Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Monbiot: Why is it so easy to save the banks – but so hard to save the biosphere?
– Will the right turn green?
– Economists Push for a Broader Range of Viewpoints in Their Field
– Book review: “Debt” by David Graeber of OWS
– Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married – A Record Low
In the 1970s, Howard T. Odum explained human economics using ecology and energy fundamentals. His work remains essential for ecologists, who imagine achieving “sustainability.”
Odum’s energy economics begins with an understanding that energy provides the foundation for all life processes, but that all energy is not equal. As energy is transformed through an ecosystem, quantity decreases as concentration increases.
What the recent MF Global bankruptcy–the eighth largest in U.S. history–tells us is that the world’s financial system may be moving headlong into a collision of incompetence with unscrupulousness.
– Senate Approves Short-Term Extension of Payroll Tax Cut, Gives Obama Two Months to OK Keystone XL Pipeline (new)
– NYT: As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks (this is a **big** deal)
– Climate Change May Modify Half Earth’s Plants
– In A Year Of Big Environmental Stories, COP17 Rises Above Them All
– Critical Issues in the Domain of Climate Dynamics (request for comments)
“We’re the ants patiently carrying sand a grain at a time from under the castle wall. We work from the bottom up. The knights up there don’t see the ants and don’t know what we’re doing. They’ll figure it out only when the wall begins to fall. It takes time and quiet persistence. Always remember this: They fight with money and we resist with time, and they’re going to run out of money before we run out of time”
(Discussion with “Peak Shrink” Kathy McMahon, “Ecological Footprint” originator Bill Rees and Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International.)
After years as an ardent advocate for “renewable”, “alternative” energy, I looked through another lens. I stepped back and looked at the whole process of making wind and solar devices.
It took several years to work through the mind change. I saw a show on the mining of copper on the History Channel’s Modern Miracles. I looked at other components of wind and solar – the getting of basic materials, the refining, the manufacture, the assembly, the installation and all the necessary transportation. I saw the environmental degradation. I finally I saw clearly that solar, biomass and wind devices were not “renewable” nor “alternative”. They are an extension of the fossil fuel supply and burning world along with the devastation to the environment of the land, river, underground water, ocean and air.
– Wukan, China: Revolt Begins Like Others, but Its End Is Less Certain
– The Struggle Emerges in Russia
– Occupy! Connect! Create!
– Occupy and the Tasks of Socialists
– Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas (methane)
– Lundberg to McKibben: Combatting the “jobs” argument for the XL pipeline
– Guardian on climate conference: sometimes inching forward looks like progress
– Thoughts on Bruce Sterling: It gets boring being a Cassandra (Bardi)
The big oil news this week was that OPEC came to an agreement – albeit a bit of a fudge– showing something of a recovery from June’s “worst meeting ever”. Last time around the group failed to agree new quotas and was upstaged two weeks later by the IEA releasing strategic reserves to offset loss of production from Libya.
It’s all too easy to feel that hope is lost. But with your help, we’re determined to make 2012 the year that resilience built.
2011 has been another turbulent year … looming behind it all — increasingly acknowledged, but still not often addressed — resource, environmental, economic, and social constraints.
For Post Carbon Institute, the question has not been, “What to do?” but rather, “What to do first?” There are so many challenges, all of them interrelated, and so many areas that need attention. Building on the wise counsel of our Fellows, Board, Advisers, Allies, and Supporters, PCI has developed three primary strategies:
On December 12, from the foyer of the Canadian House of Commons, you irrationally rationalized why it is a good idea for Canada to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol. I would like to congratulate you on your cheeky display of hyperbolic satire — there was so much cognitive dissonance and misleading rhetoric in your statement that it couldn’t possibly have been serious! I can’t wait for the day when you reveal that your government’s position is one big elaborate hoax designed to taunt the world into acting on climate change. I want to point out where your satire was effective but also give you a little bit of advice on how you could have made your statement even better.
– New Survey of 1,000 Young and Beginning Farmers Reveals What the Next Generation Needs
– Fruit trees coming to an Unley street near you
– Wes Jackson: Can we restore the prairie — and still support ourselves?
– Farm Bill Hackathon
