Politics

Worse than 1789?

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Senator Levin pretty much had Goldman Sach’s Lloyd Blankfein dead in a casket with that now-notorious email from GS’s head of sales and trading, Tom Montag, describing one of their billion-dollar investment “products” as “one shitty deal.” Levin seemed to delight in crossing the boundary into the realm of the unspeakable, knowing that even the so-called “family” newspapers and cable TV networks would have to report it. And just to make sure nobody missed the point, the senator repeated that phrase at least twenty times before the day was over.

History’s Mad Hatters

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On a winter’s day in Boston in 1773, a rally of thousands at Faneuil Hall to protest a new British colonial tax levied on tea turned into an iconic moment in the pre-history of the American Revolution. Some of the demonstrators — Sons of Liberty, they called themselves — left the hall and boarded the Dartmouth, a ship carrying tea, and dumped it overboard.

Officials wake up to peak oil, part 2

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In the first part of this series, I reviewed a series of reports from March supporting the peak oil view, and warning that world oil production very well may go into terminal decline by 2015 or sooner…On March 25 the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) joined the officially worried, with a report in French newspaper Le Monde titled “Washington considers a decline of world oil production as of 2011.”

Cochabamba postscript: lessons, reflections, and the road to Cancun

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The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (CMPCC, for its Spanish acronym) ended on Thursday in Cochabamba and every airport I’ve stopped in (more than a few now) has been filled with people heading home with new energy, new direction, and excitement to get back to work. But before the movement moves on I want to share some last reflections that we’ll be taking forward.

Come to the largest climate rally ever on the D.C. mall on April 25

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Earth Day Network is organizing a huge event on the Mall in Washington D.C. on April 25. The goal is to demand tough, effective climate legislation and a swift transition away from 19th century energy sources.

Why I hate Earth Day II: the road to hell in baby steps

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A number of commenters to my previous post argued that I’m being unfair to Earth Day – of course, there’s greenwashing. of course people are cashing in, but underlying the greenwashing, there’s something good and serious and worthwhile there and I’m being churlish to deny it.