04 Nicole Foss Part 1 – Building Resiliency in an Era of Limits to Growth

Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth presented this talk, the first of two, at Studio 353 in Manhattan on January 17th, 2013.

Few people realize the extent to which our modern way of life is critically dependent on the availability of plentiful and affordable natural resources, particularly energy, which acts as the master resource. However, we stand on the edge of a major contraction in fossil fuel supply. The energy sources we are increasingly looking to for the future are largely a cruel mirage.

As energy availability declines, we will increasingly be facing other limits to growth. There will be less energy available for resource extraction and transportation, or to address the inevitable externalities generated in the process. The implication is that life will of necessity become increasingly local and much less resource intensive. We must learn to adjust our expectations accordingly. Fortunately, there is much we can do to use resources far more sparingly and effectively. It is critical to make the adjustment while conventional energy is still available, meaning that we must begin at once.

Nicole Foss is Senior Editor of The Automatic Earth. She previously wrote under the name Stoneleigh. She and co-author and Editor-in-Chief, Raúl Ilargi Meijer, have been chronicling and interpreting the ongoing credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. Nicole is also an international speaker on energy and global finance. She has lectured in hundreds of locations across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and has made numerous media appearances in a variety of countries.

Prior to the establishment of TAE, Nicole was editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance. She also ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects, grid connections for renewable energy and feed-In tariff policy development.

She was a research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, specializing in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level. She has significant experience as an environmental consultant. She has a BSc in Biology from Carleton University in Canada, a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, in addition to the Common Professional Examination in Law and an LLM in International Law in Development from the University of Warwick in the UK.