Peak oil
The Ooooby Local Economic Model
FEASTA / Pete Russell / 19 February 2012
More people than ever before are losing trust in the established economic order and looking for fair ways to exchange value with one another.
The convenience and the reliability of readily available internet technology are enabling viable challenges to the dominant monetary system. It is becoming increasingly important that a trading system be simple, elegant, understandable and underpinned by items of real and tangible value.
The Ooooby economic model uses locally grown food and food-processing labour to underpin a system of internal credits called Roobys. Now serving over 50 local growers in the Auckland region, the Rooby system has operated successfully since October 2009.
Participants can earn and spend Roobys at Ooooby’s market stall in Parnell, Auckland, and via its weekly Auckland-wide local-food home delivery service. For every $10.00 a customer pays Ooooby, the producer earns 9 Roobys, each of which is worth $1.00 if used to purchase other Ooooby members’ goods or services, or $0.50 if redeemed for cash. The balance covers retail costs.
A currency based on local food affords people an opportunity to generate value from scratch. If you can grow some food you can create purchasing power. This is a sustainable currency model, quite unlike the dominant system in which only sanctioned institutions have the right to create money. Roobys represent a new model of fair and decentralised value exchange. There is no Ooooby bank issuing Roobys from thin air.
Video: There's No Tomorrow
Peak petroleum and public health
Energy Bulletin / Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH; Jeremy Hess, MD, MPH; Stephen Vindigni, MPH / 09 October 2007
Petroleum scarcity will affect the health system in at least 4 ways: through effects on medical supplies and equipment, transportation, energy generation, and food production.
Peak oil moves to the mainstream
Online Opinion / Michael Lardelli / 13 February 2012
Something quite momentous happened on 26 January 2012. While most Australians were distracted with celebrating their national day, the world's leading scientific journal, Nature, published its first serious commentary on peak oil. That's right, peak oil took its final step from "extremist fringe conspiracy theory" to general acceptance by the world's scientific community. The authors of the Nature article were David King, a former chief scientific advisor to the UK government and James Murray, founding director of the University of Washington's Program on Climate Change. In their article we learned how "there is a potentially more persuasive argument for lowering global emissions [than climate change]: the impact of dwindling oil supplies on the economy". Indeed, writing about rising oil prices have affected Europe's second biggest debtor nation, Italy, they said, "Italy now spends about $55 billion a year on imported oil, up from $12 billion in 1999. That difference is close to the current annual trade deficit". King and Murray are quite blunt about the implications of peak oil for future economic growth (the same growth that the USA and Europe are counting on to drag them slowly out of their debt woes),
"Historically, there has been a tight link between oil production and global economic growth. If oil production can't grow, the implication is that the economy can't grow either. This is such a frightening prospect that many have simply avoided considering it."
Despite its length, there were many topics that King and Murray's article did not cover. For example, declining oil supplies threaten the world's food supply. Until recently, the "green revolution" allowed us to expand food production in tack with the world's expanding population but this was underpinned by the mechanization of agriculture and the increased use of fertilizers and pesticides. Therefore, peak oil and food security are absolutely and intimately linked. King and Murray also failed to mention how the volume of oil available on the world's export market has been in decline since 2006 as the rate of global oil production stagnates and the expanding populations and economies of oil exporting nations consume a greater proportion of those nations' production.
Solar Power to Pay Nevada City’s Debt, Government Costs for Decades
CleanTechica / Silvio Marcacci / 08 February 2012
Boulder City, Nevada is best known as the home of Hoover Dam, once the largest hydroelectric power plant in the country. But the rapid expansion of solar power projects is quickly making a name for the city as the first solar-financed town in America.
A solar power building boom is happening in the community, located about 25 miles south of Las Vegas. This boom will soon generate enough revenue to eliminate Boulder City’s municipal debt and stabilize its financial needs for years to come, according to Mayor Roger Tobler.
Ontario: "The economy is based on the environment"
Kingston Whig-Standard / Danielle VandenBrink / 07 February 2012
[Ontario environmental commissioner Gord] Miller outlined key issues facing Ontarians when it comes to the environment, including climate change, peak energy (increasing cost of fuel and other energy resources), the increasing shortage of fresh water and increasing threats to biodiversity.
Review: Fleeing Vesuvius
Dissident Voice / Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / 03 February 2012
The basic theme of Fleeing Vesuvius, which is aimed at the growing sustainability movement, is TEOTWAWI (The End of the World as We Know It). The title refers to the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, specifically the large number of residents who failed to save themselves, despite weeks of earthquakes, gaseous clouds and other obvious signs that an eruption was imminent. For more than a decade, a growing body of evidence suggests that the planet is on the verge of economic and ecological collapse. Yet the vast majority of us do absolutely nothing to prepare for the stark conditions ahead.
