The Right-Wing Steamroller: First Trump in the US, then Bolsonaro in Brazil, now Salvini in Italy….. No, wait! Salvini was Defeated!!

By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy

Even if you don't follow Italian politics, the recent upset in the elections is significant. Italy's Berlusconi was the first of the right populists to win power, and now Italy seems to have developed an immunity toward their propaganda strategy: "The idea is to target the lowest cultural level of the population. Use scare tactics, find enemies of all sorts, demonize them, then promise safety in the hands of a right-wing government."

  • January 27, 2020

For-Profit Investments Are not ‘Development’

By Dan Carden, New Internationalist

The British government is ramping up its policy to divert taxpayers’ money into private hands – and away from the world’s poorest people, warns Labour’s Dan Carden. The  UK-Africa Investment Summit will send a clear signal. The UK government’s aid policy will not be driven by evidence about how to best fight global poverty, but instead by naked free market ideology and the interests of British business.

  • January 27, 2020

Climate Politics/Capitol Light (41)

By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion

The Trump administration has gone to great pains to purge Obama-era science advisers from federal advisory boards and replace them with their own. Trump’s scientists seem to have the integrity many of his administrative appointees, e.g., EPA Administrator Wheeler lack.

  • January 27, 2020

Peak Oil Review: 27th January 2020

By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, Peak-Oil.org

Brent crude closed at $60.56 on Friday, its biggest weekly decline in more than a year as concerns that the coronavirus will spread farther in China, curbing oil demand.

  • January 27, 2020

Apocalypse Fatigue, Selective Inattention, and Fatalism: The Psychology of Climate Change

By Damaris Zehner, Integrity of Life

Connie Barlow, a climate activist, writer, and film maker, dislikes the word “apathy” used to describe people’s response to climate change. She says, “I now bristle at that word. In my view, what looks like apathy, especially when it comes to climate disruption, is actually a variety of psychological protections.”

  • January 27, 2020

Owning your own information: How about a Constitutional Amendment?

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

Everywhere the key to controlling others has become controlling information related to them, and that information now includes your movements, your purchases, your habits (at work and at home), your current whereabouts, and anything and everything you put on the internet about yourself. In addition, anything you choose to monitor using "smart" technology will have the providers of such technology looking over your shoulder as you do.

  • January 26, 2020

Dethroning King Coal – How a Once Dominant Fuel Source is Falling Rapidly from Favour

By Rapid Transition Alliance Staff, Rapid Transition Alliance

Electricity fuelled by coal is experiencing a record decline. 2019 is expected to show the biggest fall yet, after decades of increases. An accelerated move away from coal is imperative to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. Coal currently accounts for 38.5% of the global power mix and generates 46% of global CO2 emissions.

  • January 24, 2020

To Feed or to Profit? To Eat or to Consume?

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

We can no longer let the distribution method - the market - dictate how we farm and how we eat. We need to develop new tools and institutions in order to cater for the many functions of food and farming.  A process of decommodification should be at the core of the alternative food movement.

  • January 24, 2020

State of the Climate: How the World Warmed in 2019

By Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief

All of the official climate data for 2019 is now in. In this article, Carbon Brief explains why last year proved to be so remarkable across the planet’s oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature. A number of records for the Earth’s climate were set in 2019

  • January 24, 2020

Indigikitchen Is Bringing Native Food Sovereignty Online

By Katharine Walla, Food Tank

“Not only do Indigenous diets provide us with nutritionally balanced, seasonal local food, but they help us recognize the connection to our physical place in the world, as well as the wisdom of those who have come before,” says Mariah Gladstone (Blackfeet, Cherokee), founder of Indigikitchen. “This helps us care for ourselves, the land, and each other.”

  • January 24, 2020

Lending and Community Building at The Thingery

By Casey O'Brien, Shareable

Diplock sees a distinction between The Thingery and much of the recently monetized sharing economy, however, especially rental services. “The big line in the sand is, is accessibility and inclusivity a key part of the social purpose? Is that present in the business charter?”

  • January 24, 2020

What’s in a Name?

By Courtney White, Resilience.org

Words matter. Here’s what various dictionaries say about the word regenerate: to be formed or created again; to be renewed to a better, higher, or more worthy state; to be spiritually reborn; to generate or produce anew, especially after an injury; to restore to original strength or properties; to revive, reform, rekindle, rejuvenate, reconstruct, redeem, reawaken, or reanimate.

  • January 24, 2020

Can Reparations Help us to Re-envision International Development?

By Priya Lukka, Open Democracy

Reparations are important because they provide an alternative vision of what international development could be if these issues were properly taken into account. Although originally defined in terms of active amends to repair a wrong, debates around reparations have grown to include new ways of understanding contemporary problems.

  • January 23, 2020

Manifesto for the Future

By Sam J. Knights, Monkey Wrench

I do not look forward to the future like I used to. I do not sit and dream about the life I will lead or the things I will do. In fact, these days, I have to force myself to think about it. Dreaming is effort. Imagination is work. Hope is complicated.

  • January 23, 2020
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