Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Europe’s political landscape is marked by conservative governments and waves of anti-EU right-wing populism. A fully fledged European politics needs to emerge, driving alternative policies capable of countering the current crisis.
With the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, following on so closely from the English riots, we are witnessing the end of the “War on Terror” and its replacement by the “War on the Underclass” as the governing paradigm of state-authoritarian technocracy. Under this new scheme, the hoodie replaces the jihadi as the hostile internal Other.”
With more people losing full-time jobs, can’t the unemployed just create their own dream careers as wired freelancers?
One way to make out a slim ray of hope from today’s global financial crisis is to look from the vantage point of 2008, and &– forgive me for going so far back into the mists of time –1973.
Here is irony befitting a Shakespearean tragedy. Gov. Rick Perry finally got what he called on all Texans to pray for — some rain — but it was almost entirely dumped elsewhere and the winds of Tropical Storm Lee merely served to stoke the most brutal wildfires anyone had ever seen. This unprecedented climate impact is, indeed, Hell and High Water. Time’s headline is, “Texas Burns as the Rest of the Country Drowns” But, of course, they have no mention of climate change whatsoever.
During the first decades of communist rule, Todd argued, aliens were seen as friendly or, what amounted to the same thing, in need of some revolutionary help from Earth. “Andromeda”, published in 1957 by Ivan Yefremov, is the perfect example of this. It pictures an entirely communist Earth, member of a kind of interstellar radio network, the Great Circle. There is no faster-than-light travel, so the civilizations of the Great Circle almost never meet in person, but from time to time a utopian Earth sends spaceships in a kind of Grand Tour with the occasional fight against non-sentient monsters and the occasional ecological disaster on some distant planet. As the Soviet Union sank deeper into depression, however, the tone changed.
In Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences and Addressing the Challenges, uthors Henk-Jan Brinkman and Cullen S. Hendrix illustrate clearly that food insecurity is a “threat and multiplier for violent conflict”. Based on their fairly broad review of the research, in which more than 100 sources were referenced, “[f]ood insecurity, especially when caused by higher food prices, heightens the risk of democratic breakdown, civil conflict, protest, rioting, and communal conflict.”
The sooner we can admit that a large portion of the loans now outstanding will never be paid back in full and move on, the sooner we will be able to invest in the steps we need to prepare ourselves for a future marked by limits on resources. However, if no acknowledgement is forthcoming, then we are likely to face a long-term stagnation that will starve society of the capital it needs to make important investments in a more sustainable world.
As rebels take Tripoli, foreign powers are eyeing the prize of Libya’s high quality crude oil. There are vast oil spoils to distribute. The Libyan oil industry produced 1.6 million barrels a day prior to the war. The country is thought to have 46 billion barrels of reserves – the largest in Africa.
The war in Libya entered the endgame this week: fighting continues, and fierce pockets of resistance remain, but oil companies are already queuing up to get back into action. Estimates vary on how quickly, and indeed whether Libya can return to its 2010 production capacity.
Europe’s crisis is a crisis of democracy. The ‘democracy of the experts’ cannot deliver: representative democracy is incapable of channelling demands in the political system. More participatory and deliberative democracy is needed, as argued in Europe’s public spaces by the movements of ‘ indignados’.
“Traditional” economic measurements and the dominant paradigm no longer work in a world of peak debt, peak energy and peak disasters. Can a new way of talking shift things? My interview with Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute on his latest book The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. He’s diagnosed the problem. Now, how to communicate the issue to everyday folks and policy makers? Heinberg weighs in.
