Year: 2011

Lock on – notes towards an article on activism and transition

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For a long time we have been able to be the audience to history, to live our lives theoretically. We can watch everything on our screens, at arm’s length. But now history is coming into our streets and into our lives and we need to know how to act, or support those who act on our behalf. If we cheer for those bold protesters in Tahrir Square, in Wisconsin, for the thousands of campaign groups that Paul Hawken wrote about in Blessed Unrest, we need also to cheer for those who occupy Fortnum and Masons and the Royal Bank of Scotland, who protest against the corporations who threaten those fragile eco-systems on which we depend.

In the world, at the limits to growth

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A battered and highly unstable world economy is probably at the peak of global energy and food production, and declines may be imminent. Yet our tightly interconnected and globalised civilisation, and the economy that maintain it require increasing such production to remain functional. As a result, Ireland is unlikely ever to come out of recession, and the world is not in the middle of a financial crisis but at the edge of a civilisational one.

We urgently need to re-assess where we are, the assumptions that underpin our interpretations of the world, what is likely to happen, and how we might move forward.

Cancer now leading cause of death in China

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Cancer is now the leading cause of death in China. Chinese Ministry of Health data implicate cancer in close to a quarter of all deaths countrywide. As is common with many countries as they industrialize, the usual plagues of poverty–infectious diseases and high infant mortality–have given way to diseases more often associated with affluence, such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

Transition’s life as a straw man

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I am currently reading Carl Sagan’s excellent book “The Demon-haunted World: science as a candle in the dark”, which I picked up for a song in a second hand bookshop when I was last in London. Here he sets out what not to do when trying to assess the validity of an argument, and common ways that people make flawed arguments. One of those is creating a straw man, which he defines as “caricaturing a position to make it easier to attack”. Having spent Monday morning debating on ABC Radio in Australia with someone who has done just this, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on being a straw man.

Economics – May 26

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– What’s Driving Projected Debt?
– Krugman: When Austerity Fails
– Monbiot: Cameron’s ‘green growth’ policy looks naive today. It will look cynical in 2027
– Pricing Carbon to Reduce Emissions, Create Dividends
– A legacy fund could secure the future of New Foundland and Labrador

UK Government to work with business on plans to tackle peak oil threat

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Business leaders today welcomed a commitment by the Government to work with the private sector on contingency plans to protect the UK and its economy from the growing risk of rising oil prices. It follows a meeting between Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES). During the meeting, the Secretary of State agreed that the Department for Energy and Climate Change and ITPOES should work more closely together on peak-oil threat assessment and contingency planning.

How defining planetary boundaries can transform our approach to growth

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Our planet’s ability to provide an accommodating environment for humanity is being challenged by our own activities. The environment—our life-support system—is changing rapidly from the stable Holocene state of the last 12,000 years, during which we developed agriculture, villages, cities, and contemporary civilizations, to an unknown future state of significantly different conditions. One way to address this challenge is to determine “safe boundaries” based on fundamental characteristics of our planet and to operate within them.