Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Brent crude surged to $104 this week as anti-government protests spread to Libya and Bahrain, prompting a violent reaction from the authorities in both countries. 24 protesters are reported killed in Libya, and in Bahrain 4 have been killed and hundreds injured. Unlike Libya, Bahrain is not a significant oil producer, but there are fears that instability there could spread to its neighbour Saudi Arabia…
Bill McKibben, author and founder of the international environmental organization 350.org, says that without a global campaign to curb climate change, the ecological devastation of our warming climate will make our planet uninhabitable. His appeal to citizens and policy-makers, the seventh video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, is a call to action as much as it is a sobering account of the damage we’re already doing to our environment.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
-Budget struggles in Washington
Several prominent organizations dealing with peak oil, have just launched a petition drive urging President Obama to mark the anniversary of the Gulf spill with a major speech to the American people on the subject of peak oil.
-How to build a left-wing Tea Party: A guide for Americans
-Life in the Water
-Paradox: Linchpin of the Long Emergency
– How Cyber-Pragmatism Brought Down Mubarak
– Another Step Toward Mainstreaming Nonviolence
– How to Build a Progressive Tea Party
– Wendell Berry Joins Retired Coal Miners and Residents in Kentucky Capitol Sit-in
All is not rosy in global cities where inequalities reach record levels and put such cities at risk. There may consequently be more cycles of disorder and violence if the financial and economic sectors continue to dominate the cities’ agendas.
Crop To Cuisine discusses food in Egypt, as the standoff between protesters and government continues. The World Food Programme’s Abeer Etefa joins us over the phone from Cairo. We hear from Carol O’Meara on feeding the birds this season. And we turn food advertising on its head. All of that, headlines in food and farming from around the world, and more.
The dissertation is a case study of the first official Transition Town, the English market town of Totnes, long a popular tourist destination known for its alternative culture. Using interviews, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and other social science research methods, the study examines the degree to which the Transition ideals of localization and resilience have become a reality in Totnes. (Transitioners endorse a number of upbeat definitions of a resilient community, a popular one being “[a] culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its own limits, and able to thrive for having done so.”*)
These communities are adopting laws that, taken together, are forming an alternative structure to the global corporate economy. The principles behind these laws can be applied broadly to any area where corporate rights override local self-government or the well-being of the local ecology.
– Water: On Women’s Burdens, Humans’ Rights, and Companies’ Profits
– Peak Water: What Is it — and Are We There Yet?
– Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’
– “Walk like an Egyptian” – the Egyptian Revolution: Jan 25, 2011 (video)
– Oil falls on unfounded Egypt report, profit-taking
– Civil unrest in Middle East, concern among investors
– We All Helped Suppress the Egyptians. So How Do We Change?
– Clinton rings alarm bells about Middle East – oil reserves running out
– Egypt and the Global Oil Market: Geopolitics Is Back
– Jan Lundberg: Arab World’s Turmoil May Spell Sudden Petrocollapse
