Energy Bulletin has such a great bunch of posts, I’m highlighting alot of them below. Its hard to pick a favorite. Pick and read yours.
Overcoming systems stupidity
A very large part of the reason why contemporary American society so often defeats itself by chasing after fantasies of limitless growth is a learned blindness to the behavior of whole systems. It’s hard to think of a challenge more necessary or less popular than learning to measure our expectations against the realities, and especially the limits, of natural systems; the Archdruid suggests some resources for the job.
Hunger for change
Sharply rising food prices have often meant trouble for governments, especially when people expect better and the cost of food is a big fraction of average household consumption. In the U.S., where grocery costs are a small fraction of the average budget, it is hard to imagine the effect of sharply rising prices for bread or rice, cooking oil, and other essential foods. It’s seldom been enough for out-of-touch regimes to say, “let them eat paistries” (or brioche, as Marie Antoinette put it in the face of the French revolution).
Delivering the message
[I] wrote about things that deeply affected me on a global and planetary level and what Transition was doing at a local level to configure the world that had got so out of balance: seedling swaps and community gardens, Transition Circles, Bungay Community Bees, all our decisions to use less energy, eat differently, come together in small bands and work to build a low-carbon culture.
Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk (VIDEO)
Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP’s risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to extreme risk in finding new energy, new financial instruments and more … and too often, we’re left to clean up a mess afterward. Klein’s question: What’s the backup plan?
Two stories: Forests, fields, food
There is a story implicit in the farmer’s relation to the land, and it is our culture’s central organizing myth, the one that informs all the other stories we tell. The story is just a few words long, but its implications are widespread and profound. The story is this: everything belongs to us.
Global population speak out
We do have to talk about population – we have to talk about it honestly and clearly, and with an eye to the real complexities of the issue. We have to put it on the table and stop being afraid of it. We have to have these conversations even when they are difficult, personal, emotional and when they are hard.
Wood by the cord yields lots of discord
Sitting by the woodstove, I am warmed twice when I read that a cord of shagbark hickory equals 250 gallons of No. 2 oil in heat value. I don’t know what heating oil costs right now, or what that equals in gas heat or electric heat, but it sounds like my wood is worth real money today.
Life within the soil (AUDIO) 
Doug Weatherbee, a Soil Foodweb Advisor and owner of SoilDoctor.org, talks about the biodiversity that lies beneath our feet. Soil is alive!
Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition (Book Introduction)
In the closing months of the first decade of the twenty-first century, what does the world need most?
Health and food security
Both health and food security are fraught with expectations at social, academic, and governmental/regulatory levels. Both are states of mind as well as physical conditions. Absent either, the human organism eventually dies.
Transition and the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP)
“Your EDAP should feel more like a holiday brochure, presenting a localized, low-energy world in such an enticing way that anyone reading it will feel their life utterly bereft if they don’t dedicate the rest of their lives towards its realization.” Does the Totnes EDAP meet this criterion? Does it feel like a holiday brochure? Is it an adequate model for the changes needed in a community? Will the “holiday brochure” somehow be developed into a practical action plan? This is still unclear.
The broader palette
Even if we restrict ourselves to the minority of plants that have become domesticated crops, we typically recognize only a few varieties of each – the ones bred recently for fossil-fuel transport, not for taste, health or your climate. Take the colour, for example – most of us have never seen green oranges, purple carrots, striped beets or blue potatoes.
Farmer by farmer, an organic transition
According to Gil: “Only about 2 percent of what we eat comes from outside the farm: salt, some cooking oil, spices. That’s it.”
Building a local food system: An interview with Bob Waldrop of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (audio)
Bob Waldrop was the driver behind the forming of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative in 2003. Here Bob explains how the co-op, which started with just 60 members and 15 producers, has grown to 3400 members and 200 producers, effectively transforming the local food scene in Oklahoma. Bob shares thoughts about doing it where you are.
Stimulus duds, bailout blanks
In response to the financial crisis, governments and central banks have undertaken a series of extraordinary, dramatic measures. In this section we will focus primarily on the U.S….From Richard Heinberg’s upcoming book The End Growth.
The peaking of coping strategies
Human societies, like individuals, can still be undone by their own tendency to do whatever has worked (or seemed to work) past the point where it’s simply not working.
( EB editor says: Clifford Scholz has an excellent point about cheap energy enabling dysfunctional behavior )
