Saturday, December 24
Sharon Astyk "Depletion and Abundance"
by
Post Carbon Man
on Sat 24 Dec 2011 16:01 GMT
 ISBN: 978-0-86571-614-8. "Depletion and Abundance: Life on the
new home front (or, One Woman's solutions to finding abundance for your family
while coming to terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and hard times)" by Sharon
Astyk was published by New Society Publishers in 2008. This paperback's 273
pages include acknowledgements, six parts, fourteen chapters, two appendices and
index. Sharon's work is not familiar to us in the Europe but the accolades in
the blurb comes from the likes of Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov and John Michael
Greer. Early in her acknowledgements she thanks her influences who include
George Monbiot, Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, Dale Pfeiffer and Rob Hopkins.
However this is the only mention of Rob in the book and no Transition books are
mentioned in the appendices. As this work is three years old (we write in late
2011) then this may indicate the age of this book in a fast moving field in
which Rob Hopkins has been rapidly accelerated to thought-leader. So, before Rob
there were people like Sharon. She is struggling with the very question that we
struggle with in the Transition movement and it is thus: how do we get an entire
society to move to a sustainable future of natural abundance (and away from an
unsustainable lifestyle of artificial fossil fuel "abundance") voluntarily
BEFORE it is forced upon society involuntarily? Whilst it can be a pleasure
rather than a pain?
Some believe that it cannot be done voluntarily. As
George Monbiot wrote in Heat: nobody every rioted FOR austerity. So Sharon setup
a scheme called "Riot for Austerity" with fellow Americans online to do,
voluntarily, what many believed couldn't be done without technology or
unacceptable sacrifice. Their aim was to reduce their consumption footprints to
levels almost unimaginable to the western mind. Unlike ... more »
Saturday, November 26
Thomas H. Greco, Jr. "The End of Money"
by
Post Carbon Man
on Sat 26 Nov 2011 18:15 GMT
 ISBN
978-086315-733-2. "The End of Money and the Future of Civilisation" by Thomas H.
Greco, Jr was published by Floris Books in the UK in 2010 (originally Chelsea
Green in in the USA in 2009). The paperback gives you 295 pages including twenty
chapters, an Epilogue, Acknowledgements, two appendices, References, Notes and
an Index. Those of you who have read a few monetary reform books may well know
the score. If you liked Peter North's "Local Money", "The Web of Debt" by Ellen
Hodgson Brown, "The Grip of Death" by Michael Rowbotham or David Boyle's "Money
Matters" then you will like this. It is actually quite similar to the Peter
North work as it travels the road of local currencies but not to the
enthusiastic extent of the Transition movement. Rather Greco extols the virtue
of local currencies as part of a new ecology of money that is focused upon local
"credit clearing". As with other books of its ilk this is not always an easy
read - especially for anyone who finds economics and banking difficult concepts.
Let's face it, that is most of us. Which is the problem. Greco doesn't really
overcome this problem for his reader but, on the up side, his description of the
future evolution of money is a far more satisfying solution than simply local
currencies. Unlike others who write in this field he doesn't peddle a simple
statist solution. He prefers local money in a free market of currencies where
the medium of exchange is entirely separate from money as a measure of value.
Greco has no doubt about the scale of the problem and kicks off in the second
chapter with the term "mega-crisis" and the question "can civilisation be
saved?" Woah.
However he is no doomster as he quickly persuades the ... more »
Friday, November 11
Mark Lynas "The God Species"
by
Post Carbon Man
on Fri 11 Nov 2011 08:50 GMT
 ISBN
978-0-00-731342-6. "The Gods Species - How the Planet can survive the Age of
Humans" was written by Mark Lynas and published by Fourth Estate in 2011.
Lynas's "Six Degrees" remains one of the finest books on Climate Change that
anyone should read. It is for good reason that it won the Royal Society Prize
for Science Books and is one of Post-carbon Living's top rated books. So when
Lynas turned against his old buddies in the green movement and called for the
support of GM crops and Nuclear power he turned from being just an awesome
author but also one with interesting views. Views we have a lot of sympathy for.
Since our work has never stemmed from a set of green orthodoxies we certainly
are also free to turn over the mish mash that is the cultural legacy of 40 years
of environmentalism. Some of it is good, some bad and some darn-right ugly. We
live in enlightened era of breakthrough environmentalism where the likes of
Chris Goodall and George Monbiot feel comfortable expressing concerns over
resource depletion alongside support for technologies such as nuclear. There was
nothing new in what Lynas was attempting. What proved unfortunate was the style
in which he has attempted this renaissance. He likes to bang his own drum.
We first noticed it when we started to follow Lynas's Tweets.
It became quickly clear that Lynas had no great vision of using social media to
explore new ideas. No. He used Twitter to promote the sale of his books. This in
itself is not wrong (it is his only income next to a retainer paid by the
government of the Maldives) but what left us feeling jaded was the abrasive
manner of his self-promotion. His Tweets started to resemble those of Bjorn
Lomborg. ... more »
Wednesday, October 12
Richard Heinberg "Blackout"
by
Post Carbon Man
on Wed 12 Oct 2011 09:05 BST
 ISBN 978 1 905570 20
1. "Blackout - Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis" by Richard Heinberg was
published by Clairview Books in 2009. For your money you get 200 page including
Acknowledgements, Introduction, eight chapters, Notes, Bibliography and Index.
What can we say about a book by Richard Heinberg? Next to Colin Campbell he
practically founded and defined the modern concern about Peak Oil and how it
will effect our civilisation. This is his fifth major book on the topic and (at
the time of writing September 2011) he had already published his sixth "The End
of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality". It seems hard to catch up. So,
after four good books does the quality start to fail him? Well, sadly, yes. This
is not necessarily a bad thing as this is a book he had to write. Whereas he had
written continually about Peak Oil his critics would always level the criticism
along the lines of "well, that's all right because we have 200 years of coal
left". This is his response and it is well researched and workmanlike. However
it is his least entertaining work and you have the feeling that it was a chore
for him. Most of the book reviews numerous reports on the state of global coal
supplies broken down country by country and region by region. His conclusion?
Well, yes there is lots of coal left but the peak is still likely to come far
sooner that the claim of "200 years supply" suggests. We are likely to see the
peak of coal production somewhere between 2025 and 2075. So, by mid-century
(within the lifetime of this reviewer) we will learn if we can expand our
economies any further on the supply of cheap coal.
 Putting the peak issue
... more »
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|
ISBN: 978-0-86571-614-8. "Depletion and Abundance: Life on the
new home front (or, One Woman's solutions to finding abundance for your family
while coming to terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and hard times)" by Sharon
Astyk was published by New Society Publishers in 2008. This paperback's 273
pages include acknowledgements, six parts, fourteen chapters, two appendices and
index. Sharon's work is not familiar to us in the Europe but the accolades in
the blurb comes from the likes of Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov and John Michael
Greer. Early in her acknowledgements she thanks her influences who include
George Monbiot, Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, Dale Pfeiffer and Rob Hopkins.
However this is the only mention of Rob in the book and no Transition books are
mentioned in the appendices. As this work is three years old (we write in late
2011) then this may indicate the age of this book in a fast moving field in
which Rob Hopkins has been rapidly accelerated to thought-leader. So, before Rob
there were people like Sharon. She is struggling with the very question that we
struggle with in the Transition movement and it is thus: how do we get an entire
society to move to a sustainable future of natural abundance (and away from an
unsustainable lifestyle of artificial fossil fuel "abundance") voluntarily
BEFORE it is forced upon society involuntarily? Whilst it can be a pleasure
rather than a pain?
