Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kurt Cobb As the European Central Bank prepares to raise interest rates to prevent inflation, the bank cites rising commodity prices, particularly oil prices, as a sign of that inflation. What the bank and other market participants don’t seem to understand is that high commodity prices and, in particular, high oil prices are deflationary.
As I entered the Fred Flinstone structure that characterizes the convention center in Palm Springs, I was intensely curious about what kind of people would come to The Prophet’s Conference on 2012. It was odd enough that I was there. Such an expedition into the high dessert for a weekend of lectures by speakers dispensing insight into the Mayan prophecy required serious wu wu credentials.
I did have a journalist’s curiosity and, having reported mostly from the doomer’s corner concerning planetary demise, I thought there might be interesting parallels in the prophecy corner.
We need to evaluate the potential for a nuclear future in light of the disaster in Japan. This was not unpredictable, and should have been accounted for in any realistic assessment of nuclear potential. It cannot realistically be described as a black swan event.
Human behaviour can easily turn what should be a one in one hundred thousand reactor-year event in to something all too likely within a human lifespan. Nuclear power may allow us to cushion the coming decline in fossil fuel availability, but only at a potentially very high price. (Excerpts)
– Japanese Scramble to Avert Meltdowns as Nuclear Crisis Deepens After Quake
– Meltdowns Grow More Likely at the Fukushima Reactors
– US lawmakers say go slow on nuclear energy
– Japan nuclear fears as systems fail at second reactor
– Nuclear plant issues in Japan are the least of their worries
– Background
– More links at TOD
– Heinberg in Totnes: “The End of Growth” (video)
– What is “Gross National Happiness” ? (video)
– In China, to get rich is not always glorious
– What the Fight Against Measles Can Teach Environmentalists
– Lights go out in Seoul amid energy crunch
– Monbiot: UK must follow Spain down the road to lower speed limits
– Scrapping the fuel duty rise will hurt Britain economically
– “Repair-Ware” Household Gadgets Designed To Last Forever With Easy Fixability
– Maine Report Finds Solar Hot Water Would Save Mainers $, Oil
– Obama Confronts Oil-Policy Critics
– “We Want More Millionaires In America”: With Gas Prices Soaring, Lawmakers Call For President Obama To Stop Picking On Oil Industry
– Demanding Cheaper Oil is Disastrous
– Q & A with geologist Sally Odland
– Should West Help Oil States Kick the Oil Habit Too?
– The New American Pessimism
– Kunstler interview: The old American dream is a nightmare
– Krugman: Degrees and Dollars
– New poll shows independents warming to the role of government
-Japan battles to contain nuclear crisis after huge quake
– On the Brink of Meltdown: The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
– 2 Japanese plants struggling to cool radioactive material
– Spent nuclear fuel; more opportunity than threat
As a wave of anti-union bills are introduced across the country following the wake of Wall Street financial crisis, many analysts are picking up on the theory that award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein first argued in her 2007 bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, she reveals how those in power use times of crisis to push through undemocratic and extreme free market economic policies. “The Wisconsin protests are an incredible example of how to resist the shock doctrine,” Klein says.
It’s been nearly six months since BP Plc.’s runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the largest unintentional offshore spill on record, was finally deemed “effectively dead.” And those six months have brought almost as many books on the disaster. Cavnar’s book has a particular ring of authenticity, and I suspect that’s because he’s the only one of the above authors to have spent a career in the oil and gas drilling business.
That is a much bigger project even that conversion to small farms and agro-ecology. That requires that we care about other people enough to make changes and sacrifices, that we take the right to food seriously.
