Last Days, Last Words
by John Rember 1. For most of my life, I’ve been a teacher of rhetoric, which means that I’ve taught writers how to take difficult or unpopular ideas and get them across to people who don’t want to think about…
Personal choices in uncertain times
by John Day What is your energy descent plan? To develop personal, family and community energy descent plans, we need to have an idea of the overall context. The overall context is very hard to sort out, because there is…
Taking a Hike
I've long accepted the words of Hunter S. Thompson in The Proud Highway: "We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and…
Occupy: Embrace what you are!
by John Duffy at Grow Food, Raise Hell Since the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and around the US and the globe, there has been a constancy of criticism coming from the entrenched establishment…
Identity crisis
Self-indulgence is only one of many advantages associated with having a blog of my own. In a rare attempt to avoid drawing further attention to myself, I'll not list the others. At least, not now. As regular readers know by…
Peak oil, the new boom-bust cycle and gold
by Mark Motive at Plan B Economics The world is experiencing the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. So why is oil hovering around $100/bbl? And as a gold investor, why should you care about oil? Some might point…
Mixed media
I delivered two TED-style talks at the 2011 International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change in Bellaire, Michigan. The presentations embedded below were delivered to the few dozen people remaining at the conference on its fourth day, Sunday, 13…