Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff -The Global Economy: It’s All About Increasing Leverage
-China exports yet more excess capacity to crippled West
-Rio+20: Tim Jackson on how fear led world leaders to betray green economy
-The Future /Who/ Wants (or needs)?
-Libor was a criminal conspiracy from the start
– Norway: A Political Risk Lesson For Oil (oil workers strike, prices rise)
– Are Natural Gas Liquids as Good as Oil?
– „Das ganze Land in Gebrauch nehmen“ – Norway plans to drill in the Arctic
Warning! This article will make you smarter. You’re best to guard your ignorance as a powerful political and economic tool, particularly during these current times of financial crisis.
-Report: Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Was Man-Made
-Japan’s Unsatisfying Nuclear Report
-Reactor restarts, but Japan’s energy policy in flux
-Shadowlands – photographs & stories from Fukushima
-The ‘Monsanto Rider’: Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?
-Revolutionary Plots
-Grow your own: making Australian cities more food-secure
-What’s Cooking? the UK’s potential food crisis
-Can food save the high street? (audio)
– Very Local Food at “Frau Gerolds Garten” in Zürich
In Extraenvironmentalist #44 we discuss the archeology of innovation with Sander van der Leeuw to learn how our complex societies have shifted short-term risks to long-term risks through the application of technologies.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Economic growth
-The Iranian confrontation
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Public space is a literal commons: the common ground where people come together as friends, neighbors and citizens. Places we share together—parks, streets, sidewalks, squares, trails, markets, waterfronts, beaches, museums, community gardens, public buildings and more—are the primary sites for human exchange, upon which our communities, economy, democracy and society depend.
As many have argued, modern macroeconomics has proved itself spectacularly unsuited to anticipate and understand the crisis. This is no wonder, considering that the majority of models – including the macroeconometric models of the main central banks – treat money in an unrealistic textbook way and don’t even consider the existence of private banks, which, instead, are the major players in the process of creation and allocation of credit in the economy, as nef’s recent “Where does money come from?” brilliantly explains.
After Copenhagen it was by no means obvious that simply calling upon governments to act would achieve very much. Yet the situation is urgent – so what do we do? The aim of this chapter is to look at options for getting from where we are now to adequate climate mitigation. It starts by looking at all the obstacles to getting things done – but this is not so that we get discouraged and give up. It is so that we are realistic and can find our way around the obstacles.
First, to be a hope-monger or a hope-peddler today is not just a sign of weakness but also of laziness, and sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. Don’t forget that, as good Christians, we try to avoid those.
Second, our world is not broken, it is dead. We are alive, if we choose to be, but the hierarchical systems of exploitation that structure the world in which we live — patriarchy, capitalism, nationalism, white supremacy, and the industrial model — all are dead.
It would be more just to Canute if the term “Canutist State” referred to a wise government that constrained the ignorant attempts of its businessmen and economists to grow forever. With apologies to the wise King, I will perpetuate this injustice because the image of a stupid government serving business interests by trying to countermand nature’s laws is such an apt description of what is happening today that we need a name for it.
