Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
US Ecojustice People’s Movement Assembly We support the conclusion that only by “living well,” in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than “living better,” based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive.
-Exclusive: Was disregard for industry standards on BP rig worse than we thought?
-Deep Water Oil The Final Frontier
-Senate Panel Ends Liability Limits for Offshore Spills
-RBS tells clients to prepare for ‘monster’ money-printing by the Federal Reserve
-Peak Metals – What happens when we run out?
-A quiet crisis whispers of impending poverty
But here’s what I really want to say, as a psychologist, to all of you: Sociopaths lack something 95% of us have: They lack a conscience. They lack the capacity to feel empathy, to feel guilt, to feel bad about doing bad. When you lack Vitamin E(mpathy), you hate people who have it. You walk around with an expensive suit and you have a black card to pay for an expensive dinner, and you buy and sell people and marry the hottest mates around, but it’s all for nothing. You can’t attach to other people, even though you know it is something you should want to do.
The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published their quarterly Energy Trends document last week. It covers up to the first quarter 2010…It’s a familiar story: every year the UK’s primary energy production declines significantly. Today, primary energy production is almost half what it was at the peak just a decade ago. Has any other country, let alone major economy experienced such a speed and magnitude shift in its energy system outside wartime?
I wonder if a book titled A Guide To Insane Farming would sell, especially when, upon opening the book, the reader would encounter descriptions of how farming is actually done today. But what I’m talking about at the moment are ideas that really are off the grid, outside the box, beyond normalcy, agronomic lunacy.
This weekend in the Washington Post, there’s an article about a couple who first met while serving in various capacities during WWII, who just celebrated their marriage in DC this weekend after a “62 year engagement.” This would be a romantic story in any context – but it isn’t a story of parted lovers who finally found each other again after decades apart. Instead, it is of two men who have lived a life almost wholly together, sharing work, family and community, but who lacked legal and social recognition.
At last report BP was making progress on the relief wells that are being drilled to plug the runaway well in the Gulf. The London Times reports that BP hopes to penetrate the casing of the leaking well and start pumping in well-sealing mud in about two weeks. Let’s hope something works.
Symbols matter. When Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House in 1979, they weren’t today’s efficient electricity-generating PV panels (they produced only hot water) and the goal wasn’t to make 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue energy-independent. Nevertheless, during a historical period remembered for oil shocks and gas lines, this was a way of sending the message that changes were needed in America’s energy habits and that the President was ready to lead by example.
Nation-states are critical pawns in the power games and economic predation of our modern world. Without them, people and resources would be much more difficult to control and exploit…. In a genuinely convivial and localized world, nation-states and their megacities will, one can only hope, wither on the vine.
From the Enron debacle to the BP catastrophe, the principal architects of our society have abused the trust they enjoy because of their specialized knowledge. It’s time, on the world stage, for the emergence of ‘omni-competent citizens’
The race is on: can we extract the last remnants of Western oil from such unlikely places as the ocean floor before the global economy picks up enough to test out the hypothesis that supplies have already peaked?
