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Living Within a Limit is OK: Talking Resilience with Doria Robinson
Living Within a Limit is OK: Talking Resilience with Doria Robinson
Doria Robinson is the Executive Director of Urban Tilth, based in Richmond, CA. Urban Titlh works to build a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system, by hiring and training residents to work with schools, community-based organizations, government agencies, businesses, and individuals to develop the capacity to produce 5% of food supply locally.
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A Resilient Society
A Resilient Society
The final video in a four-part video series. Released in conjunction with Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Resilience is a word that’s gaining a lot of currency in recent years, as more and more people realize there are some shocks headed our way. But what would a more resilient society look like?
This video is the fourth in a four-part series by Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute. The themes covered in these videos are much more thoroughly explored in Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels. (View the entire series here.)
Special thanks to New Society Publishers for partnering with us on this fantastic series and to Shutterstock.com for granting image rights.
…click on the above link to view the presentation…
The Great Burning
The Great Burning
Part two of a four-part video series. Released in conjunction with Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
What will we do when the Great Burning comes to an end?
In this short video, Richard Heinberg explores why The Great Burning — the combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas — must come to an end during the next few decades. If the twentieth century was all about increasing our burn rate year after blazing year, the dominant trend of twenty-first century will be a gradual flame-out.
This video is the second in a four-part series by Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute. (View Part 1 Here.)The themes covered in these videos are much more thoroughly explored in Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
…click on the above link to view the video…
The Law of Diminishing Returns
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Part one of a four-part video series. Released in conjunction with Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Is modern society hitting our defining moment, the point of diminishing returns?
In this brand new short video released today, Richard Heinberg explores how — in our economy, the environment, and energy production — we may well be. When previous societies have hit similar limits, they often doubled-down by attempting ever more complex interventions to keep things going, before finally collapsing. Will this be our fate too? And is there an alternative?
This video is the first in a four-part series by Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute. The themes covered in these videos are much more thoroughly explored in Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.
…click on the above link to view the video…
Climate Crisis and the Pursuit of Happiness: Reflections on Community Solutions Conference – Transition Milwaukee
Last weekend I had the privilege of attending the Sixth Community Solutions Conference: “Climate Crisis—Curtailment and Community—and The Power of Individual Action,” held in Yellow Springs Ohio by The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. To those not familiar with permaculture, the work of Community Solutions or for that matter The Post Carbon Institute, the most remarkable thing about the conference was what was not included—namely, the usual salvo of smart-grids and breakthroughs in efficiency, panel after panel celebrating the decreasing price of solar and wind, the false promise of carbon capture or a new knowledge economy, or, if necessary (so that we might continue to live as if there is no tomorrow) the prospect of blasting the tops of mountain tops, this time to fill the air with sun-blocking dust. There was no suggestion, here, that we might magically maintain our unsustainable way of life with nary an inconvenience; the message was far more optimistic and uplifting than that.
Any foolish hope that we might collectively address climate change in a way that does not involve massive lifestyle-changes was disposed of in Richard Heinberg’s opening talk, which highlighted the peaking of world conventional oil production, the limits of tight oil, and the fact that renewable energy just won’t behave like coal, oil, and natural gas, no matter how much we may wish it would. Pat Murphy added to this a significant discussion about the diminishing returns that we might expect from efficiency and thus the necessity of re-engineering our own practices and demands rather than the planet itself. The rest of the conference was geared mainly towards personal and community choices we can make. While some of these changes did had a technological aspect, inner-change, will, and commitment received far more attention. The power of moral reckoning and a commitment to doing what is right on a planet that is hot, crowded, and certainly not flat, were highlighted by Jim Merkel’s rousing and highly-personal account of his model of radical simplicity. No one was suggesting that politics don’t matter, nor that our current societal values might be compatible with humanity’s long term survival. But the stronger emphasis, this weekend, spoke to the belief that this group of activists and aspirants might “be the change they want to see.”
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Drilling Deeper Post Carbon Institute
Drilling Deeper Post Carbon Institute.
Abstract
Drilling Deeper reviews the twelve shale plays that account for 82% of the tight oil production and 88% of the shale gas production in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reference case forecasts through 2040. It utilizes all available production data for the plays analyzed, and assesses historical production, well- and field-decline rates, available drilling locations, and well-quality trends for each play, as well as counties within plays. Projections of future production rates are then made based on forecast drilling rates (and, by implication, capital expenditures). Tight oil (shale oil) and shale gas production is found to be unsustainable in the medium- and longer-term at the rates forecast by the EIA, which are extremely optimistic.
This report finds that tight oil production from major plays will peak before 2020. Barring major new discoveries on the scale of the Bakken or Eagle Ford, production will be far below the EIA’s forecast by 2040. Tight oil production from the two top plays, the Bakken and Eagle Ford, will underperform the EIA’s reference case oil recovery by 28% from 2013 to 2040, and more of this production will be front-loaded than the EIA estimates. By 2040, production rates from the Bakken and Eagle Ford will be less than a tenth of that projected by the EIA. Tight oil production forecast by the EIA from plays other than the Bakken and Eagle Ford is in most cases highly optimistic and unlikely to be realized at the medium- and long-term rates projected.
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