Planting the Seeds

Today, I was catching up on my news, reading about the Clock of the Long Now, when I heard a little story about roof beams at Oxford's New College (really, you should just watch Stewart Brand's clip). Five hundred years ago, at the same time as the college was built, the founders planted oak trees, because they knew that long after they were all dead, the beams would become beetley and eventually need replacing. Their foresight floored me; to plan that far ahead, to ensure a legacy for their successors deep in the future. And it got me thinking about our energy system, which underpins every other part of the economy, and about the seeds we should be planting now. Read the rest.