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Tag Archive | "greenhouse effect"

When all is said and done

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

61 Comments

Fascism has come to the industrialized world, and the evidence is particularly clear in the United States. As I wrote in a book published in 2004 regarding the executive branch of the U.S. government: [The administration] is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic [...]

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Channeling Kurt Vonnegut

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

25 Comments

I presented at SUNY-Fredonia on 2 April 2012. The standing-room-only audience, in a room with 200 chairs, included about 30 students from a class on Kurt Vonnegut and similar number from a class on environmental chemistry. I was informed the Vonnegut students would be attending the day before the event, so I asked their instructor [...]

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The cost of affluence

Friday, March 30, 2012

132 Comments

In a letter to Ernest de Chabrol dated 9 June 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring it?” Nearly [...]

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TEDx talks in Tempe, Arizona

Friday, March 2, 2012

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I presented a TEDx talk on the campus of Arizona State University on Wednesday, 25 January 2012. The Barrett Honors College hosted, and Ashley Irvin was the facilitator. Michael Sliwa spoke before me and, as is customary for TED talks, a couple short video clips were included. All clips are presented below in the same [...]

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Preparing in place (and speaking in other places)

Saturday, November 5, 2011

109 Comments

There are various ways to ready oneself for the trip down the peak-oil curve, as well as for climate chaos. Most importantly, as I’ve indicated many times, is psychological readiness. If you are mentally prepared for a future radically different from the past you’ve known, you’re well on your way to thriving in the years [...]

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Talking about oil in Oil City, USA

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

46 Comments

I presented in Austin, Texas, 9 January 2011 under the title, Durable Living: Preparing for Climate Change and Energy Decline. Free and open to the public, the event was sponsored by Design~Build~Live and Crude Awakening Austin, and attended by about 30 people. I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes [...]

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We’re toast

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

85 Comments

When people tell me the dire messages about which I write don’t resonate with other people, I struggle with a coherent response. Would you prefer continued overshoot on an overshot planet? Would you prefer we keep heating our overheated home? Would you prefer we ignore the most important issues in the history of our species? [...]

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A presentation with audio and another about bioenergy

Friday, October 1, 2010

31 Comments

Two presentations follow. The first focuses on the twin sides of the fossil fuel coin and what we can do about it, as presented in Louisville, Kentucky earlier this week. It’s similar to many presentations I’ve given recently and it includes an audio file, so you can follow along with the slides. The second was [...]

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Typical presentation

Saturday, September 18, 2010

31 Comments

The pages below are excerpted from the presentation I delivered to the Sixth Annual Gila River Festival in Silver City, New Mexico on Friday, 17 September. Click on one of the seven pages to view it. With apologies for the awkward format, click again to make it large enough to read. As always, questions and [...]

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High tide of hate mail

Sunday, August 22, 2010

40 Comments

The high tide of hate mail has rolled into my email in-box. I haven’t had such an invigorating dose of hate mail since I wrote an op-ed piece for Arizona’s largest and most conservative newspaper. I thought I’d share, just for your voyeuristic fun. This is by no means a comprehensive account, and the mail [...]

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