Peak oil notes – Sept 27
A mid-week update on peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Media & Communications
Thousands surround Spanish Parliament in bid to “Occupy Congress” and stop austerity
Thousands of people surrounded the Spanish Parliament in Madrid on Tuesday to protest austerity measures and the loss of public confidence in elected leaders. The “Occupy Congress” protest came as the conservative administration of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy prepares to unveil further austerity measures on Thursday. After hours of protest, police in riot gear charged against demonstrators with batons and fired rubber bullets. Thirty-five people were arrested, and at least 60 people were injured. We go to Madrid to speak with independent journalist Maria Carrion.
Transition yourself
The climate has gone rogue, energy prices are threatening, and the economy sucks. You know the elections aren’t going to make it better. Why wait for government? You can protect your community and yourself by helping your town withstand the shocks.
Citywatch: Getting to the right question on the nutrient benefits of organic food
The international media had a field day headlining a Stanford university dissing significant nutritional benefits of organic food. I hope it’s not too late for me to ask a few questions that might steer the debate in a more useful direction.
New language for nonviolence — a conversation with Tim Gee
I recently spoke with Gee about his use of an old and largely forgotten term, whether the climate movement can win, and how true democracy exists within movements and the spaces they create.
Sharing for Survival Chapter 4: Policy Packages
A viable mechanism to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions, such as Cap and Share, is a necessary part of any coherent action plan to avoid catastrophic climate change, and end fossil fuel dependence. There are many other aspects to the global economic and ecological crisis, though, which have to be dealt with through complementary and synergistic measures. Any element of a coherent package including Cap and Share could, on its own, be counterproductive. This chapter explores some of the main issues that need to be addressed in tandem with capping fossil fuel CO2.
Truth vs. “the economy” – Sept 26
-Bill McKibben’s Rolling Stone Article Was a Hit — So Why Didn’t It Make a Splash?
-When Journalists Are Dying to Expose Environmental Plunder
-Haiti and the Shock Doctrine
Revolution Episode 2: Step on a Nail and Die, Already
"We lived in an electric world. We relied on it for everything. And then the power went out… We weren’t prepared."
That little bit of intricate exposition is from the show’s voiceover introduction. And it’s about as gripping as Revolution gets. The upside is we get to hang on those artful words every week.
50 years after silent spring
It is the nature of popular books to inspire people to wildly overstate their importance. The most stunning example is Abraham Lincoln’s statement upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.” While _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ was an incredibly important book, one that moved many people to shift their sympathies on the subject of slavery, this was, of course, the wildest hyperbole….The single possible exception to the overstatement of the importance of popular books might be the claim that Rachel Carson’s _Silent Spring_ began the environmental movement.
Activate your (climate) science – Sept 24
-Limiting global warming to 2 °C is unlikely to save most coral reefs
-Arctic Crisis: Far From Sight, the Top of the World’s Problems
-Yikes: Avoiding dangerous climate change is still possible, but just barely
-Freaked-out climate scientists urge other freaked-out climate scientists to speak up, fight Man
-Activate (?) your science
The “Switch Energy Project” highlights the scale of our energy challenges
Every year in Washington DC, the annual Environmental Film Festival screens thought-provoking films. And at this year’s festival in March 2012, one of the world premieres was the film”Switch.” Switch follows Dr. Scott Tinker on a spectacular journey to explore the world of energy in a sweeping period of transition.
From start to finish: Why we won and how we are losing
We label as “crazy” those members of the human species whose behavior we find hard to understand, but the cascading crises in contemporary political, economic, and cultural life make a bigger question increasingly hard to ignore: Is the species itself crazy? Has the process of evolution in the hominid line produced a species that is both very clever and very crazy?