Tag Archives: local

“The Big Flatline” by Jeff Rubin

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Rubin_Big_FlatlineISBN 978-0-230-34218-7. “The Big Flatline – Oil and the No-Growth Economy” by Jeff Rubin was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. You remember Jeff don’t you? He wrote the outstanding “How Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller” in 2009. It is a work that we recommend everyone reads. Not only was it a good read but it had a certain gravitas being from a man who had spent his career as the chief economist at CIBC Markets in Canada. Sadly no more. Now he is just an author who “blogs for the Huffington Post”. Nowadays he earns his money by writing about energy economics. And if there is one thing he knows it is the energy markets. So how do you follow up a classic?

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“The Long Descent” John Michael Greer

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Greer_Long_DescentISBN 978-0-86571-609-4. “The Long Descent – A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age” by John Michael Greer was published by New Society in 2008. Well over two years ago we reviewed Greer’s “The Ecotechnic Future” and generally quite liked his work. “The Long Descent” is essentially the same book reworked into a new form. If you read one you pretty much get the other. In his last book Greer challenged the ‘sudden collapse’ beliefs of the Peak Oil crowd. For him it would be a drawn-out descent of several hundred years. In THIS work Greer spends more time unravelling the cultural origins of both the ‘sudden collapse’ & what he calls the “myth of progress”.

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Genetic Modification in our food: the gloves come off

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Nothing more clearly illustrates the division between old fashioned green thinking & the modern sustainability movement than Genetically Modified food. A recent clash of Tweets between author Mark Lynas (“The God Species“) and Dr Vandana Shiva (author “Soil Not Oil“) exposes just how deep the battle wounds have become. The gloves are off but maybe both are missing the point.

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“Future Scenarios” by David Holmgren

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ISBN 978 1 900322 50 8. “Future Scenarios – How communities can adapt to peak oil and climate change” by David Holmgren was published by Green Books in 2009. Although only three or four years old this book already looks dated somehow. It is a contemporary of Rob Hopkins’ original “Transition Handbook” and Shaun Chamberlin’s “Transition Timeline“. There was a brief flurry if such publications a few years back – but, no more. Their apparent visions of imminent energy collapse proved empty. What we got instead was financial collapse. Still, there is nothing obsolete in this publishing genre. It took as a while to catch up with this publication. So, let’s take a brief walk down memory lane to remember how it all began… Continue reading →