A little hope on climate change
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Looking for a little hope on climate change? Believe it or not, it’s here and it’s real. And I'm not referring to the fact that, at least temporarily, oil prices have gone through the floor, making environmentally destructive “tough oil” projects look ever less profitable.
Ending the world the human way: Climate change as the anti-news
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Here’s the scoop: When it comes to climate change, there is no “story,” not in the normal news sense anyway.
Graduating the Class of 2012
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Class of 2012, greetings! It's a deceptively glorious day, even under this tent in the broiling heat of an August-style afternoon in mid-June on this northeastern campus. And yes, let's admit it, the heat, the sun, the clearness of the azure blue sky stretching without a cloud to the horizon, the sense of summer descending with a passion, it's not quite as reassuring as it might once have been, is it? I suspect that few of you, readying yourselves to leave this campus, many mortgaged to your eyeballs (some for life no matter what you do), and heading into a country on edge, imagine personal clear skies to the horizon.
The four occupations of planet earth
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
This "we" is something that hasn't been seen on this planet for a long time, and perhaps never quite so globally. And here's what should take your breath away, and that of the other 1%, too: "We" were never supposed to exist. Everyone, even we, counted us out.
Wall Street by the book
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Once upon a time, no one imagined that an American world of home ownership and good jobs, of cheap gas and cheaper steaks, would ever end. Nonetheless, it was kneecapped over the last few decades and it’s not coming back. Not for you or your children, no matter what happens economically. So don't kid yourself: whether you know it or not, young as you are, you're in mourning, too, or Occupy Wall Street wouldn't exist. Unlike the Tea Party, however, you are young, which means that you're also a movement of the unknown future, which is your strength.
Eating fossil fuels for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
If you didn’t know better, you might think the planet was simply piling on to make a point. The extreme weather events of the last year have proven little short of biblical.
China as Number One? Don’t bet your bottom dollar
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
What confidence should we now have in projections about China that assume more of the same? The ruling Communist Party threw the dice definitively for state capitalism and untrammeled growth decades ago and now sits atop a potential volcano. Only one thing may keep the present system safely in place: ever more growth. The minute China’s economy falters, the minute some bubble bursts, whether through an overheating economy or for other reasons, the country’s rulers have a problem on their hands that could potentially make the Arab Spring look mild by comparison.
Call the Politburo, we’re in trouble
By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
The most distinctive feature of the last years of the Soviet Union may have been the way it continued to pour money into its military -- and its military adventure in Afghanistan -- when it was already going bankrupt and the society it had built was beginning to collapse around it. Successive American administrations have blindly headed down the very path that had led the Soviets to ruin.