Examines "fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives, informed by ... analysis of shale gas and oil drilling data"--Page 4 of cover.

Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future

Business & Money

HEINBERG, Richard

Economics

Post Carbon Institute

Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience describes how communities can approach the full scope of the 21st century’s challenges equitably and sustainably. The report draws on some of the most compelling recent thinking about resilience from academia, sustainability advocacy, and grassroots activism, as well as Post Carbon Institute’s prior work. It is intended as an accessible resource for local leaders and activists in the United States, and as a contribution to the larger public conversation about resilience in human communities.

Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience

Politics & Social Sciences

Lerch, Daniel

Social Sciences

The Future is Rural challenges the conventional wisdom about the future of food in our modern, globalized world. It is a much-needed reality check that explains why certain trends we take for granted–like the decline of rural areas and the dependence of farming and the food system on fossil fuels–are historical anomalies that will reverse over the coming decades. Renewable sources of energy must replace fossil fuels, but they will not power economies at the same scale as today. Priorities will profoundly shift, and food will become a central concern. Lessons learned from resilience science and alternatives to industrial agriculture provide a foundation for people to transition to more rural and locally focused lives.Jason Bradford, a biologist and farmer, offers a deeply researched report on the future of food that reveals key blind spots in conventional wisdom on energy, technology, and demographics. The Future Is Rural presents Bradford’s analysis from his career in ecology and agriculture, as well as a synthesis of the historical and scientific underpinnings of the astonishing changes that will transform the food system and society as a whole.PDF version available for free at https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/.

The Future Is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification

Bradford, Jason

Is this the end of the world as we know it? Will the winding down of fossil-fuel consumption lead to radical changes in our lives? Or can we turn away from the climate crisis cliff while the industrial economy just keeps growing? Renewable energy sources have powered civilizations for nearly all of history and must do so again. But usable energy will become a more precious resource, as it was before our brief, explosive binge on the most easily accessible fossil fuels. In coming years we will have to recognize when "enough is enough." Sufficiency, not growth, needs to be the focus of the new economy. The authors discuss changes in food production and distribution, urbanization and rural revitalization, cargo transportation, energy generation, law, and education. They show how many aspects of contemporary technology, plus lessons from our long history, can help us in the "sufficient economy" of the future. Renewable energies will not save our always-on, constantly growing, high-energy economy. But if we share the wealth to produce what we really need, renewable energies can power a sustainable civilization.

Energy Transition and Economic Sufficiency: Food, Transportation and Education in a Post-Carbon Society

In recent years, policy think tanks have increasingly adopted the term polycrisis to signify humanity's destabilized status quo. "Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown" seeks to build a coherent narrative about the roots of the polycrisis, the signs of its arrival and evolution, and why we should be thinking differently about the future.

Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown

Miller, Asher