PowerSwitch

Watch this video, a lecture presented a couple of weeks ago by an
Australian geologist --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE

Note, it touches on CSG in Australia, uranium production and nuclear
power, as well as metal mining -- because ultimately all energy
technologies are reliant upon mining/metals production.


I got a lot of flak a couple of years ago for writing a presentation
on mining and resources, entitled "Limits to Technology" --
http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/archive/pres ... s-2011.pdf
-- which suggested that limits to metal mining, especially copper, would
be a greater limits on our future use of digital gadgets than the physical
restrictions on the technology itself. An issue I followed up on in the book
I wrote the following year, "A Practical Guide to Sustainable ICT" --
http://www.apc.org/en/system/files/Section2.pdf

Seems that the 'Limits to Growth' arguments are coming home to roost!
You can't look at things like shale gas/CSG without also considering the
need of governments to deflect the public's attention from peak
resources/limits to growth.

On that note, he's also got a good lecture on YouTube called
"Developing a Sustainable Community" -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM_aBS1HlUk


P.

Thanks for the links, very useful. The road sign at the end of the first video really sums it up.

Thanks for that - it's a lovely piece of work and I think the speaker deserves a far better medium than blurry U-tube.

His point about being in the right place as the system breaks seems particularly apposite - particularly in light of the rising fashion for passivism and outright defeatism and resulting urban-vegan-permaculture-roof-farming.

Regards,

Lewis