Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As world leaders meet at Copenhagen to avoid taking action about climate change, it’s crucial to recognize that the industrial world’s repeated failure to confront the limits to growth is woven into the foundations of our collective life. In this first part of three, the Archdruid explores the political barriers that make a failure to meet the challenge of climate change the only option on the table.
-Copenhagen, Day Three, from Tuvalu to Todd Stern
-Copenhagen day 1: Scandal! Bullying!
-Met Office reveals last decade was the hottest ever recorded
-The millionaires who want to pay more tax
-This tax on the City is a bonus
-Tax rebate plan for ‘green’ drivers and homeowners
-Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’
-The Physics of Copenhagen
-Earth More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than Previously Thought
-Cap and Fade
-‘Climategate’ at centre stage as Copenhagen opens
A cause for the financial crisis of 2008 is described that differs from conventional wisdom. It is proposed that in the early 2000s, an increase in the volatility of oil took place…The oil shock of 2008, when price doubled over less than a year (peaking at ~ $140 a barrel), is shown not to be an isolated event. Instead, the oil shock of 2008 is the largest in a series of 7 prominent spikes in oil price variance that began some 7-8 years ago.
-America Without a Middle Class — It’s Not As Far Away As You Might Think
-Living without money
-The Deep Surface: A Note on Edward Abbey and Wendell Berry
Jared Diamond seems to have missed one of the central observations of his own _Collapse_ – that when societies actually avert collapse, the tend to do so with strong levels of prohibition and regulation. That is, Japan didn’t ask the gun manufacturers to self-regulate, they prohibited the use of guns entirely. The reason the Dominican Republic is so much better off than Haiti isn’t because people refined their logging practices, but because they restricted them.
-Wikipedia shows signs of stalling as number of volunteers falls sharply
-Car culture: Some snapshots
-The story of cap and trade
-Available Now! The 2 Disc Special Edition of ‘In Transition 1.0′!
-Christmas insanity unwrapped
It should be easy to deal with climate change. There is a strong scientific consensus supported by very sound data; consensus across much of the religious and political spectrum and among businesses including the largest corporations in the world. The vast majority of people claim to be concerned. The targets are challenging, but they are achievable with existing technologies, and there would be plentiful profits and employment available for those who took up the challenge.
The language of revolution should be used as a last resort and against odds that can be beaten only with radical thought and action. It requires justification or, at the very least, explanation.
-Todmorden’s Good life: Introducing Britain’s greenest town
-Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture
-Farming with Far Fewer Fossil Fuels at Tillers International
-Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food
Not deterred by the international financial crisis which became widespread in 2008 or by the many recessionary patterns that grip most country economies, financial engineers are massing in København to prepare for the next wave. This one is about the commercial opportunities which renewable energy technologies, country climate funds and sectoral mitigation programmes promise to contain.
