Vandana Shiva

Climate justice requires a new paradigm

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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.

the fire stealers – a love story

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The fact is our rulers, gods or government, corporate CEOs, the 1%, however you like to look at it, want to keep the fire for themselves. They like to govern over the people, but they do not like the people. They do not like you. Some part of you doesn’t like you either. That’s the hard part. Psychologists and mystics can chip away at that part for years, and yet the only thing that transforms us is doing the one thing it is terrified of: connecting with the heart.

Sanctuary

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At first there was nothing spectacular about this rejuvenating forest, but then Brad and Berny Billock (my brother-in-law and sister) bought the property, cleaned out much of the underbrush that had crept in and encouraged seedling black walnuts to spread out from a couple of hundred year old bearing trees. The Billocks reintroduced sheep but on a careful, rotational schedule. Then the flowers ran rampant through the grove.

Take our children, please!: A modest proposal for Occupy Wall Street

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Inspired in turn by Swift, I want to suggest that we put in motion a similar undertaking: on January 16th, Martin Luther King Day, citizens from around the country should gather at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Let’s call this macabre gathering — with luck and even worse times, it should be mammoth — “We Surrender” or “Restore Debtor’s Prisons” or “De-Fault Is Ours” or “Collateralize Us.” And plan on a mirthful day of mourning.

Death of Sprawl: Past and Future

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Seems like my chapter “The Death of Sprawl” from The Post Carbon Reader is taking on a life of its own. Friday, Christopher Leinberger had an Op-ed in the New York Times, titled “Death of the Fringe Suburb,” which restated concepts I had published (and sent Leinberger last year) namely, that the US mortgage crisis and recession were set off by upsidedown economics of sprawl speculation in US exurbs or “Boomburbs” and we can’t ever do that again.

Pepperspraying the future

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What do a whiff of pepper spray rising from a suburban big box store, a breathtakingly absurd comment by an American politician, and a breathtakingly cynical statement from a Canadian minister have in common? Arguably, an attitude that helps to explain why the political, economic, and cultural institutions of today’s industrial societies are committed to doing anything and everything in response to the crisis of our time, except the options that would actually help. With a little help from history, the Archdruid explains.

No miracles in science: The story of the “energy catalyzer”

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A few weeks ago some readers asked me to comment on an invention devised by two Italians, Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi. We are talking about the device known as “E-Cat” (Energy Catalyzer) which is supposed to produce energy from nickel, water and an unrevealed catalyzer…if the device were really to produce a significant amount of energy from a low temperature nuclear reaction, we would be facing an energy revolution; all the troubles with Peak Oil will be over and even we will have at hand a magnificent economic stimulus. There is only one problem: the E-Cat cannot be what it is claimed to be. Apart from contradicting all known physics developed up to now, the promoters have never been able to demonstrate that nuclear reactions take place inside the device, and not even that it can produce useful energy.

MPG of a human

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On Do the Math, three previous posts have focused on transportation efficiency of gasoline cars, electric cars, and on the practicalities of solar-powered cars. What about personal-powered transport—namely, walking and biking? After stuffing myself over Thanksgiving, I am curious to know how potent human fuel can be. How many miles per gallon do we get as our own engines of transportation?

When oil disruptions lead to crises: Learning from the Arab oil embargoes 1967 and 1973-74

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What is oil dependence and how can it lead to energy crises? What lessons can be learned from history to tackle new energy crisis? And why do some oil disruptions lead to crisis while other do not? This article looks at the Arab Oil Embargo of 1967 and the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-74 and examines why the Arab oil embargo against the US in 1967 did not lead to a crisis while the Arab oil embargo against the US in 1973-74 did.

The peak oil crisis: the IEA’s road show

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Every November following the publication of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, the leadership of the Agency travels to major capitols in an effort to explain to the world’s leaders the conclusions of the new publication. Parts of this year’s briefings contain not-so-subtle hints as to what sort of energy policies the world’s leaders might like to follow if they want to avoid killing off all life on earth a century or so from now. Earlier this week the travelers stopped in Washington, where sandwiched between visits to various dignitaries they briefed an assemblage of some 200 journalists. Here is my report.