Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I don’t think we’re really going to understand this friction between, and the potential energy arising from, transition and “activism/action” unless the latter term gets further granularity. “Transition justice” is a new term and probably means different things to everyone. How this gets woven explicitly into the framing of Transition is a question we’ve not answered yet. But at least we’re asking that question.
Bahrain wouldn’t seem to have a lot to offer, except that it seems to offer something for a million people (half of which are guest workers) living on a desert island. Why is it generating so much interest? Is there any oil left there? In this article, I will discuss some recent developments between Bahrain and its neighbors in the context of its long history.
“Because money talks and BS walks, if the hydrogen economy was an apprentice working for Donald Trump, it would’ve been fired in the first season.” This is just one of the pearls of wisdom from Transition Voice’s new “Snarky Guide to Peak Oil.” It’s got the facts you need to debunk energy myths and the attitude you need to defuse a heated discussion with a smile.
Media reports often fail to connect recurring demonstrations in Greece and Spain with those in the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain). After all, the MENA demonstrations are ostensibly about democracy, while European countries already have functioning electoral systems. Protestors in Greece and Spain are instead decrying austerity programs resulting from governmental efforts to rein in deficits and debt burdens.
The original Boston Tea Party, claims liberal talk radio host Thom Hartmann, wasn’t really a protest against higher taxes and unrepresentative government. Instead, its target was the excessive power of a large corporation — the British East India Company. In Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People” — and How You Can Fight Back, Hartmann surveys the 250-year tug-of-war between citizens and corporations in the US, charts the ascendancy of today’s plutocratic rule and calls for a movement to take back American democracy. But is it relevant to fighting climate change and preparing for peak oil? You bet it is.
-Greece strikes: ‘The atmosphere is toxic’
-Beijing worries as sense of injustice deepens
-Kuwait ruler warns against unrest, security threats
Pathetically the media has been awash with New York Congressmember Anthony Weiner’s string of electronic sexual peccadillos. Punctuating the sensationalism, and between the TV commercials from the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries, are story after story of extreme weather events. Herein lies the real scandal: Why aren’t the TV meteorologists, with each story, following the words “extreme weather” with another two, “climate change”?
Could Rob Hopkins become the US right wing’s next Van Jones? Could the Post Carbon Institute become the next ACORN? A new video from the Tea Party attacks the Transition movement and fingers both Hopkins and PCI as part of a United Nations plot to “take away your land.” Silly? For sure. But given how much money from big polluters is behind such attacks, we ignore them at our peril.
– Lawmakers Introduce Reality-Based Plan to Achieve “Freedom From Oil”
– The Optimism of a Double-Dip
– US Military Goes to War with Climate Skeptics
– L.A. Times: Obama is throwing ‘the environment and public health under a bus’ to get reelected
– Why I take part in the naked bike ride
– Raging Greeks Stage Biggest Anti-Austerity Protest Yet
– Yemen: After Saleh, What?
“Spain is now as forked as Ireland. It not only has all the problems of a crumbling paradigm–the religion of endless growth–but it has elevated the high priests of that paradigm to its seats of power.”
Perhaps the route to real change, long-lasting and deep change, isn’t through deepening polarity, but through a re-weaving of what has been torn apart, a seeking of common ground, an appeal to universal values, creating a safe space where people can sit together and not feel judged, and through the creation of viable, nurturing and life-affirming alternatives that have a strong and broad sense of ownership.
