well it took them a bit longer than they might have hoped… but now that the price is right, the big boys are getting ready to start pumping oil and profits back to the UK and US… a win-win scenario! (oh, except for the Iraqi people of course…)

essential reading: david holmgren’s new future scenarios website.

some good quotes from the site:

There is a huge body of evidence that the next energy transition will not follow the pattern of recent centuries to more concentrated and powerful sources. The likelihood that this transition will be to one of less energy is such an anathema to the psycho-social foundations and power elites of modern societies that it is constantly misinterpreted, ignored, covered up or derided.

The explosion of economic activity based on financial services and information technology in the dominant economies during the early 90’s gave some credibility to this concept of the “weightless economy”, although it is now clear that globalisation simply shifted the consumption of resources to other countries to support this growth in the service economies.

The gentle whine of the electric milk float is a sound I remember vividly from my childhood slumbers. This quiet and efficient vehicle delivered our daily milk early each morning. In many parts of the UK they also delivered bread, fruit-juice and other perishables.

The beauty of an electric milk float is that it can charge each night when not doing the rounds and the electric motor is very efficient for the stop-start of a delivery round. Also, by delivering early they can be fairly sure that people are in to pick up their produce.

I think a Transition Town project somewhere should (if they haven’t already) start up a ‘local food float’ initiative and get a fleet of floats back on the road. Perhaps the ‘local food float’ could load up at a central distribution point where local producers bring their produce for distribution the evening before. This would save vegetable box schemes some of their distribution costs. Farming Today recently ran some programmes on how rising fuel costs are hitting local producers just as hard as the supermarkets. Conventional sustainability wisdom says that local producers will benefit as fuel costs rise as they can finally out compete the supermarkets on something - however most ‘local’ producers still rely on oil based distribution to get their produce out to the consumers - or for the consumers to drive to their farm.

Some great info on milk floats at milkfloats.org.uk.

I would like to echo Graham and point you to Rob’s excellent interview with David Fleming for brilliant insights on where we are with liquid fuels and some options for the medium term.

Of course this is all ridiculously hopeful given Brown and Bush’s sabre rattling today which makes me so angry at their stupidity. How can Gordon Brown sleep at night? It took Tony Blair 10 years to go this bonkers. Bloody idiots.

George Monbiot has written one of the best things he’s done for a while. I feel so passionately about the importance of a peasant culture that the lack of possibility for it in England was a major reason I left the UK (along with not wanting to pay taxes for nuclear weapons, the oppressive police powers and the over-population).

Ireland is still thankfully a nation of small farms.  We were able to buy 11 acres for reasonable money and have been allowed to build a house and live on the land.  This would be unthinkable in the UK. 11 acres is hardly considered big enough for a farm in many rich countries. However, when we move there later this year we will embark on as much primary production of food, fibre and fuel as we can. We are fortunate to be surrounded by many people who are doing similar things. We will share knowledge and mix the best of the old with the best of the new. The hope is that through judicious use of knowledge, crop varieties and technology we will be able to live good lives in a world with less fossil energy.

for some reason i was wondering what rik mayall was up to these days… wikipedia says:

“Mayall currently performs the voice of the Andrex puppy in the UK TV commercials for Andrex toilet paper, and also has a voice part in the UK Demestos cleaning product adverts.”

the entertainment industry sure is cruel….

while governments are busy clamping down on benefit fraud…

…these guys steal money from the poor (and your pension, if you were unlucky enough to start one in the 90’s when it still seemed like they might have been a good idea… much better to plant some trees these days).

each year the EU spends €31bn on the common agricultural policy. it is the largest single area of EU spending and is ripe for reform. but this seemingly huge amount of money is but a drop in the ocean compared to what rich people in the uk avoid paying in tax…

the UK government estimates that the very rich in the UK avoid paying €51.5bn (£41bn) in tax each year. (via monbiot.com)

i find this absolutely sickening. there is so much we need do to alleviate poverty and suffering in the world and start to build resilient post oil societies but typically the people doing such work are using minuscule budgets compared to these vast sums. the rich have become so powerful and so good at protecting their wealth that i’ve given up hoping that it might ever be redistributed more equitably.

and don’t get me started on military spending… (for context with the above figures, european countries spends €289bn per year on the military.)

fantastic weather here and incredibly lush and green everywhere… the house is starting to look like part of the landscape…

we’ve been busy installing insulation - some new photos on picasa.

according to a study by the wwf between 25% and a third of of all wildlife on the planet has been lost since 1970. at this rate there won’t be much left if I make it to 80 years old! naturally the bbc article linked above makes no mention of the main cause of this - human over-population.

on sunday we’re going to biodiversity day at manch here in west cork - sounds like a great day, but i feel that celebrating biodiversity is becoming a bit like going to a zoo or museum…