August 13, 2011
by George Mobus

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand you cannot help but be wondering what is going on. Or, if you are like me you may think you understand exactly what the problems are, and more importantly what is the root cause. The last two weeks have been wild WRT the global economy and social unrest. And with the kickoff of the political season for the Republicans, the entertainment value of all of this has skyrocketed.

I’ve had three or four blog topics in various stages of write up that I have been wanting to get finished and posted. But every day some new extreme event has distracted me. It has been hard enough to keep on task with my book writing with what has been going on in the world. It has been essentially impossible to give any mind time to these blog topics (more on education, judgment, and, of course, biophysical economics principles).

***Most of the recent events have actually not surprised me much. They are all in one way or another tied to economics and I have been long suggesting that the net energy decline we are in will cause economic activity to contract with all sorts of consequences. So seeing some of those consequences come to pass is not what bothers me. I think what tends to cause me the greatest distress is the fact that the people who are in front of the cameras and microphones, the ones who purport to be the pundits and experts on politics and economics, have still not got a clue and don’t seem inclined to find one.*** They are all still trying to gen up stories about what is happening based on their conventional wisdom and so completely miss the root problem. They will probably never really understand what is happening because most of them probably never took a college-level physics course in their lives. Read the complete Post.

We risk losing our country to permanent droughts and extreme natural disasters.

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Scientists have been predicting for years that global warming would produce record-breaking extremes on either side of the thermometer. This past winter, America survived its so-called snowpocalypse, and now that summer has arrived, we’ve got a heat dome.

If you’re wondering what the hell that is — it’s just another obvious climate change assassin that we could see coming miles away, if some of us were paying better attention. If you’re looking for a more technical definition, according to National Geographic a heat dome is a seasonal high-pressure system of dense hot air, albeit one with a highly unusual (for now) strength and size, stretching one million square miles from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. It’s already killed a couple dozen people, adding to a swelling death toll resulting from recent tornadoes and floods that bedeviled the nation this year.

It conforms easily to the ravages of Kevin Borden and Susan Cutter’s so-called Death Map — academically known as “Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States” — which in 2008 peered into climate change’s crystal ball and found intensifying natural disasters capable of regionally reshaping the nation with every catastrophe. According to University of South Carolina scholars Cutter and Borden, heat and drought were the main death-dealers, along with extreme summer and winter events. Borden now works for homeland security risk management specialist Digital Sandbox. If his post-academic career choice doesn’t confirm it outright, then recent warnings from the United Nations Environment Program should: These global warming nightmares, not domestic or international terrorists, are the most dangerous threat to global security in existence. Read the complete Post.

As many of you already know, Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in jail yesterday for defending thousands of acres of pristine wilderness in Utah. The Bush administration was illegally selling off land to the oil and gas companies. DeChristopher stopped them. I am deeply moved by his courage.
Vandy July 27, 2011

Excerpt – “Mr Huber claims that the seriousness of my offense was that I “obstructed lawful government proceedings.” But the auction in question was not a lawful proceeding….

The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people. The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the more that power begins to shrivel. The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today. And neither will I. I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future. Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience. Nothing that happens here today will change that. I don’t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don’t have that authority.

You have authority over my life, but not my principles. Those are mine alone…I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false. I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.

You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path. You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.”
Tim DeChristopher – July 26, 2011 Utah courthouse

Follow the story at Peaceful Uprising

Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in prison on July 26, 2011 at the Salt Lake City federal courthouse. He was taken immediately into custody, being denied the typical 3 weeks afforded to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to his friends and family.

Federal prosecutors asked for Tim to receive an extra harsh prison sentence in an effort to intimidate the movement that stands with him. They hoped that by condemning him to years behind bars, they would “make an example out of him” and deter all of us from taking meaningful action. Read the complete Post.

All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet’s real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 May 2011 19.30 BS

Photograph: Daniel Pudles

All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet’s real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much.

You think you’re discussing technologies, and you quickly discover that you’re discussing belief systems. The battle among environmentalists over how or whether our future energy is supplied is a cipher for something much bigger: who we are, who we want to be, how we want society to evolve. Beside these concerns, technical matters – parts per million, costs per megawatt hour, cancers per sievert – carry little weight. We choose our technology – or absence of technology – according to a set of deep beliefs: beliefs that in some cases remain unexamined. Read the complete Post.

Some B.C. environmentalists are taking credit for stopping Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Kevin Falcon from becoming premier.

During the recent B.C. Liberal leadership campaign, conservationists infiltrated the party to defeat Falcon, a former transportation minister who spearheaded major road-building projects. On the final ballot on February 26, Falcon ended up with 48 percent of the points compared to 52 percent for the winner, Christy Clark. Read the complete Post.

Feb. 27, 2011
A note from VPOE Jon Cooksey....

Hi all,

Thanks to all who took part in the GreenLibs phenomenon, and voted
yesterday!  The very short version of what we accomplished is this:  we
stopped (or greatly helped stop) Kevin Falcon from becoming the Premier of
BC.  From talking to a lot of people, I'm guessing that was the goal that
got most people to sign up, so accomplishing it in a matter of 6 weeks was
no mean feat!  This was a real grassroots movement, that sprouted in a lot
of different places at once.  Many thanks to our friends at local
organizations like Conservation Voters of BC and Dogwood, who signed up
voters, interviewed the candidates, made recommendations and so on.

GreenLibs has been, from the start, a pragmatic idea based on the reality
that our next Premier would be one of the BC Liberal candidates, none of
whom were or are "green" by the standards we set.  But beyond our primary
Anyone-but-Falcon goal, we also accomplished our secondary goal, which was
to get the word "environment" back on the lips of the candidates.   Read the complete Post.

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Reuters reports that, “A string of Arab uprisings are giving a foretaste of the likely havoc that climate change will cause without greater effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a British foreign ministry official warned. …’Treat this as a prequel, because if we can’t remove some of those upward pressures on resource stresses then crises that are difficult to deal with when they happen will become more likely,’ said John Ashton, special representative for climate change at Britain’s foreign ministry.”

“Soaring food prices, stoked by Russia’s drought last year and subsequent ban on wheat exports, were an additional trigger in the popular revolts across North Africa and the Middle East mostly blamed on public frustration with autocratic rule. …(Ashton) used the example of food riots in Mozambique after the Russian wheat export ban. …A Libyan uprising follows revolts which toppled the long-time rulers of Tunisia and Egypt and threatened entrenched dynasties including Bahrain.” Read the complete Post.

Hey Green Libs,

Vote for your next Premier – SATURDAY, FEB. 26 - 5am PST– 5pm PST

You should have received your pin number in the mail. If not call Phone: 1-888-281-8683 (toll free)

Here is the voting consensus of the BC Green Liberal Caucus on Sat. Feb. 19th merged with your email suggestions from around the province.

After much discussion we have decided to recommend the following:
1.Abbott
2. de Jong
3. Clark