Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“Very, very few people can ever say that they are in the single most important place they could possibly be, doing the single most important thing they could possibly be doing — that’s you, here, now. You are the movement that we need if we are going to win in the few years that we have.”
– Lester Brown: Smart planning for the global family
– The Anti-Immigration Crusader
– The Hypocrisy of Hate: Nativists and Environmentalism
– Bahrain braced for new wave of repression
– President Assad’s promises fail to quell Syrian protests
– If Humalain wins presidency, he could align Peru with Latin America’s political left
– Furious Greeks press for country to default on debt
– ‘Farms’ Owned by the Rich Provide Massive Tax Shelter
– Offshore Banking and Tax Havens Have Become Heart of Global Economy
– Matt Taibbi: The Real Housewives of Wall Street
The IEA reported this week that there are preliminary signs of oil demand destruction due to soaring prices. Goldman Sachs underlined this viewpoint on Tuesday by advising its clients to sell oil, copper, platinum and cotton. Prices fell in response, although concern over conflict in the Middle East and Saudi production saw prices nudging up again by the end of the week.
Many of us are left wondering how to deal with the president. Climate change, above all issues, requires a transformative and not an incremental vision. We have fundamental change to make, and a very short window to make it in–Obama’s typical (and often quite savvy) little-bit-at-a-time approach doesn’t square with the physics and chemistry that govern this debate.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the continued mirage of “recovery” remains forever on the horizon. The accelerating evaporation of anything resembling a social safety net for the workers of the world makes business-as-usual a less-than-sexy proposition for the majority of us. The increasingly schizophrenic behavior of our planet’s natural processes doesn’t enhance our calm either. As the calls for a change of strategy and priority for the world’s economy get louder, it makes perfect sense that the most viable and desirable option, a steady state economy, is pilloried with great vitriol.
– Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth
– Bolivia After the Storm (raising fuel prices)
– German Greens on the rise
– WikiLeaks cable: Politicians, military – not militants – behind most Nigeria oil thefts
A new global movement for happiness was launched Tuesday in the UK. Action for Happiness is supported by more than 4,500 members including the Dalai Lama. Based on the new science of happiness, the movement suggests that the keys to happier living lie in actions such as Giving, Relating and Accepting.
Media coverage has been extensive:
– 20 Happiness Facts
– Don’t worry, every little thing’s gonna be all right
– Switch off, chip in, be happy, say activists
– My advice for the happiness lobby? Start with drugs
– Britons becoming ‘increasingly miserable’, warns happiness group
– Happy evangelists take on the cynics
– It’s time the right looks beyond its prejudices and understands what this agenda is about
One of the least discussed and most fascinating features of the present day is that the strategies that got the world through the energy crisis of the Seventies are being pointedly ignored, not only by governments and corporations but by a great many of the people who claim to be offering alternative views. The obvious and successful response then — rallying the collective will and enthusiasm of the people by ‘fessing up to the arrival of crisis, and using that will and enthusiasm to slash energy consumption — has been all but erased from our collective imagination and memory. Maybe it’s time to take a hard look at how that erasure happened.
We need to rebuild the kind of mass movement that marked 1970: bodies, passion, and creativity are the currencies we can compete in. It’s not impossible.
Public process as it exists today is not a desirable commons-based, inclusive, creative, bottom-up assertion of ideas by the people—although that is what it pretends to be. It’s actually an expert-driven, one-way dissemination of ideas from the top.
