Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Carolyn Baker Faith Carr, after working hunched over a desk for 35 years, ended up disabled. Exhausted after even more years of progressive political activism with no success, she turned her hand to her own backyard. The 25 square-foot herb garden turned into a homestead. Come the revolution, she’ll bring the eats.
-Conoco, Total to expand oil sands project
-Shell faces shareholder revolt over Canadian tar sands project
-Alberta to study pace of oil sands growth
-UN climate chief admits mistake on Himalayan glaciers warning
-The New Storm Brewing On the Climate Front
-U.N. Panel’s Glacier Warning Is Criticized as Exaggerated
-“Glacier gate” – how the Murdoch press have got it wrong on the Himalayan big melt
-Hanging EPA regulations around Democrats’ necks
-Murkowski to call on Congress to block federal greenhouse gas regulation
-Emissions targets set for delay
-UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets
This essay brings a different perspective to the question of whether oil caused the financial crash of 2008.
Many scientists have long complained that standard economics fails to account for the biological and physical systems that form the basis of the economy. In short, the economy is a subset of the environment and governed by the same biological and physical laws as every other system on the planet.
Due to our refusal to live within the Earth’s natural limits, we now face a multitude of problems that will have a severe negative impact on human civilization. Orr, an expert on environmental literacy and ecological design, further argues that political negligence, an economy driven by insatiable consumption and a disregard for future generations are only adding to our plethora of environmental challenges.
During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood. Wood gas cars (also known as producer gas cars) are a not-so-elegant but surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol (gasoline) cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars.
-Voodoo wasps that could save the world
-Groups ask U.S. to regulate shipping of commercial bumblebees
-The cricket that pollinates plants
-Bee decline linked to falling biodiversity
-The Vexing Bugs in the Global Trading System
-Obama’s year in power: Healthcare was tough, but the future is tougher
-A Year Later, Voters Send a Different Message
-A Very American Coup
For Queen Elizabeth, 1992, the year Windsor Palace caught on fire and several of her kids separated, was an annus horribilis, for the rest of us the coming year may well turn out to be horrible too. While our leaders and the media continue to tell us that we have turned an economic corner and that all will be well soon, the underlying data, for those willing to look, tell a far different story.
As the disaster in Haiti moves into its “Katrina” phase of organizational chaos, relief effort failure, and public health calamity, the world will get another lesson in the dangers of techno-triumphalist posturing. American authority pretends to be in flawless control of a situation that by the minute crumbles into anarchy and death as the generals strut their stuff and the CNN crews broadcast yet another feel-good segment about adopted orphans. At this point, one rainstorm is all it will take to kill what is left of the Haitian social order.
The “Don’t Fear the 2010s” article written by Nick Gillespie of the Wall Street Journal featured a section on Peak Oil and, after reading it, I found myself uttering the famous words of Homer Simpson: “Doh.” The article claims that “something always gets in the way” of peak oil, and since no clear peak has occured globally, Peak Oil is and will remain unimportant.
