Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I’m happy to have the opportunity to spend the next few minutes sharing some personal thoughts on the subjects that bring us together for this excellent event—thoughts based on my experience, during the past few years, of trying to get the message of Peak Oil out to an ever-wider audience.
-World’s airlines pledge to cut emissions by 2050
-Cars must be electric, says climate tsar
-Climate Change: Four Degrees of Devastation
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
It is John McPhee, that fabulous writer about the geology of the United States, who has given me the insight as to what the “true” purpose of humankind is….to alter the landscape and the atmosphere to such a degree that we bring about wholly new conditions on Earth.
A couple of weeks ago Jerry Mander and I were discussing the best word to use in the heading for the back cover copy of a new short book being co-published by International Forum on Globalization and Post Carbon Institute, Searching for a Miracle: “Net Energy” and the Fate of Industrial Societies (I wrote the main text, Jerry wrote the Foreword). Jerry liked the word “conundrum,” while I argued for “dilemma.” We were in basic agreement, though, about a word we didn’t want: “problem.”
This post introduces the U.S.-based Mobilization for Climate Justice, as well as similar critiques and activism associated with this Climate Justice coalition. As I indicate, the organizers in and around that coalition also address a range of energy & carbon issues (including tar sands pollution, and biofuel land grabs) — along with interrelated and more apparent global warming concerns. Their approach to these ecological issues is based on prior environmental justice critiques and activism, as well as wider opposition towards corporations, and other international market structures.
How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge? It is a question that, in a fundamental sense, transcends many life-and-death concerns (threats of sickness, natural disaster, or military invasion) that prompt us collectively to spend fortunes on insurance, health care, and weaponry.
Lester Brown released a new book this week called Plan B 4.0, Mobilization to Save Civilization. The book is for sale, but it can also be downloaded free as a PDF.
I participated in a conference call with Lester Brown, in which he talked about the book, and several of us asked questions. In this post, I will give you at least a brief introduction to the book.
-UN sees rise in ‘land grab’ for food security
-The Coalfield Uprising
-Jumpin’ Jack Verdi, It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas
-Arctic seas turn to acid, putting vital food chain at risk
-New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase
-Imagining Climate Solutions
-Rich countries ‘must slash living standards’ to fight climate change
-Tipping towards the unknown
-No rainforest, no monsoon: get ready for a warmer world
-The power of nightmares
-That’s Not the News: Clinton’s “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”
-Greenwald Film on Afghanistan Destroys the Logic of the War, Leading the New York Times to Whine
-Book Review: ‘Mannahatta’ by Eric Sanderson
-How to Save the News
The human role in extinction of species and degradation of ecosystems is well documented. Since European settlement in North America, and especially after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have witnessed a substantial decline in biological diversity of native taxa and profound changes in assemblages of the remaining species…We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet.
