An Outside Chance

season finale

On a chilly late August morning you may feel that your best-before date has come and gone, your colours have faded and your once-splendid wings are tattered. But by the warmth of the noon-day sun, when you’re sipping nectar from a silphium flower eight feet in the air, you can still make the most of … Read More

Festival of Wings

The gardens are filled with beating wings this month – wings of butterflies, bees, moths, damselflies, beetles and wasps. Many of them don’t like to sit still long, so trying to photograph them can be a great way to while away the hours. There have been an encouraging number of monarchs along the north shore … Read More

gems of the garden

When you coax a wide variety of flowers and herbs into your garden you also attract a wide variety of insects. Although not all these inhabitants are a welcome sight, most are not only beneficial but also remarkably beautiful. For instance, there’s this cute little caterpillar with the unwieldy name Eupithecia miserulata. Not only does … Read More

S-curves and other paths

Also published at Resilience.org. Oxford University economist Kate Raworth is getting a lot of good press for her recently released book Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. The book’s strengths are many, starting with the accessibility of Raworth’s prose. Whether she is discussing the changing faces of economic orthodoxy, the … Read More

Guns, energy, and the coin of the realm

Also published at Resilience.org. While US debt climbs to incomprehensible heights, US banking authorities continue to pump new money into the economy. How can they do it? David Graeber sees a simple explanation: There’s a reason why the wizard has such a strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him, there’s a man … Read More

Shiny Things

This week’s photo post is all about things that catch the eye with a flash of sunlight – even when that light is first reflected by the moon. In our garden the first of the summer fruits are just about ready to eat. Meanwhile out in Bowmanville Marsh the water smartweed (persicaria … Read More

Fossil fuel empire: a world of vulnerability

Also published at Resilience.org. “It’s all about the oil,” many commentators said about the US assault on Iraq in 2003. Attributing a war to a single cause is almost always an oversimplification, but protecting access to the 20th century’s most important energy source has been a priority of US foreign policy since World War II. … Read More

The stratospheric costs of The American Century

Also published at Resilience.org. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” Chairman Mao famously stated in 1927. Political power grows out of a barrel of oil – that’s an important theme in Daniel Yergin’s classic book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. Political power, including the use of … Read More

Pollination Nation

There are many beautiful flowers in the meadows and marshes this month, and the insects that visit the plants are photogenic in their own right. For today’s post we venture to some of the farthest reaches of greater metropolitan Port Darlington – from the east end of West Beach Road out to the meadow beyond … Read More

Energy And Civilization: a review

Also published at Resilience.org and BiophysEco. If you were to find yourself huddled with a small group of people in a post-crash, post-internet world, hoping to recreate some of the comforts of civilization, you’d do well to have saved a printed copy of Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization: A History. Smil’s new 550-page magnum opus would … Read More