July 31, 2010
George Lakoff
Author, The Political Mind, Moral Politics, Don’t Think of an Elephant!
Posted: July 15, 2010 09:08 AM
Huffington Post
Saving nature is the central issue. Carbon fuels destroy nature. The Gulf Death Gusher is the most visible sign. But signs are everywhere. Overall global warming increases hurricanes and floods, destroys habitats for plants, fish, birds, and ground animals, spreads deserts, causes deadly waves, and destroys glaciers and our polar ice caps. The use of carbon fuels has been destroying nature. Our job now is to save it.
Interestingly, there is a short, 39-page bill before the Senate that would allow us to save nature and get paid substantially for doing it. It is the CLEAR bill, first suggested by Peter Barnes, and introduced by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME). It is simple, it works, and it pays you!
The principle behind it is this: We US citizens own the air over the US equally. Carbon-fuel sellers are dumping pollution in our air, not just poisoning the air, but destroying nature. At least they should pay for permits to dump, poison, and destroy, and should be forced year-by-year to stop. Who should the sellers pay for permits? All of us, the citizens who live here, should be paid handsomely. And there should be predictably fewer permits every year, till the practice ends or reaches tolerable levels. Read the complete Post.
10 Jun 2010
As the final arrangements are made for this weekend’s Transition Network Conference (the weather forecast is looking good, by the way!), a newly released report from Lloyds Insurance and Chatham House does an amazing job of putting the case for Transition to a business audience (you can download it here). Although given the mad, pre-conference swirl, I haven’t yet read it in detail, its conclusions are striking, indeed quite extraordinary, and I have reproduced them below. Nothing about the role of communities, but then this is a report aimed at business. It does, however, state that any business seeking to be successful in the future will need to be prepared for ‘dramatic changes in the energy sector’, and that energy dependency will become a key vulnerability. It is interesting also that it arrives just after the new UK government announces it is commissioning a review of global resource scarcity and how it will affect the UK.
This is, in effect, the Hirsch Report for British business… and provides the perfect case for the work that Transition Training and Consulting are now doing with businesses.
Conclusions: Read the complete Post.
by Silver Donald Cameron
SUNDAY HERALD COLUMN March 21, 2010
If you want to change the world, empower the women. Especially the
grandmothers.
I’m in a classroom at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario,
where Professor Ron Harpelle is showing a TV series that he and he
and his colleague, Bruce Muirhead of the University of Waterloo, have
made about the history of the International Development Research
Centre, part of Canada’s foreign-aid apparatus.
Since this is International Women’s Day, Harpelle has been showing an
episode featuring the women of a Senegalese village who are
combatting both poverty and the encroachment of the desert by
protecting the local baobab trees and making products from their
fruit. The scene shifts, and now we’re in Morocco, where a group of
women are pursuing exactly the same objectives with a different tree,
the argan.
A Morrocan woman says that the project has transformed her life.
Before, she had no money of her own and she was invisible. Now that
she has some money, she’s become a person. She deserves and gets
respect. She can buy things for her home, for her children. Her whole
family benefits indeed, her whole community does.
I’ve heard this before not once, but many times. Improve the
condition of women, and you achieve real development. Men will
squander their money on toys, drink and general peacockery. Women
will improve the lives of their families and their communities. Women
will behave like adults. Read the complete Post.
Posted Jan 29, 2010 by Tom Whipple
Last weekend, one of the more out of the ordinary meetings in recent memory took place out in Berkeley where some 30 people gathered to begin planning for the world’s transition from the industrial age to whatever is to come.
They were a diverse group, coming from all over North America and representing an array of disciplines. Most had grey hair and among them held many advanced degrees and had written stacks of books and papers.
There was, however, a common thread that held them together. Not a person in the room needed to be convinced that the world is entering upon a great paradigm shift that will sweep away much of industrial civilization, thoughts of economic growth, and the lifestyles that have grown up in the age of ubiquitous fossil fuels.
To the agreement of those present, speakers quickly outlined the problem. In a nutshell, the world is dangerously close to “peak everything” - oil, coal, natural gas, water, minerals, soil, phosphorous, fish, and perhaps the most important of all, the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon without triggering off life-destroying phenomena. Problem two is the financial collapse from efforts by too many governments to spend their way out of recession. The final phenomenon that will force changes, is that there is no sign that mankind is about to make the efforts required to stop spewing carbon into the already saturated atmosphere. Without at least some moderation, it is likely that the atmosphere eventually will have its revenge by raising global temperatures so much that there will be no higher forms of life left. Read the complete Post.
Climate change has opportunities for us all
by Toby Reid, VPOE
Recent declarations that we are in the midst of one of the greatest mass extinctions in the history of the planet are enough to make a person lose hope. In fact, this harsh reality is downright unsettling and, for this author, unacceptable. The means by which we’ve ended up in this position is important to understand, but more important is what we’re going to do to reverse the trend. There is no doubt that if we continue on our current path, humans are likely to be the biggest name on this extinction card. Some may not care about our current plight, but most of us feel the instinctive pull to try to do the right thing. But where do you start?
Let’s start with understanding how we got here. A friend recently laid it out this way, and it’s simply the cold truth of the matter – we’re in this mess because we’re using too much stuff. That’s right – stuff. Steel, fish, wood, oil, plastic, copper, fertilizers, cars, iPods, silicone breast implants - all of it. We’re drowning in stuff, and the byproducts of using this stuff to make other stuff. It’s a stuff-a-palooza gone horribly wrong.
The biggest, and most important step we all can make is to consume less stuff. I’m not suggesting that we go back to the loincloth and live in caves, but it’s a darn sight smarter than what we’re doing right now. We’ve got to scale back the amount of stuff that we consume. That starts with being less greedy, less needy, and more self-sufficient. Grandparents and great-grandparents are very helpful in providing guidance on this.
The next most important thing to look at is your housing situation. This also affects personal transportation, so it’s a biggie. If you live in the suburbs in a huge house for two, I’m sure it’s dawned on you that maybe that’s not sustainable living. You’re right – it’s not. The average single person needs only about 600 square feet to live, and the average family of four needs only about 1500 square feet to have a good home. Urban density is the way of the future.
Read the complete Post.
by Toby Reid, VPOE
Dear President Obama,
I am writing to you today as a concerned global citizen who wishes for his future and the future of the generations to come to be taken into account when the world gets together to plan the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, in December of this year in Copenhagen, Denmark.
For many years now, we have known the cause of climate change. It is human caused, and is due to our exponentially rising carbon emissions which have resulted from an exponentially increasing consumptive society. We have been keenly aware of the dangerous path that we’ve been collectively blazing since the second Great War, a time that caused my grandparents to say ‘enough is enough, we just want peace and stability’. It was the noted economist, Kenneth Boulding, former president of the American Economic Association, who declared in his book “Economic Analysis” in 1941: “anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.
While the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 is a good first step in tackling our exponentially growing carbon emissions, containing provisions that improve building codes and that support a cap and trade system for carbon management, it is not even close to being enough for what the world needs from its largest emitter. Under the terms of this Act, a satisfactory outcome could be obtained if just 12 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by renewable means by 2020. This outcome would simply be delaying the inevitable and making the problem worse. Renewable electrical generation IS the future, and something the current administration should be holding as one of its top priorities for the current term.
Read the complete Post.
One January in Paris, I held a well-wrapped bag of Brie outside my third-floor window.
Street lamps shone on deep green leaves as snow melted in the cool air. I wound my window closed, holding the edge of the bag until it was firmly secured in the protective corner of the outer pane.
With hundreds of students and only one kitchen, leaving food in the communal fridge was like giving it away.
Four years later, in my new apartment in Toronto, I stood in front of what sounded like a fridge with bronchitis. I started to view it less as a useful appliance than as an unneeded annoyance.
In what felt like a radical decision, I unplugged my fridge. Read the complete Post.
vlsavage
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Activism, Alternative Energy, Economics, Energy supply, Events, Food, Global Warming, Housing, Mitigation, Overpopulation, Overshoot, Social effects, Urban Agriculture, Urban Planning, Video
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Mar 26 2009
BLUE NORTH FESTIVAL OF ART AND SUSTAINABLE CULTURE presents - How to save Civilization with a Movie - an eco-workshop with:
Teri Woods McArter - Co-Producer, How To Boil A Frog (documentary film by Jon Cooksey)
Rick Balfour- Architect, Urban Planner; Balfour and Assoc., Metro Vancouver Planning Coalition
Vandy Savage - Animation Supervisor, How to Boil a Frog; Communications Vancouver Peak Oil Executive
Join us for a FREE Illustrated lecture and discussion.
Get a sneak preview of the new film, How to Boil a Frog, created and produced on the North Shore. Get informed about strategies to transition into New Normal by building resilient communities from author, architect, urban planner, Rick Balfour. And find out how we won the People’s Choice Award for our 1 minute animated film teaser.
Date: Saturday, April 4th, 2009
Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am (registration onsite at 9:30am)
Location: John Braithwaite Community Centre - Anchor Room ground level
145 West 1st Street, North Vancouver
Cost: FREE
www.howtoboilafrog.com
www.plancanada.com
For more information visit: www.bluenorthfestival.ca
PhilipBr
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Activism, Alternative Energy, Economics, Energy supply, Environment, Food, Global Warming, Health & Disease, Housing, Mitigation, Overpopulation, Overshoot, Social effects, Thoughts, Transportation, Urban Agriculture, Water, What's Your Plan?
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Mar 25 2009
I can’t help but feel frustrated when I read Newsweek articles like that one below that only go as far as advocating a Business As Usual (BAU) or a Technofix just-in-time-to-save-our-asses solution (In religious jargon – False Messianic promise) to Climate Change and Peak Oil.
By Philip Be’er VPOE
In his Hierarchy of Needs, Abraham Maslow laid out in a graphic format, what human beings need to thrive http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm
Try to find the need for nuclear, fossil or even “low carbon” energy sources, for cars or of any other kind of mechanised transportation in the pyramid and you’ll see that they simply play no role in what human beings require to be healthy, wealthy and happy.
According to Professor Abraham Maslow, we do need Clean Air, Food, Water, Sleep and Shelter to survive. When we also get our safety and security needs met this creates a stable environment conducive to developing socially and emotionally. When we set up our societies in ways that allow us to have our Esteem Needs met, then we also have a shot at realising our personal potential.
Read the complete Post.
No longer the purview of anti-social types, experts warn we must embrace a massive lifestyle change
Feb 15, 2009 04:30 AM
The Toronto Star
Cathal Kelly
STAFF WRITER
While panic is not the prescription, experts are warning that the time to begin taking Peak Oil seriously is past.
“It’s not about believing. It’s about facts,” said Gord Miller, Ontario’s environmental commissioner. Miller has been warning about Peak Oil for years. He thinks we hit peak around early 2007.
“If we’re not there, we’re awful close,” said Dave Hughes, a geoscientist who once ran Canada’s national coal inventory.
Peak Oil doesn’t mean we have run out of the stuff. It means that we have crested the top of a bell curve of supply. Then it’s a roller-coaster ride down. Depending on who you ask, that ride will either be slow and uncomfortable or teeth-rattling and destructive.
“Depletion is taking somewhere between 5 and 6 per cent of (existing) world oil production per year,” said Hughes. “The reason that oil price is where it is today is that the economy has reduced demand.”
No one has found a major new oil field since the 1960s. It’s getting harder and more expensive to bring up the oil we know is there. All these signs point toward the peak.
What happens now? Read the complete Post.
