Inquiry arc: 2017-2020

For the last few years I’ve used Beyond this Brief Anomaly primarily as a platform for announcing work stemming from the inquiry that has been published through other channels, rather than for releasing original content. That’s mainly because the work I’ve been doing has been in collaboration with other people. While I’ve highlighted the two books (three including the German translation of Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future published in September) in particular, and a few spin-off articles and events related to those, there have also been a number of peer-reviewed journal articles that either add directly to the inquiry here, or that address issues that are thematically connected. I’ve been slow off the mark linking these directly here, with the oldest of these going back three years now.

To make the inquiry record as comprehensive as possible, I’ll introduce these papers here in reverse chronological order simply by posting the abstracts, with links to the journal or manuscript versions on my own repository website where relevant. The manuscripts also contain links to the article pages on the journal websites.

Continue reading

German edition of ‘Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future’

A German edition of Carbon Civilisation and the Energy Descent Future, translated by Simon Göß, is due for release on 3 September, published by Oekom.

Simon included many updates to reflect data emerging since publication of the original English edition in 2018, and also added notes to link the book’s global focus more explicitly with the German context.

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Charles Hall, and Ugo Bardi have each also very generously provided forewords to the German edition. We’re tremendously grateful to these pioneering thought leaders for their support of our work. They have been important influence on our thinking, and hence on the ideas explored in the book.

Sam and I are also very grateful to Simon for approaching us to initiate this project, and for the commitment and enthusiasm he brought to carrying it out, very much reflected in the quality of the outcome. This included attracting the interest of the highly regarded publisher, Oekom. The project was also greatly assisted by the hard work of the Sharon France of Looking Glass Press, who carried out the typesetting.

English versions of each of the forewords follow.

Continue reading