Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The failure of the Copenhagen climate talks has been blamed on everything from Chinese intransigence to Barack Obama’s failure to live up to the messianic fantasies projected onto him. Behind the rhetoric, though, lies the uncomfortable reality: the political systems of America and most other industrial nations are pinned in political cul-de-sacs that make them incapable of constructive change.
Humans must create paradise or they cannot live on the planet Earth. Paradise here is described as a human community that lives in perpetuity and in peace on one place on the earth, over many generations.
Taking responsibility for our own lot and the climate crisis means we must first reject an unworkable system and culture. I hasten to clarify; this does not mean there aren’t a lot of nice people caught up in it. But if they believe elections and voting with their consumer dollars are going to save them from the ecological crisis and the slide into societal chaos of collapse, they are of no help to themselves or to the countless species being driven extinct by modern civilization.
This is a preliminary attempt to explore the relationship between the current predicament facing humanity arising out of an exploding population facing planetary resource limitations, in other words known as overshoot, and the psychology of work inherent in the human species.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen never expected the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to amount to much. He told the British Guardian newspaper that it would be better if Copenhagen failed. That’s because Hansen is a vocal critic of the economic policies discussed there, and he hopes Copenhagen’s failure gives the public a chance to talk about new options.
-Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
-Carbon Supplicants on the Copenhagen Pilgrimage
-Review of the Year 2009: Climate change
-How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
-There’s No Negotiating With Nature
-BC Fossil of the Decade Awards
-Copenhagen’s failure belongs to Obama
-Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees
-Doom and Gloom
-Mammals May Be Nearly Half Way Toward Mass Extinction
-Death, taxes, and Mr. Market calling the bluff
-Forget the Happy Talk: Longer, Deeper Recession Lies Ahead, Execs Warn
-Why Britain is still in recession
-The “Slow Money” Movement May Revolutionize the Way You Think About Food
-Seed behemoth Monsanto stumbles into antitrust trouble
-Weather no obstacle for Pittsburg garden
-How a Hoop House Can Extend the Growing Season
-Copenhagen: peasant farmers can save the planet
-Getting at the roots of unsustainable U.S. ag policy
-Copenhagen could lead to increase in intensive farming
-Meet the Milk
-Where Industry Once Hummed, Urban Garden Finds Success
-West should allow Iran to solve its own problems, says opposition leader
-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says US fabricated nuclear documents
-Iran rejects nuclear trigger claim
-Iran calls for specifying Iraq border areas
For many centuries, canal boats were propelled by men, horses or mules on the towpath beside the water. Before diesel power took over, engineers developed several interesting methods powered by electricity: trolleyboats, floating funiculars and electric mules. Many of these ecological solutions could be applied today instead of diesel engines.
Economic recovery! The media, economists and politicians are talking it up. The spin machines are working flat out cherry picking statistics to convince us that recovery is underway and we are entering another growth phase. It could, however, be argued that this is the least likely of all the potential outcomes from the global financial crisis. One of those potential outcomes, one rarely spoken about unless you are Barnaby Joyce, is the subject of this article.
It’s the end of the decade 2000-2009, and there has been progress as well as potential disaster for sustainability. In chronological order, I’ve chosen these ten stories to show a range of relevant global and national issues and events on climate, business, government, media, design, technology, language and demographics.
