Banff Transition

Post-Carbon Institute: “As the world economy crashes against debt and resource limits, more and more countries are responding by attempting to salvage what are actually their most expendable features—corrupt, insolvent banks and bloated militaries—while leaving the majority of their people to languish in “austerity.” The result, predictably, is a global uprising. This current set of conditions and responses will lead, sooner or later, to social as well as economic upheaval—and a collapse of the support infrastructure on which billions depend for their very survival. …

“[I]t will increasingly be up to households and communities to provide the basics for themselves while reducing their dependence upon, and vulnerability to, centralized systems of financial and governmental power. This is a strategy that will require sustained effort and one that will in many cases be discouraged and even criminalized by national authorities.The decentralization of food, finance, education, and other basic societal support systems has been advocated for decades by theorists on the far left and far right of the political spectrum.”

Science-Based Medicine: “I figure a murderous wife would have to feed something like 67 large potatoes to her husband in a single meal to poison him.”

Also see An outbreak of suspected solanine poisoning in schoolboys.

Global Guerrillas: “I don’t have to spell out the implications of this.  I want to have my drone before the government makes them illegal.”

Green Left Weekly: “There is no such thing as a green car… Unsustainable would barely describe the car’s environmental failure if the rest of the world were to adopt US patterns of car ownership and driving behaviour. So why is the car such a protected species, culturally celebrated and immune from radical policy review? Because, the authors say, the car is integral to the capitalist economy and thus any criticism of the car is taboo. Since 1925, the automotive industry has been the leading sector of the US economy, and, of the world’s 10 largest corporations, three are car manufacturers and six are oil companies.”

Do the Math: “A few options are available for the homestead. A passive solar home with PV panels, wind, and some method to produce liquid fuels on site would be a dream come true. Here’s hoping for artificial photosynthesis!

Calgary Herald: “A German pensioner who had kept a tub of lard in his cupboard for 64 years, took it to authorities who pronounced it very much fit for consumption – if a little tasteless.Retired chemist Hans Feldmeier, 87, told AFP he had received the pig fat as a student in 1948 near the northern city of Rostock as part of the post-war U.S. aid program…. Finally, after 64 years, he took it to food safety agents and was astonished at their appraisal.

“There is of course a slight lack of smell and taste,” sniffed Frerk Feldhusen, from the office of agriculture, food safety and fisheries in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Moreover, the lard was “of gritty consistency, difficult to dissolve and looked a bit old,” the officials added. However, “all in all, given its level of freshness and its material composition, the product is assessed as satisfactory,” Feldhusen said, adding it would stand up to today’s definition of being fit for the dinner table.

There must be some coal left at Bankhead. Maybe not enough to run a railroad, but enough to keep a small town warm. We need a Banff School of Mines.

The Archdruid Report: “The point that has to be grasped just now, it seems to me, is that this is what peak oil looks like. Get past the fantasies of sudden collapse on the one hand, and the fantasies of limitless progress on the other, and what you get is what we’re getting—a long ragged slope of rising energy prices, economic contraction, and political failure, punctuated with a crisis here, a local or regional catastrophe there, a war somewhere else—all against a backdrop of disintegrating infrastructure, declining living standards, decreasing access to health care and similar services, and the like,”