Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Staff – Bill Clinton joins Obama to champion Washington energy saving strategy
– Obama’s Push for Better Mileage: This Is a Big Deal (Thomas Friedman)
– Report highlights Obama’s broken environmental promises
– Hans Noeldner: Spending the Middle Class out of existence
– Rotating blackouts possible in Texas this winter
Old school letterpress printers Hatch Show Print of Nashville, Tennessee have been in continuous business since 1879. They do everything by hand from carving plates to setting type to inking and then hand cranking their print rollers. Their business model offers an excellent example of the kinds of jobs of the future communities need in addition that go beyond food production and farming.
The primary contributor to the US becoming a net exporter of refined products and the primary contributor to the decline in US net oil imports is declining consumption in the US, as the US and many other developed countries have been forced, post-2005, to take a declining share of a falling volume of Global Net Exports (GNE), which are calculated in terms of Total Petroleum Liquids.
The WSJ reporters are taking a symptom of Peak Exports, i.e., declining US oil consumption, and presenting it as a positive story.
– Nature Bombshell: Climate Experts Warn Thawing Permafrost Could Cause 2.5 Times the Warming of Deforestation
– An Arctic Wildcard Could Make the Climate Go Bust
– Changing climate of Republican opinion doesn’t agree with Tea Party
– Climate change: 2011 temperatures the hottest ever during La Nina
– Chris Nelder: Why energy journalism is so bad (good article!)
– The myth of renewable energy
– Renewable Power Trumps Fossils for First Time as UN Talks Stall
– Fukushima and the inevitability of accidents
– 2012=1968? (good article)
– Organizing Principles for 99 Percent Clubs
– Arundhati Roy: ‘The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution’
– NYT: Camps Are Cleared, but ‘99 Percent’ Still Occupies the Lexicon
– Why Naomi Wolf got it wrong
– Millions of British Public Sector Workers Take to the Streets in Historic General Strike
– Lessons from Egypt: Occupy the Democratic Party
– Student Protests Spread Throughout Latin America
Evidence that the oil price is killing the economy came by the tanker-load this week. The FT reported that the cost of oil imports to the EU has increased from $280bn in 2010 to $402bn this year. Meanwhile the newly created Office of Budget Responsibility for the UK named oil prices as a key factor in a drastic downward revision of its economic and fiscal outlook released this week…
Tested in lion country in the African bush, Allan Savory is still in the top 11 for the $25 million dollar Virgin Earth Challenge to find a harmless way to remove carbon from the atmosphere. In Vermont, carbon farmer Abe Collins follows that lead. Then we hear how to create a functioning local food system – even in hard times. North Carolina county organizer Aaron Newton was recorded at ASPO 2011 in D.C. All this new agriculture can function in a super-low oil economy – but can we handle change?
Unfortunately, ecological literacy is not nurtured in most schools. At the same time, many science courses are taught in ways that turn too many students off to science.
Twenty Years ago, at the Earth Summit, the world’s Governments signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to create a legally binding framework to address the challenge of climate change.
Today, the Green House Gas emissions that contribute to climate change have increased not reduced.
The Climate Treaty is weaker not stronger.
The failure to reduce green house gases is linked to following the flawed route of carbon trading and emissions trading as the main objective of the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Convention.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
