by Dr.Jim Stephenson
NSUC 13 November 2011

This article helps us understand our unwillingness to change and how and why we must.

Over the last few years I have become increasingly aware that the path of our society is not sustainable in several ways.
We won’t be able to continue as we are. Sooner or later, stuff will hit the fan.

Naturally, I set out to help my society recognize the dangers and to make the necessary changes. Employing a naive view of the political process, I wrote articles, gave presentations, and ran for political office. It was encouraging having people like Bill McKibben, James Hanson, and Al Gore helping me.

However, as time went by, I noticed that this approach was not leading to the necessary actions. Citizens were not studying the issues, considering the tradeoffs, and electing politicians to do the right thing. Most people were not interested, thought the complexity was too great, fell for the most simplistic campaign slogans, and reacted emotionally.

Intrigued by this dysfunctional behaviour, I set out to explore the ability of humans to practice foresight. After all, one of the characteristics which distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species is an awareness of the future and an ability to plan actions today which affect tomorrow. Today I will share some of my findings about this ability and its past, present, and future use. Read the complete Post.

By Paul Kingsnorth

26 September, 2011
The Guardian

Leopold Kohr warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded. We should have listened

Living through a collapse is a curious experience. Perhaps the most curious part is that nobody wants to admit it’s a collapse. The results of half a century of debt-fuelled “growth” are becoming impossible to convincingly deny, but even as economies and certainties crumble, our appointed leaders bravely hold the line. No one wants to be the first to say the dam is cracked beyond repair. Read the complete Post.

By Richard Heinberg

09 August, 2011
Post Carbon Institute

Memo to politicians: Stop promising to grow GDP and start targeting social benefits you can actually deliver—or prepare to face angry mobs. Nothing grows forever on a finite planet, not even the US economy.

It’s not surprising that everyone from President Obama to Michele Bachmann is assuring the electorate that he or she can deliver more GDP growth. When GDP numbers are up, more jobs appear and investments reap higher returns. When GDP is down, economic mayhem ensues.

Yet there are signs that more GDP growth may not be in the cards, regardless whose economic remedy is chosen. In fact, the day may have arrived when GDP itself has outlived whatever usefulness it ever had.

Read the complete Post.

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.

Time: May 31, 2011 from 7pm to 9pm
Location: Langara College Theatre A122b in “A” bldg
Street: 100 W. 49th
City/Town: Vancouver
Phone: for more info: Ross ross@villagevancouver.ca

Nicole Foss spoke at last year’s annual Transition Gathering in England and impressed the heck out of everyone with her very powerful talk.

A Century of Challenges is a comprehensive analysis of energy, finance and the interaction between the two from a big picture perspective. Read the complete Post.

A lesson in limits
by Derrick Jensen
Published in the January/February 2011 issue of Orion magazine

’M CONTINUALLY stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.

Some of those who believe in perpetual growth are out-and-out nut jobs, like the economist and former White House advisor Julian Simon, who said, “We have in our hands now—actually in our libraries-—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years.” And showing that, when it comes to U.S. economic policies, insanity is never out of season, are yet more nut jobs, like Lawrence Summers, who has served as chief economist at the World Bank, U.S. secretary of the treasury, president of Harvard, and as President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council, and who said, “There are no . . . limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind at any time in the foreseeable future. . . . The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.” Read the complete Post.

When people tell me the dire messages about which I write don’t resonate with other people, I struggle with a coherent response. Would you prefer continued overshoot on an overshot planet? Would you prefer we keep heating our overheated home? Would you prefer we ignore the most important issues in the history of our species? Party on, brothers and sisters, when you bother to extract your head from your asses the sand. As long as we ignore reality, it’ll all be fine.

And then, there’s reality. I’ll go there. You’ve been warned.

We’re irrevocably broke. I’ve made that announcement before. Finally, though, mainstream financial analysts are joining the party of reality.

Perhaps our individual and collective bankruptcy (of every kind) explains why 79.6% of respondents to a Scientific American poll are unwilling to forgo even a single penny to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change. Scientific American readers undoubtedly are better informed than the general populace. And yet they won’t pay a thing to avoid extinction of our species. Kinda makes you warm and fuzzy all over, doesn’t it?

At the request of corporate CEOs and their minions, high-level politicians, we’ll spend, spend, spend to keep propping up the industrial economy that is making us crazy and killing us. Far be it for me to suggest those CEOs and politicians are killing us directly — I’ll leave that charge to others — but there is no doubt this system is destroying every aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our lives. In return, we’ll throw away fiat currency in the name of infrastructure so we can maintain our non-negotiable, completely disastrous way of life. But we won’t spend a buck a dime a single cent to preclude disaster for our children.

Excuse me, I need to retch into my composting toilet. I encourage you to do the same. I’ll wait. Read the complete Post.