Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Economic recovery may look anaemic, especially against the backdrop of the Eurozone crisis, but measured in CO2 the downturn is over. After falling by 1.3% in 2009, global emissions are set to bounce 3% this year. Worse, the emissions cuts pledged at Copenhagen last year fall 40% short of what’s needed to limit warming to 2 degrees and avoid runaway climate change…
-Welcome to Farm School
-FoodWorks Unveiled: A New Vision for NYC’s Food System
-The Distillers Grains (DDGS) Export Market
-Global food prices may be even higher next year, warns new UN report
America is beginning to look a lot like the dark “Pottersville” vision in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey is shown a town where the middle class has been destroyed and lives in poverty under the thumb of evil Big Banker Henry Potter. Bailey’s heroic efforts to help the middle class saved Bedford Falls. America can help the middle class prepare for energy shortages with energy retrofit loans — or funnel billions to Potter-like promoters of Too Big to Fail energy projects. Where’s that angel Clarence when we need him most?
-Rural area depopulation is in part due to lack of surrounding natural beauty
-Climate change scepticism is about more than just science
-I Believe: ‘For us to survive and thrive in a new century, we must peaceably dismantle the United States of Empire’
– The Tea Party Targets… Sustainable Development?
– Here’s where we should cut: corn ethanol subsidies
– Walmart local food?
– U.S. Oil Imports Shrink, Yet Worries Loom
In order for humankind to resolve its ecological predicament, capitalism must be historically superseded. People who are aware of the system’s growth compulsion and the environmental destruction that results may well suspect that this statement is true. But carrying this train of thought forward is difficult. Why? Because currently the only well-known model for moving beyond capitalism is that of the socialist tradition. This model, however, arose in the context of class struggles rather than overshoot, and in my view it incorporates several grave errors. I therefore believe that an alternative model for the post-capitalist transition must be developed.
The G20’s agenda is driven by corporate capital as evidenced by the G20 Seoul Business Summit where around 120 top global CEO’s met with G20 leaders to discuss corporate priorities. In contrast, civil society and social movement representatives voicing people’s demands and priorities were not allowed into Korea. The Korean government effectively prevented the democratic participation of civil society and social movement representatives from abroad by denying visas and by forcibly deporting others.
The disconnect between the American body politic and reality grows larger every day. In reviewing hundreds of pages of commentary on the election, one searches in vain for analysis that even come close to describing what is happening to the nation – i.e. we are in the midst of a massive deflating credit bubble and running short of affordable liquid fuels at the same time.
Birk has just the right message to the bike community: Don’t get defensive, hold your ground and push ahead, because in the end even your opponents will come to appreciate the progress you make. … “We’re driving a cultural shift where you trade off motor vehicle space for bike lanes. This is deep, fundamental change. It’s not like just adding a bike lane and Boom, you’re done.”
“I have seen a lot of people not quite getting what economically might happen. I have seen a lot of people assuming there is a kind of energy decline curve, so that economy might sort of to follow that. But we are entering this decline curve with the highest level of leverage, or debt, on record. We have been towering up huge amounts of debt that requires constant growth. So I see the possibility, again a risk, of a more disruptive future than perhaps others do.”
“The energy world faces unprecedented uncertainty”, so begins the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook, released on Tuesday. The annual report from the energy watchdog guides the energy policies of OECD member countries including Britain.
Many people seem to believe that it is possible to have a rapid transition to a “low carbon economy,” based on a totally different pattern of production of energy carriers (using different primary energy sources) and a totally different pattern of consumption of energy carriers, while still guaranteeing the same set of end uses.
