Featured

New Orleans’ Summer of Floods Revives the Threat of Privatization

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As climate change intensifies weather events like the rainstorms that keep hitting New Orleans, the burden on cities’ infrastructure gets heavier. At the same time, the backlog of deferred maintenance in most of the country has weakened these systems’ resilience. Most municipal governments are ill-equipped to handle the increasingly urgent overhauls, especially if they’ve just been hit with a major disaster. That opens a window for private companies — so-called “disaster capitalists” — to make their pitch.

False Methane Math

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Because of the difference in nature between methane and carbon dioxide we should cease expressing the climate effect of methane in carbon dioxide equivalents. This has important implications for policy as well as for the assessment of different strategies for minimizing the climate effect of production or lifestyles. Culling all cows may sound like a great proposition if we use the conventional metrics but is actually a rather futile effort to curb climate change. 

Monbiot: ‘We Need that New Political Narrative’

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Prompted by the sense that we are living through a moment of transition, George’s latest book, ‘Out Of The Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis’, attempts to sketch a way forward. Most important to this project, he argues, is a political ‘narrative’ that can gain traction as the new ‘common sense’, carrying within it our values and the society that we want live in. But the book is also full of practical proposals, from land value taxes and community land trusts, to democratic reforms and ‘Big Organizing’.

The Community Resilience Reader: Radio Ecoshock interview

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“Resilience” is a key word for a spectrum starting with collapseniks all the way to big city Mayors and regional planners. But what is it? Has anybody thought this through? Enter The Community Resilience Reader from the Post Carbon Institute. It’s billed as “Essential Resources for an Era of Upheaval”. We’ve certainly got the upheaval.

The Hopeful Work of Turning Appalachia’s Mountaintop Coal Mines Into Farms

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Southern West Virginia nonprofit Coalfield Development runs Refresh, Reclaim, and a family of three other social enterprises. In an environment where finding secure employment is hard, Coalfield offers low-income residents a two- to two-and-a-half-year contract to undergo training in sustainable construction, solar technology, and artisan-based entrepreneurship.

Basic Income’s Third Wave

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The drive toward a basic income isn’t new. It’s a 100-year-old movement that has gotten stronger each time inequality has returned to the public discussion. Support for unconditional basic income (UBI) has grown so rapidly over the past few years that some might think the idea appeared out of nowhere. In fact, activists have been floating the plan – and other forms of a basic income guarantee (BIG) – for over a century.

China Is Showing the World What Renewable Energy Dominance Looks Like, Says New IEA Report

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The Renewables 2017 report takes a deep dive into renewable energy deployment across all industries and throughout the world, but the dominance of solar PV stands out. As a whole, renewables represented nearly two-thirds of new electricity capacity additions last year, far outshining coal and natural gas growth. For the very first time, solar PV additions grew faster than any other resource, surpassing coal growth.

A Field Guide to Thoughtstoppers

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The question is why a species with the tolerably impressive intellectual capacities we’ve got has done such a bad job of applying those capacities in the face of civilization-ending threats. From this perspective, our problem can be phrased very precisely: the vast majority of people in today’s industrial world have never learned how to think.

The Secret Life of Cows: Review

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The charming and insightful manifesto recognises that cows, as well as other animals, have far more awareness and know-how than they are given credit for. At a time in which intensive, factory farming predominates and most cows are now recognised by an electronic number not a name, Rosamund’s insights are of even greater significance.

Smoke from California’s Raging Wildfires Spreads a Public Health Emergency across the Bay

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As you might have heard, those of us who live in the Bay Area are breathing air this week that rivals Beijing’s, thanks to the fires raging across Northern California. West Oakland deals with bad air quality all the time, so I reached out to some folks there seeking perspective.