At Permabusiness we like to maintain a positive attitude, so we hesitate to share this story. But we also know that it is important to face reality as it is, not as it once was, or how we would like it to be. Accelerating amounts of permafrost methane and CO2 are beginning to be emitted …
Continue reading “Methane from melting permafrost set to accelerate climate change by 20%-30%”
The amount of investment in renewable energy has passed that in fossil fuels for the first time. Electricity from the wind, sun, waves and biomass drew $187 billion last year compared with $157 billion for natural gas, oil and coal, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Source, LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-renewables-20111125,0,2421278.story This related story has a nice graphic …
Continue reading “Renewable energy investment finally passes fossil fuels”
Oil remains volatile, with prices falling despite low US stocks. UK-based banks are swapping their liquid assets for the illiquid assets of European lenders — but does the resulting mix have a lower or higher risk of contagion? Use of the renminbi to settle cross-border trades fell.
The Earth is full and over the past ten years increasing demand from emerging markets has erased all the resource-price declines of the last century. A new report from McKinsey says three key trends look set to make this situation more difficult and more volatile: people in developing nations are looking to increase their standards of living, …
A BBC Panorama programme recently put out some figures on the UK’s up-coming energy crisis and the need to build new capacity. This short film explains how the programme got its figures wrong, and how within a few years (by 2020) renewable energy is expected to be cheaper, and more reliable, than fossil-fuel alternatives. If …
Continue reading “Why BBC’s Panorama got it wrong on Green Energy”
The solution to the financial crisis is straightforward. As Richard Douthwaite and others have pointed out, the problem we face is not a lack of money. Rather it is the fact that our money has been lent into existence. As we are now discovering, this creates an inherently unstable system of debt, in which default …
This movie tells the story of dirt. It is relevant to your business because it shows how current farming practices are destroying topsoil, increasing the likelihood that your employees, your suppliers, and your customers, will not have enough food to eat. And as one participant puts it, “here’s this 120 year window in which we …
A sustainable way forward needs to reconnect our economy back into the ecology of the planet. This excellent five minute video explores some of the issues: One thing jumps out from the very beginning: the origin of the word economics means ‘household management‘ the origin of the word ecology means ‘household organisation‘ What if you could …
New US unemployment figures are at a seven month low, adding to the view that the American economy is strengthening. But in Europe the crisis is deepening.
In the third quarter this year, as prices fell, central banks made their largest purchases of gold for 40 years. The buying was led by the central banks of emerging countries such as Thailand, Mexico, and South Korea. The value of foreign currencies and government debt at the moment are volatile at best, so it …
Continue reading “Innovation in money and music (and agriculture)”