David MacLeod's Blog (111)

Read Part 1 here.

The Maya Civilization has earned a great deal of respect. Beginning sometime around 2000 B.C., they had a fully developed written language, as well as well developed art, architecture, mathematical, and…

The IEA is the international organization that many governmental bodies look to for authoritative data on energy, put in place during the energy crisis of the 1970s.  They put out a major report once per year, and I have been reading the executive summary of this report for about 7 or 8 years.  It is fascinating to see how the report evolves year after year.  I wrote a piece for Energy Bulletin a few years ago, looking at the trend of the reporting from 2005 through 2009 (…

Hurricane Sandy as Greek Tragedy

by Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation

Never has a hurricane been more aptly, if tragically, named than Sandy, the superstorm that flooded New York City and battered much of the East…

I've changed the title of Heinberg's latest essay.  See the bolded sentences below.  Beyond the many great reasons already circulating about why we need to "Power Past Coal," here's one more: building a huge terminal for the purpose of sending coal to China could become one of our greatest boondoggles.

- David

Australia, Meet the Post-Growth Economy…

Last night I had the privilege of introducing author Andrew Nikiforuk to the “Literature Live” audience assembled at Village Books in Bellingham, WA.  His latest book is The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude.  It…

Where do the worlds of Occupy, the Transition Towns movement, and the Integral community meet?  Perhaps in the work of Charles Eisenstein.

"I consider Charles Eisenstein one of the up-and-coming great minds of our time. Rarely have I met a person who combines such philosophical and spiritual depth with such practical insights into the cultural and institutional origins of…

In my two previous posts, Global. Warming. and…

This is a continuation of Thursday’s post, “Global. Warming.” We left off discussing Bill McKibben’s phenomenally popular article for Rolling Stone, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” A week ago it had already been viewed 450,000 times, and shared 100,000…

A Dust Bowl storm approaches Stratford, Texas in 1935. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It sure…

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for thepeople who break them. The gross national product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and…

The sinking of the RMS Titanic, as painted by Willy Stöwer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One week ago, on Sunday April 15, 2012, was the 100th anniversary of the…

This is a beautiful story of one person's journey as an eco-activist.  Where the author ends up is very close to my vision for Transition Whatcom.…

Mary Logan, daughter of the late pioneer of systems ecology, Howard Odum, undertook a book review of “Together; the Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation“, by…

Back in 2008, the price of gas and oil was steadily climbing, and there was some openness in the community about the idea of "peak oil."  A task force to study the issue was unanimously supported by both the city and county councils. 

As the task force was going about its work, the economic crisis hit, and the price of oil dropped.  As prices declined, so did the level of concern about the peaking of world oil production.  Few connected the dots to realize that high oil prices…

I am currently part of a small study group using material from the online "PDC+++" course on the "People Care" module.  Last week's class looked at why groups fail, and also discussed some communication strategies.  One of the things that came up in our discussion was when we think of…

Published Nov 9 2011      by Post Carbon Institute,       Archived Nov 10 2011

A funny thing happened on the way to the occupation

The danger in commenting about the Occupy movement, is that so many of us seem to have a desire to project own own ideas onto the movement, kind of like a Rorshach ink blot.

Initially blacked…