Please Spread the word as this is an impromptu event and very timely talk considering the times we live in.
Transition Town Kinsale presents..
Nicole
Foss aka Stoneleigh, one of the world’s best speakers on local,
national and international economics and energy, will be giving a talk
in Kinsale, “A Century of Challenges” on Sunday April 10th in
Temperance Hall at 7pm.
Topics to include:
...
* Nicole will speak on energy and finance
* Ireland's economic woes
* Oil and the importance of net energy in defining energy sources.
* The alternatives - what we can do and can't do.
* The connection between energy subsidies and financial bubbles, explaining the nature and consequences of bubbles.
* The effect of financial crisis on the energy sector, and also briefly on the environment.
* If people want Nicole will discuss what people can do to ride out the crisis
Nicole
M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the
name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and
interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of
our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance,
energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to
explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do
about it. Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was editor of The Oil
Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance......read more
Most recently, Foss ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level.
Her
academic qualifications include a BSc in biology from Carleton
University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and
psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control,
an LLM in international law in development from the University of
Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top
science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school
graduate in 1997.
Foss believes that resource limits (peak oil)
and the collapse of global Ponzi finance are a "perfect storm" of
converging phenomena that threaten to trigger wealth destruction, social
discontent, and global conflict. The consequences for unprepared
individuals and families could be dire.
At her presentation, Foss
will discuss the many converging factors that are contributing to the
predicament we face today, and how individuals can build a "lifeboat" to
cope with the difficult years ahead. She explains how our current
financial system is an unsustainable credit bubble grounded in "Ponzi
dynamics," or the logic of the pyramid scheme. She warns that most
people are woefully unprepared to face the consequences of the
devastating deflation that is now unfolding.
What makes this crisis different from past financial calamities?
Foss
argues that this crisis has developed in the context of the fossil fuel
age, an age which will prove to be a relatively brief period of human
history. She says that we have already seen oil reach a global
production peak, and other fossil fuels are not far behind; and while
there is still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, production will
fall, meaning that there will be less and less energy available to power
the economy at prices afford to pay.
She continues that
societies have gone through boom and bust cycles before, examples
include: the Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble and the "Real" Great
Depression of the 1870s; but most people in the Western world today will
face this crisis without the knowledge or means to provide the basics
of their own survival. Our industrial system has nearly destroyed the
individual capacity for self-reliance.
Foss argues that
individuals and communities that take steps now to prepare stand a much
better chance to thrive in a changing world.
http://theautomaticearth.b
Subscribe to this comment's feed
