Ippoippo

Well, looks like it’s finally happened.
It’s been on the cards for a while… but they’ve finally gone under. Seems the founder and CEO has legged it as well!

An interesting article about Peak Oil and Climate Change.

BBC Report on the publishing of the Geo4 Report on mankinds influence on the planet. Also here.

Meanwhile, it seems the price of oil is marching on up.

And finally… here’s some complete madness. Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to allow traffic onto the hard shoulder of the motorway during rush hour. Ignoring environmental issues and trying to pursuade people to use cars less… this is just plain dangerous in my opinion.

There is quite an interesting article I found via the Powerswitch forum. The basic jist of it is why did the ‘return to the land’ movement in the 1970’s failed. It’s from an American perspective, but a lot of it would apply here.

That’s the thing. The ‘romantic, idealist’ part of my brain loves the idea of self-sufficiency. The ‘realist, geeky’ part of my brain knows that things just ain’t that simple.

Someone on the forum wrote this, and in principle I would agree:

I think the article explains very well while I’m still working in the City and not out in Wales trying to learn farming, or at a commune somewhere. There is nothing quite as stressful as being trapped by poverty into a community in which there are conflicts and schisms. Having a strong community around you is wonderful when everyone is warm and friendly, but once you collect a couple of enemies who bitch about you in your absence - and everybody collects a few of these from time to time, it’s inevitable - you quickly find the community a deeply unpleasant place to be. If it hasn’t happened to you in ‘real life’ it’s probably happened online.
Sometimes the anonymity of modern city life can be a blessed relief, for a time.

I’m in quite a weird, and frustrating situation. Whilst I understand the eventual need for this ‘back to the land’ thing… I don’t want to jump into it, and certainly not into one of these communes. I mean, there would be complete ‘culture clash’ with a lot of the people who typical reside in some of these communes. (I don’t quite see myself as a hippy yet )

Ideally, we need a gradual “powerdown” situation with the onset of oil production decline. It seems however we have a bunch of muppets leading this country (and probably just as insane bunch of muppets ready to replace them), as shown by this latest bit of news.

We NEED this change to renewables. Why can’t our government see that the Germans have got it right. Even if Climate Change is not man-made… the UK needs to ween itself off it’s dependency on foreign fossil fuels.

And finally, while I’m in a ranting mood… I see some more Germans are saying some sensible stuff in my opinion. This time, about how screwed up our economy is here.

Nasty little powercut affected the Oedo Metro line in Tokyo the other day. (More coverage here)

That line is a bit weird compared to the other Metro lines, in that it uses small carriages, like the ones you get on a lot of the London Underground lines. I think this is because the lines are very deep underground, which meant it was not possible to have the normal large size trains running through the tunnels.

So, getting stuck down there can’t have been a nice experience to be honest.