Food riots Tuesday, Apr 29 2008 

food postoilfutures 7:33 pm

My friend and work colleague is from Bangladesh and returned recently shocked by the price of rice.

The price of eggs in my weekly fruit and veg box has gone up, citing rising prices of chicken feed and transportation costs.

Monbiot writes about global hunger in the Guardian the day of my previous post

I get an email from Avaaz.org, a campaign group asking me to sign a petition about a worldwide food crisis

I have this ‘Tipping point’ rule where I know that something is serious when a friend mentions it, I see it in the media and I experience it personally.  Are we there yet?

I have noticed that there a push towards planning for climate change in government departments.  Food will presumably sit at the heart of this…?

 

Food glorious food Monday, Apr 14 2008 

alternatives and food , postoilfutures 12:12 pm

Food Glorious Food

So how much food do we import into the UK?  What sorts of food?  What do we grow here?  What is the appropriate balance of food types to be grown in order to feed 60 million people.  Should we all be vegan to reduce the secondary stage of feeding grown grain to cattle, effectively halving the use of valuable land.  Should we ask Madonna to grow on her estate?

The food riots have a way of really crystallising our need to work these matters through.  Watch this space…

 

Vapourware Monday, Mar 3 2008 

alternatives , , , postoilfutures 8:55 pm

In the dot-com boom of the 1990s, companies would release news of software innovations that were little more than ideas jotted on the back of an envelope.  As the market for green alternatives to oil hot up, many solutions will be mooted and many will disappear as unviable.

What will happen to the idea of using CO2 as a source of fuel itself?  It has a neat singularity to it – the pollutant becomes the fuel…

 

Love life Sunday, Mar 2 2008 

story , , postoilfutures 8:50 pm

Lovelock has been predicting the future since the 1960s apparently and getting it about right.  Lovelock now reckons that we have 20 years “if we are lucky, before it hits the fan”.

These sorts of future predictions intended by some to scare people into action, from people like Lovelock come as a ‘told you so’.  An expression of pain and frustration from a lifetime of banging one’s head against the brickwall that is capitalist society.  These predictions usually lead me into a Terminator-esque Sarah Hamilton moment of holding onto the chain-link fence, looking at my children and screaming noooooooooooooo!  Then, it’s a deep breath, and channel, channel that energy into something positive.  Like imagining the multiple post-oil futures, even with a drowned London and refugees fleeing Europe to our crowded island…

“We can work it out, if we try, together, uh ha”

 

Bike traffic jams Wednesday, Feb 27 2008 

story , , , , postoilfutures 8:53 pm

“I look forward to bike traffic jams on busy commuter routes with no nasty cars”, Mark

Thanks for your vision, Mark.  How ironic that many Chinese people are giving up on their bikes, just as other countries seek to promote them…

Beijing Bikes

Picture from: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/richardspencer/sept06/bikepoverty.htm

 

Biofuel Wednesday, Feb 27 2008 

alternatives , , postoilfutures 8:39 pm

Ah, but we’re going to use biofuel instead.  Great idea.  Whoops, where are we going to grow it?  Cue, acceleration of landgrab…

Biofuelwatch

Biofuelwatch campaigns against the use of bioenergy from unsustainable sources, i.e. biofuels linked to accelerated climate change, deforestation, bio-diversity losses, human rights abuses, including the impoverishment and dispossession of local populations, water and soil degradation, loss of food sovereignty and food security.

Sigh, this ain’t gonna be easy.  Everytime we think we’ve worked out an alternative which means we can carry on as we are, someone else loses out.

 

Wednesday, Feb 27 2008 

story , , , postoilfutures 8:32 pm

AN EXTRACT FROM A POST-OIL FUTURE STORY

“SAVE THE LAST PLATE FOR ME”
By Jessica Symons

ACT 1:
FADE IN:

1 SCENE: FOREST – DAY
Sound of heavy breathing and feet crashing through undergrowth

2 SCENE: EXT. FOREST NEXT TO VERGE OF ROAD – DAY
Sound of heavy breathing and feet running through undergrowth, ALEX bursts out of wood and runs into middle of road

3 SCENE: EXT. TREE LINED STREET – DAY
Sound of heavy breathing and feet running on tarmac. Tree lined street moderately filled with many different types of bicycles, some with trailers/child seats/loaded with packages, people cycling them in both directions on the road.  Some cyclists shout, swerve their bikes and ping their bells as ALEX runs among them and starts running down the street.  More shouting and pinging as CARL appears some distance behind her also running very fast.  ALEX turns a corner

4 SCENE: EXT. TREE LINED SHOPPING STREET – DAY
ALEX turns a corner onto a busy tree lined shopping street, with boarded up chain shops such as Woolworths and Boots.  She passes a greengrocer, butcher and baker with nothing in the windows and long queues snaking outside the doors.  People are dressed in modern clothes which look shabby.  A tree is having its branches pruned by a man with a handsaw.  CARL runs in the distance but getting closer.  ALEX turns a corner

5 SCENE: EXT. BACK ALLEYS OF TERRACED HOUSES – DAY
ALEX runs through the back alleys of Victorian terraced houses.  Over the fence, two women cut a large log using a two handed saw.  ALEX runs around a man with a wheelbarrow containing a similar large log.  She passes another garden where a woman is filling a stove kettle from a water butt.
ALEX
Woo woo (whistling)
A gate opens and ALEX runs in, the gate shuts.  Seconds later CARL runs past. 

6 SCENE: EXT. ALEX’S BACK GARDEN
Small garden that looks like an allotment, veg and fruit growing in ground and up vines.  ALEX is panting, leaning back against the gate
JAY
Did you get it?
ALEX reaches into her shirt and pulls out a large mushroom. 
ALEX
Just (laughing)

FADE OUT.

TO READ THE REST OF THE STORY, CONTACT JESSICA at KRATA.CO.UK

Do you have your own script or film to share?  If it’s good, it could end up in the Earth Cinema Circle:

Earth Circle Cinema

 

Knowing the future Wednesday, Feb 27 2008 

intro , , , , , , postoilfutures 7:57 pm

Coniston valley

No-one knows the future.  But if we look at our past, we can get an idea of what futures are out there for us.  This is Coniston Valley in the English Lake District.  Beautiful, eh?  Look closer and you see the slag heap.  This place was a slate mine.  100 years ago, it was not a beautiful spot for walkers to come and admire the view.  It was the scene of dirty, backbreaking hard work.

Just as the mines of the Lake District are in the past, so will be mineral oil.  The stuff that fuels our cars and the trucks that bring us food.  The liquid gold that starts wars and enriches whole countries.  Gradually, it will be come more and more expensive and one day, it will run out.

What will happen is anyone’s guess.  But if we try to imagine, then we can try to prepare.

 On this blog, we will explore the science that predicts and analyses the future of oil and we will share stories where people imagine life without it.  Stay tuned.