hit bottom and recovery is at hand; in their view, this is just another business cycle. I see things a bit differently: to my eyes the world situation looks like a slow-motion film of a train wreck, and the sheet metal at the front of the locomotive has only just begun to crumple. Everything we thought we knew about the economy is suddenly wrong. Regarding China, we are accustomed to hearing of a new power plant being constructed each week, of energy consumption growing at a rate of 10 percent per year or more, of hordes of farmers from the western provinces rushing to the coastal cities to get manufacturing jobs so they can buy refrigerators and cars. The current reality: Chinese factories are now closing by the thousands, workers are rioting and leaving the coastal cities to return to their farms, energy consumption is actually declining. In the US, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are falling dramatically for the first time since records have been kept. During past recessions or gas price spikes, people bought smaller cars or drove slower; now they're just not driving. Explanation? The use of public transit is up, but so is unemployment: people without jobs don't commute to work. And deliveries of raw materials and finished goods are way down, so trucks are driving less, too. Gasoline and diesel consumption is down. Nobody's buying cars—large OR small—and as a result GM, Ford, and Chrysler are on deathwatch (even the Japanese automakers are reeling). Retail businesses are closing so fast that it's tough to keep track of who's still open and who isn't. Globalization was the one trend we could all count on in perpetuity (the world is flat, remember?), but now every metric of global trade is plummeting, and national leaders are worrying much less about lowering trade barriers than they are about how to protect their domestic economies from the cross-border plagues of currency collapse and banking failure. Within a year or two we may even begin to see world population growth go into reverse—though not because of policy shifts. We are in a new era. Welcome to the conclusion and consequences of the industrial growth bubble. It's not the end of the world—yet. There is still opportunity to manage economic collapse in such a way as to lay the groundwork for a recovery to low-flow sustainability. But not if we concentrate our efforts on denial, blame, or the propping up of old institutions and industries that have no chance of survival—all of which are the obsessions of our current leadership. A new economic world requires new institutions and new thinking. These will take a while to emerge. We can lay the conceptual groundwork now (as the ecological economists and localists have been doing for some time), but implementation will require cool heads and collective effort. Meanwhile, individuals will need to protect themselves as best they can by developing social and practical coping skills: know your neighbors, garden, repair, make, and make do. It would be nice to be able to offer a cheerier New Year's message, but here we are. It's more important to have a realistic view of our situation and prospects. It is nevertheless possible to hope for the best within those constraints, and I certainly do: 2009 is going to be a challenging year, but may you weather it well! 2009-02-02T15:15:05+00:00 964 15 2009-02-04T19:24:33+00:00

true I am a big fan of the straight talking commentator Richard Heinburg. He speaks of the realities of [Peakoil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) and human behavior. This post is a re-blog from the [Post Carbon](http://postcarbon.org/peak_everything_year) institute and a video piece from Richard Heinburg which gives an accurate view of our current predicament. For those who understand the overwhelming importance of fossil fuel depletion, the signal event of 2008 was without doubt the oil price spike that sent the cost of a barrel of crude rocketing to $147. Knock-on effects were as anticipated: the airline industry contracted, the auto industry went on life support, food prices jolted upward, and the overall economy went into reverse (more on that below). Due to all of these things, the demand for oil subsequently peaked and began to slide, which in turn caused the price to plummet, with no end currently in sight. I am among several commentators who have gone on record as saying that July 2008 will turn out to have been the all-time record month for world petroleum production. With the price so high (in July), all producers were pumping flat out. And now, with the price so low, there is no incentive to make the required enormous investments in future productive capacity, so that when demand picks up again (and it may be a few years before that happens), new additions to supply will not be sufficient to overcome the capacity erosion that will have accumulated in the interim due to depletion and decline in existing oilfields. Say goodbye to Peak Oil: it's history now. Fortunately, high oil prices during the early months of the year led to an explosion of Peak Oil awareness. There was an unprecedented frequency of discussion of the issue in the mainstream media, with T. Boone Pickens doing much of the heavy lifting, but also we saw the release of several film documentaries, along with dozens of radio and television interviews of Post Carbon Institute fellows and board members. Transition Initiatives sprang up in scores of towns and cities around the world, and more communities began to assess their vulnerability to future oil shocks. The climate continued changing this year, with a new record set for the melting rate of the north polar ice cap. Even more ominously, plumes of methane were observed rising from thawing permafrost in Siberia, leading some researchers to speculate that at least one of several potential "doomsday" reinforcing global warming feedback loops has been triggered. Negotiations over the treaty that will replace the Kyoto Protocol have begun. Environmental organizations are planning to spare no strategic option (including massive direct action campaigns) to press for maximum emissions reduction commitments from the world's nations, but the economic crisis will likely weigh heavily on the minds of world leaders, whose top priority is the futile quest for a return to growth. Which brings us to the subject of that annoying economic collapse that everyone keeps talking about. The "slowdown," as our government officials like to call it, actually started in 2007 when housing prices weakened and mortgage-backed securities started tanking, but over the past six months the low hissing noise that wary commentators have attributed to a deflation of the debt-credit bubble has turned into a vaporizing explosion. In a commentary a few weeks ago I opined that 2008 will eventually be seen to have been the last year of aggregate world economic growth (as currently defined). Ever. That's a big, nasty prediction to make, but somebody needs to be pointing out the obvious: economic growth is, almost by definition, something that can't go on forever on a finite planet, and things that can't go on forever cease at some definable point in time. Given Peak Oil, I think we can define that point as now. On the bright side, we are very nearly at the end of the Bush Administration, and we have just seen a historic election in which hope triumphed over cynicism. Despite realistic concerns that the Obama team faces unmanageable economic and geopolitical crises left over from its predecessors, and that the new Cabinet consists of insiders who are unlikely to grasp the unprecedented nature of the circumstances facing us, or to propose the kinds of bold policies that are called for in a post-Peak era, nevertheless it is clearly a time to offer every possible encouragement and support to our articulate and optimistic President-Elect. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zJQBl0wlDMw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zJQBl0wlDMw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2008-12-11T15:43:48+00:00 860 15

true <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/VRBJf57aNp4&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/VRBJf57aNp4&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> This is the first part of a 60 minutes documentary which explores the possible reasons for Colony Collapse Disorder. You can find the remaining parts on Youtube. Enjoy! 2008-11-13T17:37:39+00:00 718 15

true The honey bee is disappearing worldwide from a disease named colony collapse disorder. This is something that we are fully aware of and concerned about here in Edenbee. They have an important environmental role, pollinating wild plants which birds and wild animals rely on for seeds and fruits. They are a fundamental part of our whole eco system! [Global Giving](http://www.globalgiving.co.uk/travel) got in touch with us telling us of their bee saving program and related christmas offerings. Check out this program to see if you want to get involved. "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left." Albert Einstein. 2008-11-13T17:32:35+00:00 717 15

true Isn’t it great the way we are constantly finding new solutions to our problems through creativity and innovation? But for all the innovation, vested interests (ie the oil companies) still have the power to shelve and disrupt great ideas, remember the electric car. The [Compressed Air Car]( http://zeropollutionmotors.us/?page_id=45) developed by Motor Development International (MDI) is a real beauty. According to their founder Guy Negre their mission is “to bring zero pollution motoring at any speed, for any distance, to the largest number of motorists possible and, in doing so, significantly improve the quality of the air we breathe and reduce our collective carbon footprint.” I don’t know about you but that sounds like an attractive proposition? The time has come, as we all know, to stop burning our natural resources and start supporting the innovators and creatives like Negre who are interested in a better world and not just profit. 2008-10-29T21:24:16+00:00 650 15

true Severn Suzuki speaking at the UN Earth Summit 1992. She is only a child but has the power of an army in her voice!! <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/uZsDliXzyAY&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/uZsDliXzyAY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> 2008-10-23T16:02:56+01:00 625 15