Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Jan Lundberg The latest mainstream media coverage on Climate Changegate might indicate at first glance that the scientific research might have been hopelessly compromised. Millions of people saw this widely syndicated headline: “UK University to probe integrity of climate data” (Associated Press, Dec. 3, London)
-America Without a Middle Class — It’s Not As Far Away As You Might Think
-Living without money
-The Deep Surface: A Note on Edward Abbey and Wendell Berry
Jared Diamond seems to have missed one of the central observations of his own _Collapse_ – that when societies actually avert collapse, the tend to do so with strong levels of prohibition and regulation. That is, Japan didn’t ask the gun manufacturers to self-regulate, they prohibited the use of guns entirely. The reason the Dominican Republic is so much better off than Haiti isn’t because people refined their logging practices, but because they restricted them.
-Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply
-Car culture: Some snapshots
-The story of cap and trade
-Available Now! The 2 Disc Special Edition of ‘In Transition 1.0′!
-Christmas insanity unwrapped
-Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’
-The Physics of Copenhagen
-Earth More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than Previously Thought
-Cap and Fade
-‘Climategate’ at centre stage as Copenhagen opens
The subject of food waste is not sexy. Anyone faced with the statistic that we waste 40% of our food in America is almost certainly appalled – for a second or two. But they also probably stop thinking about it just a tiny second later, probably after a moment of thinking “not us, though.” And yet, it almost certainly is us.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The natural gas bubble
-Climate change
-Briefs
It should be easy to deal with climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus supported by very sound data; consensus across much of the religious and political spectrum and among businesses including the largest corporations in the world. The vast majority of people claim to be concerned. The targets are challenging, but they are achievable with existing technologies, and there would be plentiful profits and employment available for those who took up the challenge.
So what might it look like when a local authority really gets Transition? Earlier this week I received a very excitable email from Cristiano Bottone, one of the movers behind Transition Italia, and the Transition of his own town, Monteveglio, near Bologna.
I’m looking forward to the rhubarb growing season; it happens when you least expect it, as tiny shoots start to emerge from the soil, embellished in the most delightful crinkles, and bursting with every shade of pink, red and green you could imagine. You can almost smell it stewing in the pan as its red shoots push upwards and outwards.
The language of revolution should be used as a last resort and against odds that can be beaten only with radical thought and action. It requires justification or, at the very least, explanation.
I do not question that emissions of greenhouse gasses affect our climate. But I have a different understanding than the UN’s climate panel, the IPCC, on the extent of emissions from coal and oil – and it is based on new scientific knowledge from Uppsala University. The future scenarios that the IPCC published in 2000 are not just improbable, they are also in several cases completely unrealistic.
