Will The United States Collapse Due To An Internal Societal Meltdown?

Are we witnessing the beginning of the end for the United States of America?  All great nations eventually fall, and the United States is not going to be any exception. Many of those that write about the decline of our once great country tend to focus on external threats, and there are certainly many that […]

The story of the fisherman and of the farmer

As I sit on the podium with the other speakers, I have in front of me about 30 boys and girls, around 10-12 years old; not even teenagers. They sit while the other speakers tell them of climate change and renewable energies. They are being told what we believe is good for them: that we […]

We Could Be Witnessing the Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry—Will It Take the Rest of the Economy Down With It?

In just two decades, the total value of the energy being produced via fossil fuel extraction has plummeted by more than half. Now $3 trillion of debt is at risk. It’s not looking good for the global fossil fuel industry. Although the world remains heavily dependent on oil, coal and natural gas—which today supply around […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 4

I’ve mentioned in the prior posts of this series that there were two articles posted online a number of weeks ago *  which caught my attention for reasons which at first puzzled me. No disrespect intended either author, but the contents of each were fairly routine offerings by those who clearly have not accepted the […]

Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years

A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, the first of its kind, says that industrial civilisation is currently on track to experience “an eventual collapse of production and living standards” in the next few decades if business-as-usual continues. The report published by the […]

Making Meaning for the Ending of Our Days, part 2

Stephen Jenkinson asserts that our death-phobic culture considers “The best death is the least death” — basically dying quickly and knowing little about dying. He titled his book Die Wise rather than Die Wisely to encourage us to learn about dying from those who die before us. He advocates being exposed to dying people from […]

Peak Oil: Time To Get Serious

The truths, unpleasant though they may be, are the truths: inexpensive, readily available oil is slowly but surely becoming less readily available, more expensive, and harder to come by. Current conditions [ultra-low prices; curtailed/canceled oil production and exploration projects; over-supply; declining investments; high debt] only highlight that the problems of maintaining an adequate, affordable, accessible […]

The Joy Is True, The Sorrow Is True

Excerpt from Episode 14 – Carolyn Baker To hear the entire show or find out more please visit: http://www.extinctionradio.com/ For more from Carolyn Baker: www.carolynbaker.net Extinction Radio is a production of the Near Term Human Extinction Support Group on Facebook. http://bit.ly/NTHESG For all Xnotes: Field Notes from Extinction, please visit: http://bit.ly/1F0b0OE

Neil Howe & The Coming Generational Crisis

I recently had the pleasure to visit with Neil Howe on the “Lance Roberts Show” about the coming generational shift and its potential affect on the economy. Neil Howe is a renowned authority on generations and social change in America. An acclaimed author and speaker, he is the nation’s leading thinker on today’s generations—who they are, […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 2

In Part 1 of this series, I confessed at the outset that I had mixed feelings about posting this series. More of the same tiresome pieces [1. 2.] of fact-light energy abundance Happy Talk designed to do anything and everything but start a meaningful conversation [at least from this peak oil advocate’s perspective] was instead […]

Making Meaning for the Ending of Our Days

Stephen Jenkinson made keen observations in his decades working with the dying. The author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul observed that our high-technology medical system often makes things harder for dying people. When a patient or their family bargains for “More Time” through radiology or chemotherapy or drugs, it “bears no […]

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This?

I’ll confess that I hesitated before starting this series. It was too easy to again just dive into mockery and sarcasm over pieces written several weeks ago by those who refuse to give credence to the concept of peak oil and/or its implications. [It’s also the gateway to yet another round of verbal grenade lobbing […]

Healing The Core Of The Separation Illusion

Today, March 28, 2016, I am launching the first episode of the New Lifeboat Hour podcast. Today’s podcast features an interview with author and coach, Dean Walker, discussing how we heal the core of our illusion of separation from each other, from Earth, and from ourselves. Listen here: http://drumbaker.podbean.com/?source=pb Dean Walker and Carolyn discuss healing […]

The Human Shadow And The Global Crisis

This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine. ~William Shakespeare~ Why would any author intending to sell books write one about the shadow? Why would anyone already aware of the unprecedented severity of the global crisis want to read a book on the shadow? Wouldn’t this reader prefer the “catastrophe respite” of indulging in a book […]

Creativity & Culture in Collapse

Discuss this article at the Diner TV Table inside the Diner As a student of Collapse Dynamics, I’m always looking for signs of collapse in various areas in our civilization.  I was drawn to the topic first by the collapse of the Investment Banks Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers back in the financial crisis of […]

The Oracle Of Oil

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS Many have heard of peak oil, but few seem to understand what it really means, and fewer still know much of anything about the father of the idea, M. King Hubbert. In this episode we interview science journalist Mason Inman, who has […]

How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us

Natural selection was probably the factor that led the Irish Elk to develop oversized antlers: they were a beneficial feature for the males in the sexual competition game. However, the weight of the antlers was also a burden and it has been argued that it was one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, that led […]

Peak Oil Revisited: Did I get anything right?

In 2014 I wrote on the arrival of peak oil. That now appears at best premature. So what did I get wrong, and what (if anything) did I get right? In my initial post I made two key assumptions. The first was that fracking would not be that important, because it remained a high-cost method […]

Why the big run for oil is setting off alarm bells again

It’s been a huge week for markets. Soaring oil helped turn the Dow industrials DJIA, +0.69%  positive for the year on Thursday, and the S&P 500 SPX, +0.44%  has a shot at the green too, if markets behave Friday. Oil settled at a new high for 2016 above $40 a barrel, and is hanging in […]

Simplicity Has Its Disadvantages

Few of us appreciate just how much we rely upon inexpensive, readily-available supplies of energy to live our lives. [W]hat future awaits us if we cannot be courageous and honest enough to plan for that future with the full range and understanding of all the facts now at our disposal? [1] While there’s surely some […]

explain global economic crisis

Something weird is going on with the global economy. It’s been going on since at least 2007. Economic growth has been slow, financial markets have been volatile and economic policy makers have often been at a loss. We tend to focus on the problem of the moment — the subprime crisis, the euro crisis, the […]

What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?

We have covered some bases on the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and how to prepare the home and supplies against it.  One of the major problems with the EMP is not just what will not work regarding unshielded equipment, but what will happen when certain things do not run anymore.  What I’m referring to the real […]

The folly of long-term planning

This weekend I thought I might head up to Oil Shale City for a night out in the big town. After all, Oil Shale City has more than 300,000 people and it’s just between DeBeque and Rifle, where the town of Grand Valley used to be located before it was swallowed up by the city. […]

Entropy and the collapse of civilizations

When we discuss the impending crisis of our civilisation, we mainly look at the resources our economy need in a growing quantity. And we explain why the diminishing returns of resource exploitation pose a growing burden on the possibility of a further growing of the global economy. It is a very interesting topic, indeed, but […]

The Stupid Things People Do When Their Society Breaks Down

A frequent mistake that many people make when considering the concept of social or economic collapse is to imagine how people and groups will behave tomorrow based on how people behave today. It is, though, extremely difficult to predict human behavior in the face of terminal chaos. What we might expect, or what Hollywood fantasy […]

Gladiator War

We’re chemical machines, that have been built over 4 billion years, and we’ve been tested in what can be called quite accurately a ‘Gladiator War’; where the machines went into the battle and if you won your DNA replicated, and that’s all it was was a war. And as time evolved the war became more […]

Peak Oil: Just A Distraction Pt 3

… [T]here is no intellectually honest way to believe that the world can continue its near-total reliance on fossil fuels for much more than another decade — a paltry window of opportunity. We also know that we cannot wait until they go into decline before reaching for renewables and efficiency, simply because the scale of […]

Just A Distraction

In the end, does the choice of words really matter? The “Yes, we’ve reached Peak Oil” versus the “No, we have not” is a distraction—and I’ve done my part to contribute. But without recognizing and accepting the simple truth that we’re drawing down a finite and depleting resource which necessitates almost unimaginable adaptations and transitions […]

This film imagines Ireland after society has crumbled

COULD YOU SURVIVE the collapse of civilisation? And how far would you go to protect your life? These are questions posed by new Northern Irish film The Survivalist, which has been lapping up praise for its portrayal of a post-apocalyptic Ireland. On set, it can’t have been fun – the cast went on strict diets, […]

3 Lessons from the Holocaust to Save Us Now

My mother didn’t die when so many others did – and so lived to give birth to me. I write about this now, because it has everything to do with today, even though the cataclysm in which so many perished happened more than 75 years ago. This is how I began part 1 of this […]

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