Year: 2012

Power to which people?

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After years of claiming that resources were plentiful and that human ingenuity would find a way to replace those that were becoming exhausted, the capitalist elites have changed their tune. The McKinsey report Resource Revolution, which has already been discussed on this blog, was a clue to the shift in focus away from finance and towards resources, and today’s ReSource conference in Oxford is part of the trend. The rich and powerful are lining up to ensure that they protect the unfair share of the earth’s resources that they enjoy. Now that the finance scam has fallen apart they are adopting more direct strategies.

America’s most famous farmer puts America over his knee

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It’s not only Sarah Palin who thinks that America is the world’s essential nation because Americans are exceptionally worthy. All too many of us Yanks continue to believe that we’re the smartest, hardest working and most self-reliant people on Earth. And that God or evolution or just history has rewarded us with superpower status and super riches because we deserve it. Well, if you believe any of that, Joel Salatin has come to give you a good spanking.

Apologies to Mexico: The Drug Trade and GNP (Gross National Pain)

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I apologize. There are so many things I could apologize for, from the way the U.S. biotech corporation Monsanto has contaminated your corn to the way Arizona and Alabama are persecuting your citizens, but right now I’d like to apologize for the drug war, the 10,000 waking nightmares that make the news and the rest that don’t.

Even Earthworms Are Bad Now

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I am having trouble with one of the latest scientific findings. Some researchers are saying that earthworms are bad for forests. The new data claims the worms, which are mostly non-native species, gobble up too much of the leaf litter, leaving the forest floor bare and compacted. Wildflowers like trillium and bloodroot and even maple seedlings disappear, according to these scientists.

Battening down the hatches

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It’s true that both sides confuse weather with climate, though the two are obviously linked. But none of this matters when key details relevant to how we live today alter how we experience storms in the era of accelerating of global warming.

The Drowning Pool

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Such is the importance of legitimacy: the basic condition for governance, especially among supposedly free people. You can meddle in a lot of distributory issues – who gets what – but when you mess with the most basic operations of money to the extent that no one is sure what it’s really worth, or what it represents, then you are deeply undermining society.

TED-Stravaganza

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My wife calls it spying. I call it data. To-may-to, To-mah-to. It’s true that I know what she’s been up to (electrically) while I’m away. And it’s true that I can access this information anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. But domestic surveillance is not my aim (cameras and microphones would be far more informative in that regard). I just care about the energy angle.

A New Era of Worker Ownership?

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The workers of the just-formed New Era Windows cooperative in Chicago—the same workers who sat in and forced Serious Energy to back down on a hasty shutdown of their Goose Island plant a few months ago, and famously occupied the same factory for six days in December 2008—are doing more than putting together a bold plan for worker ownership. They are likely to move the entire subject into national attention, thereby spurring others to follow on. Though they have a powerful start, if the past is any guide they will need all the help they can get—financial as well as political.