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.

Feb 15, 2009 04:30 AM
The Toronto Star
by Cathal Kelly

For millennia, doomsayers have been predicting the end of the world as we know it. These days, theory dovetails with fact: oil is disappearing. Should we be listening?

After the planes hit the towers, Paul added a to-do to his long survival list.

At the time, he was working on the eighth floor of a west-end office tower. So he convinced a guy at the local outdoors supplier to teach him to rappel. Then he bought 60 metres of rope and packed it, along with some climbing gear, into a briefcase. Then he tucked the briefcase under his desk.

“It seemed like the intelligent thing to do,” he shrugs.

Three years ago, Paul heard about Peak Oil. This is the millenarianism of our recessionary time, a doomsday scenario with a wrinkle – scientific backing. In essence, Peak Oil states that the world’s supply of crude will soon go into permanent, inexorable decline. This is widely accepted amongst experts. The main points of debate are exactly when this will happen, how quickly oil will deplete and what happens next. Read the complete Post.

Crossposted from EcoGeek.org

It seems like every month or so, I get a press release in my inbox saying something like “Scientists Say that The World Will Explode if We Don’t Do X by Y.” I have some news for you.

1. No one has any idea what will happen if we don’t do X by Y
2. That headline was written by a journalist, not by a scientist

Sure, in their models, scientists can see a precise date of when the gulf-stream will shut down or when the albedo effect will take over and global warming will be irreversible. But scientists recognize that models, however sophisticated, are not as sophisticated as the real world. Only a fool would take the date the model spit out and assume that that’s the day of reckoning.

Unfortunately, journalists (myself included) are often foolish. Our business is to get people to read things, preferably things that are true. But by the time it goes through three editors, each with a mind on the business, the chances of a headline with more units of sensation per unit of truth get pretty high.

Plus, I think that we, as journalists, have an artificial fascination with deadlines. We think they make the world work because they make us work. Read the complete Post.

A Talk By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University, Australia.

Friday, January 9, 2009
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Room 1400
SFU Vancouver – 515 West Hastings St.

Peter Newman and Tim Beatley have written two new books, one on Resilient Cities, the other on Green Urbanism Down Under. They are on a North American tour in January beginning in Vancouver as it was here that the gestation of the Resilient Cities book began. Peter will speak about how cities are under threat from the financial crash and especially need to avoid pushing solutions such as road building and urban sprawl that were only responsible for the sub-prime meltdown. A new approach to urban development needs to be forged out of the down-turn that can at the same time enable cities to respond to the deep challenge of peak oil and climate change. Some hopeful directions will be outlined based on cities from around the world, including cities down-under.

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 13, 2008

VPO NOTE: Companion article to the one below.

On February 14th, Canada and the US signed an agreement which allows for the deployment of US troops inside Canada.

There was no official announcement nor was there a formal decision at the governmental level.

In fact the agreement was barely mentioned by the Canadian media.

The agreement, which raises farreaching issues of national sovereignty, was not between the two governments. It was signed by military commanding officers.

U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) released a statement confirming that the agreement had been signed between US NORTHCOM and Canada Command, namely between the military commands of each country. Canada Command was established in February 2006. Read the complete Post.

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 26, 2008
Original article

VPO NOTE: this article is posted both to raise the possibility that the US government may be anticipating social unrest from an imminent resource shock, and also because the Carter Doctrine designates resources like the tar sands as “American assets” even if they’re inconvenently located outside the United States.”

The Army Times reports that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is returning from Iraq to defend the Homeland, as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” The BCT unit has been attached to US Army North, the Army’s component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008).

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. …

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. Read the complete Post.