Category Archives: 2) Overshoot

The polycrisis/overshoot, collapse of the financial system, breakdown of supply chains, blackouts, end of being able to make computer chips, and so on are symptoms of the underlying cause: peak energy and peak everything, especially peak diesel since trucks, rail, and ships make this one-time only fossil fueled civilization possible. Wind, solar, nuclear, and so on also need fossil fuels for every single step of their life cycle, so that is a dead end. It is back to before the 15th century — wood world. Whether the house of cards collapses from chokepoints in the middle east such as the Suez canal, the financial shock of a natural disaster or from debt and corruption, Export Land Model, or nuclear war — there is certain to be a series of dislocations that ultimately bring population down to 400 million (population before fossil fuels) or less (due to overshoot factors such as top soil erosion, pollution, etc) Let’s hope there are some islands of sanity and that you are living on one of them!

Fantasyland 6. New Age, alternative medicine, and supernatural madness

Preface. This is the sixth of nine posts about this very important book on how and why a large percent of Americans have has been irrational for 500 years. New Age and supernatural beliefs are the religion of people who … Continue reading

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Fantasyland 5. Why Americans are so prone to believing in conspiracies

Preface. This is the fifth of nine posts about this very important book on how and why a large percent of Americans have has been irrational for 500 years. Links to the 9 parts of this book review:  1 2 … Continue reading

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Fantasyland 4. American churches go from crazy to insane and unhinged: 1800 to present

Preface. This is the fifth of nine posts about Fantasyland. This is a very important book on how and why a large percent of Americans have has been irrational for 500 years. Evangelism threatens to create a non-democratic, authoritarian government, … Continue reading

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Republican party platform: the most extreme ever

Preface. There are two articles below: the New York Times editorial on the 2016 Republican platform (they call Republicans Extremists too), followed by the 50 platform policies. Basically, the GOP 2016 platform would make Christianity the official American religion, replace … Continue reading

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Fantasyland 3. History of increasing craziness of U.S. religion from 1517 to 1800

Preface. In another post about critical thinking, “What percent of Americans are rational?”, I list the results of 10 polls about what Americans believe. Here are the questions about Christianity.  When there’s more than one figure, they’re from different polls: … Continue reading

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Fantasyland Part 2. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History.

Preface. This is the second of nine parts about the book “”Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire.  A 500-Year History”, mostly the introduction. Links to the 9 parts of this book review:  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … Continue reading

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Fantasyland Part 1. How America Went Haywire. A 500-Year History.

Preface. This a review of the “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire.  A 500-Year History”. If you want to understand what’s wrong with America, and be highly entertained at the same time, this is the book for you, one of my … Continue reading

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Richard Heinberg: Energy and Authoritarianism

Preface. Heinberg wrote this a year ago. Brilliant and well structured, he conveys as much in this article as many books, and consolidates what must be many years of research. But Heinberg is not the only one to wonder if … Continue reading

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Rising Sea Levels – What to do?

Preface. I first published this in June 2014, but thought I’d re-update it now that $2.5 million is going to be spent by Resilient by Design on 10 teams to come up with solutions for rising sea levels.  They failed … Continue reading

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Book review: the politics of California’s central valley levees

Preface. This is a book review of Robert Kelly’s “Battling the Inland Sea”.  But it is much more than that, better than any book I know if explaining the human nature of “conservatism vs liberalism”.  It drives me nuts that … Continue reading

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