A weekly update including: Oil and the Global Economy, The Middle East North Africa, China, Quote of the Week, The Briefs

An innovative footwear manufacturer that pays fair wages and uses locally sourced materials is helping to transform the economic landscape in Ethiopia.

...trimming our food waste is more important than composting our excess.

•Why America's Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think •Boulder and other Colorado cities try to fight fracking •First County In The U.S. Bans Fracking To Save Its Water •EIA: Shale Fields May Hold 10% of World's Crude Oil, 32% of Gas Resources

Savings is the diet and exercise of a healthy economy.

A fundamental precept of C2C design is its emphasis on biomimicry, i.e. copying the genius of nature’s design principles.

If you’re reading this, then you are definitely already a member of the largest social movement of human history.

You might ask: then why have children? It's a fair question.

Like children looking through a kaleidoscope who are unaware of its actual workings, the media and the public have been misled into believing that early production results in the shale natural gas and tight oil formations in the United States will be repeated again and again across the United States and the world.

“The move to the smart grid is impossible to achieve in one big operational mass,”...“Breaking it into bite-sized pieces — this is the future of the microgrid market.”

This book is a creative work of fiction – a ‘utopia of sufficiency’ – which brings to life a simple living community that became isolated on a small island after the collapse of industrial civilisation.

From northern Europe to Florida, highway planners are rethinking roadsides as potential habitat for native plants and wildlife. Scientists say this new approach could provide a useful tool in fostering biodiversity.

The coming painful decades may be the prehistory of the next American revolution – and an evolutionary process that transforms the American system, making it both morally meaningful and ecologically sustainable.

•Community Solar Concept A Big Hit At Michigan Energy Fair •A Secret Success Story •Generating interest in homegrown power •Power to the people - and to their homes •Brittany villages blazing a trail in energy self-sufficiency •Four German words

Gasland Part II, the highly anticipated anti-fracking documentary sequel, premiered at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival on April 21st.

This high-energy/high-technology life of affluent societies is a dead end.

It’s a shocking fact that 40% of all food produced in the US goes to waste at some point in production.

Fear. It's that chill that creeps up your spine. That awful, churning hot knot, deep in the pit of your stomach. The tremble that makes your hands feel powerless. The freeze-up, that tempts you to inaction.

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a speech where he presented a new plan that details New York City’s approach to climate resilience.

Each new technology, regardless of benefits,brings its own risks. In many complex situations where there are multiple questions with poorly constrained answers, it is folly to expect that we can use formal risk assessments to guide current actions.