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World Made By Hand

Pete Smith @ May 19, 2008 # No Comment Yet

This letter was published today at Survivalblog.com:
Sir:
I recently finished trenching and running a few hundred feet of irrigation pipe on land that has been in my wife’s family for a few generations. We are the proud recipients of this small farm in the Southeast US. My Mother-In-Law was helping, and getting various tools and such [...]

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Australia Pumping Empty

Pete Smith @ May 18, 2008 # 2 Comments

Fuel rationing may be just one of a series of shocks facing drivers and commuters in Queensland, Australia. Looming oil shortages will produce the biggest change in society since the industrial revolution, Sustainability Minister Andrew McNamara warned yesterday.
To underscore his concerns, Mr McNamara will appear in a documentary film premiering May 20th in which he [...]

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Goodbye To Cheap Air travel

Pete Smith @ May 16, 2008 # No Comment Yet

Shares in British Airways rose sharply this morning after preliminary results for the 12 months to March revealed annual pre-tax profits up by 44.5% to £883 million. These excellent figures are bucking the trend in airlines around the world, and particularly in the US, where the airline sector as a whole posted an $11 billion [...]

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Green Light For London Desalination

Pete Smith @ May 13, 2008 # 4 Comments

London’s new Mayor, Boris Johnson, has dropped a legal challenge to Thames Water’s proposed £200 million desalination plant in Beckton, East London. The High Court challenge was initiated by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, on the grounds that the project was inefficient and bad for the environment.
Mr Livingstone said cleaner, cheaper and less wasteful alternatives should [...]

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See, It Can Be Done

Pete Smith @ May 1, 2008 # No Comment Yet

Photo Seanna O’Sullivan/AP
Those of us who have despaired of the industrialised nations’ ability to wean themselves off their addiction to energy should take heart. Juneau, the capital of Alaska, is suffering an energy ‘crunch’ after avalanches knocked over transmission towers and severed high-voltage power lines between the city and the hydro-electric dam at Snettisham. Faced [...]

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Peak Food

Pete Smith @ April 29, 2008 # One Comment

Richard Heinberg is an American writer who is probably best known for his work on Peak Oil, the proposition that global oil production has reached, or is about to reach, a maximum from which the only way is down. The cocktail of declining output and rapidly growing demand has dire consequences for all aspects of [...]

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We Regret To Inform You…

Pete Smith @ April 28, 2008 # One Comment

This post contains in its entirety an article by Sharon Astyk at The Silver Bear Cafe. I don’t usually do this, but I can’t improve on the original, and just posting a link wouldn’t do it justice either.
We Regret to Inform You…
Sharon Astyk
When climate change and peak oil thinkers run out of other things to [...]

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Wind Up, Wind Down

Pete Smith @ April 26, 2008 # No Comment Yet

It’s been a mixed week or so for the wind power industry. On April 22nd, the Scottish government rejected plans to build one of Europe’s biggest onshore wind farms owing to “significant adverse impacts” on the local environment. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, billionaire Texas oil [...]

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U.S. Biofuel Dumping

Pete Smith @ March 10, 2008 # 3 Comments

Shares in AIM-listed biofuels outfit D1 Oils plc (LSE: DOO.L - news) are showing more sharp falls this morning after a 36% drop on Friday. The company said the influx of heavily subsidised US biodiesel is putting the entire EU green fuel industry at risk. The US government is promoting the production and use of [...]

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Ceres Power Holdings

Pete Smith @ January 14, 2008 # No Comment Yet

Shares in Ceres Power Holdings (CWR.L) rose sharply this morning on the news that Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, has taken a 10% stake in the AIM-listed fuel cell company. The shares are being bought at £3.00 per share, substantially lower than the £3.25 they reached last September when Ceres announced successful trials [...]

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