Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
-President Obama warns leaders over climate summit deal
-Obama’s Copenhagen Speech: Some Reactions
-Copenhagen climate summit: talks to go on overnight
-Copenhagen heading for meltdown as stalemate continues over emission cuts
-Obama as White Knight: Naked Ambition at COP15
-Better to have no deal at Copenhagen than one that spells catastrophe
The economic troubles and energy concerns of the present invite comparison with the 1970s, the last time industrial civilization had to deal with the limits to growth. The abandonment of the initiatives of those years offers a troubling cautionary tale for the present, in this second part of a three-part series.
This is my last column for 2009. The past year was notable for what didn’t happen.
-Unplugging from the world’s power lines
-How Effective Are Renewables, Really?
-Bringing Hope to Copenhagen With a Novel Investment Idea
-Shell’s promise of a bright future turns out to be yet another false dawn
-Dramatic American intervention brings climate deal closer
-Greenland Glaciers: Water Flowing Beneath Ice Plays More Complex Role
-Chimerica Against the World
-Clinton Promises Climate Aid; Leaked UN Report Sees 3 C of Warming
As many have now written, the Cop15 conference, which is focussed on creating a treaty that will prevent our climate from undergoing a systems state change and re-establishing itself in a new stable state that much less conductive to human survival, seems certain to fall far short of what is needed or fail completely.
-Greece Struggles to Stay Afloat as Debts Pile On
-Obama and Rubin at the Bada Bing
-Cleaners ‘worth more to society’ than bankers – study
-A Tax By Any Other Name Gains Wider Support
-Gulf petro-powers to launch currency in latest threat to dollar hegemony
-Adventures in Capitolism
-Fairness, Personal Action and Al Gore’s House
-Do Panels Dispense Advice or Rationales?
-Unschooling & Unworking: Confessions of a stay-at-home family (Part 2)
-COP15: Climate ‘scepticism’ and questions about sex
-Can Obama Stop America’s Gas-Guzzling Ways?
Right now, on two different fronts, political progressives face a horrible choice: Accept a severely compromised political agreement or stick to their guns and run the risk of getting nothing. Sure, this is a recurring question for activists and advocates of all stripes but—unlike the so-called “death tax”—in these two cases the question really is a matter of life or death.
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages
-Sinking Feelings About Storing Carbon Emissions on the Farm
-California’s Troubled Waters
-L.A. cooperative provides communities with produce
-Farmers Reclaim Power!
-Free lunches handed out to highlight food waste
-Setting the Table (report)
…I feel like I shouldn’t be here, that none of us should be. . .that there should be 200,000 Cuyetano Huanca’s and Shorbana Khatun’s in Copenhagen, not 25,000 NGO reps and media reps. It’s a bit of a disgrace, and a reminder of our hubris, to think we represent the interests of the people most hurt by overconsumption (btw – this should not be a “climate conference” but a “capitalism/ overconsumption conference-;we should be focusing on the cause, not the effect)…
