Unrest – June 16
-Greece strikes: ‘The atmosphere is toxic’
-Beijing worries as sense of injustice deepens
-Kuwait ruler warns against unrest, security threats
Activism
Heeding the warnings of environmental Reveres
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”?
Will the Transition movement be the Tea Party’s next target?
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.
United States – June 6
– 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
Protest & change – June 6
– Why I take part in the naked bike ride
– Raging Greeks Stage Biggest Anti-Austerity Protest Yet
– Yemen: After Saleh, What?
Spain’s Irish Spring
“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.”
Transition and activism: a response
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.
Lock on – notes towards an article on activism and transition
For a long time we have been able to be the audience to history, to live our lives theoretically. We can watch everything on our screens, at arm’s length. But now history is coming into our streets and into our lives and we need to know how to act, or support those who act on our behalf. If we cheer for those bold protesters in Tahrir Square, in Wisconsin, for the thousands of campaign groups that Paul Hawken wrote about in Blessed Unrest, we need also to cheer for those who occupy Fortnum and Masons and the Royal Bank of Scotland, who protest against the corporations who threaten those fragile eco-systems on which we depend.
Energy – May 26
– British Government Faces Up To Peak Oil
– Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking like a sieve
– U.S. Suit Sees Manipulation of Oil Trades
– China’s Utilities Cut Energy Production, Defying Beijing
– WikiLeaks Documents Hint of Slick Plans for Arctic Oil
– Danish warship sails into Greenpeace Arctic oil protest
Spain’s Tahrir Square
Spain’s people’s movement has finally awoken, la Puerta del Sol in Madrid is now the country’s Tahrir Square, and the ‘Arab Spring’ has been joined by what is now bracing to become a long ‘European Summer’.
The case for a disorderly energy descent
The energy descent from peak oil production imposes decades of contraction in the global economy. An orderly contraction, particularly in the US, is not likely for a number of reasons. The decline of the oil civilization is a phenomenon and spectacle of such complexity that understanding it requires a systems perspective. This summary of the case for a disorderly contraction and its core drivers demonstrates the capacity of systems tools to show the interlocking feedback structure that shapes how this momentous change plays out over time.
Europe – May 22
– Spaniards To Continue Mass Action for at Least a Week
– Tens of thousands defy Spain’s pre-election protest ban
– Spain eyewitness: The people demand to be heard
– Nick Griffin and the fall of the BNP
– Money Troubles Take Personal Toll in Greece
– Athens Plunges Deeper Into Crisis (ethnic strife)
– Danish and German Policies suggest work-sharing or subsidized leave policies might help ease the pain of U.S. recovery
