John Michael Greer's Blog
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Jun.09.2010
Part One: Peak Oil Goes Mainstream
Longtime readers of this blog will recall that one of its central projects early on was an attempt to deconstruct the most deeply entrenched set of myths industrial culture uses to define the future. To borrow a phrase from Carlos Castaneda, the myth of progress...
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Jun.02.2010
As I write these words, the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico continues unchecked. It seems almost obscene to suggest that anything positive might come out of an oil spill that is already the largest in US history, and of course it’s true that whatever good might be salvaged from the situation will...
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May.26.2010
It has been nearly four decades now since the limits to industrial civilization’s trajectory of limitless material growth on a limited planet have been clearly visible on the horizon of our future. Over that time, a remarkable paradox has unfolded. The closer we get to the limits to growth, the...
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May.19.2010
The uncontrolled simplification of a complex system is rarely a welcome event for those people whose lives depend on the system in question. That’s one way to summarize the impact of the waves of trouble rolling up against the sand castles we are pleased to call the world’s modern industrial...
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May.12.2010
The discussion of the risks of complexity in the last few posts here on <i>The Archdruid Report</i> dealt in large part with abstract concepts, though the news headlines did me the favor of providing some very good examples of those concepts in action. Still, it’s time to review some...
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May.05.2010
I trust my readers will recognize a hint of sarcasm if I say that the good news just keeps on rolling in. Of the smoke plumes that were rising into the industrial world’s increasingly murky skies as last week’s post went up, one – the billowing cloud of assorted mis-, mal- and nonfeasance bubbling...
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Apr.28.2010
It’s a bit ironic, given the events now in the headlines, that I started last week’s post by commenting that it had been an interesting week for connoisseurs of decline and fall; it might have been better to say “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” About the time the volcanic ash from Iceland began...
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Apr.21.2010
It has been an interesting week for connoisseurs of decline and fall. As I’m sure all my readers are aware by now, a small volcano in Iceland managed to chuck a sizable monkey wrench into the gears of business as usual across Europe by filling the upper atmosphere with a massive plume of what...
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Apr.14.2010
“I feel my fate in what I cannot fear,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote in his most famous poem, “The Waking.” He could have been speaking for any of us; as individuals, communities, or societies, it’s not the problems we dread but the ones we’re unable to take seriously, or fail to recognize as...
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Apr.07.2010
The end of the age of cheap abundant energy, as last week’s <i>Archdruid Report</i> argued, brings with it an unavoidable reshaping of our most basic ideas about economics and, in particular, economic development. For the last three centuries or so, the effective meaning of this phrase...
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Mar.31.2010
Any number of metaphors might be used for the predicament today’s industrial societies face as the age of cheap energy stumbles to its end, but the one that keeps coming to mind is drawn from a scene in one of the favorite books of my childhood, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. It’s the point in the...
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Mar.24.2010
The last several posts here on <i>The Archdruid Report</i> have focused on the ramifications of a single concept – the importance of energy concentration, as distinct from the raw quantity of energy, in the economics of the future. This concept has implications that go well beyond the...
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Mar.17.2010
For those watching current affairs with an eye sharpened by history, it’s been quite a week since the last <i>Archdruid Report</i> post came out. For starters, American politicians and pundits have gone in for another round of China-bashing, insisting that China’s manipulation of its...
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Mar.10.2010
These days plenty of promoters are pushing grandiose projects for huge, centralized power plants using solar energy. With the aid of two forgotten inventors and a glass of brandy, the Archdruid demonstrates why the best use of solar energy lies in a completely different direction. The latest post...
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Mar.03.2010
Perhaps the most important and least appreciated detail of the crisis of industrial society hinges on the difference between energy and exergy -- that is, between the quantity of energy and its concentration. With the aid of a friendly solar water heater, the Archdruid explains all in this latest...
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About John Michael
Born in the gritty Navy town of Bremerton, Washington and raised in the south Seattle suburbs, I began writing about as soon as I could hold a pencil. SF editor George Scithers' dictum that all would-be writers have a million words of so of bad prose in them...
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John Michael’s Favorite Books
An eclectic mess of fiction and nonfiction: Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend's "Hamlet's Mill," M. John Harrison's "The Pastel City," John Michell'...