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The End of Suburbia, $200 Oil, Food Miles, Greenpeace Goes Nuclear, Global Cooling, The iPhone Social Network, Top 25 Blogs, That’s All for NAU, and GM Invests in Cellulosic Ethanol
1. It’s the End of Suburbia as You Know it
Business Week: The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, thinks there’s a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era.
WorldChanging: The City is the Solution
Planetsave: City is Not the Problem, City is the Solution
TreeHugger: Ecocity World Summit 2008
2. $200 Oil Coming to a Reality Near You
Wall Street Journal: Make that $225 in 2012, says CIBC World Markets, a Canadian broker, in a new report arguing that “world oil markets will remain as tight over the next five years as they have over the last two years.”
That translates into $150 oil by 2010 and $225 oil by 2012. Projections for this year are $115 oil and an annual average gasoline price of $3.90 a gallon. That’s a lot more bullish than the latest projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which expects oil to retreat to the low-$90s next year and gas to peak around $3.60 a gallon.
Business Week: Gas May Finally Cost Too Much
3. Obesity in the Food Supply Chain
New York Times: Increasingly efficient global transport networks make it practical to bring food before it spoils from distant places where labor costs are lower. And the penetration of mega-markets in nations from China to Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe — like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco — has accelerated the trend. But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.
Farmer’s Weekly: Tesco Introduces Carbon Labeling on Potatoes
Mother Jones: Food Miles & Your Carbon Footprint
GreenBiz.com: Tesco Adds Carbon Footprint to Product Labels
4. The Earth May Be Catching a 10-Year Chill
BBC News: The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming. However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
The New York Times: In a New Climate Model, Short-Term Cooling in a Warmer World
Bloomberg.com: Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming, Researchers Say
Grist.org: Has Global Warming Stopped?
Planetsave: Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore was quoted at a chamber breakfast in Idaho Falls and the Idaho Environmental Forum in Boise this past week, as saying that the world needs to turn to nuclear power. Conversely, a day later, Greenpeace published a piece on their website eviscerating nuclear power.
6. The Center of Your Networking Universe: Steve Jobs
TechCrunch: A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.
Forbes: The iPhone: Apple’s Magic Wand
BrightKite: BrightKite Hands Out Some Beta Invites
Note: We’ll send BrightKite invites to the first five who comment.
TreeHugger: Doors Closing Nau: Iconic Eco-Business Winds Up
WorldChanging: NAU: An Elegy
Comment: “Good intentions need to be followed with good execution. Here the need for a quality product that is at least as good as non green alternatives, in terms of design, quality, and price. The research keeps telling us that. Green companies need to listen, otherwise they will go through painful times, as Nau here.”
9. General Motors Goes After Cellulosic Ethanol
Gas 2.0: General Motors announced today it would be entering into a strategic relationship with Mascoma Corp., a second-generation biofuel company with the technology to produce cellulosic ethanol from non-food sources via a single-step biochemical conversion.
10. The Blogosphere According to Time Magazine
1 response so far ↓
1 Food Crisis: The American Story | Max Gladwell // May 19, 2008 at 1:59 pm
[...] recent headlines on the global food crisis focus on riots in poverty-stricken countries like Nigeria, most often [...]
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