Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-The Erosion of America’s Middle Class
-Death by Growth: What the Climate-Bill Autopsies Missed
-The Federal Reserve Enters Decline
-Deflation and you: Acting perfectly sensibly
-Forget the ‘big society’; we just need a co-operative one
-Chinese scholar: Will Chinese workers challenge global capitalism
For Gulf residents, the BP oil spill has made the problem of unchecked corporate power painfully clear. Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott on why this may be the moment to overcome our political divides and take back our democracy.
As America adjusts to the New Reality of tight credit, chronically less-affordable energy, high unemployment rates, rising levels of homelessness, and steeply declining tax revenues, new strategies will be needed to help swelling ranks of low-income people adjust and adapt. National policies designed to ease credit, lower mortgage rates, or provide basic financial assistance (including extended unemployment benefits) may help over the short term, but over the longer term many needs will be better met locally by largely volunteer-driven non-profit organizations, co-ops, and hybrid public-private agencies and programs.
We are living through “interesting times”; credit crises, recession and rising debt threaten to destabilise nation states. Whilst reckless bankers and traders might have a certain amount of responsibility, if we are to understand the larger processes that are driving these trends we need to stand back and look at the human system as a whole. Change is inevitable – it’s one of the implications of the Laws of Thermodynamics. What we need to understand is the way human ecology works within these natural physical processes, how the contradictions between human systems and these natural processes define what is “unsustainable”, and what this means for our future as we adjust to the natural limitations of our environment.
A few years ago, I stumbled on a United Nations study that transformed how I think about the climate crisis. In the report, researchers pegged greenhouse gases from the livestock sector at 18 percent of total global emissions. Combine this with other aspects of our food chain—from agricultural chemical production to agribusiness driven deforestation to food waste rotting in landfills—and food and agriculture sector is responsible for nearly one third of the planet’s manmade emissions. Move over Hummer; it’s time to say hello to the hamburger.
-Five steps to developing a community-based energy project
-Dream kitchen of the future is green, survey finds
-Reusing bike parts to power water pumps, corn crushers and more
-How Will Small Businesses Survive Peak Oil?
Once in a faraway city there was born a baby who was completely transparent. You could see through his arms and legs just as if they were air or water. He was made of flesh and bone but he looked as if he were made of glass. If by chance he happened to fall he didn’t break into pieces. At most there would be a transparent bump on his forehead. You could see his heart beating, and his thoughts flickering like colored fish in their tank.
-Is the U.S. turning a corner on high-speed rail?
-Transport study call to slash carbon emissions
-The Big Lie: Highway Projects Help the US Economy
-Will the Aviation Industry and Climate Change Come in for a Smooth Landing?
London’s Do-It-Yourself Approach to Safer Streets
Transport Revolutions presents an ambitious vision of a world, 15 years from now, that is well on its way to kicking oil and being run on renewably produced electricity. The book’s authors, internationally recognized transport policy experts Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, readily acknowledge the enormity of this challenge, with transport worldwide currently 95 percent dependent on oil.
OPEC followed the IEA this week by revising its monthly oil demand forecast for 2010 and 2011 upwards. OPEC now forecasts an increase of 140,000 barrels to reach 86.56 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2011. This figure is still 1 million bpd shy of the IEA forecast and assumes stable US demand. Growth is anticipated to come from the emerging economies, which was underlined by news this week that China has now overtaken Japan as the second largest economy…
Paul Kingsnorth’s impressive and heartfelt essay traces the evolution of modern environmental thought and practice through the prism of his personal experience. I was struck by how closely this experience matches the trajectory of a book I first published in 1990 called Green Political Thought and which has been through three more editions since.
Dena Hoff talks about La Via Campesina’s vision of social change, and how the agricultural challenges faced around the world are not always so different from those faced in the U.S.
