Fossil Fuel based growth has ended: This is the best place to learn about the future. In which localism prevails and power moves from the top-down to the grass-roots. Prosperity will decline and life will again be worth living.
Focusing on Quality Over Quantity Will Change Our Lives In today’s world, it often feels like we’re all running a never-ending race. We’re told to work harder, earn more money, buy more stuff, and always be on the lookout for the next big thing. This is what most of us know as “materialism”—the idea that …
By Richard HeinbergWith his permission Download printable PDF version Humanity’s transition from relying overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to instead using alternative low-carbon energy sources is sometimes said to be unstoppable and exponential. A boosterish attitude on the part of many renewable energy advocates is understandable: overcoming people’s climate despair and sowing confidence could help muster …
Hideaway, a contributor to Tim Morgan’s blog points out that: We can’t mine, nor farm, nor gather fossil fuels the way we did 60 years ago, we already used up all those easy to get resources, we need the complex technology of 2024 to gather the much harder to obtain resources, all in a world …
MuseLetter #376 / July 2024 by Richard Heinberg Climate change is a huge, complicated problem. Therefore, many people have an understandable tendency to mentally simplify it by focusing on just one cause (carbon emissions) and just one solution (alternative energy). Sustainability scholar Jan Konietzko has called this “carbon tunnel vision.” Oversimplifying the problem this way …
Hosted by:The Club of RomeThe Council for the Human Future Roundtable on the Human FutureOnline, July 2024 Link to the Report Summary1.1 The Human Predicament Humanity is facing its greatest emergency, a crisis consisting of many, interlinked, catastrophic risks.The crisis is already here, and will get worse. Its combined scale and impact are so great …
All economic output (other than the supply of energy itself) is the product of surplus energy – whenever energy is accessed, some energy is always consumed in the access process, and surplus energy is what remains after the energy cost of energy (ECoE) has been deducted from the total (or ‘gross’) amount that is accessed.Tim …
21st June 2024 is World Localization Day. This film is being released to celebrate the day.
Much has been discussed and written about why there is widespread denial of what is really happening. The UK is falling to pieces, but why? I wrote a piece in the Radix Think Tank in 2019. The UK and further afield are in denial – about everything which effects our lives, now and in the …
by ChatGPT The vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy is often depicted as a world free from the environmental and economic shackles of fossil fuels. Solar panels glistening in the sun, wind turbines gracefully turning on the horizon, and hydroelectric dams silently generating power from flowing rivers create a compelling image of …
If we’re to understand economic trends, we need to recognize that there are two economies, not one. These are the “real economy” of material products and services and the parallel “financial economy” of money, transactions, and credit. Tim Morgan’s Guide to the Economy provides an explanation of what is REALLY going on. We will find …
In January 2023, I wrote about the silent threat lurking in people’s homes. Surveyors have reported a tenfold increase in calls from worried landlords and homeowners who have discovered damp and mould hiding in their properties – and threatening to cause chaos. And how today’s standards may be tomorrow’s problems. Sooner than I expected, the BBC website …
The following are copies of an exchange of comments on Tim Morgan’s Surplus Energy Blog confirming my view that the current policies being followed worldwide are misguided. ***** The resource requirements for RE expansion and replacement are enormous and would place vast demands on the legacy FF energy needed to access and process them. Even …
“The liberal international order is slowly coming apart. Its collapse could be sudden and irreversible… “For years the order that has governed the global economy since the second world war has been eroded. Today it is close to collapse. A worrying number of triggers could set off a descent into anarchy…” https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/05/09/the-liberal-international-order-is-slowly-coming-apart
https://www.biochar.ac.uk What is Biochar? Copied from the Reseach Centre’s website: Heating biomass in a zero-oxygen environment to temperatures of 250°C or greater yields energy-rich gases and liquids, and a solid charcoal, or char. When this char has been produced specifically to have beneficial effects – for example as a soil improver or to store carbon – we call this …
Why were roads, schools, hospitals, and now new houses only built to last for 20 years? I wonder if a characteristic of the last years of the industrial era was to avoid long-term thinking and planning. These were not conscious decisions but a consequence of how the economy evolved in response to borrowing from the …
