ASPO-USA conference, last day
Summaries of talks by Art Berman, Rick Munroe, Tad Paczek, Ken Zweibel, Ralph Nader, Anthony Perl, Dr. Charles Schlumberger, Sharon Astyk and Brian Czech.
Dave Summers (“Heading Out”)
Riding the rails
Political debates and party platforms rarely talk about public transportation, but it’s one of the most basic and important things governments can do to make life better, both in the USA and in any country where officials are cutting back such services.
The end of the experiment
If I want something, I won’t forbid it. I’ll just do it eyes wide open. Food and judgment don’t mix—they turn the stomach. I will be kind to myself and others as we stumble towards an ethical relationship with food.
Oil-producing countries – Oct 13
– Basra in southern Iraq has been transformed – thanks to oil
– Iraq has the oil stores, but does it have the know-how?
– Behind the coup in Ecuador
– Ecuador’s economy under Correa: 21st century socialism or the New-Extractivism? (Alberto Acosta interview)
Our Commons future is already here
It is time to fuse the analysis and hard work of the environmental community with the vision and commitment of the justice community, into a whole new form of governance that not only challenges the current model of unlimited growth and economic globalization but promotes an alternative that will allow us and the Earth to survive. It means the recovery of an old concept called the Commons.
Our math is not nature’s math
We built our house on the edge of a woodlot thirty some years ago. Now the trees have reached out and enveloped us. They shade us in summer, protect us from wind in winter, and try to kill us by falling in all seasons.
Food & agriculture – Oct 13
– What a Scientist Didn’t Tell the New York Times About His Study on Bee Deaths
– What Monsanto’s fall from grace reveals about the GMO seed industry
– Russia backs away from plans to break up the unique Pavlovsk seed bank
Inconvenient truths – Oct 13
– After peak oil, peak steel?
– How air-conditioning is baking our world
– Planes Don’t Kill People – Plane Exhaust Does
– Western Lifestyles Plundering Tropics at Record Rate, WWF Report Shows
Health: Human health and well-being in an era of energy scarcity and climate change
In the past hundred years, we have created lifestyles, communities, food systems, water systems, transportation systems, and health systems that are entirely reliant on cheap and plentiful oil and that assume a favorable and stable climate.
The iFinger
Apple today announced record sales of the recently released iFinger implants. Although smaller than the iBellyTop and the iForearm, the iFinger continues the concept of a wafer-thin chip-screen embedded in the human body, available around the clock and at any location for viewing Internet, videos, and music. Apple proclaimed, “The iFinger technology will change life as we know it across the planet forever in every way possible.”
Values and propaganda
By all means understand and utilise all the power inherent in your messaging, but be explicit about the values you are trying to promote, and explain why.
From Suzuki to revolution: my road to the barricades
In 1989, while attending a rally to save an old-growth forest from the corporate saw, I heard David Suzuki thunderously denounce the world’s economists for their stupidity. He accused them of encouraging economic growth while ignoring ecological limits, thus causing irreversible damage to the environment. I soon put my career on hold, returned to university, and began to study this apparently destructive discipline. My journey to the revolutionary barricades had begun.
