Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Where should we be putting our mitigation priorities?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Where should we be putting our mitigation priorities?

by Gail Tverberg from The Oil Drum. She finds three strategies for coping with the descent of energy availability and assesses the effectiveness of each. At this website I often find the non-technical articles and the following comments very stimulating. The people who participate on this site are mostly highly trained people in the sciences and technology. One might argue that they have a "trained incapacity" to look at issues from a social/political point of view. Hence they rarely mention any social and political changes that might be useful to prevent problems posed by peak oil and climate change. Nevertheless I find this article of considerable interest.