Media & Communications

“This Is Just the Beginning”: Forest Fires, Deadly Storms, Record Heat Reveal a Changed Climate

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The past two weeks have witnessed the worst forest fires in Colorado history, a deadly Mid-Atlantic storm that left 23 dead and four million without power, and a record shattering heat wave across the East Coast and Midwest that has not seen since the Dust Bowl. More than 2,000 heat records have been broken in the past week. As the words “extreme weather” flash across TV screens, where are the other two words: “global warming”? We speak to The Guardian’s U.S. environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg and Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website.

Say it isn’t so: Review of J. H. Kunstler’s “Too Much Magic”

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James Howard Kunstler describes himself as an “all-purpose writer,” and boy can he write. His latest book “Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation,” has taken otherwise ‘hard to write clearly about’ subjects such as financial instruments, what’s happening to our environment and shale oil, and made them interesting and useful to the reader, without talking down to, or boring us.

Peak oil oppositional disorder: neurosis or psychosis?

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What happens to individuals also happens to entire societies. Take a neurotic Peak Oil-denying industrial civilization, put it through a terrible global financial crisis, tell it that economic growth is over forever, and what you get a psychotic, delusional industrial civilization.

What do we do about climate change?

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After Copenhagen it was by no means obvious that simply calling upon governments to act would achieve very much. Yet the situation is urgent – so what do we do? The aim of this chapter is to look at options for getting from where we are now to adequate climate mitigation. It starts by looking at all the obstacles to getting things done – but this is not so that we get discouraged and give up. It is so that we are realistic and can find our way around the obstacles.

ODAC Newsletter – July 6

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For anyone watching peak oil this has been a busy week. The Harvard report by Leonardo Maugeri, covered in last week’s newsletter, has been seized upon by those waiting for a chance to consign peak oil to the dustbin of history. In Britain, columnist George Monbiot fell for it hook line and sinker, presenting the report as conclusive proof that peak oil is bunk – evidently without a moment’s critical appraisal…read on for exclusive analysis…