Banff Transition

ScienceNOW: “Thanks to warming temperatures in Colorado, yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris) have been getting up earlier from hibernation each year, giving them more time to feed. As a result, they grow about 10% bigger than they used to. That extra weight helps the marmots survive longer, giving each group time to produce an average of 14 more little yellow-bellies a year than did their predecessors.”

Post Carbon Institute: “First off, Canada is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, an ‘Energy Superpower’… The Canadian practice of liquidating non-renewable energy resources as fast possible to stoke economic growth is a sell-out to the energy security of future generations.”

The Oil Drum: “The fact of the matter is that the present agricultural system cannot be maintained for much longer. Decreasing oil production and rising oil prices will effectively bankrupt the American agri-food system. Without petroleum and all of its benefits, there will be little choice but to revert to a system of local, organic production and consumption.”

ClubOrlov: “In all of the descriptions of perilous situations that I have studied, arising during adventures the high seas or in the high mountains, or during armed conflict, a single mistake rarely proves fatal. More often than not, death comes as a result of a sequence of bad choices which reinforce each other. These choices may not appear bad at the time—but they certainly do in retrospect! The end result is a situation in which no further steps can be taken that would not be either harmful or futile. “

Global Guerrillas: “[The current sovereign debt crisis in Europe is] another battle in a war for dominance between ‘our’ integrated, impersonal global economic system and traditional nation-states. At issue is whether a nation-state serves the interests of the governed or it serves the interests of a global economic system. Who’s winning? The global economic system, of course.…

“When this war ends, and it won’t be long, the global economic and financial system will be the victor. Once that occurs, the nation-states of the West will join those of the global south as hollow states: mere shells of states that serve only to enforce the interests of the global economic system. These new states, more market-states than nation-states, will offer citizens a mere vestige of the public goods they offered historically. Incomes will fall to developing world levels (made easy to due highly portable productivity), and wealth will stratify. Regulatory protections will be weak. …”

Casaubon’s Book: “I bloody hate Earth Day. No offense to those of you who love it, and I know there are some awesome Earth Day programs out there, but by the time we get there, I’m spending my days hiding under the covers, because every freakin’ time I open my email inbox a wave of the most nauseating spew of greenwashing comes flowing out.

“Guess what? A major department store chain, nearly in bankruptcy, is now selling the eco-tote, made from organic sheepskin, embossed with ‘Think Global, Act Local’ to show your care for the earth and indifference to grammar. And not to trouble me, but just so you know, the manufacturers of a disgusting sugar laden soft-drink have a new organic one, in a special collectible earth-day bottle.…”

INFRASTRUCTURIST: “They’re the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment. And now it appears they just might work: New research from the University of Connecticut suggests that minor reductions in vehicle speed are possible through changes in the street environment.

The Oil Drum: “We are at the cusp of rapid and severely disruptive changes. From now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising. The challenge is not about how we introduce energy infrastructure to maintain the viability of the systems we depend upon, rather it is how we deal with the consequences of not having the energy and other resources to maintain those same systems. Appeals towards localism, transition initiatives, organic food and renewable energy production, however laudable and necessary, are totally out of scale to what is approaching.

There is no solution, though there are some paths that are better and wiser than others. This is a societal issue, there is no ‘other’ to blame, but the responsibility belongs to us all. What we require is rapid emergency planning coupled with a plan for longer-term adaptation.”

Post Carbon Institute: “With my students, we talk about all these gee whizz environmental solutions and so forth, I want to get them to think about the dark side of what can happen, because I think the ‘happy talk’ view of humans is quite dangerous. I think that there are clearly ways in which Transition Towns and the local sustainability movement could become parochial and in my part of the world we have a history which shows that small towns can be vicious, mean places.”

Streetsblog: “Even when the price of parking is free, it’s far from free.” The resulting congestion impedes the effectiveness of transit. Traffic volumes and double-parking make bicycling less pleasant and more dangerous. Walkable environments give way to curb cuts, dead walls, and land-devouring parking facilities that spread destinations farther apart.