Nov 14, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Seems to me that all efforts to create awareness about climate change will be useless. Any effort to make the average individual understand the problem we are facing today, will be useless. “Limits to growth” is a good example of failed efforts. The message has been there for 40 years. The required awareness, at a global scale, a necessity to handle the current situation, is something that seems to me impossible, because we are, as specie, not smart enough to handle our own power.
Oct 29, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Action is the antidote to despair even if the action is hopeless. When a medical doctor knows that somebody has cancer, it’s malpractice if they don’t tell that. So I’m doing that. I think Bill McKibben and James Hansen and a whole bunch of climate scientists are guilty of malpractice. Because they know what I know. Almost every politician in the country knows what I know. All the leaders of the big banks know what I know. And they’re lying to us.
Oct 28, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
If, as Guy McPherson has said in the recent past, the only way for humanity to avoid Near-Term Extinction (NTE) is the immediate shutdown of industrial civilization, while to make matters worse – yes, matters could get worse – recently adding that if industrial civilization’s electrical grid were to suddenly go down, some 400+ nuclear plants around the world would begin to melt down. Without power, the normal shutdown procedures could not take place. Apparently, we may have broken our future, as well.
Sep 30, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Traits ingrained in the basic human condition may be preventing people from supporting more action against climate change.
Sep 25, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Unfortunately, many of our world’s vital ecosystems are already on the brink of collapse. Despite incredible leaps in resource-use efficiency, ecological understanding, and technological know-how, our planet’s forests and sensitive habitats are being devastated far faster than they’re regenerating, arable lands are turning into deserts and soils are being mined of their critical nutrients, our oceans are being overfished and polluted with more toxins than can safely be absorbed, our freshwater aquifers and waterways are being depleted at rates several times faster than they’re being replenished, and our atmosphere is being flooded with so much carbon that our global climate is warming to extreme degrees. Moreover, the fossil fuels we rely on for transportation, agriculture, housing, manufacturing, and so much more are becoming harder and harder to find and extract, posing severe challenges to the very foundation of industrial civilization.
Sep 18, 2013 | Feature Articles
In Part One of this essay, we looked at defining the terms “paradigm shift” and “tipping point” as they apply to the multiple-systems failure scenario we find ourselves in today. As we and others have pointed out for years, these failures are pandemic. They are everywhere: Education, economy, government, social systems, peak everything, and on and on the list goes. to the point where it’s difficult to find systems that are thriving. But nowhere are the failure of systems more critical, more in your face, and more threatening than Climate Change and Fukushima. Either one of these has the potential to sound the death knell of the entire human race. But before we move to the possibility of positive paradigm shifts and the tipping points needed to that might mitigate each, let’s touch on both.
Sep 16, 2013 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Before writing another word I want to thank all of you who have reached out to me through my website, on Facebook, Twitter, and by email to check on my status during the horrific Colorado floods of last week. At this writing, over 12,000 people have been evacuated, nearly 18,000 homes destroyed or damaged, 5 confirmed dead, and hundreds more missing. I consider myself extraordinarily blessed not to have been harmed or have experienced any damage to my home; however, all around me in every direction is devastation—evacuated families, schools closed, and people who still cannot return to their workplaces.
Sep 5, 2013 | Empire
I believe that as individuals, we must conduct “wars” in our families and communities to radically alter how we live. More importantly, we must engage in the ongoing transformation of our psycho-spiritual awareness so that we are not just giving lip service to our desire to live in a new paradigm, but are actually embracing it and functioning in alignment with it. Curiously, the original meaning of the Islamic term “jihad” was not a holy war on anything or anyone external, but a holy war on one’s own psyche—a conflagration with unconsciousness that resulted in a profound spiritual awakening.
Sep 4, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
It’s much easier to kill people with missiles in a foreign country than to undertake any transition in the U.S. economy from fossil fuels to sustainable energy. The President simply gives an order that is sent down the chain of command. The most profound dysfunction of the U.S. government has to do less with the military and “security” budgets, our system of health care, the debt ceiling, or the rate of economic growth, than with the failure to deal effectively with climate change caused by greenhouse gases. If nothing sufficient is done, the effects will become obvious only when it would be too late.
Aug 31, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
It’s difficult to see a way out of this dilemma that doesn’t involve considerable suffering. Limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, the widely agreed-upon threshold beyond which climate impacts are expected to become severe and irreversible, is likely off the table. Widespread adaptive measures are slow in coming, far more expensive than mitigation would have been, and subject to enormous inequality of impact based on wealth and class. So, in this grim situation, do I have hope? It’s complicated.
