Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
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.
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.
– 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 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 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.
– 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
John Bellamy Foster’s book focuses on a sustained critique of the mainstream ecological theories, solutions and proposals that do not address the root cause of the dilemma, and that do not deeply investigate why the ecological crisis has reached such dire proportions. A big issue for those concerned with climate change and other environmental ills is to get a better understanding of the capitalist system, who benefits most from it and how it works to undermine stable ecosystems.
The story of the presidential campaign of former U.S. Representative John B. Anderson is so at odds with anything we see going on in politics today that it almost seems like it happened in a whole other country if not to say on a completely different planet.
So what do you think? Do you think left and right, in some or all variations can work together? To what extent are political ends enough, and to what extent are the means and underlying enlightenment philosophies critical?
– Military thinkers: for a bright American future, look to sustainability and liberalism
– Renewable Energy Can Power the World, Says Landmark IPCC Study
– Taboo Economics
– ‘The Ecological Rift’: a radical response to capitalism’s war on the planet (book review)
– Poet Wendell Berry on Mankind’s Ecological Imprint
A new youth climate movement lead by Alec Loorz, who is suing the US government on behalf of his generation over lack of action on climate, seeks to raise awareness and move the climate conversation to an actionable tipping point. While his iMatter movement inspires, and shows the best in youth, iMatter hasn’t included climate’s twin issue —peak oil— and it faults their parents and grandparents for causing the problem, rather than recognizing that youth today are the inheritors of the work of energy and environmental giants that came before them.
With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether biologist Ernst Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.
