Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Matt Mushalik Grandiose statements about the “Asian Century” are now being followed by warnings that the days of rivers of gold from China are over. Economic growth needs growing quantities of oil. Where will it come from? Not from South East Asia which peaked in 2000 as will be shown in this article.
Occupy is now a year old. A year is an almost ridiculous measure of time for much of what matters: at one year old, Georgia O’Keeffe was not a great painter, and Bessie Smith wasn’t much of a singer. One year into the Civil Rights Movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was still in progress, catalyzed by the unknown secretary of the local NAACP chapter and a preacher from Atlanta — by, that is, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Occupy, our bouncing baby, was born with such struggle and joy a year ago, and here we are, 12 long months later.
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.
A weekly review including:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-The Middle East
-The Oil Market Report
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless…Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects.
September 17 (S17) is of course the one-year anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, a reclaiming of public space that galvanized the political imagination of the country and the world with its proclaimed opposition between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, its prefigurative emphasis on horizontality and mutual aid, and its linking of grievances from climate change to Stop and Frisk to predatory debt. All summer, OWS organizers have poured their energy into preparing for a three-day convergence of “education, celebration and resistance” to mark the anniversary…
The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
The challenge today is to learn how to identify the need for and to accept help with emotional problems quickly, and to recognize that not doing so could mean taking an economic as well as psychological hit.
The Earth Orbital Outpost is pleased to report to Galactic Command that the eradication of the intelligent beings (“humans”) inhabiting the planet known as “Earth” is proceeding according to plans. The rapid warming of the planet obtained obtained by the injection of large amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is expected to wipe out most large vertebrates within 40-50 planetary revolutions around the parent star. The planet will be ready for colonization by our species in a few thousand years; when the ecosystem will have been restored. [inspired by a story by Isaac Asimov]
In the old days, that is before 2010, the oil industry used to regale the public with tales of plenty that revolved around what is commonly called "conventional oil." Then in its 2010 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency announced that the peak in the rate of production of conventional oil had already arrived, probably in 2006. The agency projected that production of so-called "unconventional oil" would grow considerably over the coming decades and allow total oil production to rise. But, new unconventional oil production may not be able to make up for the decline in the rate of conventional oil production. And, rate is the key metric.
Both Solar Bob and Doc agree that trying to get charcoal-burning cultures like Haiti to give up making and burning charcoal is a lost cause, not worth spending much time on. We are less convinced of the hopelessness of conversion, having the card up our sleeve of eCOOLnomics still to play. Pop Culture can marry Mother Earth. We can make it cool to sequester carbon in the soil.
The victory last year to stop the Keystone XL pipeline was a temporary victory. I guess all environmental victories are temporary, but this one was even more temporary than most. Mitt Romney has made it absolutely clear that if he wins the election his first duty, on his first day in office, will be to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Barack Obama hasn’t said one way or another what he will do, but the signs aren’t particularly great.
