Media & Communications

Global boosters

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Suddenly, with the turn of the decade and the latest World Economic Forum opening, we’re awash with projections of how the world economy might look in 2050, produced by economists, and each as implausible as the other.

WikiLeaks: For Norway, oil wealth and humanitarianism go hand in hand

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In a brief but revealing cable included in the vast WikiLeaks “CableGate” trove and published last week by the Norwegian paper Aftenposten, US embassy officials report that the Nordic nation opted to divest its sovereign wealth holdings from companies violating “humanitarian principles” and “fundamental ethical norms.”

Obama on energy and climate

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I find it sad that there was no explicit discussion of the incontrovertible scientific fact that we are destabilizing our climate with our energy system. Elsewhere in the world, this can be discussed frankly, but in the US, out of deference to half the political spectrum being in total denial, the elephant in the room cannot be named. There are aggressive goals for converting the energy system to “clean energy” with no discussion at all as to why that might be necessary.

The Arab crisis: food, energy, water, justice

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In Tunisia, Mohamad Bouazizi did not rebel because he did not find a job reflecting his ambitions and education. He did not burn himself when a police officer confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling at a street-corner on the pretext he had no permit. But when he went to file a complaint to seek justice, his demand was rejected. It was this feeling of injustice that led Mohamed Bouazizi to his desperate act. 
 
 
 


Film review: The farmer and the horse

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Jared Flesher’s film The Farmer and the Horse is a joy, an absolutely fascinating immersion into the world of three people who have fallen in love with working with horses. In a world where the production of food is hugely dependent on the availability of cheap liquid fuels and where, in the UK, the average age of farmers is 58, this film follows 3 young people trying to get into agriculture in New Jersey in the US, each of whom has a passion for working with horses.

 

Small flood in Sri Lanka; no white people dead

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The old assumption about the superiority of white people, after all, was never simply biological. It was very much tied up with the cultural, economic and political achievements that the white people were responsible for. When a “developing” country is devastated by a natural disaster, it’s to be expected. When a “developed” country is hit, it’s counter-intuitive; it automatically becomes a crisis.

We need freedom of action to confront peak oil

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In the third video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth productions, co-editor of The Automatic Earth, Nicole M. Foss, explains how energy relates to the economy and what our impending energy crisis will look like. Foss discusses the issues associated with peak oil in financial rather than environmental terms, because she finds that peak oil has much more to do with finance than it does with climate change.