Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Supriya Kumar Global warming has likely already caused changes in the world’s climate by delaying monsoon seasons, causing less summer precipitation and creating longer breaks between rainy periods. One group of women in southern India is turning to traditional farming practices for immediate and sustainable answers to address these water problems.
-Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers
-Wastewater Recycling No Cure-All in Gas Process
-Politics Seen to Limit E.P.A. as It Sets Rules for Natural Gas
Resiliency demands something quite different than specialization and diligent professionalism. Resiliency calls for an equally amazing and profound rise in competence on the part of citizens, consumers, eccentrics, dissenters, minorities…
You learn extraordinary things living among the poor. The first thing you learn [from people] in poverty is that there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot if you want to survive.
Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings, and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed.
Radio and television host and author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Thom Hartmann talks about ways we can all help combat global warming. Speaking from the grounds of Wisconsin’s 2010 Fight Bob Fest, Hartmann insists that Americans need to change the way we live if we are going to save the planet, and the first step has to be getting active in the political process.
Despite the “Lockerbie” attack on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 it seems as though the required help arrived since production increased to around 1.4 Mb/d during the 1990s. Despite this increase, there was still the possibility of further expansion but that would require the advanced technologies possessed by the international oil companies and could not occur in secret. The September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 opened doors for Gaddafi and he played his cards well.
What we see is fairly simple – and incredibly complicated. The intertwining of markets, of energy and food, tied by biofuel production and national policies, and the fact that we are not in control of either one. And that when food and energy prices spike, the world is transformed.
To people who follow the energy industry closely, it’s a common occurrence to come across announcements from companies proclaiming to have developed the key to the ‘next big thing’ — for solving the world’s energy crisis. Maybe they say they can take any sort of waste biomass and turn it into fuel — ethanol, diesel, pyrolysis oil, mixed alcohols — at very low cost. Or they say they can produce renewable electricity at a price competitive with coal.
The layperson reads the news release and is curious: “Is this real?”
I think RR alfalfa is a big mistake for another reason. Weeds are rarely a problem in alfalfa cut for hay, so who needs the stuff. Alfalfa seed is expensive enough as it is. If biotech alfalfa seed goes up horrendously in price like biotech seed corn has, who would want to buy it?
It was heartbreaking to be at Camden Council last night. Because of the government-imposed cuts libraries, playgroups, breakfast clubs and after school care are being swept away in a borough that has always prided itself on its public services, especially for the young. Protests outside the council turned into chaotic and ugly scenes and the police prevented demonstrators entering the building on public order grounds. A few made it in and loudly berated councillors for cutting services. Council had to be adjourned at one point.
Half hidden among the roar of recent news, a pair of stories point toward the uncomfortable reality that the current economic order is coming apart around us. As that process accelerates, pragmatic steps to cut costs and save energy — such as this week’s example, insulated window coverings — will take on an unexpected importance.
