Jason Heppenstall

Healthcare for all in the U.S?

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The most bang for our healthcare buck occurs in providing improvements in socioeconomic factors–preventive, systemic changes that result in improved quality of life. Those changes have occurred naturally over the past two centuries as a function of fossil fuel related improvements in public health and complexity.

Yet most of our current healthcare interventions occur at the top of the pyramid above, in costly, high-tech clinical interventions. If fossil fuels are constrained in the system, then both the top and the bottom of the healthcare hierarchy become disordered, requiring change. Healthcare is one of the last bubbles in the US economy. We need new goals and a new healthcare system that is focused on justice and the good of the whole, rather than profits and personal freedom.

The influence of Donella Meadows and the Limits to Growth

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“There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.”

This cornucopian quote sounds like something a Disney character would say, but it’s actually chiseled in stone on a monument in the heart of Washington, DC. These are the words of Ronald Reagan, and they have a permanent home in the atrium of the government building that bears his name. These words also seem to have a permanent home in the economic strategy of the U.S. and just about every other nation.

“The first question should always be “how are we going to work together?” rather than “what are we going to do?”

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“We’re on a mission here now with this group. We all are co-ordinated and there’s something powerful about having fifteen people completely dedicated to the degree where we all know we’re going to do absolutely what it takes to make this happen in our community”.

A new energy third world in North America?

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The “curse” of oil wealth is a well-known phenomenon in Third World petro-states where millions of lives are wasted in poverty and the environment is ravaged, while tiny elites rake in the energy dollars and corruption rules the land. Recently, North America has been repeatedly hailed as the planet’s twenty-first-century “new Saudi Arabia” for “tough energy” — deep-sea oil, Canadian tar sands, and fracked oil and natural gas. But here’s a question no one considers: Will the oil curse become as familiar on this continent in the wake of a new American energy rush as it is in Africa and elsewhere? Will North America, that is, become not just the next boom continent for energy bonanzas, but a new energy Third World?

Commodification: the essence of our time

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The dominant process underlying the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the mid-nineteenth century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or commodification. In advanced capitalist countries this process is now outstripping our political and social capacity to adjust to it. Any useful economic analysis needs to foreground this process. Mainstream economics does not do this.

The nitrogen cycle and health

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Nitrogen is necessary for life on earth to continue and the nitrogen cycle is one of the most important nutrient cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. Everything that lives needs nitrogen; it is required for the manufacture of complex molecules such as chlorophyll, proteins and DNA, and also for the production of enzymes necessary for growth, reproduction and other vital functions. However, when present in excess, nitrogen poses risks both to the environment and human health.

Commentary: DOE Responds to ASPO-USA – Too Little, Too Late … or a Good First Step?

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In October 2011, ASPO-USA conducted a news conference in front of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) headquarters in Washington D.C. to express deep concerns about the reliability of projections for future oil and gas supplies by DOE and the Energy Information Administration. Representatives of ASPO-USA presented a letter to DOE Secretary Steven Chu which outlines these concerns and asks for answers to seven specific questions. The letter also urges DOE to initiate and lead the development of a National Oil Emergency Response Plan. A staff member from the Office of the Secretary was on hand to receive the letter. This month DOE sent their response – printed below.

My ‘Gasland’ ‘Tis of Thee

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It is one thing to read about the fight over the environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing or fracking that are associated with natural gas drilling in deep shale formations. It’s quite another to see that fight captured on film. The documentary film Gasland provides a compelling, if one-sided, portrait of the devastation visited on the lives of those who live closest to the drilling.