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Showing results 516 - 520 of 635 for the category: Peak Oil.
I’d like you to imagine yourself about 50 years from now, in a post-peak world. We are assuming for the purpose of this post that everything more or less worked out OK, we managed to contract our economy and our consumer addictions to a point where our quality of life is much improved, where we live in local economies, with local food, local products, local currency and so on.
My first reason why nuclear power is a non-response to peak oil is that it will take the steam out of the profound and far-reaching renewables revolution which is the only thing that will actually get us through peak oil. In the long run, we need to restructure society so that it becomes more local, with local food production, decentralised energy grids and so on, as has long been argued at **Transition Culture** . This is the ONLY thing that will pull us through. Nuclear power offers the illusion that “something is being done”, and takes the steam and the necessary funding out of the urgency to start the programme of profound change needed.
An article in The Times last week looked at the fact that coal is starting to be taken seriously again as an energy source now that oil prices are so high. It quoted Gerry Spindler, UK Coal’s chief executive as saying “coal is the rich, drunken uncle at the family party. No one wants it there, but no one is going to ask it to leave because it is going to pay for the party.” If coal is the drunken, rich uncle, nuclear power is an over-exuberant Count Dracula. Every time he is safely dispatched with a stout stake throught the heart, he somehow manages to come back again, and the villagers have to once again start fashioning a new and hopefully sharper stake in order to sort him out for what they hope will be the final time.
The Independent on Sunday this week had a supplement with it called “Overseas Property” full of ways that British folks can buy their ‘dream holiday house’ in Spain or Portugal. The giveaway of course was in smaller print on the cover, “produced in association with British Airways”. Yes, of course. It is the cheap air travel that makes “buying your dream home by the sea” even a starter. I have got to feeling that there is something terribly undesirable and impendingly disastrous about all this. I’m sure some people will disagree, but I think there is something very important at issue here.
**Transition Culture** is delighted to be able to present the UK premiere of The Community Solution’s new film ‘The Power of Community’, at Totnes Methodist Hall on **Thursday May 25th at 8pm**. The explores the impacts of peak oil on Cuba and how the country adapted and adjusted to it. It is the perfect antidote to the End of Suburbia, drawing out the lessons from this amazing societal transition which we in the West will have to start to learn very soon. It is a wonderful and inspirational film and is one not to be missed.
