There are some really good resources around regarding peak oil and its inevitable consequences. Some of my favourite books that I have read have been:

• ‘Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller” -  Jeff Rubin
• Collapse – Michael Ruppert

Now if this doesn’t seem interesting or that important right now think about the last time you, your family or friends commented on the sudden increases in the price of every day items. While there has been an increase in all commodities, oil increases will have played a part in such steep increases. This is mainly affecting food prices and transportation costs mainly at this point. Oil prices are essentially indirectly built into the price of everything we buy especially the essential things. Once the age of cheap oil is really over which is rapidly becoming evident then economies and subsequently those countries begin to retract and there will simply be no energy for the constant growth we require to maintain our current model.  Not to mention the debt associated with this model we all have accumulated. The more reliant your country is on oil then the worse it will be.

One noticeable change has been the price of petrol. More recent increases have accelerated due to wars in the middle east it is claimed. On the ground for me that has meant a trip from London to Liverpool (220 miles) has gone from £30 each way in 2009 to £45 each way. That is an increase of 50% or 16.6% per year .  That is clearly unsustainable increase especially if you drive a lot which I don’t luckily.. And these are moderate increases compared to what is to come once oil declines at a more rapid pace. So if that is the yearly increase my pretty efficient car is suffering then imagine what it is costing suppliers to be able to get food on your table.

In light of this fact major wars with oil rich nations are an inevitability as oil dependent nations such as the US (currently consuming 25% of global oil production), China and Europe have the largest exposure to this problem and all will scramble for control of what is left.

Although there is little spoken about this issue at the top of governments and amongst the people too one thing is certain: If we didn’t have such a major problem then surely our very famous infinite growth model that is  serving us all so well economically at present (j/k)  would mean we could simply afford to buy it from world suppliers instead of invading and surrounding these suppliers surely?

This Mark Farina mix I on soundcloud is awesome:

While it all started in Alex Jones and conspiracy theory land it has worked its way up to the heights of major web companies including even Facebook.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

This is Ron Paul in Iowa in 2011:

Hmmmmmmmmmm do his point really sound super radical to you?!! I simply do not get it at all.

Here is the trailer which you can watch and a link to the films web site below:

http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org/

It was an interesting premier with some highly academic folk attending. Often scratching their beards if they were men and looking down their pointy glasses if they were females. However unlike before when I would have visioned them to be owners of huge gas guzzling 4×4 Range Rovers they took to the Tescos hypermarket for bread and milk; I imagined them now in a totally different way. Here they were at an event concerned about their communities and thus the environment we seem to be destroying recklessly, me included.

I spoke to one such aristocrat next to me who had paid £55,000 of his own money to install a wind turbine in his own village. Then there was another guy next to him running a transition town in Norfolk. Both highly rich with more money than they knew what to do with but worried about their future existence on the planet just as I have become.

I became inspired and transfixed by everyone. Gone were the crusties, famous for failing university courses so they could extend their student life style and gate crash a demonstration somewhere and here was a totally different side of britain completely concerned by what was going on around them.

If you get a chance try to watch this. I actually bought this on DVD at the premier. I then did an experiment. Out of ten selected people I offered to give this to to watch only 1 person watched it and she was the person who actually told me about it in the first place. The world is great while it works for us hey.