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

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

UK government's oil shock warning

from Peak Generation

The capitalist engine of our economies is constantly looking for more stuff to produce and sell in order to increase private wealth; meanwhile...
A slew of reports published this year have pointed to a coming tightening of global oil supplies. I recently considered six reports written by groups as wide ranging as UK business leaders, the US military, insurers Lloyds, Kuwait University engineers, the German military and an Australian think tank. Taken as a whole they refer to aging oilfields, oil industry underinvestment, the limited output of unconventional sources such as oil sands, increasing global demand and the possibility of the world being close to peak oil, the geological natural maximum output.