Those of us who have been following the unfolding global crisis – the converging, interlocked “wicked problems” of energy, the environment, economics and social justice – have become intimately familiar with the painful progression through the Five Stages of Grief described by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.
Our leaders behaved despicably, and continue to, and we allow it to happen e.g., Democrats boast of Obama “getting Bin Laden” in a reprehensible attempt to gain political leverage from the tragedy… actions that Democratic partisans would have, rightly, shamed a Republican president for attempting to exploit.
An extremely disturbing new study published in the American Journal of Public Health finds that suicides have replaced car accidents as the leading cause of injury-related death in the U.S. This is partly because deaths from automobile accidents are down — that’s the good news.
This article is an attempt to respond to those who say they see me as a defeatist, a ‘doomer’, a dogmatically negative person. I have described myself of late as a joyful pessimist, and will try to explain why. This article draws on various theories about complexity, and the phenomenological philosophies of several writers, poets, artists and scientists. But it’s not a work of exposition of theory or of philosophy. It is, I guess, a confession.
Drawing on new data on the rate of melting arctic ice released Wednesday by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), leading scientific experts and environmental campaigners upped the level of alarm and issued a renewed call to action by calling the growing reality of climate change a “planetary emergency”.
Contrary to popular imagery, it is not lawn watering, car washing, and long showers that are depleting aquifers and draining rivers. As Derrick Jensen points out, 90% of the freshwater in the U.S. is used by Industry, including industrial agriculture, with the remaining 10% being split evenly between municipal users (such as people in homes) and golf courses. Here in Eastern Oregon it’s a small constituency — the ranchers — sucking up most of the moisture, and whining about it to boot. There’s your real scam.
A study released last week by Stanford scientists, which claims organic foods are no more healthy than non-organic foods, was funded by corporate agriculture and biotechnology giants, according to a new report by the Cornucopia Institute.
In today’s post by Charlotte Kellogg, she explores the public health threats caused by inner-city food deserts as well as the new and innovative approaches to solving this problem. In communities that lack access to healthy food choices and fresh produce, the job of a public health advocate is often to combat and treat the afflictions that accompany food deserts, namely obesity and diabetes. Here, Madison expands on Mark Bittman’s suggestions for promoting fresh food in inner-city food deserts, as reported in a Carolyn Baker post, arguing that simple changes and plans can make significant differences.
We’ve blown past the mileposts for global peak oil, says Kunstler in his new book, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation, and we expect technology to save us. Whether our cheap-oil lifestyle falls quickly with a single knockout blow or crumbles slowly with a battery of jabs, Kunstler is certain of one thing: We’re about to be walloped. We’ve definitively entered the epoch Kunstler calls “the long emergency,” an extended era of economic contraction and social stress caused by shrinking resources. Yet we refuse to see this, largely because we’re spellbound by the mighty systems we run with technological magic. Peak oil got you down? No worries; we’ll run those iPads with some other undiscovered, inexhaustible means of power. Writers Paul Smyth and Judy George spoke with Kunstler about the end of the fossil fuel era and whatever comes next.
As I spoke to the Sisters about the collapse of industrial civilization as a rite of passage for humanity—as a spiritual and emotional practice which we must begin now and continue going forward, they were overwhelmingly receptive. In fact, I was inundated with their resonance and gratitude. Of all the audiences to whom I have presented my work on the topic of collapse in the past five years, this one displayed the most unequivocal comprehension of any.