Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Pro-WikiLeaks cyber army gains strength; thousands join DDoS attacks
– TIME: Why WikiLeaks Is Winning Its Info War
– VOA: WikiLeaks Following New Strategy in Document Release
– The 24-hour Athenian democracy (talking to “Anonymous” hackers)
– Twelve Theses on Wikileaks
Oil reached a two year high above $90/barrel this week before falling back on mixed economic news. A growing list of analysts including JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital are now forecasting prices above $100/barrel in 2011…
The UN Climate Conference (COP16) in Cancun is turning out to be both anti-climactic and anti-climatic. There will be no major agreement to stop global warming this week, despite the timed release of a number of reports that show that the phenomenon is advancing more rapidly than expected, with lethal consequences. There likely will be announcements of progress in schemes to allow contaminating industries and nations to continue with business as usual and add another lucrative area to their portfolios—trade in carbon offsets and credits. It’s a worst-case scenario for the planet.
The efficiency with which people and goods move into and within cities has a huge impact on both energy use and air quality. And the availability of non-driving modes of transportation can improve people’s lives in a lot of ways.
There is growing evidence that prices of staple foods, like maize, rice, and wheat will rise steadily due to increased population and income growth. And climate change adds more pressure to these already big challenges.
– A Case Study in Web Survivability
– Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net
– Massive Release of Raw WikiLeaks Files Threatened if Assange Harmed
– WikiLeaks avoids shutdown as supporters worldwide go on the offensive
– WikiLeaks, the web and the power of the people
– WikiLeaks a blueprint for things to come
– How to Think About Wikileaks
In the short to medium term, climate-driven food insecurity is likely to pull Pyongyang into increasing reliance on its nuclear weapons program as leverage to bargain for international largesse in the form of food, energy and fertiliser supplies. The increased importance of the nuclear bargaining chip in the context of climate change, in conjunction with the numerous other justifications for its nuclear proliferation (domestic politics, security, ideology), makes it even more unlikely that the regime will relinquish its nuclear weapons capability.
– Shell boasts it has infiltrated Nigerian government
– WikiLeaks climate change cables
– Wikileaks Reveals Hushed Concern Over Tar Sands Oil in US State Dept.
– Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solón Responds to Secret U.S. Manipulation of Climate Talks
– WikiLeaks: oil deal executive ‘was paid £46,000 a month’
As Urbanization Week continues, Liz Borkowski put up a great post about feeding cities that includes a nice, rational discussion of the idea of Vertical Farming. I’m glad to see the issue come up, because it has so much power. We have a strong taste for complex and expensive, especially when it looks cool – generally speaking, and in an era of cheap energy and economic stability, there’s at least an argument for doing the complicated fancy thing – first, you can, second, the results are more elegant than what you can generally get without complexity. But in a society with major economic constraints and facing the reality of less, rather than more available energy for consumption, complex and expensive becomes not only a bad idea, but infeasible.
“Most of the food people eat is processed,” says Left Coast Naturals president Ian Walker. This simple truth sums up what may be the biggest hurdle for our local food system in feeding the masses.
“The only preventive and the only remedy is for the people to choose one another, and their place, over the rewards offered them by outside investors.”
The yawning gap between the real world and the discipline and profession of economics has never been wider.
