Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In any group of pundits assembled to denounce the suggestion that there’s a problem pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet, economists are sure to be well represented. Given that economists have also been well represented among the cheerleaders of the last half dozen disastrous speculative bubbles, this is not exactly comforting. What lies behind the repeated failures of contemporary economics to provide a timely warning of predictable dangers?
The outlook for consumption growth in the over-leveraged United States is bleak. Economists Menzie Chinn and Jeffrey Frieden discussed the origins of the financial crisis, the debt situation in the U.S. and the global outlook in Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of the Debt Crisis of 2008. This text broadly describes the origin of the crisis.
-Public bored by climate change, says IPPR
-Important week for global warming
-Politicians on climate: a failure of wit, will and imagination
-Buy ‘Climate Change’ — Now With Added Warming Power
-Collapse or survive: the stark choice facing our species
Dandelion leaves flown thousands of miles north from Mexico now grace the organic section of our best local grocery stores…I find myself smiling at the latest proof of the power of our greening greenbacks. I am as well amused and saddened by the irony that the leaf generously and effortlessly yielded every hour for most months of the year by soil and worms in our own backyards must be carried north in airplanes guzzling barrels of oil and spewing millions of pounds of greenhouse gases.
-Not your average peak oil theory, from Macquarie
-Total issues oil shortage warning
-Would You Know How to Survive After the Oil Crash?
-Squeezing the last bit of oil from Mother Earth
-UK at risk of global energy shock, says MPC’s Andrew Sentance
-Let a thousand eco-documentaries bloom!
-Six Questions for Peter Maass on the Violent Twilight of Oil
-Yes Men Hoax: “Special Edition” of NY Post Warns of Climate Change Threat
-Barack Obama Must See Michael Moore’s New Movie (and So Must You)!
A few months ago, I had an email exchange with Bill McKibben about the commonly perceived but, we both agreed, false distinction between lifestyle changes and political acts. Those of you who have read _Depletion and Abundance_ know that I spend a good bit of time on just this subject – on the idea that our ordinary daily activities are not political acts, or that we can resolve our problems in a way that isn’t whole, that doesn’t include our personal way of life *along* with our political and community activism.
The conundrum we call human nature readily rises to the occasion of a crisis and as readily slacks off when the living is easy. During its decade of prosperity based on precarious financial schemes, Iceland grew politically apathetic and a little dull and demoralized. When its mismanaged economy crashed spectacularly in October 2008, furious citizens took action and a vibrant civil society emerged; it was the best and worst of times as the country lost its economic wealth and social poverty…
In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.
Crop To Cuisine spends time with James McWilliams – Author of a new highly provocative book, Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong, And How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. McWilliams shares his thoughts on on food dogma, global population, and sustainability.
-Thomas Paine Would Have Loved Van Jones
-If Obama can’t defeat the Republican headbangers, our planet is doomed
-Good Billions After Bad
-Big Step Forward Lost in Shuffle
The troubled future of industrial society has become tangled up in our collective imagination with a dizzying array of hopes and fears. Will the end of our age bring more meaningful and fulfilling lives to the survivors, as some people insist nowadays, or have daydreams of destruction become an inkblot onto which too many people project fantasies of redemption?
