Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This afternoon I sit near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, reveling in the brilliant sunshine which pierces the dry, nippy air, knowing that in less than three hours, it will be dark. I count the hours until the shortest day and the longest night of the year signal that magnificent turning point of light and time when the days slowly become longer and the nights shorter.
By now, you’ve likely heard conflicting reports on what was or was not accomplished in Copenhagen these past two weeks. Whatever you’ve been told, I can tell you with conviction you need only know this: The U.N. convention on climate change in Copenhagen resulted in zero meaningful progress on global emissions reductions. Feel free to read the spin, but please, don’t get caught up in its spokes.
A few years ago, when the Local Agenda-21 group for Copenhagen (Agenda 21 was the name of the sustainable development plan the UN launched at the Earth Summit in Rio) started to look at what kind of changes might be needed to place the city on a more sustainable path through the challenges of the coming century, they requested a guided tour of Christiania.
So Copenhagen has been and gone, with no meaningful agreement being reached, and now the politicians and lobbyists have headed home having failed to do anything meaningful to address this staggeringly pressing challenge. Hugo Chavez came up with the quote of the fortnight when he observed “if the climate was a bank, they would already have saved it”.
Although one yearns for global warming to indeed not exceed 2 degrees Celsius (or less, as African countries demand), the take-home message from the Copenhagen COP meeting is that polluters and growth mongers, large and small, will not let up.
-Copenhagen: a look back at the most striking narratives
-If you want to know who’s to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate
-There is a way ahead after Copenhagen
-Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms
-All over the map: Rounding up editorial reax to Copenhagen
-No One Is Going To Save You Fools
-Copenhagen – Historic failure that will live in infamy
-Terminator 2009
-A Climate Con: Analysis of the Copenhagen “Accord”
The economic troubles and energy concerns of the present invite comparison with the 1970s, the last time industrial civilization had to deal with the limits to growth. The abandonment of the initiatives of those years offers a troubling cautionary tale for the present, in this second part of a three-part series.
-Unplugging from the world’s power lines
-How Effective Are Renewables, Really?
-Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea
-Fairness, Personal Action and Al Gore’s House
-Do Panels Dispense Advice or Rationales?
-Unschooling & Unworking: Confessions of a stay-at-home family (Part 2)
-COP15: Climate ‘scepticism’ and questions about sex
-Can Obama Stop America’s Gas-Guzzling Ways?
As many have now written, the Cop15 conference, which is focussed on creating a treaty that will prevent our climate from undergoing a systems state change and re-establishing itself in a new stable state that much less conductive to human survival, seems certain to fall far short of what is needed or fail completely.
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages
-Sinking Feelings About Storing Carbon Emissions on the Farm
-California’s Troubled Waters
-L.A. cooperative provides communities with produce
-Farmers Reclaim Power!
-Free lunches handed out to highlight food waste
-Setting the Table (report)
