We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, August 12, 2013

Shale Is A Pipedream Sold To Greater Fools

Click here to access article by Raúl Ilargi Meijer from The Automatic Earth.



























It seems that perhaps the main reason why people believe the US has an energy revolution and/or independence on its hand is that they don't understand and/or care what for instance an annual 40% depletion rate means. True, more and more wells are drilled, but the pattern is that they deliver even less and deplete even faster than earlier wells (oil engineers will always go for the best stuff first, and they're good, they know where the best stuff is).