The American Way of Life

Today at the graduation for little C's basic training class the guest speaker talked about infantry's role in protecting freedom and the American way of life. This was echoed in the movie that was shown at the National Infantry Museum. What, exactly, do they mean by this? Government under the Constitution? That's gone. The current political economy? The continued destruction of tradition by liberals?

The end of growth

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute 

Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with.

 

Abandoned

Gene Logsdon, OrganicToBe.org

The abandoned farmsteads shown here are not far from where I live. Such sad scenes are easy enough to find. They have been a part of the landscape of my life, grave markers of the agrarian culture that I love.

Online Course: Building Sustainable Health Systems: The Essential Role of Public Health

Dan Bednarz, Nancy Lee Wood, Health after Oil

In spring semester 2011 the Institute for Sustainability and Post-carbon Education at Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massachusetts will offer an online course titled, “Building Sustainable Health Systems: The Essential Role of Public Health.” The premises of this course are that 1) the structure and content of public health, medicine and nursing will be deeply transformed as society reaches the limits to growth and 2) public health is critical to all socioeconomic localization and community building.

Strengthening our health

John de Graaf, Solutions

America's health care system is more expensive by 40–60 percent than health care systems in any other industrialized country (it makes up nearly half the health care budget of the entire world), but the results it produces are arguably the worst of the group.

 

IEA acknowledges peak oil

Stuart Staniford, Early Warning

The IEA's position is summarized in the graph - conventional crude oil production has already peaked in 2006! Suddenly, the subject of impending peak has gone from not worthy of discussion to in the past already!
 
IEA World Energy Outlook 2010: questionable assumptions and major omissions

Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum

The WEO 2010 report just released by the International Energy Agency makes quite a number of assumptions that seem wrong, and omits important ideas. Here are a few that Oil Drum staff members have mentioned.