• About

Collapse of Industrial Civilization

~ Finding the Truth behind the American Hologram

Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Dull Static

28 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by td0s in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Neo-Colonialism, Peak Oil

≈ 172 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Dark Mountain Project, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Mass Die Off, Mike Ruppert, Neoliberal Capitalism, Paul Kingsnorth, Peak Oil, Uncivilization

Originally posted at: Prayforcalamity.com


The flowering dogwoods are in bloom. Along the country lanes, the pink petals have already exploded into ephemeral radiance and begun to wither and fall from the branches of the Jane Magnolia trees. For me this means no longer having the agonizing luxury of hours to sit and write. After six months of bi-weekly essays, I feel I have expressed much of what had become balled up and cluttered in my mind, and now it is time to ruminate in the garden once again.

I named this blog, “Pray for Calamity,” because there are several major crises converging which threaten human civilization, and there are no existing structures capable of mitigating them. Democracy, capitalism, neo-liberal globalization; they are all incapable of undertaking the work necessary to avert cataclysm. The paradigms of thought and approach which are almost hardwired into the modern mind at this point, need to be scrubbed. Of the remaining, solvable ecological crises, which may not include climate change, there is no tool available to attend to them that comes from the conventional tool box of legal, lawful pursuit. These ecological crises, which range from topsoil depletion to tree extinctions to massive die off of oceanic life, cannot be remedied without a fundamental shift in the thinking of the people in the civilized world. If people do not begin to perceive the world as a living entity, interconnected, conscious, and with intrinsic value beyond how it can be carved up and sold, then it is only a matter of time until the human race begins to suffer on a massive scale due to their callous disregard for the other beings with whom they share this planet.

And then there are the political and economic and resource depletion crises as well.

Changing our minds, changing how we think, is physically speaking one of the easiest things we can do. However, when our egos and our identities are wholly interwoven with an idea or an ideology, changing our way of thinking and discarding the old ideas, can be the hardest thing we are asked to undertake. If our physical reality changes, this can create a rip in the threads that stitch our view of ourselves with a dogma or a paradigm. So I await calamity because the egos of the civilized have hardened their hearts and deafened their ears, and until those in the first world middle class feel the gnawing pain of persistent hunger and the fear of deafening uncertainty, they will refuse to consider that maybe everything they have been taught to believe about themselves and their collective destiny, is abjectly wrong.

—

“We’re many generations overdue for a revolution, in our thinking. I’m not talking about blood and violence although I’m afraid thats already happened. I’m talking about a revolution that’s probably the hardest kind, the kind that takes place within the human soul and the human mind. To be able to tear everything down, throw everything out, and start with a completely fresh piece of paper and say, ‘OK, how do we solve this problem?’”

Mike Ruppert said that in the documentary “Collapse.” While by no means a perfect man, Mike was a good person, and did his best to tell the truth as he knew it. He shot himself two weeks ago. He left many insights like this one as gifts for us.

People who become aware of the depth of the problems facing humanity at this juncture in time, often seek answers. They want to know what we need to do. Some suggest we need a revolution. Some suggest we need to take to the hills and hide on personal homesteads, to perhaps form communities of these homesteads and just hold on white knuckled through the bottle neck of collapse. Then there is Paul Kingsnorth of the Dark Mountain Project, who speaks of the difference between problems which are to be solved, and predicaments which are to be endured.

“What do you do,” he asked, “when you accept that all of these changes are coming, things that you value are going to be lost, things that make you unhappy are going to happen, things that you wanted to achieve you can’t achieve, but you still have to live with it, and there’s still beauty, and there’s still meaning, and there are still things you can do to make the world less bad? And that’s not a series of questions that have any answers other than people’s personal answers to them. Selfishly it’s just a process I’m going through.” He laughed. “It’s extremely narcissistic of me. Rather than just having a personal crisis, I’ve said: ‘Hey! Come share my crisis with me!’

Kingsnorth was recently interviewed by the New York Times. As a long time environmental activist who years ago lost faith that there is much we can do to “save the planet,” he decries the false hope sold by mainstream environmentalist groups. With friend Dougald Hine, Kingsnorth wrote the “Uncivilization” manifesto, on which The New York Times writes:

“Uncivilization” was firm in its conviction that climate change and other ecological crises are predicaments, and it called for a cadre of like-minded writers to “challenge the stories which underpin our civilization: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality and the myth of separation from ‘nature.’ ”

On this matter I think Kingsnorth and Hine are right on the mark. We will never weather the predicaments before us, let alone solve what problems remain solvable, if we refuse to take an honest look at who we are, where we are, and just what the hell we are doing. I think this is a meditation that would benefit revolutionaries and those hiding in the hills alike. We must ask if civilization is something we are even interested in continuing. We must ask what it is we value most and whether or not the lifestyles we are cordoned into are even in line with those values. We must ask what it means to be human. And if we are to trust any of our conclusions, we must first find a way to step outside of everything our culture has programmed us to believe.

—

Civilization is a power structure. It is a rejection of natural law in favor of the control of those high on social hierarchies. Civilization is the domestication of nature and people alike. It is the creation of a once regional, now global farm where the multitudes of humans are livestock, restricted by the borders of various owners, and subjugated and exploited for the extraction of the surplus values generated by their labor. Non human life forms and entire ecosystems are subjugated likewise, and as this control apparatus is now world wide and hell bent on growing in scale year over year, life itself is at risk. Simultaneously, this architecture of domestication and control has blunted the souls of the humans it dominates, and like house pets, the great many people have been declawed and broken. This is the existential portion of the crisis we face. The meaninglessness of life on the inside. The dull static of the best case scenario, where those in the first world yearn for the life of tepid, safe predictability offered by the owner class, should only one produce enough without question or complaint. We are a wretched bunch who fetishize our oppressors and spew vitriol at insurrectionaries who would in trying to shake us loose even for a moment, dare make us late for work.

Navigating circumstances beyond our control in which masters are hostile to us, constantly maneuvering to exert more control over our lives as well as to extract more value from us even in our imprisonment or death; most people are surviving, not thriving. Merely jockeying through a preset condition of work and fee schedules has muted the potential of our species. What has been throttled cannot be measured in discoveries or inventions, but in the satisfaction of individuals and communities to thrive on their own terms. To be fully actualized and autonomous creatures. To witness the assembly line life of modern man is to suffer a snuff film.

If we are to rescue our own hearts and our minds, if we are to save the last embers of burning wildness in our souls and to break the tethers that bind our thinking to suicidal paradigms, then we must uncivilize. Like Buck in “The Call of the Wild,” we must seek to undomesticate ourselves, no only to survive the realities of the world into which we are being thrust, but because to be a house mutt lying bored at master’s feet is to barely exist at all.

—

So what does any of this really mean? What are the steps, the actions to undertake which will align the force of our arms with the rhythms of our hearts? Do we fight or do we flee? Or do we stand upon the hill and bear witness until the fire consumes us? Or is there perhaps some combination of all; a time for rebellion, a time to tend our gardens, and a time to merely sit and say goodbye?

Certainly, if people seek a recipe for action that can maintain society in a form even remotely similar to its present incarnation, then I offer nothing. If what people desire is a map of the future from which plans can be derived and survival assured, I have none. I think maybe it is time to give up on maps. Maybe it is time to just be in the territory for a while. Maybe it is time to give up on human words and to leave the electronic buzz of the internet and to set foot on soil and rock. If domestication is the product of being in the domicile, in the house, then perhaps what we need is to step outside. If the stories we have been told for generations have poisoned us; if these myths about the greatness of the lines on maps and the men who ruled those patchwork lines have only served to make us slaves to abstractions, engendering in us a self righteousness and a malice towards all that isn’t of our hands and seeding in us a fear of what lies outside comfortable walls, then perhaps it is time to go and to hear some different voices. To hear some new stories. Maybe, lost in the ballad of crowing frogs and moaning trees we can crumple up what is written before us and find a blank piece of paper, and on it we will write of our sadness and our fear. We will admit our weakness in the face of all that we have made and we will scratch out our apologies and our gratitude.

Then we will collect up everything that we think the future needs to be given, and we will carry it within us to barricades and to garden gates, to jail cells and to barn bays and to graves. We will find the fire that will make tomorrow worth struggling towards, in that dark, when we are bent and cold heaps of hungry, smoke smelling bone and sinew beneath taught and blackened skin. The madness of the world will grow raw, and real. Privation and awfulness will bloom, and we will endure it.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Do the Math of Peak Oil and Convince Yourself

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Hans Zandvliet in Peak Oil

≈ 82 Comments

A Step-By-Step Plan to
Calculate Hubbert’s Curve

Ing. Hans Zandvliet, April 2014

Table of Contents
Do the Math of Peak Oil and Convince Yourself
Table of Contents
Introduction
Download and Organize CDIAC Data
Methodology of Calculating Hubbert’s Curve
Do the Math!
Back to Our CDIAC Database
Defining the Linear Trend Line
Calculating Hubbert’s Curve
Matching Hubbert’s Curve with Historical Data
Combining Hubbert’s Curve and Historical Data in a Graph
Conclusions
Recent Developments
Bibliography

Introduction

Until Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère published their paper The End of Cheap Oil in 1998 (Campbell & Laherrére, 1998), the petroleum geologist Marion King Hubbert (1903 – 1989) was all but forgotten, including his correct forecast – back in 1956 – of the US’s peak of oil production in 1970 (Hubbert, 1956). In their paper Campbell and Laherrère warned that:

“Barring a global recession, it seems most likely that world production of conventional oil will peak during the first decade of the 21st century.”

It took another 12 years, but eventually the oil production optimist par excellence, the International Energy Agency (IEA, of the OECD countries), also had to admit the undeniable in their World Energy Outlook of 2010 (IEA, 2010):

“Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68–69 mb/d by 2020, but never regains its all‐time peak of 70 mb/d reached in 2006, while production of natural gas liquids (NGLs) and unconventional oil grows strongly.” (emphasis added)

Since Campbell’s and Laherrère’s paper, the peak of global oil production has been studied and commented on intensely. Centre stage in the debates has been Hubbert’s peak-oil calculation. However, in order to calculate Hubbert’s curve, one needs to have reliable petroleum production data and this is precisely the biggest problem. Oil reserves and production data of many countries and oil companies are kept secret, so one has to circumvent those obstacles by piecing together national import and export data from all countries in the world. Doable for a petroleum geologist, but not for an ordinary college student.

And this is a pity, because ordinary people cannot verify what the experts say about the timing of the peak of global oil production. The entire calculation remains a kind of magical mystery in which to either believe or not. The calculation itself is not the problem; any college student with a bit of affinity for mathematics should be able to do these calculations. The lack of reliable data is the problem.

Download and Organize CDIAC Data

Fortunately there is a fairly accurate solution to this problem, freely accessible to the general public. It’s not direct petroleum production data, but a closely related proxy: carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels. On the basic assumption that burning one barrel of petroleum will always produce roughly the same amount of carbon-dioxide, it doesn’t really matter whether one calculates the peak of global oil production or the peak of global carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels. The unit and vertical scale of the curve will be different, but the general shape of it and the timing of its peak will remain the same.

This database of carbon emissions from fossil fuels has been put together by CDIAC (Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre), which “[…] has served as the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since 1982.” So, CDIAC is not some kind of obscure website with dubious and poorly documented information, but an authoritative source used by climate scientists.

So, let’s go and take a look at CDIAC’s website: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/. On CDIAC’s home-page, in the pull-down menu “Data”, click “Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions”. Now, click “Global, Regional, and National Annual Time Series (1751-2010)” on top of the list on this page. Here you can choose between national, regional and global data. It’s worthwhile to have a look at some national data (like those of the U.K.), imagine the work to get these data together from historical archives and appreciate the magnitude of this database. (By the way, for the interested, it’s a nice cross-check to use the U.S.’s national emissions data to calculate the U.S.’s peak of oil production back in 1970.) For the purpose of this article, we click “Global” emission data. Now you can choose between three data formats: “Graphics”, “Digital Data (ASCII, Fixed Format)” and “Digital Data (ASCII, Comma-Delimited)”. Choose the third option and open the data file (presented in CSV format) with Excel. Now save the CSV-file as an XLS-file (or XLSX-file) in a map of your choice. Additionally, going back to the “Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions” page, click “Preliminary 2011 and 2012 Global & National Estimates” to update your database with two more years. This only requires a bit of copying and pasting of a few numbers between two Excel sheets.

You now have a database of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels running from 1751 until 2012. The data differentiate between solid (like coal and peat), liquid (predominantly petroleum) and gaseous (mainly natural gas) fossil fuels. Row number 1 contains the headings of the table, but they are very long. For convenience, rename them to something shorter, like “Year, Total, Gas, Oil, Coal, Cement, Flaring and Per Capita” (cells A1:H1). Row number 2 mentions the source of the database. Copy this information away to somewhere on the right side of the table and use row 2 to mention the units of the data (million metric tons of carbon [Mt C] for all columns, except the per capita data in column H (after 1949): metric tons of carbon [t C]). Your Excel sheet should now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-24 at 23.36.53

Methodology of Calculating Hubbert’s Curve

This article follows the explanations of Kenneth S. Deffeyes’ book Beyond Oil, the View from Hubbert’s Peak (Deffeyes, 2005). Deffeyes is a geologist and was a colleague and friend of Hubbert when he started his career at the Shell Research Lab in Houston, back in 1958. He wrote this book with the intention of explaining how Hubbert’s curve is calculated, so in this sense my article is not that novel. However, my aim is to get more into the details of how to actually do it, step by step, by means of an (Microsoft Office 2007) Excel sheet and (which I think is novel indeed) CDIAC’s carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels.

Marion K. Hubbert discovered a peculiar pattern in oil production data, which allowed him to make a fairly accurate estimate of the amount of oil “yet to be discovered”. This almost sounds like a contradiction of terms: how can you know how much oil you are going to discover in future decades? Still, Hubbert discovered a linear trend in historical oil production data and a linear trend can easily be extended into the future. The following graph shows the pattern of oil production that Hubbert discovered: 

snap-2014-04-24-at-23-40-30

The vertical axis represents the oil production of a certain year divided by the cumulative oil production up to that year (“P” stands for annual oil production and “Q” means cumulative oil production). The horizontal axis represents the cumulative oil production in billions of barrels. 

Every dot represents the data of one year. At first the cumulative production is still little, so the quotient of P/Q gives relatively high outcomes (the blue dots in the graph). But the cumulative oil production keeps rising steadily, so the outcome of the quotient P/Q trends downward. Most importantly, from 1983 onward the dots start to line up fairly close to a straight line (the red dots in the graph) and form a linear trend (the black line in the graph).

If we extend this linear trend line until it reaches the horizontal axis, we can get an idea of the ultimate recoverable amount of oil. Upon reaching the horizontal axis, the quotient P/Q becomes zero, meaning that the annual oil production has become zero and no more oil can be produced. Therefore, this point indicates the total cumulative oil production at the end of the age of oil. Once you know how much oil you can ultimately produce, you have the key to calculate the future trend of annual oil production.

Do the Math!

In mathematical terms, the equation of a straight line is very simple: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 00.02.06

Where “b” is the y-value where the line intersects with the y-axis. In other words, the y-value when the x-value is zero.

The “a” indicates the inclination of the line. When two points on the line are known, this inclination can be calculated as follows: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 00.08.30

Or, the difference in y-values divided by the difference in x-values of the two known points. A negative outcome means the line slopes downward from left to right.

So, if we can define this linear trend line, we can calculate the future trend of oil production and to quote Deffeyes: “Since we want to estimate likely future trends, nothing beats a straight line on a graph.” No cooked up magic added, just straight forward mathematics.

First we translate the mathematical terms into oil production terms, taking the intersections of the trend line with the x and y axes as the two known points: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 00.15.54

With these translations, the mathematical formula becomes the following oil production formula: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 00.19.50

Or simplified: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 06.50.27

To calculate annual production data, you’d like to know “P”, not some incomprehensible quotient “P/Q”. This is easily achieved by multiplying both sides of the equation with “Q”: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.05.35

To define “b” and “Qt”, we will make use of Excel’s linear trend line option. Then we will come back to this formula. 

Back to Our CDIAC Database

Time to roll up some sleeves, because now we’re starting to elaborate our Excel calculations. First, insert two new columns (E and F) to the right of the column with carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels (D). Merge cells D1, E1 and F1, rename cell D2 into “P [Mt C]”. Name cell E2 “Q [Mt C]” and F2 “P/Q”. Your Excel sheet should now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.08.59

The cumulative emission data are easily calculated by adding the emission data from the present year to the cumulative emission data of the previous year. Of course, 1751 doesn’t have a previous year in this database, so here (cell E3) we enter “0”. In cell E4 enter the Excel formula “= E3 + D4” and copy it down to all cells of column E (cells E5 till E264).

Petroleum was not yet discovered in 1751, so everything is still zero. As from 1870 the first emission data from liquid fossil fuels appear in the database. For convenience, you can split the window (menu tab “View”) to keep visible the heading of the table. Go to cell F122 (of the year 1870), enter the Excel formula “=D122/E122” and copy it down to the rest of column F (cells F123 till F264). Your Excel sheet (as from 1870) should now look like this:

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.13.15

Defining the Linear Trend Line

From the menu tab “Insert”, select the graph type “Scatter with only Markers” and a blank window opens up to design a chart. From the menu tab “Design” (“Chart Tools” are only visible when you select the chart window), click the button “Select Data” and a dialogue box opens. Click “Add” (under “Legend Entry (Series)”) and yet another dialogue opens in which you can type a name for the data series and the range of x-data and y-data. Under “Series Name” type something like “P/Q (1900-2012)”. I suggest making the graph as from 1900, because initially P/Q values start at 1, so the vertical scale becomes very large and the final and most relevant values between 0.04 and 0.02 become barely visible. For your x-data select the values E152:E264 and for your y-data select the values F152:F264. With some layout editing, your graph could now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.16.41

Below a value of 0.04, you can see the dots lining up in a roughly linear way. When you move the cursor over the first dot just below the 0.04 line, an information box shows the coordinates of this dot: “Series “P/Q (1900-2012)” Point “55,931” (55,931, 0.0389)” Looking up these data in the table and you will find that they belong to the year 1983. So, as from 1983, the carbon emission data from liquid fossil fuels start to line up in a linear way.

Before we can let Excel calculate a linear trend line, we first have to make a second graph of the 1983-2012 data. Do this in exactly the same way as the former graph, but only select the 1983-2012 data. Your graph should now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.22.48

Of this second graph (of red dots) we let Excel calculate a linear trend line. You could calculate it yourself (the WikiPedia page “Linear Regression” will tell you all you need to know), but it’s very tiresome work and too farfetched for this article.

From the “Chart Tools” select the menu tab “Layout”, click the “Trendline” button, select “More Trendline Options” and select the “P/Q (1983-2012)” series. In the “Format Trendline” dialogue box, select the “Linear” type of trend line. At the bottom, tick the selection box “Display Equation on Chart” and close the dialogue box. You now see the linear trend line as a thin black line in your graph, together with its mathematical equation.

To improve the precision of this equation, right-click on it and from the quick menu that pops up, select “Format Trendline Label”. Now format the numbers of the formula as “Scientific” with two decimals (more decimals will only give a false impression of high accuracy). In this case scientific numbers come in quite handy because the P/Q-numbers are very small and the Q-numbers very large (so, don’t bother about them and let Excel do the job). Brightening up your chart a bit, your graph should now look like this:

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.30.42

Now we have the values for “a” (-1.84·10-7) and “b” (4.74·10-2) and we can convert the mathematical trend line formula into our carbon emissions formula by changing “y” into “P/Q” and “x” into “Q”: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 08.39.10

Annual emission data follow by multiplying both sides of the equation with “Q”: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.01.17

We can now calculate the ultimate amount of carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels at the end of the age of oil (Qt). This is when P = 0: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.05.52

So let’s solve this equation: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.14.18

Calculating Hubbert’s Curve

Now we can calculate Hubbert’s curve of CDIAC’s carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels. First we not only want to calculate our Hubbert’s curve up to 2012, but through the end of this century, so we have to extend column A to 2100. The quickest way is to enter the Excel formula “=A264+1” in cell A265 and copy this formula down to the cells A266 till A352.

To the right of column F (with the P/Q data) we insert two new columns G and H. Merge cells G1 and H1 and type something like “Hubbert Oil”. Something similar you can do with cells D1, E1 and F1, naming them Historic Oil. In cell G2, write “P [Mt C]” and in cell H2 “Q [Mt C]”. Your table (as from 1870) should now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.17.40

We need to put the values of “b” and “Qt” somewhere in the sheet. I put them in the following cells:

  • Cell M265: “b [P/Q]”
  • Cell M266: “4.74E-02” or “0.0474” (same value, different formats)
  • Cell M267: “Qt [Mt C]”
  • Cell M268: “258,000”
  • Cell M269: “Q-1870 [Mt C]”
  • Cell M270: “1” (for the time being, later you will see why)

In cell H122 enter “=M270” (To check, this is Hubbert’s cumulative emissions in the year 1870). Since the calculation of cumulative emissions remains the same, copy cell E123 to the cells H123 till H352.

We have to be careful now, because we’re going to use Q to calculate P and P to calculate Q, which results in a circular reference. However, given the right settings, Excel can easily deal with that. Click the Office button in the top-left corner of Excel and click the “Excel Options” button (bottom-right). Now click the “Formulas” button (top-left) and activate “Enable iterative calculation” (top-right). Usually it’s not necessary to tinker with the maximum amount of iterations and change. Leave the Excel Options by clicking “OK”.

Now we’re going to use the formula we arrived at on page 4 (repeated here, for convenience):

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.29.13In Excel-format, enter in cell G122: 

Snap 2014-04-26 at 19.27.55

The dollar-signs mean that the row-numbers of these cells don’t change when the formula is copied. This is necessary, because M266 and M268 are the two numbers “b” and “Qt”, which occupy one fixed cell. Copy cell G122 down to the cells G123 till G352. Your table should now look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.40.16

You can see I gave the cells E264 and H264 a bold and blue format to let them stick out. Likewise I made cell M270 bold and red. It’s handy to do the same.

Matching Hubbert’s Curve with Historical Data

So what do we have now? We have a Hubbert’s curve (for sure, if you copy it down another century), but it’s not yet matched with the calendar years of historic emission data. To imagine what needs to be done, we need to move our Hubbert’s curve horizontally across the chart, until it best fits with the historical data. The most acurate way to do this is to adjust the initial value of cumulative emissions in 1870 (we set it to “1”, for time being) such that Hubbert’s cumulative emissions in 2012 equal the historical cumulative emissions of that same year (that’s why I marked them blue and bold for comparison).

Now finding this match is a matter of changing the value “1” of cell M270 and seeing what happens. To avoid having to scroll up and down between 1870 and 2012, I placed this adjustment cell at M270, while H122 uses M270 as its starting value (now you see why).

So, give it a try and change cell M270 from 1 to 10. You should now see that the blue cell H264 has increased from 984 to 9,498. So, we’re heading in the right direction, but we’re not there yet. Try 100 instead of 10. H264 has now increased to 70,639. It seems we’re half way now, so let’s try 200. H264 is now 110,198, so we’re getting there. Say, 250? H264 = 124,157. M270 = 300? H264 = 135,637. That’s just a tad too much! M270 = 299? H264 = 135,427. Still a tiny bit too much. M270 = 298? H264 = 135,217. For the record: M270 = 297? H264 = 135,006. So, 298 is a much closer match than 297: M270 = H122 = 298! We have matched Hubbert’s curve horizontally with the historical emission data.

Now, curious in which year Hubbert’s peak occurs? Look at the annual emissions of Hubbert’s curve in column G. In which year does it reach its highest value? In 2010! 

Combining Hubbert’s Curve and Historical Data in a Graph

From the tab menu “Insert”, select a 2-D line graph. From the Chart Tools select the menu tab “Design”, click the button “Select Data” and click the button “Add” (under “Legend Entries (Series)”). In the dialogue box that opens up, enter as a “Series Name” something like “Hubbert’s Curve (1870-2100)”. Select the data cells G122 till G352. You can now see you have added a legend entry, but you still have to edit the “Horizontal (Category) Axis Labels”. So, click on the “Edit” button and select the cells A122 till A352.

Now add a second data series of the historic annual emissions of cells D122 till D264 (Chart Tools -> Design -> Select Data). However, select as its calendar series the same range of years as the Hubbert’s curve (1870-2100): cells A122 till A352. After tidying up a bit, your chart should look like this: 

Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.44.18

Conclusions

Based on CDIAC’s global data of carbon emissions from liquid fossil fuels (i.e. predominantly petroleum) and Marion King Hubbert’s method of calculating the oil production curve, we have arrived at a theoretical emissions peak of carbon from liquid fossil fuels (i.e. oil production peak) in 2010.

Compared to earlier forecasts of oil-geologists and other experts using Hubbert’s methodology, the calculations based on CDIAC data get quite close to the mark. Most of these experts (like Collin Campbell, Jean Laherrère, Kenneth Deffeyes and Matthew Simmons) forecast peak-oil between 2005 and 2010, so the CDIAC data turn out to be a fairly reliable source for this purpose.

Theoretically, we’re already 4 years past the peak, although historical data still show growth. This is very well possible for a limited period of time. Given the frantic drilling and fracking spree we’ve seen since about 2007, it’s not even surprising. Extraction methods have improved as well over the last decade or so: horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, deep-sea drilling, more accurate 3D soundings of geological formations, etc. The much higher oil price has also made it worthwhile to drill for harder-to-get oil. So, the ultimately recoverable amount of oil has increased indeed (though I don’t know by how much) and this is not (yet) reflected in the historical data.

Recent Developments

Since a few years, there has been a lot of talk that there are so much fossil fuel reserves left that we can only responsibly burn about one third of them (leaving two-thirds in the ground) in order to keep global warming below 2°C (IEA, 2012). This also implies that the shares of fossil fuel companies are over-valued by up to 80% (Carbon Tracker, 2012; Carbon Tracker, 2013). However, there are several caveats against this analysis:

  1. The reserves are based on stated reserves of fossil fuel companies and governments, but we don’t know to what extent these reserves are overstated. Of the OPEC-countries it’s quite obvious that (for political motives) they overstated their reserves dramatically between 1987 and 1990. The sudden jumps in stated reserves were not accompanied by announcements of newfound oil fields. Also, it doesn’t add up that oil reserves have remained virtually constant during decades of high rates of oil production and low rates of new discoveries:Snap 2014-04-25 at 09.57.02

    Source: own compilation of U.S. Energy Information Administration data
    (EIA, 2013)

  2. It’s not the amount of fossil fuel reserves that counts; it’s the rate at which they can be extracted. The big oilfields with high quality and easy to get petroleum are mostly depleted. We are now looking for ever smaller fields in ever harder to reach locations, like the ocean floors and the arctic. When it’s ever harder to get the oil, this will result in a slowdown of the rate of extraction (i.e. going down the other side of Hubbert’s curve).
  3. The Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) has already gone down seriously. The EROEI is an analysis of how much energy it takes to produce fossil energy (produce materials and operate machinery needed to construct the facilities to drill for oil and get it to the market, like drilling rigs, pipelines, oil tankers, refineries, etc.) and how much energy you get from all this. The EROEI used to be 100:1 in the 1930s – 1950s. Talking about tar sands the EROEI is already down to something like 5:1. This means that for every 5 barrels of oil (equivalent) one has to be invested into getting it, 4 are left as “profit”. Once it takes one barrel of oil to get one barrel of oil, there won’t be any profit left and it’s pointless to continue. Actually well before this point (say 2:1) because an oil company needs to sell at least some oil to pay for the investments in wages and equipment.
  4. The cost of oil extraction is already such that the oil price has to be above $100/barrel in order to be profitable. On the other hand, how high a fossil fuel price can the world economy afford in order to function healthily? We’ve seen the world economy crash into the Great Recession in 2008, when the oil price soared to $147/barrel (I daresay it wasn’t exactly a housing bubble…) and the price is again hovering around $100/barrel. No wonder economic growth doesn’t want to pick up! Oil consumption simply responds to the economic law of supply and demand. When oil gets too expensive, people will turn to cheaper alternatives and oil consumption goes down (the other side of Hubbert’s curve) just the same.

So there are many ways to look at peak-oil (environmental, geological, economical, social, etc.). One way doesn’t exclude the other, so I surely don’t want to contribute to infighting between peak-oilists and environmentalists. Both are right and allies to the same cause: we have to think hard and take swift action to create a sustainable way of living in harmony with the world wide web of life on our planet, in order to prove that human intelligence was not an evolutionary error.

Bibliography

Campbell, Colin J., and Jean H. Laherrère. “The End of Cheap Oil.” Scientific American 278.3 (1998): 78-83. Print. Download at http://josiah.berkeley.edu/2007Fall/ER200N/Readings/Campbell_1998.pdf

“Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.” (CDIAC). Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Website http://cdiac.ornl.gov/

Global Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. CDIAC. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. Website http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2010.html

The Crisis of Civilization. Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. Dead Dean Films, 2011. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMgOTQ7D_lk

A Crude Awakening. Dir. Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack. 2006. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qGM9ypR-UI

Crude Impact. Dir. Jennifer Jandak Wood, James Jandak Wood, and Joanne Shen. 2006. Film. Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvyDH8-y-AE

Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. Print.

Hubbert, M. King. Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels. Houston: Shell Development, Exploration and Production Research Division, 1956. Print. Download at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf

International Energy Statistics. EIA, 2013. Data. Download at http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=57&aid=6&cid=CG9,&syid=1980&eyid=2013&unit=BB

Unburnable Carbon – Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble? Rep. Carbon Tracker. 2011. Print. Download at http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/07/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2.pdf

Unburnable Carbon 2013: Wasted Capital and Stranded Assets. Rep. Carbon Tracker. Print. Download at http://carbontracker.live.kiln.it/Unburnable-Carbon-2-Web-Version.pdf

World Energy Outlook 2010, Executive Summary. IEA, 2010. Print. Download at http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/weo2010sum.pdf

World Energy Outlook 2012, Executive Summary. IEA, 2012. Print. Download at http://www.iea.org/textbase/npsum/weo2012sum.pdf

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Overpopulated by Homo Colossus

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 118 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Derrick Jensen, Environmental Collapse, Gross Inequality, Overconsumption, Overpopulation, Poverty, Social Unrest, Wage Slave, William Catton

Snap 2014-04-01 at 21.56.52 Do citizens of industrialized, consumerist nations have the moral authority to lecture the world about overpopulation, singling it out as the root of all the world’s problems? William Catton coined the term Homo colossus to describe those living in the industrialized world whose consumption of resources is disproportionately greater than those in the so-called undeveloped world:

Snap 2014-04-20 at 11.42.06 In his book Endgame, Derrick Jensen points out that the argument of overpopulation becomes rather meaningless unless it is framed within the context of consumption levels:

Snap 2014-04-20 at 09.24.25 If we take a look at who is actually pushing the environment to collapse according to their consumption levels, it becomes clear by the numbers that the real planet destroyers are not the teeming masses of the Third World, but industrial civilization’s energy gluttons driving their SUV’s, checking their stock portfolios on the internet, and wagging their finger at the huddled masses who have been corralled into megacities because globalization wiped out their indigenous means of subsistence:

consumption-inequality-2005-pie

consumption-inequality-2005-bar

…What is immediately apparent from Chart 1[above] is that the 10 percent of the world’s population with the highest income, some 700 million people, are responsible for the overwhelmingly majority of the problem. It should be kept in mind that this is not just an issue of the rich countries. Very wealthy people live in almost all countries of the world—the wealthiest person in the world is Mexican, and there are more Asians than North Americans with net worth over $100 million. When looked at from a global perspective, the poor become essentially irrelevant to the problem of resource use and pollution. The poorest 40 percent of people on Earth are estimated to consume less than 5 percent of natural resources. The poorest 20 percent, about 1.4 billion people, use less than 2 percent of natural resources. If somehow the poorest billion people disappeared tomorrow, it would have a barely noticeable effect on global natural resource use and pollution. (It is the poor countries, with high population growth, that have low per capita greenhouse gas emissions.22) However, resource use and pollution could be cut in half if the richest 700 million lived at an average global standard of living.

Thus, we are forced to conclude that when considering global resource use and environmental degradation there really is a “population problem.” But it is not too many people—and certainly not too many poor people—but rather too many rich people living too “high on the hog” and consuming too much. Thus birth control programs in poor countries or other means to lower the population in these regions will do nothing to help deal with the great problems of global resource use and environmental destruction… – link

By far, the wealthy have the world’s largest environmental footprint :

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the carbon footprint of the top quintile is over three times that of the bottom. Even in relatively egalitarian Canada, the top income decile has a mobility footprint nine times that of the lowest, a consumer goods footprint four times greater, and an overall ecological footprint two-and-a-half times larger. Air travel is frequently pegged as one of the most rapidly growing sources of carbon emissions, but it’s not simply because budget airlines have “democratized the skies”–rather, flying has truly exploded among the hyper-mobile affluent. Thus in Western Europe, the transportation footprint of the top income earners is 250 percent of that of the poor. And global carbon emissions are particularly uneven: the top five hundred million people by income, comprising about 8 percent of global population, are responsible for 50 percent of all emissions. It’s a truly global elite, with high emitters present in all countries of the world.

In the post Earth to Humans: “Get Off Your Merry-Go-Round Ride to Extinction”, I quoted a well-reasoned article by Devon G. Peña who explained the self-serving and hypocritical stance taken by the capitalist industrialized nations regarding the issue of overpopulation. The root causes driving mankind to extinction are completely sidestepped:

…In climate change debates, overpopulation arguments serve to delay making structural changes in North and South away from the extraction and use of fossil fuels; to explain the failure of carbon markets to tackle the problem; to justify increased and multiple interventions in the countries deemed to hold the surplus people; and to excuse those interventions when they cause further environmental degradation, migration or conflict.

As such, population theory is far more than a theory or a principle. It is above all a political strategy that obscures the relationships of power between different groups in societies, whether these be local, national, global, while at the same time justifying those political relationships that allow certain groups to dominate others structurally, be they men over women, property owners over commoners, or ‘us’ over ‘them’. The “too many” are hardly ever the speakers, they are always the Other.

This partially explains why those considered to be surplus are not those who profit from continued fossil fuel extraction but those most harmed by it and by climate change…

As was shown in the post The Biophysics of Civilization, Money = Energy, and the Inevitability of Collapse, GDP and money are tied to energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and our economic model and profligate way of life are on a collision course with catastrophe. Realistic solutions require dealing with the root of the problem, not the symptoms. Geoengineering, carbon trading schemes, and GMO’s are technocapitalist solutions to climate change. Focusing on overpopulaion ignores the socio-economic system behind all the exploitation and destruction.

…It is not surprising, however, that a worsening climate situation is often attributed not to continued fossil fuel extraction but to too many people. Whenever global environmental crises, Third World poverty or world hunger are at issue, whenever conflict, migration or economic growth are discussed, economists, demographers, planners, corporate financiers and political pundits (at least in the North) frequently invoke overpopulation.

Over 200 years ago, at a time of immense social, political and economic upheavals and deprivation in England triggered by the enclosure of common lands and forests on which peasant livelihoods depended, free market economist Thomas Malthus wrote a story about how nature and humans interact. The punch line was his mathematical analogy for the disparity between human and food increases. Harnessing politics to mathematics, he provided a spuriously neutral set of arguments for promoting a new political correctness – one that denied the shared rights of everyone to subsistence, sanctioning instead the rights of the “deserving” over the “undeserving”, with the market as arbiter of entitlements. The poor were poor because they lacked restraint and discipline, not because of privatisation. This is the essence of the overpopulation argument.

Today, a range of industries use the same argument to colonise the future for their particular interests and to privatise commonally-held goods. In agriculture, for instance, the talk is of extra mouths in the South causing global famine — unless biotechnology companies have the right to patent and genetically-engineer seeds. With respect to water, growing numbers of thirsty slum dwellers are held to threaten water wars — unless water resources are handed over to private sector water companies. And in climate, the talk is of teeming Chinese and Indians causing whole cities to be lost to flooding through their greenhouse gas emissions — unless polluting companies are granted property rights in the atmosphere through carbon-trading schemes and carbon offsets. These are the tools of the main official approach to the climate crisis that aims to build a global carbon market worth trillions of dollars.

Two centuries ago, Malthus was compelled to admit that his mathematical and geometric series of increases in food and humans were not observable in any society. He acknowledged that his “power of number” was just an image — an admission demographers have since confirmed. And for over 200 years, his theory and arguments — that it is the number of people that cause resource scarcity — have been refuted endlessly by demonstrations that any problem attributed to human numbers can more convincingly be explained by social inequality, or that the statistical correlation is ambiguous. Malthus’s greatest achievement was in fact to obscure the roots of poverty, inequality and environmental deterioration. The “war-room” mentality generated by predictions of scarcity-driven apocalypse has always diverted attention away from the awkward social and environmental history of discredited policies and projects – a more important focus of study.

Frequently left out of discussions about tackling malnutrition, hunger, starvation and famine, for instance, are the maldistribution of the world’s food supplies, skewed access to land, trade policies, the hazards of devoting land to agrofuel or carbon offset production, unequal access to money to buy food, and commodity speculation.

If over one billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, it is because water, like food, flows to those with the most bargaining power: industry and bigger farmers first, richer consumers second, and the poor last, whose water is polluted by industrial effluent, exported in foodstuffs or poured down the drain through others’ wasteful consumption… – link

And of course we can always wash our hands of everything by saying humans, driven by base biological urges, are inherently aggressive, selfish, and hierarchical by nature. We can blame our fossil fuel consumption on the optimal foraging theory and the lethal mutation of higher intelligence. We can excuse our self-destructive behavior on account of evolutionary blind spots such as faulty human brain circuitry with its numerous cognitive biases and inability to perceive long-term threats like climate change. We can say that “complex global human systems” are beyond anyone’s control and therefore cannot be altered or stopped. In other words, we can rationalize inaction and put forth many reasons for why we are helpless as our manmade economic system speeds toward the cliff, but as the masses see the system for what it really is, the facade becomes harder and harder to maintain. The mantra of business-as-usual is becoming a curse for most, and if continued on for much longer will most certainly be a death sentence for all.

tumblr_n3vnfes2R71qbmgeto6_1280

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Time of Seamless Black

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Peak Oil

≈ 111 Comments

Tags

Age of Climate Chaos, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate $tate, Depression, Eco-Apocalypse, Michael Ruppert, Peak Oil, Resource Wars, Security and Surveillance State, Suicide, The Elite 1%, Vandana Shiva

post-apocalyptic-worldHumans live on hope and without it they fall into depression, oftentimes taking their own lives. In ‘The Evolution and Psychology of Self-Deception‘, optimism bias is said to be a defense or coping mechanism for survival. Most turn to religion for the ultimate hope of an afterlife nirvana. Voluntarily and unflinchingly holding one’s eyes open to the searing light of reality is an unnatural act for humans. For many, simply dealing with everyday life and the stress of surviving the concrete jungle is enough to drive them to despair, madness, and suicide. Whether they realize it or not, any normal person taking in the full scope of the multiple crises we face is surely prone to depression to some degree or another. I am now finding that I have to periodically distance myself from blogging on these subjects because it’s affecting my personal relationships as well as my mental/physical health. Suicide is on the rise in the modern world:

Death on the Farm:
…Since that crisis, the suicide rate for male farmers has remained high: just under two times that of the general population. And this isn’t just a problem in the U.S.; it’s an international crisis. India has had more than 270,000 farmer suicides since 1995. In France, a farmer dies by suicide every two days. In China, farmers are killing themselves to protest the government’s seizing of their land for urbanization. In Ireland, the number of suicides jumped following an unusually wet winter in 2012 that resulted in trouble growing hay for animal feed. In the U.K., the farmer suicide rate went up by 10 times during the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, when the government required farmers to slaughter their animals. And in Australia, the rate is at an all-time high following two years of drought.

Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S.:
From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives.

Why Suicide Has Become an Epidemic–and What We Can Do to Help:
…We know, thanks to a growing body of research on suicide and the conditions that accompany it, that more and more of us are living through a time of seamless black: a period of mounting clinical depression, blossoming thoughts of oblivion and an abiding wish to get there by the nonscenic route. Every year since 1999, more Americans have killed themselves than the year before, making suicide the nation’s greatest untamed cause of death. In much of the world, it’s among the only major threats to get significantly worse in this century than in the last…

…This year, America is likely to reach a grim milestone: the 40,000th death by suicide, the highest annual total on record, and one reached years ahead of what would be expected by population growth alone. We blew past an even bigger milestone revealed in November, when a study lead by Ian Rockett, an epidemiologist at West Virginia University, showed that suicide had become the leading cause of “injury death” in America. As the CDC noted again this spring, suicide outpaces the rate of death on the road—and for that matter anywhere else people accidentally harm themselves. Somewhere Ralph Nader is smiling, but the takeaway is darkly profound: we’ve become our own greatest danger.

This development evades simple explanation. The shift in suicides began long before the recession, for example, and although the changes accelerated after 2007, when the unemployment rate began to rise, no more than a quarter of those new suicides have been tied to joblessness, according to researchers. Guns aren’t all to blame either, since the suicide rate has grown even as the portion of suicides by firearm has remained stable.

The fact is, self-harm has become a worldwide concern. This emerged in the new Global Burden of Disease report, published in The Lancet this past December. It’s the largest ever effort to document what ails, injures, and exterminates the species. But allow me to save you the reading. Humankind’s biggest health problem is humankind…

That last article I quoted above, from a mainstream periodical, has more truth written between the lines than its author even realizes. Humans are their own worst enemy and perhaps the rise of suicides across the globe is a reflection of our ecocidal culture, one that values money over life and reduces everything to a financial statistic. Capitalism is the most pervasive religion on the planet today. Most living at the end of modern history have adopted the ruling elite’s belief system which says that all problems can and will be solved via the “free market” and human ingenuity, but as one Indian philosopher of the 21st century wisely observed:

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.” ~ Vandana Shiva

People are a reflection of their environment, and so it is in the waning days of industrial civilization and predatory capitalism that many will no longer have the will to go on. From an interesting obituary written by a friend of Michael C. Ruppert:

…I look at Ruppert’s life, his hard struggle, his victories and his short-comings. I wish we were closer in his final couple of years. I loved him. I say the following with love. I say the following because I don’t want to know any more great truth-loving writers to die this way. If you have a drinking problem, hit a meeting. Reach out. It worked for me, to stop flailing about, running from city to country to city, always moving, thinking a big move is going to change things. Get centered. Pray and meditate. Be still.

Something snapped in Ruppert sometime later in that decade, after the book. He moved to Venezuela, in rushed effort to seek political asylum from the Chavez government. Ruppert probably wasn’t anti-imperialist enough for their tastes, at least not in a leftist way. Oh, and the CIA/DIA family background probably didn’t help.

I wept. I felt rage today. I was mad at you, Mike, going out this way. It was too similar to Gary Webb, to Jim Hatfield the Bush biographer. I don’t want this pattern. Tell me it’s not the fate for writers of deep truth, to die, alone, shooting their brains out, because they went deep and hard after the invisible forces, the slithering stag. The hunter became hunted by the dragon.

No. Mike will be remembered for his discipline, his writing, his development of a critical paradigm. Our society is stronger for the deep analysis. In the same way that Ruppert investigated Gary Webb’s death, it’s up to us now to do the scientific and careful analysis of the crime scene. To pick up where he left off, and wake up to a new view of the matrix…

In their search for the truth, perhaps some travel too far down the rabbit hole of civilizational and environmental collapse to ever escape its malignant shadow; it consumes them like a cancer. A copy of Ruppert’s suicide letter can be read here. His research and thinking lead him to the inner sanctum of dark revelation and the unsettling details of civilization’s trajectory. The vaporware dreams of a technological utopia will most certainly go up in smoke as social unrest and resource wars consume the nations of the world in an age of climate chaos. The evil genius of mankind will be revealed in evermore lethal and destructive ways to kill his fellow man. And waiting in the wings of industrial civilization’s collapse is the toxic and radioactive tsunami from an aging fleet of nuclear reactors dependent on a functioning electric grid. Humans are capable of great acts of compassion and selflessness as well as great acts of cruelty and violence. The system rewards sociopathic behavior at the expense of the health of the whole. Ignoring such stark realities won’t change our odds for survival.

RIP Michael C. Ruppert, Feb. 3, 1951- April 13, 2014

Full Documentary of ‘Apocalypse, Man’:

Error
This video doesn’t exist

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Who lives, Who Dies in a Never-Ending Energy Crisis

12 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil

≈ 117 Comments

Tags

Alice Friedemann, Barbara Demick: Nothing to Envy. Ordinary Lives in North Korea, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Cuba, Ecological Overshoot, Energy Descent, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, North Korea, Peak Oil, The Elite 1%, unwashed public

Empires take what they want, first through diplomatic and economic pressure, then through the use of jackals and mercenaries, and finally with the shock and awe of military might dressed up with the appropriate propagandistic slogans of rescuing a resource-cursed country from its now out-of-favor dictator. ‘Regime change’ has become an acceptable TV euphemism for overthrowing governments. However, when those foreign oil taps start to run dry, important environmental regulations in the homeland get reinterpreted and scaled back in order to open up resources that once were thought of as undesirable. The elite systematically cannibalize their own societies while at the same time extracting massive profits by shredding the social safety net, criminalizing poverty and dissent, stripping away environmental protection, and gutting scientific research. In order to protect their ability to loot the commons, the elite circle believe it is more advantageous to keep the masses ignorant about the true extent of the planetary crisis their policies have created. If science gets in the way of “progress”, then it is summarily dismissed by outright denial, defunding, and deletion from public records as Apneaman points out:

…the gutting of Environment Canada by the Harper gang was an effective strategy in silencing scientists whose research was causing “sufficient embarrassment”. It was not violent, but they are just getting started. Then there are the non violent environmental protesters who are being sent to prison. Could you imagine that 20 years ago? Just getting started. As the benign dog points out, when the dollar hegemony slips even further it won’t be just the government and the rich looking to silence the critics. Does anyone one here really think people like the neo-cons are going to give up the reserve currency status without a fight?

For those countries who are located down low on the totem pole of energy wealth such as North Korea, the coffers of the State are filled by criminal activity of a more mundane variety such as drug smuggling and currency counterfeiting:

North Koreans began to produce meth in “big state-run labs.” The Los Angeles Times reports that narcotics investigators said the North Korean government controlled the production of meth and opium, as well as other drugs, in the 1990s in order to bring in “hard currency” for Kim Jong Il, the late North Korean leader. The government was engaging in the drug trade in order to save and improve its economic state as a nation. I do not by any means agree with the actions North Korean government chose to take. Instead of tending to its people’s health issues, it chose to spread life-threatening drugs throughout the world. In such a heavily government-dependent political system, the people have no hope to turn to a government official and ask for help. Individuals and families turned to the drug in times of desperation, leading to many North Koreans becoming fervent methamphetamine addicts. This situation is devastating and should not be overlooked. According to CNN, a majority — two-thirds to be exact — of the North Korean population has used methamphetamines. It is reportedly accessible in restaurants and has “become the drug of choice of high-ranking officials and the police.” http://www.centralfloridafuture.com/opinion/north-korea-s-meth-addiction-could-spell-disaster-for-us-1.2853884#.U0jHJyhRY20

It is no secret that North Korean diplomats and embassies are self-financing. In fact, they are profit earning and they must remit funds back to Pyongyang. While this means that DPRK diplomatic relations are not a drain on the treasury, as is typically the case with other countries, it does mean that the DPRK’s official representatives are more likely to make headlines for their business dealings rather than political statements. http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/11/22/dprk-diplos-arrested-for-smuggling-again/

Liu had been convicted of conspiracy and fraud involving millions of dollars made not by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing but by counterfeiting presses in a foreign country, presumably North Korea. The quality of these “supernote” forgeries is so high that he’d managed to pass enormous quantities through the electronic detection devices with which every Vegas slot machine is supposed to be equipped. The prosecutor was asking the judge to give him close to 25 years, and in the end Liu would receive more than 12. Liu’s crimes threatened not only the integrity of America’s currency but the very fabric of international peace. They were part of a vast criminal enterprise believed to be controlled by the North Korean state, set up and used to finance its nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs. All of this, intelligence analysts say, is coordinated by a secret agency inside the North Korean government controlled directly by “the Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, himself. The agency is known as Office 39. (Given the opacity of anything inside North Korea, experts differ on whether “Office” should be “Bureau” or even “Room”—and they also suspect that the number itself may change.) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/09/office-39-200909

Cuba and North Korea are two interesting examples of countries that are both energy poor but also very different on the sociopolitical spectrum. Cuba appears to be closer to an ideal model for how energy descent should be handled, and North Korea is a much more frightening view of how things are run by a tiny, coddled elite. What follows is a review by Alice Friedemann of “Nothing to Envy. Ordinary lives in North Korea” written by Barbara Demick…

Nothing-to-Envy-9781400139842

North Korea and Cuba were the first countries to lose oil, the lifeblood of civilization. Since we will all share that fate, it’s interesting to see what happened, though keep in mind that how severe the consequences are will depend on the carrying capacity of the region you’re in, how much civil order can be maintained, and the effectiveness of the leaders in power (i.e. see “Lessons Learned from How Cuba Survived Peak Oil” that compares California to Cuba).

There are enormous differences between the fates of Cuba and North Korea. Cuba had many advantages — a benign climate with year-round rainfall where three crops a year could be grown, a culture of helping one another out, and Castro prevented middlemen and speculators from charging astronomical amounts for food. For a detailed understanding of what happened in Cuba read this Oxfam analysis.

North Korea couldn’t be more opposite – a cold mountainous nation with only 15% of its land arable, and dictators so crazy and cruel they’re almost unmatched in history. North Korea might be the only nation with more prisoners per capita than America. There are many kinds of prisons, from detention centers to hard-labor camps, to gulags where your children, cousins, brothers, sisters, and parents would also be sent to for a crime you committed for generations to come. About 1% of the population– 200,000 people –permanently work in labor camps. The threat of these prisons has made it impossible for organized resistance to happen.

It’s hard to escape, and if you do, then your relatives end up in labor camps. Other nations aren’t keen on refugees – South Korea fears a collapse of North Korea and being overrun by 23 million people seeking food and shelter, and China has their own problems with 1.2 billion poor people.

The consequences of peak energy in North Korea are worse than what’s likely to happen initially in America, though some regions of the United States are likely to suffer more than others. On the other hand, when times get hard, group-oriented cultures that depend on a large network of people tend to do better than highly individualist cultures, which is as you can learn more about in Dmitry Orlov’s Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century.

The only good aspect I could find about North Korea was that the women there are less repressed than in the past. A century ago Korean women were so completely covered in clothing that the Taliban would find no faults. In one village north of Pyongyang women wore 7 foot long, 5 feet broad and 3 feet deep wicker hat constructions that kept women hidden from head to toe. Perhaps even more than Muslim women, Korean women were imprisoned in family compounds and could only leave at special times when the streets were cleared of men. One historian said that Korean women were “very rigidly secluded, perhaps more absolutely than women of any other nation”.

After the Korean War ended, North Korea lost most of its infrastructure and 70% of its housing. It was amazing that Kim Il-sung managed to create a Spartan economy where most were sheltered and clothed, had electricity, and few were illiterate. Grain and other foods were distributed as well. In autumn each family got about 150 pounds of cabbage per person to make kimchi, which was stored in tall earthen jars buried in the garden so they would stay cold but not freeze and hidden from thieves.

North Korea became utterly dependent on the kindness of other countries for oil, food, fertilizer, vehicles, and so on.

What happens when the oil stops flowing? 

In the early 1990s North Korea suffered a double blow at a time when they were $10 billion in debt. China wanted cash up front for fuel and food while at the same time the Soviet Union demanded the much higher price of what oil was selling for on world markets.

The nation spun into a crash. Without oil and raw materials the factories shut down. With no exports, there was no money to buy fuel and food with. Electric plants shut, irrigation systems stopped running, and coal couldn’t be mined.  The results were:

  • Power stations and the electric grid rusted beyond fixing
  • The lights went out.
  • Running water stopped so most went to a public pump to get water
  • Electric trams operated infrequently
  • People climbed utility poles to steal pieces of copper wire to barter for food
  • There were few motor vehicles
  • And few tractors, farming was done with oxen dragging plows

Hunger struck, which made people too exhausted to work long at the few factories and farms that were still surviving.

Oil is liquid muscle. One barrel of crude oil (42-gallons) has 1,700 kilowatts of energy. It would take a fit human adult laboring more than 10 years to equal one barrel of oil.

Perhaps this is why many nations have had no choice but to rely on muscle power after an economic crash or during a war, which means putting many people to work on farms. After the energy crisis, North Koreans over 11 were sent out to the country to plant rice, haul soil, spray pesticides, and weed. This was called “volunteer work”. Now that they couldn’t afford to buy fertilizer, every family was expected to provide a human bucketful of excrement to a warehouse miles away. The bucket was exchanged for a chit that could be traded for food.

Like Mao’s crazy schemes, North Korea’s dictators lurched from one mad idea to another — one day it was goat breeding, the next ostrich farms, or switching from rice to potatoes.

Food staples were grown on collective farms, and the state took the harvest and redistributed it. The farmers weren’t given enough to survive on, so they slacked on their collective fields to grow food to survive on, making the food crisis even worse. In the end, it was people in cities with no land to grow their own food on who ended up starving first. Every year, rationed amounts of food went down.

People were told the United States was at fault, and propaganda campaigns encouraged Koreans to think of themselves as tough, and that enduring hunger without complaint was a patriotic duty, and kept everyone’s hopes up by promising bumper crops in the coming harvest. The Koreans deceived themselves like the German Jews in the 1930s, and told themselves it couldn’t get any worse, things would get better. But they didn’t.

Worse yet, instead of spending money on agriculture, the defense budget sucked up a quarter of the GNP. One million men out of 23 million people were kept in arms – the 4th largest military in the world.

The only place to get food became the illegal black market, where prices were terribly high, sometimes 250 times higher than what the state used to sell food for.

Natural disasters made harvests even worse – in 1994 and 1995 Korea was struck with an extremely cold winter and torrential rains in the summer that destroyed the homes of 500,000 people and rice crops for 5.2 million people.

People began picking weeds and wild grasses to stretch out meals, as well as leaves, husks, stems, and the cobs of corn. Children can’t digest food this rough and could end up in a hospital, where doctors advised the rough material be ground up fine and cooked a long time. It wasn’t long before malnutrition led to increasing numbers of people with pellagra and other diseases. Hospitals soon ran out drugs and other supplies.

Who died?

The rest of the article is at:

http://energyskeptic.com/2014/book-review-of-nothing-to-envy-ordinary-lives-in-north-korea/

 

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Let’s Get Critical

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by td0s in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Environmental Degradation

≈ 235 Comments

Tags

activist, Albert Camus, Alberta, anarchist, Anti-civ, Captain John Brown, critique, Derrick Jensen, forest defense, fossil fuel, HL Menken, Hypocrisy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Monte Belo Dam, moutain top removal, Niger Delta, Tar Sands Blockade

Cross Posted from Prayforcalamity.com


“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

HL Menken


To criticize the status quo is to invite volley after volley of personal criticism back in your own direction. I am sure this has likely been the case for a very long time, and I believe this may be partly due to the way in which humans learn through pattern recognition, as well as how the architecture of the human brain physically lays neural pathways to build understanding. Thus when an idea too astray from the usual is presented to the human mind, there is a high chance of a negative reaction because the new pattern is far too asymmetric for the current set of neural pathways to incorporate. That, or the derogator is a bored and obtuse malcontent with nothing better to do than shit all over other people on the internet.

I often write about the exploitation inherent in the model of civilization itself, and how this organizing framework which is dominant on the planet now is entirely unsustainable and will necessarily collapse catastrophically. This is some level nine stuff. By this I mean that if you have not been initiated, if you haven’t read about this topic or all of the feeder topics that lead to this conclusion, it would likely seem extreme. Thorough understanding of an issue requires prerequisite knowledge. We get to where we are by having been where we were, even philosophically and intellectually. Because my topics of critique often surround the civilization paradigm, its parts, and alternatives, I often receive flak from people which either demonstrates that they do not fully understand the gravity of the issues, or which merely indicts me as complicit in civilization’s crimes. The former generally comes in the form of people arguing that technology will remedy all of the converging crises faced and created by civilization. The latter is far more frustrating, as it is usually some pathetic attempt at a “got’chya!” moment where someone tries to defeat my greater thesis by pointing out my use of a computer or some other trapping of civilization. “Hypocrite!” they cry.

The hypocrisy claim is everywhere you find people critiquing any facet of the status quo. Antiwar activists who protested the Iraq war were called hypocrites for using gasoline. Occupy Wall Street participants were called hypocrites for using Apple products. My friends in forest defense have been called hypocrites for using paper. As an anti-civ anarchist I have been called a hypocrite for everything from having moved into a house during the winter, to having gone to the hospital when after forty hours of labor at home with a midwife, my partner was physically exhausted and wanted access to drugs so she could sleep. Every time these criticisms are leveled, it becomes a major energy suck to explain exactly how nonsensical they are. I would like to here dedicate this essay to shredding the “hypocrisy” argument once and for all, so it can forever be linked to by activists and social critics of all platforms and stripes, who neither have the time nor energy to swat at the many zombie hordes who become agitated when new ideas are presented to them which run counter to the comfortable patterns that they are used to, and who then proceed to scream “hypocrite!” in place of an actual counter argument.

—

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “Hell is other people.” Despite my anti-civ analysis, I am no misanthrope. Civilization is a system of organization, a power arrangement in which a small few control the many. Using their power, these few exploit the lands and beings around them so they can grow their power and comfort at the expense of others. Industrial civilization takes this paradigm full tilt and is wiping out habitat and species at a mortifying rate. Understanding this does not cause me to hate my species, but rather to be eager to help them understand why we must pursue new organizational methods. Still, the uphill battle of convincing fellow humans, especially those who are net beneficiaries of this destructive and exploitative set of arrangements, can be at times an infuriating engagement. Of course, this is not because I need people to immediately agree with me, but if they don’t, I do prefer they focus on challenging the content of my statements as opposed to nit picking the content of my life.

In “The Fall,” Albert Camus wrote, “Everyone insists on his innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven itself.” I believe that it may be this personal insistence on one’s innocence which leads people to quickly cry “hypocrite!” at those who critique the status quo. Because we are all mired in this paradigm, when it is critiqued, some individuals feel that the critique is of them individually, likely due to a personal identification with the system. Thus critiques become personal attacks against which they must defend themselves. “If the system is guilty, then I am guilty, and I’m not guilty!”

The need for personal innocence runs deeper. If a critique against an overarching paradigm such as a government, capitalism, or civilization itself seems irrefutable, this can invoke in some a certain need to then utilize this new information as part of their own personal ethos. The problem here, is that this will mean that person will feel compelled to act accordingly with this information, and the actions required may seem difficult, uncomfortable, or frightening. For instance, if you’re told that capitalism is exploitative because employers retain the surplus labor value generated by their employees, and you happen to be a business owner, this new understanding will mean one of two things: either you rearrange the operating model of your business to fairly compensate your employees for their labor, effectively making them cooperative partners, or you change nothing but must go through life recognizing that you profit off of the exploitation of others. Here, your internal need to perceive yourself as innocent, or at least to believe yourself a good person, will run counter with your open acknowledgement that you exploit people for a living. What to do then to keep the ego in tact?

If the action required to fall in line with the new ethos created by accepting new information is too hard, too uncomfortable, or you just don’t want to do it, you must justify inaction. Justifying inaction will be achieved possibly by denying the veracity of the new information. Like most capitalists in this scenario, you could convince yourself that your entrepreneurial and risk taking spirit give you the right to take the surplus labor value generated by the people you employ indefinitely. Of course, the justifications are endless.

In some cases though, if the new information received cannot be deflected through argument or justification, and the need to preserve one’s picture of their innocence is too great, then calling into question the character or behavior of the information’s purveyor can also suffice. For instance, if an activist is working to halt fossil fuel extraction for the myriad reasons that such a halting would be beneficial, it can be difficult to disagree with this activist on a purely argumentative level. How could you? Deny climate change? Deny ozone killing trees? Deny the death and destruction from Alberta, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Niger Delta? On an argumentative level, you’d be wrong every time. However, you could call into question the activist’s use of fossil fuels, thereby deflecting the conversation, and basically insinuating that, as Camus also wrote in The Fall, “We are all in the soup together.” Because hey, if we’re all guilty, then none of us are guilty, am I right?

In the fall of 2012, I was in Texas working with the Tar Sands Blockade using direct action tactics to shut down construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On the side of a highway north of Nacogdoches, I sat with some friends as our comrades were perched on platforms fifty feet in the air with their support lines tied to heavy machinery, effectively making the machines unusable lest their operators not mind killing these young people. There were a surprising amount of supporters for rural east Texas, but of course, there were plenty of people who made sure we were aware of their disdain for us. One such person passed by, slowed down, and said “I bet you used a pick up truck to get that stuff out here.” In his mind, this was a real zinger. I replied, “Of course we did. Why wouldn’t we?”

There are a slew of reasons why this man’s comment contained zero validity as a critique of our action. For one, the gasoline we used did not come from that as of yet unfinished pipeline. Also, though I wouldn’t, I could claim to be against tar sands bitumen, but not conventional crude. But really the truth is that anti-extraction activists are making what economists would even defend as an intelligent bargain; using X amount of fossil fuels to prevent the extraction of a million times X. Of course I would use a tank of gasoline to prevent the daily extraction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of barrels of bitumen. Not only am I seeking a massive net gain for the ecology of the planet, I am also not using any more fossil fuels than I would have used had I gone to work that day anyway.

In the same vein, it is not hypocrisy to write a book about the ills of deforestation. Though it may be printed on paper, it has the potential to affect policy which will then lessen the total amount of deforestation. Not to mention, the loggers are going to log and the publishing company is going to publish. Using those resources to ultimately dismantle that destructive activity is actually the best use for them. So no, the person who posts on the internet about the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining or hydraulic fracturing for natural gas isn’t a hypocrite. They are cleverly utilizing the paradigm’s resources to expose its flaws to the light of scrutiny, in the hope that the consciences of people will be stirred to ultimately upend the paradigm itself. This is, in fact, the most ethical use of the resources generated by destructive industrial activity.

Using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house is to be encouraged.

—

It feels ridiculous to even have to lay this out, but the “hypocrisy” barb is flung far too often and dismantled far too little. What’s worse, is that hypocrisy in this regard isn’t even being understood correctly. According to wikipedia:

“Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy is not simply failing to practice those virtues that one preaches. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of “hypocrisy” in Rambler No. 14:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.

Thus, an alcoholic’s advocating temperance, for example, would not be considered an act of hypocrisy as long as the alcoholic made no pretense of sobriety.”

This being understood, we can unequivocally state that a forest defense activist who prints pamphlets about saving tracts of woodland is not a hypocrite, unless they also claim to never use any forest products. Sure, there is a reasonable expectation that people who see a social ill will do their best to avoid adding to that ill, but sometimes the requirements of society horseshoe people into activity even they do not appreciate because the alternative options are worse or non-existent. Of course, this is where detractors will still claim that if an activist wants to save the forests, that they should cease using anything made from trees because consumer demand is behind all economic activity. Ignoring the obvious benefits of the trade off between printing five hundred pamphlets to save five hundred acres of woodlands, I think further disemboweling of this notion about consumer choice activism is also necessary.

Derrick Jensen writes about how he got in an argument with a man who accused him of being just as responsible for deforestation as Weyerhaeuser because he used toilet paper:

“Here, once again, is the real story. Our self-assessed culpability for participating in the deathly system called civilization masks (and is a toxic mimic of) our infinitely greater sin. Sure, I use toilet paper. So what? That doesn’t make me as culpable as the CEO of Weyerhaeuser, and to think it does grants a great gift to those in power by getting the focus off them and onto us.

For what, then, are we culpable? Well, for something far greater than one person’s work as a technical writer and another’s as a busboy. Something far greater than my work writing books to be made of the pulped flesh of trees. Something far greater than using toilet paper or driving cars or living in homes made of formaldehyde-laden plywood. For all of those things we can be forgiven, because we did not create the system, and because our choices have been systematically eliminated (those in power kill the great runs of salmon, and then we feel guilty when we buy food at the grocery store? How dumb is that?). But we cannot and will not be forgiven for not breaking down the system that creates these problems, for not driving deforesters out of forests, for not driving polluters away from land and water and air, for not driving moneylenders from the temple that is our only home. We are culpable because we allow those in power to continue to destroy the planet. Yes, I know we are more or less constantly enjoined to use only inclusive rhetoric, but when will we all realize that war has already been declared upon the natural world, and upon all of us, and that this war has been declared by those in power? We must stop them with any means necessary. For not doing that we are infinitely more culpable than most of us—myself definitely included— will ever be able to comprehend.”

He continues:

“To be clear: I am not culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper. I am culpable for deforestation because I use toilet paper and I do not keep up my end of the predator-prey bargain. If I consume the flesh of another I am responsible for the continuation of its community. If I use toilet paper, or any other wood or paper products, it is my responsibility to use any means necessary to ensure the continued health of natural forest communities. It is my responsibility to use any means necessary to stop industrial forestry.”

I believe it is dangerous to convince people that their only power is in their purchasing decisions, because this relegates people to being mere consumers, not active citizens, let alone autonomous beings who define their own struggles, explore a diversity of tactics, and experiment to find new and effective measures for countering power. It also reduces all of society to nothing but customer transactions. Doing so ignores the power people have to protest, blockade, persuade, legislate, and sometimes, to overthrow. Would advocates of consumer choice activism stand by the idea that American revolutionaries should merely have boycotted tea, stamps and British products? Would they advocate that these revolutionaries should have instead of smashing windows, burning buildings, and fighting back against the crown have instead started their own competing tea trading companies? How about American slavery? Was the real solution that abolitionists and free blacks should have started competing fiber plantations in the north, hoping to push slave produced cotton out of business? Should we brand Captain John Brown a hypocrite for not wearing fair trade worker owned flax linen pants when he raided Harper’s Ferry seeking weapons with which to start a slave revolt? Preposterous!

Fighting against a behemoth industry that is interwoven into the state apparatus and has insulated itself as a central pillar of day to day operations is not something easily done. For one to claim they know exactly how to win such a fight is audacious. When it comes to the extraction industries, there is a large buffer where no matter how much the public cuts their consumption, the state will offset their financial losses through subsidies and purchases. The US government will happily buy discount oil for the fifth armored division after a civilian boycott lowers the price. Because of this, all forms of resistance are welcome and necessary, and it should be understood that attacking such a monolithic industry requires people hammering away, figuratively and literally, on every possible front. If it takes two million barrels of oil to power the cars and trucks necessary to organize the ten thousand strong blockade that cripples the refinery complex at the Port of Houston, well hell, oil well spent.

—

Those who demand lifestyle purity of anyone who ever raises a critique of any facet of the status quo are creating a double bind paradigm of hypocrites and extremists so to establish two camps into which they can then package critics in order to isolate and ignore them. The hypocrite camp is obvious. By misdiagnosing via a false definition someone who is against civilization as a hypocrite because they use electricity to write their thoughts online, these detractors can in their own minds, suggest there is no reason to take the critique seriously. But suppose the anti-civ critic did achieve lifestyle purity. Suppose that they lived in a wigwam in the woods that they constructed themselves from branches and deer hides. Imagine that this person walked to the center of town every weekend in haggard clothing they had pulled from thrift store dumpsters and then this person stood on a bench to shout about the ills of industry and hierarchy. Is it likely that this person would be taken seriously? Of course not! They would be labeled an extremist. Passersby would write this person off as insane before listening to argument one. There is no middle ground in this double bind, and that is the point. Those who would cry from the wilderness about the death and the misery that civilization brings will forever be stripping more and more from their lives in a futile effort to gain recognition, to be valid in the eyes of those who called them hypocrites, until one day they are branded as lunatics, if they are not unheard and unseen, exactly as their detractors want them to be.

On this, we should remember too, that there are people who have achieved this lifestyle purity. They are the tribal peoples around the world who never have been drawn into the net of civilization. They are the global poor who do not benefit from the burning of coal or the sinking of copper mines. And their voices consistently go unheard. In fact, their voices are almost ubiquitously silenced. What do the defenders of the status quo say to the Kayapó, Arara, Juruna, Araweté, Xikrin, Asurini and Parakanã peoples who are fighting the construction of the Belo Monte dam which threatens their survival? What do the defenders of the status quo say to the animals and plants who have been nothing but victims in the story of human progress? There is no inconsistency in their lives. No iPhone to scoff at, no power tool, no window fan. What is the excuse for denying their right to live? What is the excuse for exterminating them and pretending it isn’t happening? Why is it OK to deny their pleas?

Analysis and critique precede action. Without first understanding a system and describing its flaws, it will never be repaired or replaced. To assert that one must excise themselves from a system prior to criticizing it is asinine, especially so when the system being criticized is a global power structure with tentacles in almost every geographical region. Such assertions if considered legitimate would render critique impossible. They are also so implausible as to essentially be nothing more than a dismissal of critique, a backhanded way of saying “Shut up!” To be sure, the horrors of the dominant culture always have required a silencing of those it would make victims, so such behaviors amongst the denizens of civilization should come as no surprise, but they have never been and will never be intellectually or academically valid.

If you are in a prison, eating the food from the cafeteria does not mean you accept being a prisoner. Likewise, if you are a prisoner and you detest the prison and the system that put you there with every fiber of your being, you are not a hypocrite for allowing the prison doctor to treat you. Navigating life in a system of dominance, violence, and control is difficult and miserable, and if you have any designs to resist, whether to organize others on the inside with you to demand improvement of conditions, or to dig a tunnel and to escape, staying well fed and healthy in the mean time will be necessary for your success. While you fight, while you resist, use what you must to survive, especially in light of the fact that not doing so will not bring down the walls around you.

—

With the ever worsening issue of climate change, on top of the issues of political rot, net energy decline, and economic sclerosis, there will be more and more critique and analysis of exactly how societies are breaking down and what people should do in response. With this will come wave after wave of nonsense rebuttal to muddy the waters. At least when the defense of the status quo defers to indicting the behavior of the critics themselves, we can likely presume that their critiques are probably accurate, or at least that the status quo defender has no legitimate argument. For if the detractor had a legitimate counter analysis, they would present it. Attacking the messenger is behavior of the beaten. If I say “we need to abolish fossil fuels because they cause too much ecological damage” and someone responds “but you use gas in your chainsaw,” they have not displayed that my statement is untrue. In fact, there is a tacit admission that what I am saying is true, they just want to drag me down into the muck as if I’m not already standing in it.

Yes, I am knee deep in the shit of global industrial capitalist civilization. Yes, circumstances have me dancing from rock to rock, trying to avoid participating in the destructive protocols of the dominant culture, and obliging to where it makes strategic sense to do so. Most people understand this. Most people understand the nuance between having and living an ethic in a complex world which leaves little to our individual control. Those who would deny this reality in order to deny your point are a nuisance at most. Hell is not other people, just other people in the comments section on the internet.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Connect with me on Twitter:

Connect with me on Tumblr:

Who really pulls the strings?:

The megawealthy and Washington have become so symbiotic as to be a single entity. The bought-and-paid politicians sitting in Washington are simply the marionettes of the corporations and financial elite who are dictating public policy and regulations.

Preserving the Status Quo

There is no right wing or left wing, only the aristocracy and the serfs (a vertical paradigm). To know this is to be like a fish who has broken the surface of the water, realizing he was in water the whole time.

A Kabuki Play

"What we have, in what passes for US democracy in 2012, is a kabuki play that Cicero put to papyrus 1948 years earlier. All historical empires and war aggressors have used propaganda to claim their looting and police states were necessary and helpful to the 99%. Instead, a sorrowful history tells us they were almost always for the sole benefit of the 1%." - Albert Bates

Climate Change & Global Warming Myths (Click on Icon)

Climate Change Videos

Topics

  • Basic Rules of this Website
  • Capitalism
  • Climate Change
  • Consumerism
  • Corporate State
  • Cyber-Warfare
  • Cyberwarfare
  • Ecological Overshoot
  • Empire
  • Environmental Degradation
  • Inequality
  • Intro
  • Military Industrial Complex
  • Neo-Colonialism
  • Peak Oil
  • Pollution
  • Wall Street Fraud
  • Weekend Funnies for the Depressed Collapsitarian
  • Year-End Review

Doomsday Clock Stats

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

  • June 2022
  • January 2022
  • July 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • September 2020
  • January 2020
  • September 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2018
  • May 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Movies and Videos

  • 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
  • 1976 Hubbert Clip
  • A meteorite is not the greatest danger of environmental change – The Sixth Extinction
  • After Armageddon – A SHTF scenario
  • American Blackout 2013 National Geographic
  • American Coup
  • An Unreasonable Man (Ralph Nader)
  • Anima Mundi
  • Answering Climate Change Skeptics, Naomi Oreskes
  • Apocalypse, Man (Full Documentary)
  • Apologies Of An Economic Hitman (Full Documentary Movie)
  • Arctic Death Spiral and the Methane Time Bomb
  • Arctic Emergency: Scientists Speak
  • Are Humans Inherently Unsustainable? …Yes.
  • Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?
  • Atomic Wounds
  • BBC Global Dimming Documentary About Geoengineering & Global Warming
  • Blind Spot
  • Born Into This – Charles Bukowski Documentary
  • Cabot Institute Annual Lecture 2012
  • Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction
  • Capitalism Hits the Fan – Richard Wolff
  • Capitalism is the Crisis (Full Movie)
  • Cinema Politica
  • Clive Hamilton 'Requiem for a Species'
  • Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
  • Conspiracy Rising
  • Consumed – Is Our Consumer Culture Leading to Disaster?
  • Conversations with Great Minds – Climate Scientist Dr. Curt Stager
  • Dark Days – Documentary by Marc Singer
  • David Fridley – Green Dreams: Future or Fantasy?
  • Developing a Sustainable Community – Simon Michaux
  • Do Fox News Viewers Understand Basic Science At All?
  • Do Fox viewers understand the propaganda they are watching?
  • Earth 2100 – Full Documentary / Movie Full HD
  • Earth Days (2009) – Full Movie
  • Earth Under Water – Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise (SLR)
  • END CIV Resist Or Die (Full)
  • END:CIV 2011
  • Facing the Anthropocene: fossil capitalism and the crisis of the earth system
  • Final Warning Limits to Growth
  • Four Horsemen
  • Garbage Warrior [Full Length Documentary]
  • Gasland Part II
  • Geo Scarcity – Geo Destinies in the Coming Age
  • Geologic and human time scales: How can we salvage our global civilization?
  • Green Illusions
  • Green Illusions: "Solar Cells and Other Fairy Tales"
  • Guy McPherson – Earth Extinction 2030
  • Guy’s Climate Chaos Presentation from Pauline Schneider
  • Harvest of Empire
  • Hoodwinked: Who Stole Our World – Presented By John Perkins
  • Into Eternity ( A Nuclear Waste World )
  • Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers • FULL DOCUMENTARY
  • Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, & Steel
  • Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse
  • Joseph Tainter: The Energy Crisis and the End of The Industrial Age
  • Journeyman Pictures
  • Koch Brothers Exposed
  • Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
  • LAST CALL: the untold reasons of the global crisis
  • Last Hours for Humanity?
  • Lecture on Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter
  • Life After People
  • Manufacturing Consent
  • Modern Black Death – The Next Pandemic – BBC Horizon
  • Nate Hagens – Limits to Growth: Where We Are and What to Do About It
  • Noam Chomsky – Propaganda & Control of the Public Mind
  • Obey
  • Ocean Acidification
  • Ocean Acidification in Earth's Past: Insights to the Future – James Zachos
  • Oil, Smoke & Mirrors
  • Peak mining & implications for natural resource management
  • Permian – Triassic Mayhem: Earth's Largest Mass Extinction
  • Peter Ward Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps
  • Peter Ward The Medea Hypothesis II
  • Peter Ward: The Medea Hypothesis I
  • Photographing the Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima
  • Pirate Television: Financializing America with Randy Mandell
  • Professor Al Bartlett – Arithmetic, Population and Energy
  • Professor Kevin Anderson: Real Clothes for the Emperor – Facing Climate Change
  • Rick Wolff // A Cure for Capitalism
  • Six degrees could change the world
  • Somewhere In New Mexico Before The End Of Time
  • Submedia TV
  • Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers
  • Surviving Progress
  • Techno Fix – Why Technology Won’t Save Us Or the Environment
  • Techno-Fix – Dr. Michael Huesemann interview
  • The Age of Stupid
  • The Big Fix
  • The Century Of The Self
  • The Chomsky Videos
  • The Coming Famine
  • The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
  • The Crash Course
  • The Crisis of Civilization : Full Movie
  • The Day the Earth Nearly Died
  • The Domino Effect – Overpopulation
  • The False Solutions of Green Energy – Wilbert & Foley (PIELC 2014)
  • The Flaw
  • The Fuck-it Point
  • The Long Emergency
  • The Man who Quit Money
  • The Methane Ticking Time Bomb has Struck Again…..
  • The Myth of Capitalism with Michael Parenti
  • The Myth of Sustainability – Guy McPherson
  • The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News
  • The Ordinary Madness of Charles Bukowski
  • The Overview Effect
  • The Permian–Triassic Extinction Event [FULL VIDEO]
  • The Planet by Johan Söderberg
  • The Power Principle: (Full Length Documentary)
  • The Secure & the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-Changed World
  • The Shock Doctrine 2009
  • The Sixth Extinction (Elizabeth Kolbert)
  • The Twin Sides of the Fossil Fuel Coin – Guy McPherson
  • There's No Tomorrow (peak oil, energy, growth & the future)
  • Threads (Nuclear War)
  • Tom Murphy: Growth has an Expiration Date
  • TOXIC: AMAZON – FULL LENGTH
  • Up & Coming Liquid Fuel Crisis by Tom Murphy
  • VICE Documentaries
  • What A Way To Go: Life at the end of Empire
  • Who's Afraid Of Machiavelli?

Notes and Documents

  • 'Conspiracy Theories' and Clandestine Politics
  • (2019) UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’
  • 2019 UN Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services(One Million Species At Risk of Extinction)
  • American Empire and Killing Hope – The Essays of William Blum
  • An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security
  • An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for US National Security
  • An Anarchist FAQ Webpage
  • An Inconvenient Truth: Does Responsible Consumption Benefit Corporations More Than Society?
  • Animal Minds and the Foible of Human Exceptionalism
  • Averting Collapse: 6 Steps
  • “Are Humans Unsustainable by Nature?”
  • Book review of Turchin’s “Secular Cycles” and “War & Peace & War”
  • BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED
  • Burning Energy to Keep Cool: The Hidden Energy Crisis in Saudi Arabia
  • Capitalism cannot solve our ecological collapse: articles by Richard Smith
  • Capitalism's Ideological Crutches
  • Carmageddon and Karl Marx
  • Carmaggedon or Rational Discourse?
  • Charles Eisenstein Essays
  • Chatham House: Sustainable Energy Security
  • Christopher Clugston ~ Research Papers and Essays
  • Climate and collapse: Only through the insurrection of civil societies will we avoid the worst
  • Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis (2012)
  • Climate Change is Simple – We Do Something or We're Screwed
  • Climate Change: Just the Facts.
  • Consistency in American Foreign Policy
  • Could the 'Black Death' Strike Again?
  • Dangerous Climate Warming: Myth & Reality
  • Dangerous Speech Project
  • Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis
  • Dennis Meadows: “There is nothing that we can do”
  • Desert
  • DieOff.org
  • Dinosaur, We
  • Dispelling myths about oil
  • Dr. Steven Best – Writings
  • Drill, Baby, Drill
  • Earth may be 140 years away from reaching carbon levels not seen in 56 million years
  • Ecoglobe: Requiem
  • Edward Morbius
  • Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation
  • English version of German military peak oil study
  • Entropy and Economics
  • Eric R. Pianka: The Vanishing Book of Life on Earth
  • Fleeing Babylon
  • FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States
  • FRACKING GONE WRONG: FINDING A BETTER WAY
  • Getting to the Nearest Star? Not in Our Lifetimes…If Ever!
  • Gleanings for an Understanding of the Endgame
  • Global Drought Monitor
  • Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism
  • Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
  • Globalization and the Emergence of a Transnational Oligarchy
  • Green Capitalism: the God that Failed
  • Green Capitalism: The God That Failed (Updated)
  • GRIFFIN: The political writings of G.S. Griffin, activist and author
  • Hirsch Report
  • How a Culture Dies
  • How Many Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide?
  • How to Avoid Population Overshoot and Collapse
  • Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind
  • Humans will not 'migrate' to other planets, Nobel winner says: The 77-year-old said he felt the need to "kill all the statements that say 'OK, we will go to a liveable planet if one day life is not possible on earth'."
  • Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future
  • Implication of our technological species being first and early
  • Intentional Ignorance
  • Interview with Jay Hanson
  • Is Global Collapse Imminent?
  • Jason W. Moore: Essays
  • Johnny Reb's Freethought Website
  • Julian Cribb
  • Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II – Part I by William Blum
  • Le Monde interview with Dr Robert Hirsch from September 2010
  • Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics
  • Living Dangerously: Stories of Climate Change
  • Living for the Moment while Devaluing the Future
  • Lloyd's adds its voice to dire 'peak oil' warnings
  • Looking Back on the 'Limits to Growth'
  • MARY BOOTH ON THE MYTH OF “GREEN” ENERGY FROM WOOD
  • Michael E. Mann
  • Mysterious Siberian Crater Found at "End of the World" May Portend Methane Climate Catastrophe
  • NATURAL CAPITAL AT RISK: THE TOP 100 EXTERNALITIES OF BUSINESS
  • Natural Law
  • Natural Way of Farming Masanobu – Fukuoka Green Philosophy
  • Nature’s Laws No Longer Apply…
  • Net Energy and The Economy
  • New scientific study predicts that plastic pollution and toxic chemical-induced ocean acidification will cause a trophic cascade collapse of the entire marine ecosystem, destroying human society within the next 25 years.
  • NOAA & U.S. Geological Survey Interactive Sea Level Rise Map (up to 25 ft)
  • Noam Chomsky on human extinction: The corporate elite are actively courting disaster
  • Oil and gas industry using military psyops techniques to reduce opposition to fracking
  • OilCrash.com
  • On Human Nature
  • Partnership for Civil Justice
  • Peak Energy, Climate Change, and the Collapse of Global Civilization
  • Peak Oil – A Turning Point for Mankind by Dr. Colin J. Campbell
  • Peter H. Gleick : Has the U.S. Passed the Point of Peak Water?
  • Plastic and toxic chemical-induced ocean acidification will cause a plankton crisis that will devastate humanity over the next 25 years, unless we stop the pollution.
  • Poles Threaten “Climate Chaos” from Continued Warming
  • Policy Makers Slow to Take Peak Oil Action
  • Power Point Presentation on “Corporate Globalization, Corporate Power, Free Trade, Mega Trade Agreements and the Negative Impacts of TPP” by Janet M Eaton, PhD
  • Power Shift Away From Green Illusions
  • Primitivism
  • Professor Charles Hall
  • Renewable energy – Hope or hype?
  • RENEWABLE ENERGY – THE ARGUMENT AGAINST ITS CAPACITY TO SUSTAIN AN ENERGY-INTENSIVE SOCIETY
  • Richard Reese on 'Near Term Extinction'
  • Saudi Arabia May Become Oil Importer by 2030
  • Searching for a Miracle: 'Net Energy' Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society
  • Secular Cycles, Chapter 1
  • Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter planet, by Mark Lynas
  • Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
  • Stephanie McMillan's 'Capitalism Must Die'
  • TED talks – a recipe for civilisational disaster
  • The Anarchist Library
  • The Authoritarian Personality
  • The Bichler & Nitzan Archives
  • The climate threat: What our children can expect
  • The Coming Reality of Sea Level Rise: Too Fast Too Soon
  • The Consumer Trap
  • The Current Mass Extinction
  • The Damage of Current Human Activities Without Precedent in Past 'Mass Extinction' Fossil Records.
  • The Discovery of Global Warming
  • The End of Growth, Seven Years Later
  • The Entropy Law and the Economic Process
  • The evolution and psychology of self-deception
  • The Final Empire THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION
  • The Final Empire: THE COLLAPSE OF CIVILIZATION
  • The Free Press
  • The Future of Ice Sheets and Sea Ice: Between Reversible Retreat and Unstoppable Loss
  • The Gore Vidal Pages
  • The Great Oil Swindle
  • The human brain is in Denial.
  • The Human Nature of Unsustainability
  • The Idiot's Guide To Buying A Congressman
  • The Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations & U.S. Policy
  • The Last Great Global Warmıng
  • The Limits to Growth (PDF scanned version)
  • The Loss of Biodiversity: a Dangerous Game
  • The Meritocracy Myth
  • The moral environment on Wall Street is pathological — money rules all
  • The Myth of the 1970′s Global Cooling Consensus
  • The myth of US self-sufficiency in crude oil
  • THE NEED FOR A NEW ECONOMIC SYSTEM: "…he feared that human society is headed for a crash."
  • The Network of Global Corporate Control
  • The New Middle Ages
  • The physics of long-run global economic growth
  • THE POPULATION PROBLEM AND SOCIALISM
  • The Power Elite
  • The Principle of Imminent Collapse
  • The Science of Apocalypse
  • The Story of P(ee)
  • The Story of Phosphorus: 7 reasons why we need to transform phosphorus use in the global food system
  • The Temptation of The Technofix (The Quest for “New Nature”)
  • The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
  • There Is No "Green" Energy
  • Thomas Homer-Dixon
  • Tilting at Windmills, Spain’s disastrous attempt to replace fossil fuels with Solar Photovoltaics
  • Tipping Towards the Unknown
  • Too many bodies? The return and disavowal of the population question
  • Trade-Off: Financial system supply-chain cross contagion – a study in global systemic collapse
  • Twenty Premises on Industrial Civilization from Derrick Jensen
  • Twenty-First Century Collapse
  • Underminers: A Practical Guide to Radical Change
  • We Are All Madoffs
  • Wealth and Inequality – Pareto, Gini and Contingency
  • What Evolution Is?
  • Who Rules America: An Investment Manager's View on the Top 1%
  • Who Rules America: Wealth, Income, and Power
  • Why shale gas won’t end our energy woes
  • Why Space Opera Won't Fly
  • Why won't planting trees stop global warming?
  • Zygmunt Bauman

RSS 3 Quarkes Daily

  • 3 Quarks Daily has moved!
  • polixeni papapetrou (1960 - 2018)
  • bob dorough (1923 - 2018)
  • charles neville (1939 - 2018)
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: ‘This could be the beginning of a revolution’
  • Sunday Poem
  • Why Only Art Can Save Us: An Interview with Santiago Zabala
  • Cell by Cell, Scientists Map the Genetic Steps as Eggs Become Animals
  • The Islamic State’s Lingering Legacy among Young Men from the Mosul Area
  • Where the wild tales are: how stories teach kids to nurture nature

RSS A Closer Look

  • Cookies
  • The structure of this blog
  • Supreme Court not representative
  • Spanking Is Physical Abuse, Study Shows
  • Pseudo-Patriots
  • Everyone's Irrational
  • The Mathematics of Inequality
  • The Arctic may be sea ice-free in summer by the 2030s, new study warns
  • Good news on energy
  • Spanking and crime rates

RSS A Prosperous Way Down

  • A really inconvenient truth
  • Energy ethics for survival of people in nature
  • Don’t come around here no more
  • Systems thinking and the narrative of climate change
  • Nuclear power and the collapse of society
  • A systemic perspective on life
  • The Asian Miracles: Free renewables made it all possible
  • Responsibility for regeneration
  • Treatment wetlands equal cleaner water and more birds
  • Reflections on scientific illiteracy

RSS Adam Curtis Blog

  • SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME
  • WHILE THE BAND PLAYED ON
  • HE'S BEHIND YOU
  • MENTAL CHANNEL NUMBER ONE - THE MAN FROM MARS
  • HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT
  • IF YOU TAKE MY ADVICE - I'D REPRESS THEM
  • WHITE NEGRO FOR MAYOR
  • RUPERT MURDOCH - A PORTRAIT OF SATAN
  • BODYBUILDING AND NATION-BUILDING
  • WHO WOULD GOD VOTE FOR?

RSS Adam Vs The Man

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS AdBusters

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Against the Grain

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Aljazeera

  • Pakistan lays out budget but may not satisfy IMF
  • UK ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns as MP
  • Should governments make breathing clean air a human right?
  • One UN peacekeeper dead, four others injured in north Mali attack
  • Newcastle announces shirt sponsorship deal with Saudi company
  • Colombia and ELN rebel group sign ceasefire agreement
  • Djokovic beats cramping Alcaraz to reach French Open final
  • Disney bets on free mobile cricket streaming in India
  • Blinken to take delayed China trip this month: Reports
  • US bans imports from China-based Ninestar Corp over Uighurs

RSS Aljazeera – Opinion

  • Serbians join anti-government protest following mass shootings
  • US says Iran is helping Russia build drone manufacturing facility
  • Al-Shabab attack hotel in Somalia’s Mogadishu: State media
  • Pakistan lays out budget but may not satisfy IMF
  • UK ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns as MP
  • Should governments make breathing clean air a human right?
  • One UN peacekeeper dead, four others injured in north Mali attack
  • Newcastle announces shirt sponsorship deal with Saudi company
  • Colombia and ELN rebel group sign ceasefire agreement
  • Djokovic beats cramping Alcaraz to reach French Open final

RSS All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go

  • Another Christmas
  • Objective Crisis, Subjective Crisis
  • Jesse Jackson on poverty
  • Quote of the day
  • Voting and the ‘rule by law’
  • Wendy Brown on neoliberalism and democracy
  • Thomas Ferguson discusses our situation
  • This way doth dictatorship lie
  • Quote of the day
  • President Kamala Harris

RSS Alternative Radio

  • [Omer Aziz] Fascism in America

RSS AlterNet

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Anarchist News

  • Anti-LGBTQ+ Neo-Nazi Chased out of Anarchist Bookstore
  • Green Anarchy Graffiti Spotted In North Jersey
  • Update on the June 7-8 hearings of the Diamante trial
  • Call For Action Against The Moms For Liberty Conference
  • Pakistan: Activists celebrate Bakunin's 208th birthday
  • Alfredo Salerni is no Longer With Us
  • News about Belarusian anarchist prisoners from March 2023
  • Anarchist Zines & Pamphlets Published in May 2023
  • [Athens] Banner drop in solidarity with G. Michailidis
  • Numerous incendiary outbreaks in active memory of ‘Punky Mauri’

RSS Antony Loewenstein

  • The Majority Report tackles The Palestine Laboratory
  • LitHub speaks The Palestine Laboratory
  • Electronic Intifada on the how and why of testing weapons in Palestine
  • The Australian Greens strengthens its policy on Israel/Palestine
  • TRT World interview on Saudi and Israeli romancing
  • The challenge in defanging the Palestine laboratory
  • Better Reading interview on Zionism, Judaism and Palestine
  • Background Briefing interview on Palestine, Wikileaks and war crimes
  • Chatham House reviews The Palestine Laboratory
  • “The Harvard of anti-terrorism”

RSS Apocadocs

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Arctic Emergency Institute

  • Declining Summer Sea Ice Threatens More than Arctic Wildlife

RSS Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG)

  • AMEG Strategic Plan
  • Breaking the Chain
  • AMEG Policy Brief
  • The biggest story of all time
  • Getting the picture
  • Storm exacerbates Arctic predicament
  • Food security threatened by sea ice loss
  • Supplementary evidence to the EAC from John Nissen on behalf of AMEG
  • Message from the Arctic Methane Emergency Group

RSS Arctic News

  • Smoke over North America
  • A Climate of Betrayal
  • Arctic sea ice under threat
  • Nuremberg trials for imperiling all and bringing on mass extinction of species
  • Will there be Arctic sea ice left in September 2023?
  • Humans may be extinct in 2026
  • High sea surface temperature in North Atlantic
  • Temperatures rising fast March 2023
  • IPCC keeps downplaying the danger even as reality strikes
  • Sea surface temperature at record high

RSS Arctic Sea Ice

  • PIOMAS December 2019
  • PIOMAS November 2019
  • PIOMAS October 2019
  • PIOMAS September 2019
  • PIOMAS August 2019
  • Comparing
  • PIOMAS July 2019

RSS Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

  • Springing into summer
  • A slow start to the Arctic spring
  • From polar dawn to dusk
  • Arctic sea ice maximum at fifth lowest on satellite record
  • Transition time
  • Antarctic sea ice settles on record low extent, again
  • Antarctic sea ice extent sets a new record low
  • Arctic sea ice low, Antarctic lower
  • December lows
  • Lingering open water areas

RSS Around the Coast Mountains

  • The name’s Mark… Mark BC
  • Packrafting / Fatbiking Buntzen Lake
  • My New Surly Pugsley Fatbike Build
  • Salsipuedes Canyon by Fatbike
  • Bridge River Recon Part 3 — Chilcotin Mountains Park
  • Bridge River Recon Part 2
  • Bridge River Recon, Part 1
  • Chilcotin Bikerafting Route
  • May 25 to 28 — Long Beach, California to Alfonsinas, Mexico
  • Ring Pass, Attempt #2

RSS Arthur Silber

  • Moving Interruptus, and Why Hospitals Suck
  • Crisis
  • How Many Damn Fucking Times Do I Have to Explain This?
  • So Close, Yet So Far
  • Very Sick, Very Scared
  • Help! Please
  • Mama's Last Hug
  • Twilight Zone America
  • Concerning Moral Judgment, and Moral Monsters
  • SERIOUS TROUBLE: Pain. Hospital. ???

RSS Arundhati Roy

  • Modi’s model is at last revealed for what it is: violent Hindu nationalism underwritten by big business | Arundhati Roy
  • This is no ordinary spying. Our most intimate selves are now exposed | Arundhati Roy
  • ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe – podcast
  • Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe: ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’
  • Modi's brutal treatment of Kashmir exposes his tactics – and their flaws | Arundhati Roy
  • Arundhati Roy extract: 'The backlash came in police cases, court appearances and even jail'
  • Literature provides shelter. That's why we need it | Arundhati Roy
  • Amid arrests and killings, Bangladesh and India must fight censorship | Arundhati Roy
  • An exclusive extract from Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness
  • Edward Snowden meets Arundhati Roy and John Cusack: ‘He was small and lithe, like a house cat’

RSS Arundhati Roy Says

  • A perfect day for democracy
  • Arundhati Roy speaks about the issue of rape in India
  • We Call This Progress
  • ‘Those Who’ve Tried To Change The System Via Elections Have Ended Up Being Changed By It'
  • Roy Against the Machine
  • If we do not love people, what are we fighting for?
  • All roads lead to Sharjah book fair
  • ‘Fairy princess’ to ‘instinctive critic’
  • Arundhati Roy shuns 'activist' tag
  • State attacking tribals in name of Green Hunt: Roy

RSS ASPO – USA

  • On hiatus
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 23 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 17 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 10 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 3 October 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 26 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 19 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 12 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 5 September 2022
  • The Energy Bulletin Weekly – 29 August 2022

RSS Avedon’s Sideshow

  • But only now my love has grown
  • You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train
  • Did you have to traumatize my kids?
  • And in your death's mask face there are no signs which can be seen
  • Don't let it slip away
  • And hope that my dreams will come true
  • You can not do that, it breaks all the rules
  • Twelfthnight
  • You just gotta call on me
  • There's too much confusion

RSS Bad Astronomy

  • Government Formally Accuses Donald Trump of Keeping National Secrets Near a Toilet
  • The Documents Trump Hoarded at Mar-a-Lago Are Even More Sensitive Than We Thought
  • I Discovered Something Very Unexpected on My Teen’s Phone. What Now?
  • Judge Aileen Cannon Can Absolutely Sink the Federal Prosecution of Trump
  • GOP Presidential Contenders Still Unwilling to Disparage Their Indicted Rival
  • Texas Lawmakers Think Drag Shows Are Bad for Kids. This Drag King Says They’re Essential.
  • KBJ Gives Clarence Thomas a Lesson in Congress’ Basic Spending Power
  • It Was Founded in a Denny’s. Now It’s Worth More Than Facebook.
  • Samuel Alito Took a Blowtorch to Environmental Law
  • He Teases Me About My Spelling but Doesn’t Know That I Have a Learning Disability

RSS Barbara Ehrenreich

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS BBC: Science & Environment

  • Wildfires: UK to set up new Mediterranean-style specialist units
  • El Niño planet-warming weather phase has begun
  • Is climate change fuelling Canada's wildfires?
  • Crocodile found to have made herself pregnant
  • Climate change: How is my country doing on tackling it?
  • Could ultra-processed foods be harmful for us?
  • 'Extinct' butterfly species reappears in UK
  • Solar panels - an eco-disaster waiting to happen?
  • Are tornadoes in the US getting worse?
  • Conservationists tackle decline of Scottish coastal species

RSS Big Picture Agriculture

  • BIG PICTURE AGRICULTURE'S LATEST NEWS
  • How to Stay Informed About Agriculture, Food, and Farming Issues
  • Dr. Walter Falcon's 2019 Iowa Farm Report
  • Agriculture Reading Picks
  • The Merits of Amaranth
  • Global Food and Agriculture Photos October 28, 2018
  • Unloading Livestock in Ohio 1938
  • Agriculture Reading Picks
  • Managed Rotational Grazing with Profitable Dairy in Minnesota
  • Global Food and Agriculture Photos October 21, 2018

RSS Bill Moyers

  • PODCAST: Dr. Bandy Lee Saw It Coming – The Violence Foretold in Donald Trump’s Election
  • Trump-Russia-Ukraine Timeline
  • Insurrection Timeline
  • Juneteenth: America’s Other Independence Day
  • March 30, 2021
  • Letters From an American: Heather Cox Richardson
  • The Pandemic Timeline
  • Racism in America
  • Bill Moyers On Democracy Podcast
  • Stop Attacks on Asian-Americans NOW!

RSS Bit Tooth Energy

  • Waterjetting 37e - Using Cavitation to disintegrate rock
  • Waterjetting 37d - Underground Drilling with Waterjets
  • Waterjetting 37c - A Drilling Diversion
  • Waterjetting 37b - How safe is it?
  • Waterjetting 37a - Removing Explosives
  • Waterjetting 36d - Going through more complex walls.
  • Waterjetting 36c - Cutting walls
  • Waterjetting 36b - Katrina anniversary and the power of water
  • Waterjetting 36a - Jet stripping of tires
  • Waterjetting 35e - A low cost version of the soil sucker

RSS Bizarro Blog

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Brane Space

  • Solutions To Simple Linear Algebra Problems (4)
  • Dystopian Skies In Eastern U.S. Provide Preview Of Life At Cusp Of Runaway Greenhouse Effect
  • The "Mind Is Flat"? No "Inner Mental World"? No Specific Knowledge? Then We're Already In A Realm Of Illusion
  • Solving Simple Problems In Linear Algebra (4)
  • Don't Blame Biden For Ongoing Inflation -- And Why Only An Idiot Would Make A Big Deal Over Biden's AFA Fall
  • Solution To Simple Linear Algebra Problem (3)
  • Newcomer Independent Yemi Mobolade Trounces Career Conservo To Become Colorado Springs First Black Mayor
  • Solving Simple Problems In Linear Algebra (3)
  • Cocky House Dems' Bravado During 2022 Lame Duck Is Partly Responsible for the Debt 'Pickle' We're In
  • Solutions To Simple Linear Algebra Problems (2)

RSS Brave New World

  • Islam: The Overlooked Aspect of Rumi’s Poetry
  • Remembering Nur ad-Din Zengi: The Light of Faith
  • Francophobia Among Muslims: Just Another Myth?
  • A Year in Kazakhstan: Some General Observations
  • ‘Dirilis Ertugrul’ — A History We’ve Forgotten?
  • Almaty, Kazakhstan: City of Tourists and Mountains
  • Nur-Sultan City (Astana): A Young and Futuristic City
  • Tashkent, Uzbekistan: The City with 2200+ Years of History
  • Remembering Berke Khan, 1209-66
  • Tbilisi, Georgia — The City Where (Almost) Everyone Owns a Hotel

RSS Breaking the Set

  • Abby Martin Breaks the Set One Last Time
  • Never Stop Breaking the Set!
  • Cuba Part III: The Evolution of Revolution
  • Cuba Part II: Ebola Solidarity & Castro’s Daughter on Gay Rights
  • Why Are Americans Getting Their Medical Degrees in Cuba?
  • Cuba Part I: Revolution, Sabotage & Un-Normal Relations
  • Why the CIA Won’t Give Up on Venezuela | Interview with Eva Golinger
  • [531] Bayer Infects Thousands with HIV, Clinton's Shocking Bedfellows & Netanyahu’s Cartoon Lies
  • CIA Torture Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Wake Up, You’re Next
  • Abby Responds to John McCain Promoting Breaking the Set

RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

  • Artificial intelligence: challenges and controversies for US national security
  • Why the IAEA model may not be best for regulating artificial intelligence
  • Wildfires push air quality in East Coast cities almost off the charts
  • Once ‘defanged,’ H5N1 bird flu is gaining teeth again
  • Most AI research shouldn’t be publicly released
  • ‘Uncharted territory’: Warming oceans and disappearing sea ice alarm scientists
  • Ukrainian dam is destroyed; nuclear plant lives in a ‘grace period’
  • One way attack: How loitering munitions are shaping conflicts
  • New START: To succeed, plan for failure
  • Scientists identify over 5,000 new species at future deep-sea mining site

RSS Business Insider

  • Even Fox News' top legal commentator says the indictment against Trump is 'extremely damning'
  • Ukraine's forces are facing 'tough battles' and taking losses early in its offensive, but war experts say it has a lot left to hammer Russian lines
  • Judge Aileen Cannon may have been appointed by Trump, but he'll turn on her if she ever sides against him during his criminal case, former prosecutors say
  • How a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills are spreading in the US
  • The indictment against Donald Trump quotes his own 2016 campaign promises slamming Hillary Clinton's emails
  • Trump waved classified military documents in front of a writer and a member of his PAC, and said 'it is like, highly confidential', feds allege
  • Special counsel Jack Smith urged Americans to read Trump's indictment to understand 'the gravity of the crimes charged'
  • Meet Waltine Nauta, Trump's 'Diet Coke valet' who's now his co-defendant on federal charges
  • Retail investors are piling into these 10 stocks as a new bull market gets started
  • Whoopsie! Trump's classified docs spilled all over the floor at Mar-a-Lago, feds allege, and other choice photos from Trump's recent indictment

RSS C-Realm

  • Automation and SJWs: A Conversation with James Howard Kunstler
  • It's official. The Age of Limits gathering is on hiatus
  • Three Conferences in Three Weeks
  • Mantra and Collapse
  • Dirty Pool: A Response to Guy McPherson
  • Interview with Dmytri Kleiner, Venture Communist and Miscommunications Technologist
  • Epochs and Applecarts
  • The Smell of Betterness
  • Descent in Anarchy?
  • Has Charles Mann Turned to the Dark Side?

RSS Cagle: Premium Cartoon News

  • TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM
  • WILDFIRES MADE IN CANADA
  • PUTIN’S BRAIN
  • SMOKEY’S TEARS
  • ASSAULT RIFLE HUNTING
  • NAACP should focus less on symbolism, more on action
  • DHS invites in, then releases criminal aliens
  • Chris Christie’s can’t win, but he can serve a good purpose
  • SUPERBUG MRSA
  • MANKIND LOVES EARTH

RSS Cassandra’s Legacy

  • Cassandra is Dead. Long Live Cassandra!
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect": The Collapse of Saudi Arabia's Water Supply
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's latest post on "The Seneca Effect"
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect". The Hydrogen Myth
  • Ugo Bardi's Latest Post on "The Seneca Effect." The Tunnel Vision Problem
  • Cassandra has Moved
  • Censorship: How the West is becoming more and more like the old Soviet Union
  • Donald Trump: The Sacrifice of the Sacred King

RSS Censored News

  • Ox Sam Camp Being Raided, Arrests Underway at Paiute Massacre Site
  • Choking with grief, Myron Dewey's family described their loss, as court hands down minimal sentence
  • Driver of Truck Killing Myron Dewey to be Sentenced Today
  • The Death of Paiute Journalist Myron Dewey: The Poisonous Destruction by the U.S. Government
  • Descendants of Ghost Dancers Protect Paiute Massacre Site from Canada's Lithium Americas
  • Mohawk Nation News 'Rocking Mohawk Mothers'
  • MNN -- INNU & GUARDIANS OF NITASSINAN EVICT LOGGERS
  • Foreign Mining Giants Enter Legal Fight to Destroy Oak Flat
  • Paiute Shoshone at Massacre Site Must Defend Themselves in Court from Lithium Americas
  • Mohawk Nation News 'Come to Akwesasne Kanonsesne Press Conference Wednesday'

RSS Center For Biological Diversity

  • Legal Agreement Gives West Coast Fishers New Shot At Crucial Protections
  • Press Conference Monday to Explain Harms From Environmental Law Rollbacks
  • Rare New Mexico Plant Proposed for Endangered Species Protections
  • Legal Intervention Defends Protections for Lesser Prairie Chickens
  • Legal Victory Gives Southern Hognose Snake Another Chance at Endangered Species Protections
  • Federal Judge Nixes Approval of Idaho Phosphate Mine
  • Supreme Court Denies Oil Industry Challenge to California Offshore Fracking Moratorium
  • Global Plastics Treaty Negotiations End in Paris With “Zero Draft” Still to Come
  • Embattled Puerto Rico Dredging Project Faces Court Hearing
  • Secretary Haaland Protects Chaco Canyon From Oil, Gas Drilling

RSS Center for Investigative Journalism

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Center for Economic & Policy Research

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

  • Peace-building
  • FASCHISMUS UND DAS ANTIFESTIVAL
  • Das Fest ist tot, es lebe das Fest
  • Die Erde als Tempel
  • Time to Push
  • The Rehearsal is Over
  • Some Stuff I’m Reading
  • Beyond Industrial Medicine
  • A Temple of this Earth
  • The Sacrificial King

RSS Chomsky

  • The Kind of Anarchism I Believe in, and What's Wrong with Libertarians
  • Upcoming speaking event in Boston with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Jeremy Scahill
  • Violence and Dignity: Reflections on the Middle East (2013 Edward Said Lecture)
  • How Noam Chomsky is discussed, by Glenn Greenwald
  • Profile of Noam Chomsky in the Financial Times
  • Brief profile of Noam Chomsky in The Guardian (UK), by journalist Charles Glass
  • Rare video of Noam Chomsky interviewed with Gore Vidal in 1991
  • Complete videorecording of 1971 debate between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault
  • Noam Chomsky profile in the Financial Times
  • Additional video excerpt of Noam Chomsky speech at East Stroudsburg University, Pennsylvania

RSS Chris Hedges

  • How Kelp Can Help Save the Oceans
  • Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: An Interview with Jeff Chang
  • NYC Officials Were Unprepared for the Airpocalypse
  • Fighting the Patriarchy in Mother Russia
  • Third of Humanity Could Be Pushed Out of Most Livable Environment
  • Indigenous Tribes Respect Multiple Gender Identities—Anti-Trans Bills Threaten Long Tradition
  • 250,000 Floridians Get Kicked off Medicaid as Governor DeSantis Tours the Country Raking in Campaign Cash
  • Festival of Riches: Cannes Premieres by Godard, Wenders, Scorsese and More
  • Backroom Deals Increase Public Cost of Cop City
  • Could Religious Charter Schools Upend American Education?

RSS Class Warfare Blog

  • But Whadabout . . .
  • Trump Claims His Indictment is a Hoax
  • Donald J Trump: “Orange is the New Black”
  • Was the Founding American Dream an Illusion?
  • It’s a Miracle I Tells Yuh!
  • The AIs are Coming for Us!
  • Free Will, Again . . . Again?
  • Signs and Portents
  • We’ve Had No True Christians™ for Millennia
  • Eighteen . . . Really?

RSS Cliff Schecter

  • Pakistan lays out budget but may not satisfy IMF
  • UK ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns as MP
  • Should governments make breathing clean air a human right?
  • One UN peacekeeper dead, four others injured in north Mali attack
  • Newcastle announces shirt sponsorship deal with Saudi company
  • Colombia and ELN rebel group sign ceasefire agreement
  • Djokovic beats cramping Alcaraz to reach French Open final
  • Disney bets on free mobile cricket streaming in India
  • Blinken to take delayed China trip this month: Reports
  • US bans imports from China-based Ninestar Corp over Uighurs

RSS Climate and Capitalism

  • Latest data reveals ‘unprecedented’ increase in global warming
  • Industrial farming has killed billions of birds
  • Coverup: Industry hid dangers of ‘forever chemicals’
  • The ‘net zero’ hoax: Chevron’s fraudulent climate plan exposed
  • Ecological ruin or ecological revolution?
  • Global heat will hit new records in next five years
  • Has the ocean heat bomb been ignited?
  • Capital’s long war to dispossess the poor
  • Indigenous fighters resist forest destruction in Peru
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2023

RSS Climate Central

  • The looming threat for Maine’s iconic potato industry
  • Ellis Island, lighthouses among historic NJ sites flooding as seas rise
  • Still rare in Iowa, electric car powers Des Moines family’s home during blackouts
  • Storied Maine ski resort bets future on reining in high costs of warmer winters
  • Hardly any past Winter Olympic host cities will have the snow to host in 60 years
  • Data may be Colorado’s best bet to mitigate increasing wildfire risk on the Front Range
  • How sea level rise is affecting your commute to and around Atlantic City
  • ‘A moral imperative’: Monastic sisters in rural Midwest make faith-based case for climate action
  • As flooding amplifies along the East Coast, Buddhist and Jewish faith leaders join the climate fight
  • ‘Preach now or mourn in the future’: How Key West faith leaders are confronting climate change

RSS Climate Change: The Next Generation

  • Historic Greenland ice sheet rainfall unraveled
  • Flip Flop: Why Variations in Earth's Magnetic Field Aren't Causing Today's Climate Change
  • Let's call climate change deniers what they really are: CLIMATE LIARS!
  • Amy Westerfelt: The Reason COVID-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation
  • Bill McKibben's response to Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans
  • WaPo: The Congo rain forest is losing ability to absorb carbon dioxide. That’s bad for climate change
  • Mark Carney of the Bank of England unveils climate stress test
  • Tropical forests may be heating Earth by 2035
  • Roger Harrabin, BBC: Bank of England chief Mark Carney issues climate change warning
  • Evidence that an ice-free Arctic Ocean allowed ancient CO2 and methane emissions

RSS Climate Citizen

  • Australia at Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in Paris #INC2
  • Importance of funding active transport infrastructure in Merri-bek budget to 2027
  • Logging Native Forests in Victoria to end by 1 January 2024, saving 14 million tonnes of carbon by 2030
  • Submission on Synthetic Turf to Moonee Valley Council for JH Allan Reserve
  • Guest Post: Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind
  • Australia ramps up funding for energy efficiency in Budget 2023. Baba Brinkman: Insulate it
  • Melbourne Protest at Korean Government agencies funding the Santos' Barossa Gas project
  • Australia talking renewables at Petersberg Climate Dialogue 2023 while new gas projects launch
  • Email to the Treasurer for Budget 2023: stop subsidising fossil fuels
  • Guest Post: Labor’s scheme to cut industrial emissions is worryingly flexible

RSS Climate Code Red

  • James Hansen’s new climate bomb: Are today’s greenhouse gas levels enough to raise sea levels by 60+ metres?
  • Why markets fail on fossil fuel pollution, heralding an era of climate disruption
  • Are climate–security risks too hot to handle for the Albanese government?

RSS Climate Connections

  • Climate Connections Update
  • CIC’s environmental and social justice photography contest open for entries
  • FBI Harassing Activists in Pacific Northwest
  • Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Peterman on the GE American Chestnut
  • Zapatistas Host Festival of Resistance and Rebellion
  • GMO Chestnuts Draw Scrutiny this Holiday
  • Photo Essay: The Pillaging of Paraguay
  • Greenpeace Chooses Marketing Over Ethics in Peru Action

RSS Climate Denial Crock of the Week

  • Solar for Soil, Water, Pollinators and Farmers
  • What are the Dangers of Wildfire Smoke?
  • In Smoke Emergency, Fossil Fuel “Expert” Insists Dirty Air is “no Health Risk”
  • Tropical Bacterium Found on US Gulf Coast
  • Have Wildfires Increased in Canada?
  • NOAA’s Newest El Nino Notes in the News
  • Finally. Smoke Crisis Makes Climate Top-of-Mind Issue
  • Climate Science 101 Review: “Is CO2 Plant Food?”
  • Republican’s War on Breathable Air
  • Blame Canada: Fox Working to Put Out Climate Awareness Fire

RSS Climate Progress

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Climate Snapshot

  • "Carbon tsunami" lead by Enbridge Northern Gateway takes aim at BC
  • BC's tar sands? Thirteen proposed LNG projects equivalent to 13 times current BC emissions
  • Car Carbon series: cool new animation, plus the jaw-dropping impact it left out
  • Climate change fuels both California's record drought and "polar vortex" storms
  • Obama's Keystone XL delay forces Harper into the "choose first" hot seat
  • Four charts reveal gigantic climate impact from proposed Kinder Morgan mega-pipeline
  • Climate fail. Surging fossil fuels are leaving renewable energy far, far behind.
  • Twenty one ways America would destroy a safe climate -- and one way they won't: US govt. report
  • Fracking in America kills off clean energy, leading to higher emissions: EIA report
  • BP calls for global carbon price to avoid the "worst impacts of climate change"

RSS ClimateSight

  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia (Part 2)
  • Let’s hear more from the women who leave academia.
  • Talking, typing, and the social model of disability
  • We need your help! Share your views on climate change with us.
  • Ice sheet melting: it’s not just about sea level rise
  • How I became a scientist
  • How does the Weddell Polynya affect Antarctic ice shelves?
  • Climate change and compassion fatigue
  • The silver lining of fake news
  • Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting

RSS Club Orlov

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS ClusterFuck Nation

  • KunstlerCast 378 – Former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas on How His State of Vermont Got So Woked Up
  • The Great DOJ Werewolf Hunt
  • What’s Next
  • June 2023
  • Who Can You Trust?
  • Memorial Service
  • Trial By Ordeal
  • Fade to Black in Ukraine
  • Dum-Da-Dum-Dum…Dah
  • Dirty Secrets

RSS Cocktailhag – FDL

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Colin Tudge

  • Let's not bet the farm | Colin Tudge
  • Why the world needs a renaissance of small farming | Colin Tudge
  • Are modern British children suffering from 'nature deficit disorder'? | Colin Tudge and Aleks Krotoski
  • Let the country, not the City, drive the UK economy | Colin Tudge
  • Farming needs Adam Smith's invisible hand, not finance capitalism | Colin Tudge
  • Survivors by Richard Fortey - review
  • Why woodlands are wonderful
  • Fossil Ida's great big family | Colin Tudge

RSS Common Dreams: News

  • UN Report Accuses Israel of 'Silencing of Civil Society' to Repress Palestinians
  • Progressives Tell Biden He Better Have a Backup Plan If SCOTUS Kills Student Debt Relief
  • READ IT: Federal Indictment of Donald J. Trump Unsealed
  • 'Disturbing': 12 Million US Adults Think Violence Is Justified to Put Trump Back in White House
  • Dems Unveil Debt Ceiling Reform Act to Prevent Future GOP Hostage-Taking
  • 'The Fight Has Only Just Begun': Greta Thunberg Pledges More Protests After Final School Strike
  • 'This Is Secret... Look': Trump Admits on Tape He Didn't Declassify Documents
  • Jamie Raskin Warns GOP Against 'Dangerous Rhetoric' After Trump Indictment
  • 'About Damn Time': Trump Indicted in Federal Classified Docs Probe
  • As Canada Burns, Docs Reveal Oil Giant Weighed In on Government Carbon Plan

RSS Consortium News

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Consumer Energy Report

  • Death of the Florescent Shop Light – Energy Efficiency
  • Methanol VS Ethanol – Technical Merits and Political Favoritism
  • Bill Nye the Science Guy – Social Primate and Nuclear Energy
  • World’s Smallest Gasoline Engine – Technology Breakthrough
  • How Much Oil Does the World Produce? – Production Facts and Figures
  • World Sets New Oil Production and Consumption Records
  • What Makes Up the Cost of a Gallon of Gasoline? – Gas Price
  • Road Trip – Thoughts on the Satsop Nuclear Power Station
  • What Happened at Choren? – History & Events
  • Gasoline Prices Doubled Under Obama: True or False?

RSS Corp Watch

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS CorrenteWire

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS CorrenteWire – Quick Hits

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Counter Currents

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS CounterPunch

  • Less Freedom, More Money: Tony Blair’s Vaccine Passport
  • The U.S. Dares to Criticize Israel
  • Gaza – Betrayed In Thought and Deed
  • Boeing Workers Take a Stand & Take the Heat
  • Bank Corruption Down Under
  • Europe’s Deadly Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy
  • What We Can Not See
  • The Sham of Homeland Security
  • Beauty from the Heart of Texas
  • Encountering Benazir Bhutto

RSS Crooked Timber

  • Disinformation and the Intercept
  • Happy World Ocean Day
  • Pew quits the generation game
  • Sunday photoblogging: Malbork Castle, Poland
  • In the Zone: Quinn Slobodian’s Crack-Up Capitalism
  • Sunday photoblogging: Girona
  • Misogyny and Violence in Michigan Politics
  • Ban LLMs Using First-Person Pronouns
  • Sunday photoblogging: cloister
  • Utilitarianism comes to benefit-cost analysis

RSS Crooks and Liars

  • Trump Hoarded Classified Docs In A Ballroom, Shower, And His Bedroom
  • Fox Legal Hack Recommends Trump Run On Pardoning Himself.
  • Another Indictment Drops, This Time For Trump Aide
  • OJ Simpson Offers Trump Free Advice About His Indictments
  • Mark Levin Foams At The Mouth Over Trump Indictments
  • House GOPer Calls For Civil War Over Trump Indictment
  • Crack-Smoking RI Republican Arrested For Child Molestation
  • Bummer: MAGA Republicans Are Not Taking The Indictment Well
  • Stable Genius In Audio Says He Didn’t Declassify ‘Secret Information’
  • Morning Joe: Trump Will Use Saudis As Weapon Against Biden

RSS Cryptome

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Culture Change

  • Low Cost Polluting: The Real American Dream?
  • We Did It: Sailing Cargo in the Aegean
  • Cure for Depending on 90K Oil Spewing Cargo Ships: Sail Power Makes Inroads, Now in Mediterranean
  • The Trump Presidency: Celebration of the Little Boy, and Mass Awakening
  • Stepping Back from Trump's Election: Critique of underlying US Culture in a List - 25 Limitations
  • Dirty Fossil Fuel ‘Business-As-Usual’ Tactics Spew Out of the IMO at COP22
  • The Unconnected and Unrewarded in the New Divisive Dichotomy: Being Either Online Or Not
  • The Ameliorators: a possible coalition of progressives on (e.g.) NAFTA
  • It's the 21st, and this is what a growing movement is doing
  • Pro-Climate Actions - a community flier and poster

RSS Dahr Jamail

  • For a Worse Tomorrow
  • Covid-19’s Not Through With Us Yet
  • Living in a World in Which Nature Has Already Lost
  • Life in the US Has the Hallmarks of a “Low-Grade War Zone”
  • Fracking Company Has Made It Rain Toxic Water Upon New Mexico Without Penalty
  • Interview: TODAY IS BETTER THAN TOMORROW: A TIME OF ENDINGS; SHADES OF DENIAL W/ DAHR JAMAIL
  • Grieving My Way Into Loving the Planet
  • New York Times reviews The End of Ice
  • A Future Filled With Pathogens
  • Tested

RSS Daily Kos Comics

  • Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on the spineless Mike Pence
  • Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on the PGA's deal with the devil
  • Cartoon: A Calvinesque and Hobbesian look at Meatball Ron
  • Cartoon: Mike Luckovich wonders WWJD about LGBTQ+
  • Cartoon: West
  • Cartoon: Junk jargon
  • Cartoon: Targets
  • Cartoon: Guardians of the Fallacy
  • Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on Ron DeSantis and 'woke'
  • Cartoon: The lib owners

RSS Damn the Matrix

  • ERoEI, it depends…
  • Insanity rules….
  • Nuclear Fantasies
  • More Metabolic Syndrome news…
  • Empty Planet
  • On NOT joining the dots…
  • The Hydrogen fallacy explained
  • Yours Truly on the local FM radio station
  • Limits everywhere
  • Limbic Capitalism

RSS Dan Hagen

  • A Lesson in Humanity from Star Wars
  • A Wit Called Wanda
  • Ethics Begins in Empathy
  • The Devil is in the Dumbasses
  • 'Succession' Dramatizes a Death Knell
  • CNN Parades Primal Resentment
  • We Like What He Knew
  • CNN Bellyflops into a Moral Sewer
  • 'Guardians 3:' Ya Gotta Have Heart
  • Song of Spring

RSS Dangerous Intersection

  • FIRE’s Model Legislation Prohibiting Universities from Requiring Faculty Member to Make Loyalty Pledges or Ideological Commitments
  • U.S. is Provoking War with China Because … What the Hell? Why Not?
  • CDC’s Easy Solution to Inconvenient Data
  • Meaningful Conversation is Like Sex
  • San Francisco Crumbles

RSS Dark Ages America

  • Healing
  • Beating a Dead Horse Dept.
  • A Grotesque Bulvan. However...
  • The Sopranos, William Golding, and Contemporary America
  • 7 million and going strong
  • Karma City
  • Muddy Waters
  • The Midterms
  • Meatball
  • Permanent War for Permanent Peace

RSS David Bollier

  • Can We Move Beyond Philanthrocapitalism?
  • The Revelations of 'Black Earth Wisdom'
  • Foster & Iaione Probe Commoning in the City
  • Expanding Regenerative Agriculture through Open Source Technologies
  • Binna Choi of the Casco Art Institute: Curating Art through Commoning
  • John Thackara on Designing for Life
  • Joe Brewer's Bold Quest to Help Restore a Bioregion
  • David Sloan Wilson on Evolutionary Science and Prosocial Behavior
  • Cecosesola of Venezuela Wins Right Livelihood Award!
  • Greg Watson's Bold Campaign for a World Grid

RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – National Memo)

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS David Cay Johnston (Link – Tax Analysts)

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS David Harvey

  • Video: David Harvey on capital, theory, and becoming a Marxist
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 12
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 11
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 10
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 9
  • Video: David Harvey in Dialogue with Jean-Luc Mélenchon
  • Video: The Geography of Capital
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 8
  • Book Talk: Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World
  • Reading Marx’s Grundrisse | Session 7

RSS David Hilfiker

  • Welcome
  • Announcement
  • Racism in Our Small Faith Community?
  • Spirituality of Weakness
  • My Alzheimer's Disease
  • A Theology Out of my Life with Alzheimer Disease
  • More Than Surviving the Crisis
  • Facing Our Mistakes
  • Hope in an Environmental Wasteland
  • Geoengineering ... because we must

RSS David McNally

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS David Roberts

  • Seattle’s unbelievable transportation megaproject fustercluck
  • Please support Grist
  • There’s an emerging right-wing divide on climate denial. Here’s what it means (and doesn’t)
  • Everybody needs a Climate Thing
  • Jonathan Franzen is confused about climate change, but then, lots of people are
  • Turns out the world’s first “clean coal” plant is a backdoor subsidy to oil producers
  • A way to get power to the world’s poor without making climate change worse
  • “Climate change” vs. “global warming”? It really doesn’t matter
  • How American journalists deal with climate deniers
  • Nothing is nonpartisan any more

RSS Death by Car: Capitalism’s Drive to Carmageddon

  • Leading the way in preventing traffic accidents
  • Truck safety rate system 3 years
  • Traffic accident in the school zone
  • cerebral hemorrhage in a traffic accident
  • Uiseong-gun receives donations from children’s safety umbrella to prevent traffic accidents
  • 100% fruit delivery driver
  • a traffic accident
  • Prevention of traffic accidents on school buses for children
  • More than 80% of truck traffic accidents are “car-to-car” accidents
  • “Infusion truck”. Anger explodes. If you forget, you’ll get attacked again

RSS Decline of the Empire

  • Defending Reality
  • Fascism And The Uniparty
  • Apocalypse Now and Apocalypse Not
  • Fascism Marches On — Episode 1
  • There Is No Middle
  • The Elites And The Sheeple
  • For Your Own Good
  • America Is Finished, There Is No Way Out
  • The Whole World Is Watching
  • Glenn Greenwald Censored At The Intercept, Resigns

RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

  • Scientific Progress vs Natural World
  • DGR France Visits Proposed Lithium Mine Site
  • Over 150 Groups Urge to Immediately Shut Down Line 5
  • Kangaroo Walks and Talks [Event Alert]
  • For the Sake of Nature
  • Ecosabotage: A Heroic Action Against Ecocide
  • Indigenous Women’s Camp Set to Block Water Supply to Peehee Mu’huh [Thacker Pass]
  • Call for Comments on Women’s Sex-Based Rights in Sports [Press Release]
  • Despite Warnings, Norway Proposes Deep Sea Mining
  • Tomorrow Is Ours

RSS Deepak Tripathi’s Diary

  • Afghanistan Awaits Uncertain Future After US Withdrawal
  • UK’s Brexit Maze
  • Book Review: Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy
  • Book Review: How Democracy Ends
  • A Bloody Hot Summer in Gaza: Parallels With Sharpeville, Soweto and Jallianwala Bagh

RSS Democratic Underground

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Democratic Underground – Breaking News

  • Florida woman who fatally shot neighbor granted $154,000 bond
  • Boris Johnson stepping down as MP with immediate effect and says he is 'bewildered and appalled'
  • White House says Iran is helping Russia build a drone factory east of Moscow for the war in Ukraine
  • Trump charged with 37 counts in classified documents case, indictment says
  • Trump aide Walt Nauta indicted in classified documents case
  • Trump lawyers quit classified documents case
  • George Santos files appeal to keep names of those who helped post $500,000 bond sealed
  • Sudan's government declares UN envoy no longer welcome; warring sides agree to 24-hour cease-fire
  • Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, initially assigned to oversee his case: Sources
  • Judge clears way for disciplinary proceedings against Trump ally Jeffrey Clark

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • A very simple proof that the 1920-1945 Nazi Party was not truly socialist
  • Judge Aileen Cannon Can Absolutely Sink the Federal Prosecution of TrumpThe federal criminal case ag
  • One-time Biden accuser now in the 'safe' hands of Russia
  • Hope for democracy among Trump's challengers? If only
  • A False Prophet Dies. Do his false prophecies die with him?
  • The Sad Candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
  • Lauren Boebert Accused of 'Seducing' Married Man With 'Money and Gifts' Leading to Restraining Order
  • 200+ things that Fox News has labeled "woke"
  • Procedural Reasons Responsible for Many Losing Medicaid Amidst Unwinding
  • China and Xi are making a backup plan in case Putin dies or gets deposed, analyst says

RSS Democracy Now

  • DOJ vs. African People's Socialist Party: Omali Yeshitela Blasts Charges of Being Russian Agent
  • Supreme Surprise: Court Upholds Voting Rights Act, Strikes Down Alabama's Racially Gerrymandered Maps
  • Indicted Again: Donald Trump Faces Federal Espionage & Conspiracy Charges in Classified Docs Probe
  • Headlines for June 9, 2023
  • "World's Deadliest Wars Go Unreported": Journalist Anjan Sundaram
  • "Airpocalypse": David Wallace-Wells on Red Skies, Raging Wildfires & Pollution Link to Climate Crisis
  • Headlines for June 8, 2023
  • Cornel West on Running for President, Ending Ukraine War & Taking on "Corporate Duopoly" of Dems & GOP
  • A National State of Emergency: Human Rights Campaign Sounds the Alarm over Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws in U.S.
  • Headlines for June 7, 2023

RSS Derrick Jensen

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Desdemona Despair

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Desertification

  • Climate change in Nigeria: Can youth activists turn the tide of inaction?
  • Tobacco-free farms: a healthier future for people and land
  • World Environment Day: Data shows China an important contributor to global environment protection
  • NAMIBIA DRIVES TO HALT, REVERSE THE TRENDS IN LAND DEGRADATION AND DESERTIFICATION
  • Middle East faces grave environmental challenges as world marks Environment Day
  • Forum to focus on combating desertification
  • Desertification is destroying fertile land. Here’s how we’re fighting it.
  • Understanding of diurnal gas exchange in order to exploit the dynamic coordination between the rate of carbon assimilation (A) and stomatal conductance (gs)
  • Untitled
  • Geo explainer: How are deserts formed?

RSS deSmog Blog

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Digbys Blog

  • Untitled
  • They can save the world by @BloggersRUs
  • Just drifting: R.I.P. Buck Henry By Dennis Hartley
  • It looks like he wants to take Iraq's oil money
  • Untitled
  • Let's not forget who worked with Suleimani's IRGC
  • You can't win if you don't show up to play by @BloggersRUs
  • Friday Night Soother
  • I'm just going to leave this here.
  • Who wants to be the next Andy McCabe?

RSS Disinfo – Ecology

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Dispatches from the Underclass

  • China’s Saudi-Iran Peace Deal Is a Major Setback for US Empire, w/ Prof. Mohammad Marandi
  • EXCLUSIVE | Interview with Mexico’s Leading Presidential Contender Claudia Sheinbaum
  • Bombshell w/ Seymour Hersh: US Blowing Up Nord Stream Was ‘Act of War’
  • Exclusive Interview w/ Hezbollah’s Second-In-Command Sheikh Naim Qassem
  • UN Official Calls for Lifting ‘Illegal’ Syria Sanctions After Seeing Devastation First-Hand
  • Europe Self-Destructing for U.S. Proxy War In Ukraine, w/ Prabhat Patnaik
  • US Brings World to Brink of Nuclear Armageddon As Europe Self Destructs, w/ Ali Abunimah
  • Reality vs Propaganda: Understanding Iran’s Protests, w/ Navid Zarrinnal
  • How the US Used Saudi Arabia to Fuel Fanaticism & Fight Progressive Movements, w/ As’ad Abukhalil
  • Round 2: Lula vs Bolsonaro, What’s At Stake In Brazil?

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • Fighting Fire and Fascism in the American West
  • Know Your Enemy: What’s Wrong With Men?
  • Money Power
  • Belabored: How Workers Escape, with Saket Soni
  • Cruelty and Luxury:
  • Barcelona’s Experiment in Radical Government
  • Ultra Violence
  • The Lithium Problem: An Interview with Thea Riofrancos
  • Belabored: Reviving the Strike in Britain, with Morag Livingstone and Joe Rollin
  • The IRA Is an Invitation to Organizers

RSS Dissident Voice

  • Charter Schools Are Quintessentially and Irreversibly Private Schools by Design
  • Diamonds for the Antichrist
  • Who is behind Operation Fear?
  • For Argentina’s Small Farmers, the Land Is Predictable but the Markets Are Not
  • Empire Fables: Vladimir Gluten and the Country that Keeps Attacking Itself
  • France’s Global Warming Predicament
  • Connecting the Dots
  • Politically Conditioned Funding in Palestine
  • Global Capitalism: Anti-Democratic Politics and Existential Crisis
  • Convenient Villains: Kathleen Folbigg’s Miscarriage of Justice

RSS Do the Math

  • Keeping Up On Appearances
  • Holiday Haikus
  • The Simple Story of Civilization
  • Finite Feeding Frenzy
  • A Random Fix to Polarization
  • The Cult of Civilization
  • A Climate Love Story
  • Death by Hockey Sticks
  • Limits to Economic Growth
  • The Ride of Our Lives

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Doug Stanhope

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Douglas Rushkoff

  • Team Human ep. 248: I Will Not Be Autotuned – Live from All Tech Is Human’s Responsible Tech Mixer
  • SXSW 2023: The End of the Billionaire Mindset: A Celebration with Douglas Rushkoff
  • The Guardian: Douglas Rushkoff on why tech billionaires are in escape mode
  • Wired: Doug Rushkoff is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution
  • Team Human ep. 236: Fenton Bailey
  • Escape plans of the rich and famous
  • Cyber: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
  • Survival of the Richest
  • Duncan Trussell Family Hour Ep. 522: Douglas Rushkoff
  • In ‘Survival of the Richest,’ author Douglas Rushkoff examines the escape plans of the tech elite

RSS Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

  • A Voice from the Past
  • What has happened to Julian Assange shows the total helplessness of “the people” in the Western “democracies.”  Alternatively, it shows the total unconcern of “the people” about their civil liberty.
  • Judicial Watch Now Harassed by FBI
  • The FBI Ignores Real Crime while bringing false cases against Republicans
  • Today is the 56 Anniversary of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.  
  • The Department of Homeland Security Is a Threat to the Homeland
  • America Has Been Overthrown in a Coup
  • America on the Brink by David Ray Griffin
  • Tucker Carlson Is Back
  • This explains why there is no prospect of fair elections

RSS Dredd Blog

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Ear to the Ground – Truth Dig

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Early Warning

  • New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown
  • Is New York Containing Covid?
  • New York vs Italy
  • NYC Update - 46.5% increase Sunday over Saturday.
  • We Are About to Lose New York City to Covid
  • Containing Covid-19 (Or Not)
  • Covid-19 update
  • Covid-19 Infection Rates
  • Global Carbon Sink Holding Up So Far
  • The Wake-Up Call from David Buckel

RSS Earth First

  • “UNC Dildo-Boy” accosts homophobic preacher, releases anti-technology declaration
  • Subpoena caps bad week for fossil fuel
  • Less Than 60 Hours Left to Support Indigenous Land Defenders!
  • Shh! That Zookeeper Is a Total *&^%#!
  • Marcellus Shale Earth First! Aerial Blockade Celebrates 2 Weeks
  • Sabotaging the Badger Cull
  • Occupied Abenaki Lands Desecrated by 9/11 Memorial Protesters Intervene to Address U.S. Imperialism & Genocide
  • The Earth First! Newswire Has Moved
  • Massive Mine Proposed at Oak Flat, Sacred Tribal Land
  • Wharton Coal Prep Plant Spill Turns Boone County, WV River White

RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day, Natural Hazards, and News

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Earth Observatory: Natural Hazards

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Earth Policy Institute Blog

  • Data Highlight - Wind Power Beats Nuclear Again in China
  • Data Highlight - Plastic Bag Bans or Fees Cover 49 Million Americans
  • Plan B Update - Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment
  • Data Highlight - Geothermal Power Approaches 12,000 Megawatts Worldwide
  • Data Highlight - China’s Solar Panel Production to Double by 2017
  • Plan B Update - The Swinging Pendulum of Population Policy in Iran
  • Eco Economy Indicator - China Leads World to Solar Power Record in 2013
  • Data Highlight - Denmark, Portugal, and Spain Leading the World in Wind Power
  • Plan B Update - The Downfall of the Plastic Bag: A Global Picture
  • Plan B Update - Plastic Bag Bans Spreading in the United States

RSS Ecocide Alert

  • The Basics of Poker
  • What is a Lottery?
  • What is a Slot?
  • What to Know When Playing at a Casino Online
  • How to Bet at a Sportsbook
  • How to Win at Poker
  • What Is a Lottery?
  • Togel Sidney Pasaran Togel Online Terkenal
  • What You Should Know About Online Casinos
  • What Does a Sportsbook Do?

RSS Ecohuman World

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Eco-Shock News

  • Radio Ecoshock: Why Make a World Nobody Wants?
  • Radio Ecoshock: The Big Greenhouse Gas You Don’t Know
  • Radio Ecoshock: On Fire Again
  • Radio Ecoshock: Extreme Heat #2: How It Kills (replay)
  • Radio Ecoshock: Jean-Marc Jancovici: Whistling Past the Graveyard (replay)
  • Radio Ecoshock: Making $$ from Endless Record Heat
  • Radio Ecoshock: Nomad Century & Bad Banks
  • Radio Ecoshock: The Dirt Behind Betrayal
  • Radio Ecoshock: Climate: A Big Change Emerges Down Under
  • Radio Ecoshock: What I Really Think Will Happen Is Happening Already

RSS Ecological Headstand

  • Dilke, Chapman, and Dahlberg Pop-ups
  • For the Abolition of the Wages System!
  • The Incredible Shrinking Blog
  • Keynes "hadn't got round to it"
  • Napoleon Solow and the Phantom Mechanism
  • Mathiness, Growth and Increasing Returns
  • Viral Gyro Spiral
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Never Mind the Bollocks. Here's the Gyro.

RSS Ecological Sociology

  • Commons Enabling Infrastucture
  • A Short History of Progress: Book Review
  • Foucault, Power, Truth and Ecology
  • Democratizing Capital at Scale: Cooperative Enterprise and Beyond
  • Stanford: Climate Change Ten Times Faster than Previous 65 Million Years
  • Beyond Market and State: The Renaissance of the Commons
  • What Then Must We Do? The Next American Revolution
  • John Thackery: Limits to Resilience
  • Timothy Mitchell: Carbon Democracy
  • The Informal Economy Blog

RSS Ecologise

  • Why this Maharashtra village is fighting for the long forgotten Gramdan Act?
  • Ignored health risks, bungled pilot projects, bonanza for Dutch firm: Modi Govt. forces fortified rice on poor
  • Protests against Ratnagiri Refinery: Skeletons in the Development Closet
  • What will be the history of India without the history of its plant life?
  • We are ‘greening’ ourselves to extinction
  • [WATCH] We are living in a deluded world: Interview with Iain McGilchrist
  • The Avocados of Wrath
  • How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart
  • On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India
  • P.V. Satheesh, the Original Millets Man of India

RSS Economic Hardship Reporting Project

  • Parajo’s Quest to Rebuild
  • Erosion and sea-level rise are coming for their Louisiana home. They’re staying anyway.
  • Ithaca Bets on Heat Pumps in Mobile Homes
  • Republican Debt Ceiling Proposals Could See Neediest Americans Lose Benefits
  • Wrecking Women’s Healthcare
  • What It’s Like to Have an Abortion Denied by Dobbs
  • Belabored: Reviving the Strike in Britain, with Morag Livingstone and Joe Rollin
  • School Support Staffers Stuck Earning Poverty Level Wages
  • EHRP-Grist comic on Kentucky disaster relief distributed as educational tool
  • LGBTQ Students Face Barriers to Getting Student Loans Without Parents’ Participation

RSS Economic Undertow

  • Z Marks the Spot
  • The Death of Economics
  • Cars and More Cars …
  • Repost From 2015: Pied Piper of Dumb Money
  • The Arc of the Moral Universe
  • Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year
  • David Graeber Dead …
  • Frieden In Unserer Zeit, Peace In Our Time
  • Doing God’s Dirty Work
  • The Numbers Game

RSS EcoWorldView

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Empire Burlesque

  • Generation of Vipers: The Original Sin and Continuous Crimes of America’s Involvement in Afghanistan
  • Reich and Reality: Culture Wars of the Conquerors
  • On the 18th Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq
  • On the Acquittal of the Murderous Thug Donald Trump
  • Impeachment Cave-in: Dems Plumb New Depths of Perfidy
  • In Memoriam Richard Kastelein (1967-2021)
  • The Surrenderists: Dem Leaders Stand Down; No Consequences for Coup
  • Unwrung Withers: No Downsides for Trumpists From Their Coup Push
  • House of Death: Trump’s Endgame Plan to Kill Democracy
  • Brief note on a bleary post-election morning

RSS Empirical Magazine

  • From the Empirical Archives: Genius or Folly?
  • From the Empirical Archives: Nights Such as These
  • From the Empirical Archives: Second Time Foster Child
  • From the Empirical Archives: A Moment with Mary Nash-Pyott
  • From the Empirical Archives: In the Shade of a Cave
  • From the Empirical Archives: In Search of a Good Teacher
  • From the Empirical Archives: The Circle and the Pyramid
  • From the Empirical Archives: Why Human Rights Matter
  • From the Empirical Archives: Arizona
  • From the Empirical Archives: The Offer by Jennifer Hanno

RSS EmptyWheel

  • The Flavors of Trump’s Obstruction
  • Defendant-1’s 38 Count Indictment
  • John Durham’s Blind Man’s Bluff on DNS Visibility
  • Lock Him Up! Trump Charged with Crimes He Believes Candidates Can Be Charged With
  • Prosecutors Interviewing Witnesses Who Knew Trump Was Hoarding Documents
  • This Indictment Will Likely Come Too Early for Trump to Consolidate the Party
  • The Thirteenth Amendment
  • Dry Run: The Filing Room Came to Trump
  • NYT’s Pre-DOJ Meeting Attempted Rebuttal
  • Now Fully Normalized: Sportswashing the Bonesaw with Golf

RSS End of More

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Energy Balance

  • "The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower."
  • "Living the Change," Film Screening + post-film Q&A. 6 pm, April 17th (2023), Reading Biscuit Factory (Reading, UK).
  • "Living the Change," Film Screening + post-film Q&A. 6 pm, April 17th (2023), Reading Biscuit Factory (Reading, UK).
  • “The Oil Machine” and the Changing Climate.
  • Architects of Our Future: Energy and the Changing Climate.
  • The Energy War, and Climate Breakdown.
  • “Reading Hydro” – Microhydropower on the River Thames at Caversham Lock (Reading, UK).
  • “Four Meals From Anarchy” – We Must Grow More Food Locally.
  • Russia-Ukraine War and the Changing Energy Landscape.
  • Confronting the Changing Climate: COP26 - Scientists’ Warnings into Action, from Local to Global.

RSS Environment & Food Justice

  • National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement on the Climate Crisis
  • La Lucha por La Sierra | Scion of Texas Oil Barons Seeks to Overturn Historic Use Rights to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant
  • Biopiracy in Mexico | Foundation stealing wild beehives in Yucatán
  • Deep Seeds at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | April 2018
  • Exclusive Update - Monsanto in Mexico | Corporate impunity and the beekeeper struggle against transgenic soybeans
  • Student Blogs | Race, Gender, and Settler Colonial Violence
  • Notas de Campaña | Por una Tortilla 100 ciento Nixtamalizada
  • Campaign Notes | For 100 Percent Nixtamalized nonGMO Tortillas | Part One
  • Maize: Our Identity, Our Food | Photo Exhibit of Indigenous Corn Farmers Featured at UN Headquarters
  • Protecting the Sacred in Corn | Seed Sovereignty Documents | Berenice Sánchez Intervention on the Protection of Indigenous Agroecosystems presented to the UNPFII-2018 | 1 of 2

RSS Envisionation Blog

  • Dr Chad Briggs – Integrating disaster risk and national security with climate policy
  • “..colossal risks with the future of civilization” First study quantifying Earth System Boundaries
  • Archive: Michael E Mann, Michael Ghil, James E Hansen – Discussing Earth System Sensitivity
  • Dr Jennifer Francis – 2023’s symptoms of climate chaos, El Niño, Ocean Heatwaves, and Arctic Sea Ice lows
  • Archive: Dr Natalia Shakhova (& Igor Semiletov) Vienna Interview 2012 UNCUT 42mins
  • “Leave Africa Alone” – Solidarity With The Voices Of The Voiceless: Ina-Maria Shikongo
  • David Spratt: [Articulating &] Reclaiming the Climate Emergency
  • Archive: Professor James Hansen – EGU, Vienna, 2012 Unedited Interview
  • European Parliament Proposes Including “ECOCIDE” In EU Law
  • Capture6 CEO, Ethan Cohen-Cole, talks: SVB bank, climate tech & being bullish on gigaton’s of CO2 removal

RSS Extraenvironmentalist Blog and Podcasts

  • [ Episode #95 // Economy of Things ]
  • [ Episode #94 // Rocking the Google Bus ]
  • [ Episode #93 // Climate Agreements ]
  • [ Episode #92 // Decrypting Cryptocurrency ]
  • [ Episode #91 // Age of Stagnation? ]
  • [ Episode #90 // Missing Out ]
  • [ Autumn 2015 Interlude // Archaeoacoustics ]
  • The Energy Transition Show – [Episode #0] – subscribe @ energytransitionshow.com
  • [ Episode #89 // How on Earth ]
  • [ Episode #88 // Resilience Imperative ]

RSS ExtraEnvironmentalist’s Videos

  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • Untitled

RSS ExtraGeographic

  • Teary in Decathlon
  • What happened to Let’s Wrestle?
  • An Unsuitable Job for a Woman film
  • Covid-19 antibody test photo
  • Smartphone cartoon
  • The Shard / London Bridge photo gallery
  • David Bowie
  • DayZ: 36 hours in a foreign, familiar land
  • Photos: First 3D Printing Show
  • One Day in the Life of Television: 25 years on

RSS Facts for Working People

  • Modern supply-side economics and the New Washington Consensus
  • ChatGPT, value and knowledge.
  • After Congress Stops The Rail Strike. The SCOTUS Doubles Down.
  • Afscme Local 444 History From a Participant #2
  • Interesting Comments from Black American Radicals. Class Good Indentity Bad
  • US China Conflict. History Repeats Itself
  • Acemoglu, AI and automation
  • Water is a Human Necessity. We Should Own it. But What sort of public ownership?
  • Yes It's True. I Wish Bernie Sanders Would Just Bugger Off.
  • THE FIRE ANTS OF GUANTÁNAMO BAY

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • ‘Border Crisis’ Means Migrants Coming—Not Migrants Dying
  • Montana TikTok Ban a Sign of Intensified Cold War With China
  • WSJ Worries Debt Limit Fight Could Jeopardize Military Contractors’ Profits
  • Sorry, Sulzberger—NYT’s Anti-Trans ‘News’ Is Neither True Nor Important
  • NYT’s Anti-Trans Bias—by the Numbers - A FAIR study comparing front-page transgender coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post
  • Ukraine’s ‘Press Freedom’ Score Increases Despite Martial Law, Banned Media
  • Media Crime Hype Helps Roll Back Reforms
  • ACTION ALERT: False NYT Spy Claim on Iran Nukes Needs Correction
  • Calling Bud Light Saga a ‘Controversy’ Falls Flat
  • Western Outlets Send Warning to Lula Over Ukraine Dissent

RSS Fairewinds

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Fairfax Climate Watch

  • How to Slow Down Global Warming
  • Not All Asphalt Types Are Created Equal
  • How Does Climate Change Affect Your Health?
  • Health Screening Tests Every Woman Should Have
  • The Day 2 Antigen Test When Travelling From The UK 
  • Steps Towards Reducing Clinical Trials Footprint
  • What Are CDISC Standards And Why Does It Matter?
  • First Time Central Heating Grants For Home Owners
  • International Trade and Climate Changes
  • Solutions to Combat Global Warming

RSS Farooque Chowdhury’s Diary

  • Road rage faces student spirit
  • Fires within the Arctic Circle
  • A Facebook post on quota mobilisation
  • Marx in Bangladesh
  • Drug money and ambulance
  • The disinformation campaign on Venezuela
  • Bangladesh Liberation War Exposed A Neocolonial State’s Failure
  • DIGNITY OF TEACHERS AND AN ADMISSION TEST : THE EDUCATION MARKET EXHIBITS ……….
  • The Ambiguity: The Case Of Democracy
  • Blackmailing Bankers Now Stage A Coup In Greece

RSS Feasta

  • Podcast: Beyond Growth, Beyond Europe…and Beyond Politics
  • Bank Failures and the Debt Ceiling: A Double Teachable Moment for Ecological Monetary Theory
  • A post-growth Europe critical to survive and thrive, urge over 400 civil society groups and experts
  • Critical Raw Materials: Irish Waste Advisory Group Update
  • Time in the Woods: Observing through the senses in Edergole Woods
  • Giraffes: Art and the Wellbeing Economy
  • David Bollier on Building the Commonsverse
  • Sandra Waddock on Transformational Catalysts and the Role of the Arts/Creatives in Social Change
  • WEAll Ireland Hub’s Deep Dive workshop in Derry-Londonderry
  • Agroecology

RSS FireDogLake

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Fish Out of Water

  • Highest Level NWS Warning for Severe Storms & Strong Tornadoes in MS Valley NOW
  • Major Warming Disrupts Polar Vortex: Cold West, 6 Weeks of Extreme WX for U.S. Ahead
  • My Amazing Fish Story - An Incredible Success Story
  • East Coast Bomb Tomorrow - Atlantic Ocean Current Shift Blowing up Coastal Storms: Climate Brief
  • Russians attack and Seize Ukrainian Nuclear power plant, Major Nuclear Accident possible
  • Polar Vortex is splitting now bringing on severe mid-continent storms & Atlantic bomb cyclones
  • Climate Brief: A very deadly tornado season is likely this spring starting in March
  • Record heat ahead of historic storms & winds late today in Iowa, Minnesota & Wisconsin
  • COP-26 Abandons 1.5 C Target, Sticks with Big Net Zero Lie, but Hope is Rising out of the Ashes
  • Daily Kos is blowing the biggest story of all time

RSS Foreign Confidential

  • Film History: the French New Wave
  • Nine Beautiful Places to Visit in Slovenia
  • Top 10 European Islands to Visit
  • Little Europe: the Amazing Microstates
  • Chinese Virologist, MD, PhD, Says Coronavirus Made in Wuhan Lab
  • Rebels and Spies: the [GREAT] Graphic Novels of Vittorio Giardino
  • Deep in Red China ...
  • Preview Video Comic Strip Hero Battles Totalitarian China
  • Dystopian Graphic Novel Depicts China as Nazi-Like Occupier of USA
  • Coming Soon to Your Digital Device: Dack Dixon, Special Agent

RSS FracTracker

  • Test
  • Visualizing Pollution: Corpus Christi Data Dashboard
  • Assessment of Oil and Gas Well Ownership Transfers in California
  • Evaluation of the Capacity for Water Recycling for Colorado Oil and Gas Extraction Operations
  • Evidence Shows Oil and Gas Companies Use PFAS in New Mexico Wells
  • CalGEM Permit Review Q1 2023: Well Rework Permits Increase by 76% in California
  • Off the Rails: An Exploration of the Train Derailment in East Palestine
  • East Palestine Train Derailment Waste: Community Impacts
  • Worth Protecting: A photo album by Better Path Coalition and FracTracker Alliance
  • The Truth About Blue Hydrogen: Green Fuel or Greenwash?

RSS George Monbiot (Alternet)

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS George Monbiot (Official Home Page)

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

RSS Get Real List: Chris Nelder