The NYT uses the Gulf oil disaster as a hook to examine the peak oil “collapsitarians.” Some of them are a bit overwrought, it seems, and want to do more than rub their worry beads. Fortunately, there’s a new cottage industry catering to their anxieties. The theme of the NYT story can be gleaned from…Continue Reading…
Who else but Clay Shirky would draw on Joseph Tainter’s seminal 1988 book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” to discuss the downfall of a once dominant business model? Noting the regeneration of media on the web, Shirky also makes this very interesting observation: When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old…Continue Reading…
Michael Wilcox, a Stanford University archaeologist, has a new book that takes a fresh look at the Pueblo Revolt. A university press release captures some interesting themes of Wilcox’s post-colonial work in the Southwest, such as this quote directly from his book: Archaeologists and anthropologists have imposed disease, demographic collapse and acculturation as explanations of…Continue Reading…
There’s an interesting exchange over at The Oil Drum about the legacy of President Carter’s infamous 1977 energy speech. For my money, this commenter (who also posts essays at The Oil Drum), is spot on: It is almost impossible to quantify the damage that this one speech did to the very real need for a…Continue Reading…
One of the more amusing (and popular) voices in the the enviro/peak oil doom-o-sphere is James Howard Kunstler, perhaps best known for his book, The Geography of Nowhere. Once a week, he issues a rambling missive on all issues related to society’s imminent collapse from his profanely titled blog, Clusterfuck Nation. People seem to eat…Continue Reading…
I’ve become increasingly fascinated with the “collapse” meme in environmental and energy circles. It’s really become the secular equivalent of End-Times. I don’t say that to denigrate the peak oil crowd or climate change advocates, because I happen to think the energy/climate intersection is quite serious and may well lead to widespread socio-political turmoil. Still,…Continue Reading…
Black holes and Mayan prophecies do the trick. Global warming not so much. Few seem to be getting worked up over peak oil, either, which has the resource depletion crowd wringing their hands. Still, these are boom times for the apocalypse, as this piece in the Chicago Tribune reports.
This story in Nature News about societal collapse in ancient Peru is worth noting, especially for this quote by one of the main researchers: Dramatic climactic events are always used to explain culture change in the Andes. But this is not satisfying based on what we know about human culture. It paints a picture of…Continue Reading…
How is this possible: One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little. So now that the planetary panic has subsided, is it too late for institutional change? This is the passage from Alex Berenson’s saturday’s NYT article that caught my…Continue Reading…