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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

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Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Category Archives: Capitalism

Age of Annihilation

04 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil

≈ 21 Comments

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Amazon Fires, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropocene Mass Extinction, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Coronavirus Pandemic, COVID-19, Greenland Ice Melt, Greenwashing, Heatwaves, Marine Heatwaves, MegaFires, Pyrocene, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Berry, Zoonotic Diseases

“We must now understand that our own well-being can be achieved only through the well-being of the entire natural world around us.” ~ Thomas Berry

As governments stared glass-eyed at what was unfolding in China earlier this year, the fragility of modern life’s interconnectedness was soon to be laid bare by a microscopic organism. Within a couple months of the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, airline travel from China had spread the novel virus to more than 60 countries. Despite decades of warnings about the inevitability of such an event, politicians had paid about as much lip service to preventing the next pandemic as they had to dealing with climate change. As has been warned by health experts, the best we can hope for is to blunt the effects of the COVID-19 disease on the global population; eradicating it will be futile. Something similar could be said of the legacy effects of our CO2 emissions which will haunt life on Earth for time immemorial.

A study from 2014 found the total number of infectious disease outbreaks has more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2010. Approximately 75% of all emerging infectious diseases originate from animals and chances for pandemics are increasing as humanity’s growing assault on the natural world disrupts what remains of the planet’s ecosystems. If you need further evidence that we are annihilating life on Earth, consider that the microscopic mite, among the oldest and most plentiful invertebrates on the planet and a keystone species in many ecosystems, is disappearing at least 1,000 times the natural rate. More novel zoonotic diseases will eventually be unleashed into the bloodstream of the globalized economy as corporations revive parasitic growth at the expense of a habitable planet. The coronavirus pandemic is a symptom of our unfolding Anthropocene Mass Extinction which is accelerating.

The current pandemic may well mark the beginning of the end for growth as we knew it. In the U.S. right now, there are 29 million unemployed and tens of thousands of small businesses that have closed during the pandemic will never reopen. In the Age of Environmental Breakdown, there can never be a return to normal. For the normal that industrial civilization has become accustomed to is the very thing ripping to pieces those white picket-fenced lives in suburbia. A Biden presidency may bring back some sense of sanity and order to those pursuing the illusion of the American Dream, but it won’t alter global civilization’s current trajectory toward an increasingly chaotic world of never-ending disasters. The synergistic effects of biodiversity collapse, climate change, and industrial pollution will act as a growing weight on the economy.

We just learned that Greenland’s ice sheets crossed a tipping point two decades ago and will never recover, as far as human timescales are concerned. Nothing will bring them back except another ice age, and humans have managed to erase the next one scheduled to have occurred some 50,000 years hence. 100,000 years will have past before the planet completely rids itself of the CO2 humans have loaded into the atmosphere. Second only to Antarctica in terms of ice volume, Greenland’s melt-off could eventually contribute 23 feet of global sea level rise. Antarctica’s ice sheets have also been found to be much more vulnerable to collapse than previously known, as rising atmospheric temperatures melt their surface and a warming ocean destabilizes them from below. Coastal erosion, flooding, and soil salinization from sea level rise are growing drags on the economy. About 40% of the global population lives near the coast and will account for the largest mass migration in human history. Indeed, billions of U.S. tax dollars are now being used in a new strategy to relocate entire neighborhoods from coastal regions persistently hit by flooding in recent years.

With the meltdown of the Earth’s cryosphere, we are witnessing a large-scale catastrophic disruption to a critical part of the Earth system under which all life has adapted. In particular, the relatively stable climate of the Holocene is what allowed for the development of agriculture and human civilization. We no longer live in that era; We have entered the chaos of the Anthropocene, a time of deadly climate disruption, social upheaval, mass extinction, and ultimately collapse of industrial civilization. With arctic amplification weakening jet streams, larger and more intense heat domes now form over geographic regions to help spark megafires, power grid blackouts, and heat-related deaths. In Phoenix AZ, a heatwave just obliterated a previous record of most days over 110°F (50 plus), and another record-breaking heatwave is on its way as I speak. California’s Death Valley just recorded the highest temperature on Earth since reliable records began. The six most recent years (2014-2019) and 2020 have been the hottest ever recorded, with each decade since 1980 being hotter than the previous.

The recent heatwave that thawed Siberia’s tundra, set it on fire, and caused an ecological disaster by collapsing a diesel fuel reservoir, could never have happened without the massive spike in CO2 emissions from mankind’s fossil-fuel binge. Summer wildfires in the Arctic set a record this year, emitting 34% more CO2 than in the prior year. Fires in the Amazon jungle are the worst in a decade. Wildfires in Arizona this year have already scarred more land than in the prior two years. Colorado just logged the biggest fire in its history and California’s wildfires are already on track to break records even though the fire season has just begun. Globally, wildfires have increased 13% over the prior record-breaking year of 2019. A more apt name for the Anthropocene might be the Pyrocene – Age of Fire.

Heatwaves aren’t just striking on land; they are also cooking the oceans. Increasingly severe and frequent marine heatwaves(MHWs) have surged by more than 50% in recent decades. Warming oceans help create more destructive and more frequent hurricanes and typhoons. They also threaten biodiversity and ecosystem function on a global scale. Scientists have observed that stony corals around the world are hunkering down into survival mode, exhibiting the same traits as they did prior to the last great extinction. Let that sink in for a moment…Yes, a relatively primitive organism with a rudimentary nervous system is actually preparing for a mass extinction while the so-called ‘Wise Ape’ blissfully carries on destroying his very own life-support systems.

“It was incredibly spooky to witness how corals are now exhibiting the same traits as they did at the last major extinction event,” said Professor David Gruber, a researcher and marine biologist with The Graduate Center, CUNY and Baruch College. “Corals seem to be preparing to jump across an extinction boundary, while we are putting our foot further on the pedal.”

Apparently, coral are not hampered by politics in their decision-making processes. These creatures of the primordial seas will likely outsurvive the Self-Absorbed Ape who has insulated himself in a technological cocoon of false security, oblivious to the harsh physical laws of nature indifferently working to take him down. Hell, scientists are now finding microplastics in every human tissue they examine, and the health effects are unknown. How’s that for forethought?

Scientists can issue warnings about our impending demise until they are blue in the face, and they have, but they and the public are at the mercy of economic, financial, and political forces beyond anyone’s power. Couple that with the fact that the average person on the street has a Trump-level of comprehension about these existential crises and is being bombarded on social media by fake news that plays on emotions and deep-rooted inter-group distrust. Cheap energy and the individualistic consumer culture have created an illusion of abundance and destroyed any sort of communal cooperation which was once the basis of everyday life. I’ve walked this Earth for over five decades and have seen a steady and continuous degradation of the natural world; corporate greenwashing is rampant. The growth in ‘green energy’ has not displaced fossil fuel fuel consumption to any great degree; fossil fuels still supply 84% of global energy consumption. Worse yet, just to maintain our current growth in energy consumption would require an unattainable expansion in alternative energies. If one connects all the dots on our current state, then there is no refuting this most clear-eyed of scientific assessments:

“Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse.”

The end of the world is the ‘cha-ching’ of a cash register as the last vestiges of nature are converted to dollars. Lest we forget, 71% of global emissions come from just 100 companies and more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 originated from 25 corporate and state-owned entities. While the ultra-wealthy reap the profits of a poisoned ecology, the rest of the world is left to take the brunt of consequences from a world that grows more dangerous by the day. Those living on the edge who lost their livelihood during this pandemic are the collateral damage of an out-of-control socio-economic system whose incompatibility with life on Earth becomes more evident with each passing year. There’s nowhere to escape for most people because, to one degree or another, we are all entrapped in this system. The immutable laws of biology, physics, and chemistry have set an expiration date on America’s non-negotiable way of life, ensuring that many more will soon fall victim to the short-term greed of capitalism. As Stephen Hawking warned, “Stupidity and greed will kill off humans.”

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The Apocalypse Will Not Be Televised

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

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

≈ 70 Comments

Tags

Abrupt Climate Change, Anthropocene Extinction, Australian Bushfires, Climate Change Denial, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Extinction of Man, Fossil Fuel Industry, Omnicide, Overpopulation, Rupert Murdoch

“3D visualization” of the Australian fires by Anthony Hearsey, compiled from NASA satellite data collected across the span of a month/an injured koala bear sits alone on the ‘apocalyptic’ Kangaroo Island

The year is 2020 and climate change-related disasters are in full swing while at the same time, the most influential country in the world is under the leadership of someone who calls scientists “foolish fortune tellers.” Australia, another country being led to its slaughter by the willfully and criminally ignorant, is literally going up in flames as we speak. Its rich millennia-old evolutionary legacy is disappearing before our eyes. The pictures of charred kangaroo corpses entangled in barbed wire fences and koala bears curled up in the fetal position as they tried to flee the fires are gut-wrenching and should be a wake-up call to our leaders. The platypus, another of the country’s iconic creatures, is dying off in drought-stricken cesspools. To make matters worse, recent heavy rains are causing massive fish kills as bushfire ash washes into rivers. More than a billion creatures(excluding frogs, insects, other invertebrates, or livestock) are estimated to have perished, and the wildlife that do manage to survive the country’s apocalyptic conditions are now at risk of starvation. Scientists fear these fires are causing the extinction of entire species of insects which play a vital role in “processing waste, pollination, providing nutrition for other species, and myriad other ecological functions.” While warming at twice the global rate from humanity’s fossil fuel binge, Australia continues to be the biggest net exporter of coal in the world, thus fueling its own conflagration.

The Australian mega-fires are not a one-off, but just the latest manifestation of an increasingly disrupted global climate system. Australia’s fate was predicted by scientists many years ago. The forever legacy of greenhouse gas emissions means the dust won’s settle in any time scale appreciable to humans. Sea levels will continue to rise for millennia, droughts and storms will grow in frequency and intensity, thousand-year rains will become common occurrences, entire ecosystems will unravel, and the human experiment will undoubtedly come to an end. To quote an Australian on Reddit:

This is what disturbs me about my countrymen. This is not just a one-off terrible event, this is a permanent step down, a large nail in our collective coffin. Long before we recover from this, we will suffer it again, and again. Those poor animals. Worse than being glorified, or not televised, our collapse is being looked at without seeing. It is misunderstood and denied.

For those not from here I’d say that one can’t overstate what is happening here, it is truly awful. We will never recover.

Australia’s annual fire season is only at its midpoint, yet the massive pulse of carbon from these bushfires is now estimated at 900 million tons —double the country’s annual emissions. As horrific as the fires have made life on land, what’s happening in Australia’s oceans out of site and mind is equally disturbing, but of course this is not confined to Australia. Scientists have found that a ‘heat blob’ in the north Pacific ocean killed a million seabirds and wiped out 100 million cod.

We are destroying the life support systems to which all creatures, including man, are dependent, yet it does not appear that any climate disaster no matter how catastrophic will alter mankind’s tragic path to extinction. Wiping out an entire continent’s flora and fauna does not register on the Stock Market. No number of five-alarm fire warnings planet Earth sends will be heeded by this cabon-fueled corporate kleptocracy which carries us all toward a very dark future. Why would we expect any differently from an economic paradigm that tolerates no disruption as it plunders the planet in search of the almighty dollar? A report from two years ago called Australia’s extinction crisis a “national disgrace” and described its institutions tasked with protecting threatened plants and animals as “broken”. We see today that nothing has changed to prevent Australia’s natural treasures from disappearing into the black void of the Anthropocene extinction, never to be seen or heard from again. In fact, current assessments show extinction rates are accelerating:

  • Nature is in ‘unprecedented’ decline. A substantial proportion of assessed species are threatened with extinction and overall trends are deteriorating, with extinction rates increasing sharply in the past century.
  • This decline is a direct result of human activity, the most devastating being changes in land and sea use, including natural habitat destruction.
  • Since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions have doubled, raising average global temperatures by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius. 75% of fossil fuel burning and anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the atmosphere has occurred since 1970; their effects are just beginning to be felt.
  • In the near future, climate change is expected to surpass the impacts of land and sea use change as well as other drivers(direct exploitation of organisms, pollution, invasive alien species).
  • Increased human population and per capita consumption is a key driver of the above.
  • By destroying the foundations of Earth’s interconnected web of life, we are threatening our own health and existence.

I am loath to repeat these numbers because no price can be placed on intact ecosystems, but the economic costs of this year’s fire season in Australia are estimated to be approaching $100 billion, the costliest natural disaster in that country’s history. And in the U.S., the last decade has been ‘unprecedented‘:

The U.S. billion-dollar disaster damage costs over the last decade (2010-2019) were also historically large, exceeding $800 billion from 119 separate billion-dollar events. After adjusting for inflation, the U.S. experienced more than twice the number of billion-dollar disasters during the 2010s than the 2000s decade: 119 versus 59…Clearly, the historically large U.S. losses from hurricanes and wildfires over the last few years have further skewed the total distribution of extreme weather costs. This increase reflects a combination of increased exposure, vulnerability and the fact the climate change is playing an increasing role in the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters.

The finance industry is starting to see that climate change is an existential crisis, yet offer no alternative to their ideological stalemate of infinite growth on a finite planet. In fact, they believe that the personal sacrifices needed to halt greenhouse gas emissions will create a public backlash towards such efforts. In other words, business-as-usual will rule the day until the hard laws of physics, chemistry, and biology make our bubble economy impossible. We’re undergoing that process right now as anthropogenic climate disruption returns planet Earth to the chaotic climatic conditions of the Pleistocene —a time in which organized societies and agriculture will be impossible. Water shortages, degraded soils, and loss of pollinators will only compound the problem. No amount of accounting tricks will bring back the habitability of the planet.

Cheap and abundant fossil fuels have given us modern science and technology which have allowed humans to feel detached and independent from nature, but when this civilization inevitably collapses we will once again be at the mercy of the natural world. If we have destroyed the biosphere and set in motion a mass extinction event at a time when we strongly need to rely on nature, then our prospects for survival are very grim indeed! Yet another study released this week shows that Earth’s biodiversity is crashing under a perfect storm of global warming, extreme weather events, and human activity. Collapse of industrial civilization and its vast amount of specialization along with a simultaneous planet-wide ecological collapse can very easily lead to human extinction. It’s not hard to imagine a Third World War being ignited by deteriorating environmental conditions and resource depletion as nations fall under the sway of propaganda from demagogues inciting fear, hatred, and violence.

With Earth Overshoot Day arriving ever earlier each year, we have arrived at the last stage of global civilization’s doubling time. The next twenty years will be the final tick of the clock in which our mass resource extraction, consumption, and waste irreparably damage the planet’s regenerative abilities and life support systems. Decades of greenwashing, empty rhetoric, and regulatory capture by the fossil fuel industry have brought us to this precipice:

As you can see, any mitigation efforts at this late date rely heavily on the fantasy of carbon capture with nonexistent technologies that, truthfully, will never scale up to the enormous problem. To some degree or another, we are all in denial of what is unfolding in our final century as we go about our daily lives within a set of living arrangements completely incompatible to the survival of our descendants. Everyone is riding the peak of industrial civilization as we watch the world fall apart on our smart phones and LED TVs. In the meantime, the nightly news drones on about hyperpartisan politics and economic growth. That barely a vague mention is made in the news cycle of the most important story in mankind’s history tells you all you need to know about who controls mass media and why the story of our imminent demise will remain buried.

Our fossil record will be comprised mainly of plastics, radioactive waste, and billions of human bones and that of our domesticated animals. The remnants of wild animals will be extremely rare since we have supplanted them with our livestock. All civilizations, especially complex ones, eventually collapse. Ours, like many before, will be undone by overshoot of the environment’s carrying capacity, albeit this time on a planetary scale and with no second chance for a do-over.

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Greta Thunberg Speaks the Horrific Truth of Humanity’s Fate

28 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

Abrupt Climate Change, Anthropogenic Mass Extinction, Climate Refugees, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Coral Die-Off, Deforestation, Dr. Kevin Anderson, Ecological Overshoot, Exponential Growth, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Fossil Fuel Industry, Greta Thunberg, Hubris of Man, Hurricane Dorian, Jason Box, Keeling Curve, Methane Release from Thawing Permafrost, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Mid-Pliocene Era, Neil Adger, Nicholas P. Money, Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, Rachel Warren, Resource Depletion, Sea Level Rise, The Great Dying, Will Steffan

When a 16-year-old girl named Greta Thunberg spoke with trembling anger of the unspeakable crimes today’s adults are committing against her and future generations, a chill ran down my spine. She will be alive to see the pulses of rapid sea level rise, the unraveling of industrial agriculture, the mass migration of hundreds of millions of climate refugees, and the disintegration of Earth’s biosphere. Today’s world with the ever-worsening breakdown of the biosphere is much more dangerous than during the Cold War when the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation hung in the air like the sword of Damocles, as expressed by President Kennedy: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness.” Not only does the threat of nuclear war persist, the sword of abrupt climate breakdown now looms ever larger as governments are rendered impotent.

Scientists and the Red Cross recently warned the world is currently suffering at least one climate catastrophe per week and nearly two million people per week are needing humanitarian assistance. A UN global assessment confirms the planet is currently experiencing 2,500 conflicts over fossil fuel, water, food and land — conflicts directly related to the ongoing collapse of the earth’s biodiversity. No civilization in history has faced a complete reshuffling of the planet’s biosphere, let alone the ecological armageddon brought on by a Pandora’s box of pollutants from industrial civilization. Microplastics are literally raining from the sky. Irrevocably out-of-step with the natural world, modern civilization is destroying its host ecosystem by altering the geochemistry of the planet. A mass extinction event unlike any in Earth’s history is underway. Even if a small fraction of the global population survives this overshoot, it will take 10 million years for biodiversity to bounce back. Since atmospheric CO2 will ultimately be drawn down through a very slow natural process called sedimentation, the Earth will not reach pre-industrial CO2 levels again for more than 100,000 years. The last time CO2 levels were this high was 3 millions years ago during the Pliocene when temperatures were 3-4°C(5-7°F) higher globally than today, and sea levels were 15-20 meters(50-65 feet) higher. It was too warm for glacial ice sheets to even exist in the northern hemisphere.

At 412 ppm and rising, experts said temperature rises of 3-4C are likely now locked in.

What does any honest scientist have to say about mankind’s prospects in a 4°C world:

“There is a widespread view that a +4ºC future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond adaptation, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems and has a high probability of not being stable.”
Professor Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (Video, 58:00)

“We have already observed impacts of climate change on agriculture. We have assessed the amount of climate change we can adapt to. There’s a lot we can’t adapt to even at 2C. At 4C the impacts are very high and we cannot adapt to them.”
Rachel Warren, University of East Anglia

“There is a growing sense of panic in those who really understand what a 4°C world might be like.”
Prof. Will Steffan, Director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute

“Thinking through the implications of 4 degrees of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost.”
Prof. Neil Adger, University of Exeter

“…there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur.”
World Bank report (2012) Turn down the heat: why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided

“If we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately stabilize CO2 — and we also have to draw down a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. If we don’t achieve that, there’s no real prospect for a stable society or even a governable society…”
Jason Box, Prof in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland 

People are completely oblivious to our dependence on the complex adaptive systems that allow humans to exist and persist. To be clear, when the global temperature rises by 4°C within this century it will be faster than the blink of a geological eye, and we, along with 80% or more of the planet’s species are finished. 96% of all marine species and more than two-thirds of terrestrial species perished during the Great Dying at the Permian-Triassic interface. Global mean temperature at that time rose an estimated 5-8°C over a timespan of 3,000-20,000 years. A 4°C rise over just two centuries will be a rate of warming 15 to 100 times faster than that past extinction event. At this speed of warming, regions would experience temperature spikes of 10-15 degrees above normal in some months. Ecosystems would implode and the services they provide that sustain us would be obliterated. Virtually every vertebrate species on Earth would disappear, along with most plants and many invertebrates.

At just 1°C of warming we are already seeing major ecosystems such as coral reefs unraveling. Hurricanes so powerful that they require a new category now barrel across the Atlantic ocean and completely decimate islands; the cataclysmic Storms of our Grandchildren that Hansen warned about have only just begun. Arctic permafrost melt has already exceeded 2090 projections. It was economist William Nordhaus that set the 2°C warming target in 1975, not scientists. What did he get for this dangerous speculation, divorced from empirics? The Nobel, naturally. These days he is saying 3.5°C is just fine. John Kerry says we cannot leave the climate emergency in the hands of the neanderthals in power, but I dare say that anyone promoting mainstream economic theory is guilty of omnicide. Capitalism’s “extractivism” has turned the entire planet into a sacrifice zone.

Grand Bahama island before/after Hurricane Dorian made landfall, Sept 1, 2019

Humanity has essentially documented its own demise for the last half century while the Keeling curve inexorably rises faster than ever. As MIT Prof Daniel Rothman says, “When carbon levels in the atmosphere spike dramatically, the web of life collapses.” We are now seeing a record 10ppm of CO2 rise every four years and have have failed to curb emissions growth let alone move towards any sort of carbon neutral world. Alternative energies remain a sliver of total global energy consumption. In fact, “the annual increase in global energy use is greater than the increase in renewable energy, meaning fossil fuel use continues to grow.”

The rise of political ‘populism’ and the election of reactionary politicians in the U.S. and abroad has thrown yet another monkey wrench into any possibility of tackling the climate crisis. The demagogic Trump administration is simply burying any scientific evidence and ignoring its government’s own research on such things as the recent surge in climate refugees from Latin America due to climate-induced food insecurity. Russia and Brazil have both encouraged and precipitated the wildfire infernos raging in their countries. The catastrophe unfolding in the Amazon is a direct result of President Bolsonaro’s neoliberal policies designed to plunder the Amazon much like Trump’s dismantling of the EPA and deregulation of corporations. Both ignore the science of climate change and the reality of ecological collapse. In the case of Russia’s Putin, it was a cold economic calculus: “If the cost of putting out these remote fires is greater than the profit that could be made from selling the timber, they can decide to let it burn.”

And then there’s the global debt bomb of $250 trillion waiting to explode, not to mention the $200-250 trillion global carbon debt which increases by 16 trillion every year. Meanwhile, banks are quietly shielding themselves from climate catastrophe at taxpayers’ expense by shifting risky coastal mortgages off their books and onto the federal government’s Fannie and Freddie programs. Just as the U.S. government is leaving vulnerable countries to fend for themselves, so are private institutions unloading the risks onto the public. For those at the very top of our economic pyramid scheme who control public policy, dwindling resources will be kept first and foremost for them while everyone else is treated as collateral damage. This dereliction of responsibility, this cutting and running, is how the deteriorating conditions of the world are being handled. Throughout history, society’s elite have shown the same arrogance and hubris in the face of impending calamity. For example, the Fall of the Roman Empire:

If you read the chronicles of the early 5th century AD, you get the impression of total mayhem, with barbarian armies crisscrossing Europe and few, if any, Roman nobles and commanders trying to defend the Empire. Most of them seemed to be maneuvering to find a safe place where they could find safety for themselves. We don’t know what was the final destiny of Rutilius Namatianus but, since he had the time to finish his poem, we may imagine that he could build himself a castle in Southern France and his descendants may have become feudal lords. But not everyone made it. For instance, Paulinus of Pella, another rich Roman, contemporary of Namatianus, desperately tried to hold on his possessions in Europe, eventually considering himself happy just for having been able of surviving to old age.

We see a pattern here: when the rich Romans saw that things were going really out of control, they scrambled to save themselves while, at the same time, denying that things were so bad as they looked. We can see that clearly in Namatianus’ poem: he never ever hints that Rome was doomed. At most, he says, it was a temporary setback and soon Rome will be great again.

Thunberg’s speech alluded to such behavior by the polluting nations:

For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight. You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

Yes, Greta, they are evil; they have access to every expert on the seriousness of the crisis and they are building walls and saving their own skin while continuing business-as-usual. Lest we forget, the fossil fuel industry’s own scientists accurately predicted the life-threatening effects of its product decades ago and not only did they do nothing to stop it, they funded and orchestrated a vast network of climate denial propaganda which continues to this day and have raced to exploit even more fossil fuels from the melting Arctic. When you consider that billions of people are going to die as a result, their actions become by far the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. Make no mistake, our society is trading a livable planet for an unsustainable way of life that is irreparably depleting finite resources and altering the earth for eons, making it uninhabitable for organized human societies. Each day of business-as-usual further degrades the planet’s biodiversity.

“As the temperature rises, the patricians will seek refuge as polar migrants, or set sail on heavily armed ocean liners. Millions more will live in underground cities, anywhere to escape the sun. Dazzling reports of new methods for sopping up the gigatons of carbon dioxide will create ripples of enthusiasm and then fade in the next news cycle. Fisheries and agriculture will collapse, drugs will provide little solace, and everyone will curl up in a foetal position in the end, like the ash-entombed victims at Pompeii, whimpering in the inescapable heat. The likelihood of this outcome increases as the years pass and the smoke rises.”
~ Nicholas P. Money, THE SELFISH APE: Human Nature and Our Path to Extinction

"The latest climate simulation models are projecting temperature increases of up to 7°C by the end of this century. Unless you have a magical faith in technology, then that level of temperature rise signifies the potential end of our species…"https://t.co/kdldvQXGCa pic.twitter.com/a5DUZOXOG9

— xraymike79 (@xraymike79) November 2, 2019

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Weekend Funnies for the Depressed Collapsitarian #11

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Ecological Overshoot

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Climate Breakdown, Extreme Weather Events, Fossil Fuel Industry, Greta Thunberg, Techno-Fix, Technocapitalism, The Anthropocene Age

It’s been a while since I’ve published one of these dark humor posts, but I think that as the catastrophic flooding, heat waves, and other extreme weather events continue to multiply and intensify and as more and more people start losing their minds, all we can do is laugh at the absurdity of our self-inflicted predicament. As has been said many times before, the Anthropocene carbon spike is just one of many symptoms from an overpopulated technocapitalist-driven world chasing too few resources, whether it be wild fish, potable water, rare earth minerals, or arable land. No one is putting the breaks on this race towards the abyss because no one is truly in charge, except for the cold and amoral calculator of corporate profits and stock market returns. In an age of “worse than expected” and “faster than anticipated”, the true cost of environmental collapse cannot be fully appreciated because humans have never existed in a world that is 500ppm CO2e and accelerating. One thing is certain —most of Earth’s mass extinctions were caused by a disruption in the carbon cycle which happened slowly over a much longer time span compared to today and without all the other human-forced pressures on the planet. All the technological advances and creature comforts we value today came at a rising environmental cost which is now impossible to repay since we have essentially ‘sold the farm’ in terms of the stability of the Holocene and the biochemistry of the planet. There’s no techno-fixing our way out of this mess. We didn’t build a durable civilization; we built a superficial and fleeting one blinded by delusions of technological grandeur and human superiority. So as we all slowly arrive at the fifth stage of grief, here’s a toast to humans before the party ends…

And this cartoon is becoming more accurate as time passes and oil executives mourn for the loss of future profits…

Earth will be fine. Humans?…not so much 🤣

No need to plan for retirement, the beach will come to you…

I’m sure Greta Thunberg would have something to say…

Do as I say, not as I do…

And lastly…

A Final Warning to Planet Earth

15,364 scientists from 184 countries issue a ‘warning to humanity’ and present a radical agenda to protect planet Earth. We, the billions of people believing in human exceptionalism, categorically reject this agenda and issue in return a stark warning to planet Earth…We officially summon planet Earth to abandon its intransigent attitude and accept the inevitable: an extension of its biological and physical limits. Should planet Earth stick with its hardline ideological stance, it needs to be aware that mankind will never compromise and that we will seek a second planet. The universe is like our ambition: limitless…

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Evolutionary Dead-Ends

19 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 95 Comments

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6th Mass Extinction, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Capitalism, Carl Sagan, Climate Change, Collapse of Civilizations, Donald Trump, Dr Charlie Veron, Ecological Overshoot, Elizabeth Kolbert, Herman Daly, Jared Diamond, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Noam Chomsky, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Stephen Boyden, Svante Arrhenius, Techno-Fix, U.S. National Climate Assessment, Wealth Inequality, William Rees

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Have things improved since I wrote my last essay a year ago for this blog? Have we miraculously transformed our entire energy system into one that does not poison and degrade the natural world? Have we slowed the onslaught of plastic pollution choking the planet’s rivers, lakes, and oceans? Have we done anything meaningful to halt the deterioration of the planet’s biodiversity toward mass extinction? Has this global, hi-tech civilization done anything significant to avert its own demise? Despite a constant flow of warnings from the scientific community and even a letter signed by more than 20,000 scientists, the simple answer is no. We have failed to address the complexity of our rising population and a degrading environment. Yes, we are self-conscious and thus able to recognize the fact that we are destroying the only home we have, but will the end result differ much from a population overshoot of bacteria in a Petri dish? Dependent on a continuous stream of finite resources imported from across the globe, modern megacities contain the seeds of their own destruction and that of all other life forms upon which humanity depends for its survival. The exponential growth of modern civilization ensures that one of the next doubling times will produce an absolute increase in overshoot that tips the world into unavoidable collapse. Enough damage may well have already been done; we’re just waiting for inertia to catch up to the impacts.

2017 set a global record for the most skyscrapers built in a single year and 2018 is predicted to eclipse it. The fossil fuel energy spent to construct those concrete and steel buildings translates into a melting cryosphere. Not to mention the fact that the carbon footprint of some of the world’s biggest cities is 60% bigger than previously estimated. “Renewable energy” still only comprises a tiny fraction of global energy consumption and plans for a total transition will take decades, if it’s even possible. Any growth in ‘renewable energy’ has been offset by increased consumption of fossil fuels in the developing world. 2017 marked a new record high in CO2 emissions with 2018 set to break that record. Global CO2 emissions have yet to peak, and the UN has warned that we are on course for a 3C world. It doesn’t help that the current U.S. administration plans to cut funding for alternative energy R&D, with the Energy Department expecting no drop in the U.S. carbon footprint through 2050. Having embedded itself in the U.S. government over a century ago, the fossil fuel industry has consistently worked to block climate change action and undermine environmental laws. A UK shipping executive recently admitted his industry is guilty of doing the same to protect their bottom line. The utilities companies knew the dangers as well. Like most corporations, the viability of their business model depends on perpetuating an unsustainable way of life. With warnings ignored since the late 1800s starting with the work of Svante Arrhenius, it should be obvious by now that intelligence without sapience has produced deadly results. A new study finds “the most accurate climate change models predict the most alarming consequences.” The recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment has similar findings:

While climate models incorporate important climate processes that can be well quantified, they do not include all of the processes that can contribute to feedbacks (Ch. 2), compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes. For this reason, future changes outside the range projected by climate models cannot be ruled out (very high confidence). Moreover, the systematic tendency of climate models to underestimate temperature change during warm paleoclimates suggests that climate models are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the amount of long-term future change (medium confidence). (Ch. 15)

In a new ominous research finding, the evil twin of climate change(ocean acidification) is threatening the base of the marine food chain by disrupting the production of phytoplankton. This is yet another positive feedback loop increasing the rate of global warming. Climate feedback loops and ice sheet modeling are two weak areas of climate science, which means many unpleasant surprises. This is why researchers are constantly astonished. Adaptation is not a luxury most organisms have at the present rates of change. Techno-fixes are but a pipe dream.

A diet reliant on animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases, biodiversity loss, and oceanic dead zones, yet global per capita meat consumption is increasing rapidly in both developing and industrialized countries. Investments have been made to increase global plastic production by 40% over the next decade, even as all the world’s natural bodies of water become inundated with microplastics. Coca Cola alone produces 110 billion throwaway plastic bottles every year – an astounding 3,400 a second. Plastic waste from the military is another massive contributor that cannot be overstated. Half of all plastics have been made in just the last thirteen years. Over 90% of the so-called purified bottled water sold to the public has been shown to be contaminated with hundreds and even thousands of microplastic pieces. A byproduct of petroleum and the epitome of our throw-away society, plastics have truly become ubiquitous in the environment, entering the food chain at every level.

A study published last year pulls no punches by describing the mass extermination of billions of animals in recent decades as a “biological annihilation.” Extinction risks for many species are vastly underestimated. Insects, the base of the terrestrial food chain, are faring no better. With the steep loss of invertebrates, multiple studies indicate the world is “on course for an ecological Armageddon”. Trees are dying at an unprecedented rate from extreme weather events, portending profound effects to Earth’s carbon cycle. Coral bleaching events are now happening four times more frequently than a few decades ago. Dr Charlie Veron, a renowned scientist specializing in corals and reefs, said this last year:

“Half of all coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef died over the past two years due to coral bleaching,’’ Dr Veron said.

“It’s going to be a horrible world. Young people now are going to curse the present generation for what we’ve done. We’ll have left them a planet in dire straits.’’

“Between a quarter and a third of all marine species have part of their life cycle in a coral reef. Taking away the reefs precipitates ecological collapse of the oceans. It’s happened twice in the past due to volcanoes releasing carbon dioxide and lava flows, but that was nothing like the amount of carbon dioxide being released now.’’

No one thought that ecosystems such as The Great Barrier Reef would be circling the drain this soon. How these changes are affecting flora and fauna as well as human societies is critical, but it’s like trying to predict the outcome of a high speed car crash as it’s happening. Hindsight is 20/20, but it only serves a purpose if you are still around to learn from it. Abrupt climate change is happening now and we’re not prepared for it. Fighting to protect the very life support system we all share, environmentalists are under attack worldwide and being murdered in record numbers. The problem of poaching is so bad that scientists are advising people to scrub all GPS data from their nature photos before publication to help protect endangered species from being ransacked. The voracious consumption and defilement of the planet continues unabated, despite clear signs the once-stable biosphere that enabled the establishment of human civilizations is quickly unraveling(Puerto Rico, Houston, never-ending wildfire seasons, melting Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, widespread glacial retreat, shrinking lakes, and many other signs of a destabilized climate). The following picture taken in Oregon last summer illustrates my point; seemingly oblivious to the massive wildfires raging in the background, a group of golfers continues playing a round…“We’re trading a habitable climate for a few generations of easy living.”

Climate change is just one of many factors in mankind’s planetary overshoot. We even have a day designated in recognition of our oversized ecological footprint which comes earlier every year, with nary a mention of it in official economic reports. As Herman Daly has explained, the global economic system treats the earth as a business in liquidation. The destruction of the natural world is enshrined in our positive economic indicators, i.e. rising GDP. And if need be, those numbers will be massaged to meet expectations. On a subconscious level, the growth imperative applies to all species including humans:

Humans share two behavioral traits with all other species that are critically important to (un)sustainability. Numerous experiments show that unless or until constrained by negative feedback (e.g., disease, starvation, self-pollution) the populations of all species:

• Expand to occupy all accessible habitats.

• Use all available resources.

Like mindless bacteria bent on their own success, humans are victims of their own DNA and ingenuity. Any civilization that develops energy harvesting technologies allowing for rapid population growth will generate entropy which will in turn almost certainly have strong feedback effects on the planet’s habitability. Our exponentially growing economy is on a collision course with an immovable ecosphere.

The end of the world is coming for the naked ape, not by a cabal of bankers or any sort of cockamamie conspiracy tale like chemtrails, but by us –the entire human race– and the economic system we have developed. We’ve become hostages to the complex structures and ever more intricate specialization of an economic system designed to exploit diminishing resources. Pollution and waste are of little concern for capitalism until they become a significant drain on overall profitability and new frontiers to exploit are exhausted. When profitability on a global scale is finally threatened by climate change, it will be far too late. The response will be militarized and authoritarian.

On a more insidious note, capitalism is driven by a deep instinctive drive to accumulate which was a very survival-positive compulsion during our several million years of evolving into Homo sapiens to overcome dry periods and other threats. Capitalism hits on this genetic proclivity, and when we get a clear opportunity to grab a big time accumulation, get rich and all, social good be damned. Our big and powerful cerebral cortex is hard-pressed to find a cure.

“I am rather pessimistic. The maladaptive assumptions of prevailing cultures are deeply ingrained. The notion that economic growth must take precedence over all other considerations and general ignorance of biological and ecological realities do not augur well for the future.” ~ Professor Stephen Boyden, human ecologist

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond found that a common factor was the myopic and self-serving decision-making of elites who believed they could insulate themselves from the consequences of societal disasters. As the elites reaped the rewards, the resulting damage to everyone else built up over time until calamity struck. The grim reality is that history has proven such cycles of extreme wealth inequality have only been broken by catastrophes –plagues, revolutions, massive wars, and collapsed states. The U.S. has now reached a degree of wealth disparity unequaled in history:

Overall, the highest-ever historical Gini the researchers found was that of the ancient Old World (think Patrician Rome), which got a score of .59. While the degrees of inequality experienced by historical societies are quite high, the researchers note, they’re nowhere near as high as the Gini scores we’re seeing now…”it is safe to say that the degree of wealth inequality experienced by many households today is considerably higher than has been the norm over the last ten millennia,” the researchers write in their paper.

The crisis of civilization is planet-wide this time. We’ve turned a utopian world of plenty into a dystopian world of fascist-leaning governments, industrial disasters, collapsing ecosystems, and technological addiction. We have a Commander in Chief who tweets bizarre debunked conspiracies at 3 am, gets his intel briefings from right-wing TV shows, dismantles any remaining hindrances to unbridled capitalism, and doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate. Public discourse has been dumbed down to the level of Fox news talking points and tribal groupthink. Those who can discern actual ‘fake news’ from scientific fact are left to watch in horror as mainstream scientific projections continue to prove overly optimistic. Not only are regulations being cut left and right, they are not being enforced. Government science advisors are being purged and replaced with mouthpieces for industrial polluters. In fact, this administration is actively working to delegitimize and destroy government institutions. A sizable population of low information voters supports such actions, but it’s only to their own detriment. Although both major parties are under the sway of corporate power, Trump and company represent an exceptionally predatory class of people. The Union of Concerned Scientists is monitoring the current administration’s war on science and public health; their latest report is here:

The administration’s one-year record shows an unprecedented level of stalled and disbanded scientific advisory committees, cancelled meetings, and dismissed experts. The consequences for the health and safety of millions of Americans could be profound.

We live in an age of unparalleled technological advancement, while at the same time we turn a blind eye to the disintegrating natural world that gave birth to us, having forgotten that our destiny lies in our relationship with the earth. Like Icarus who, in his exuberance, ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, modern man with his technology has ascended to great heights without heeding sound advice.

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” ~ Carl Sagan

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Sic Transit Imperium

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by darbikrash in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation

≈ 55 Comments

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, Climate Change, Neoliberal Capitalism

…. The passing of empire.

The dank and musty allure of 19th century opium dens beckoned to those weak of will and lustful for escape. An opioid fuel of sorts, nature’s stock for an addiction that consumed its adherents in exchange for a state of nonchalant bliss, a temporary reprieve from the thousand paper cuts of life.

Experienced practioners knew to employ the buddy system, in advance soliciting a disinterested friend to come collect the user after 12 hours or so, sternly instructed to ignore any pleas to the contrary, and to extract the user from the den and the throes of opioid delirium, forcibly if necessary. Failure to do so might mean the will for a voluntary exit could well evaporate after a few days, and any exit might be feet first in a pine box.

An early example of the addictive effects of nature’s stock upon humans.

Amid much fanfare and production, the scientists of our society engage us in cultural clashes where arguments pertaining to climate change rage on, point and counterpoint, endless minutiae and technical details debated and argued. Advocates and denialists in full combat, in a battle of data against superstition that has lasted the ages and will never resolve.

Exactly as the instigators intended.

What is missing from these credentialed technical arguments are more basic questions, such as Why? Or How?

Why did our culture take up an addiction to fossil fuels, and How did this happen?

Human ecology professor, Andreas Malm has taken to addressing these two overarching questions in his book “Fossil Capital” which I shall review here.

“Fossil Capital” deviates from the typical climate change discussion as he strives to understand the onset and dependency of fossil fuels from a Marxist perspective. I must admit I was somewhat skeptical, orthodox Marxism is notoriously lax in addressing the largest threat to our planet, seemingly content to lather about in worker exploitation and revolts that never seem to happen.

However, the author reminds us that the core construct of Marx’s magnum opus is based on the philosophy of social relations, if anything, Capital shows us the dialectic relationship between capital, the political economy, and society at large. It shows us how capitalist property relations impacts workers, and how workers impact capital, leading ultimately to Malm’s staggering conclusion- that our addiction to fossil fuels, the resulting present day climate impact, and the onset and general adoption of fossil fuels was not due to technology, not due to scarcity of existing organic resources, and importantly, not due to intrinsic and supposedly dormant human tendencies to plunder the planet.

With academic rigor, Andreas Malm answers the Why and How, as he traces the onset of fossil fuels into general usage, and in so doing discovers that a very small group of men in a very small part of the world, belonging to an even smaller class of participants, are wholly, totally, and irrefutably responsible.

Malm finds that those responsible belong to the Capitalist class of 19th century England.

He explains this by animating Marx’s discoveries of property relations and the laws of motion of Capitalist production. He takes the dry, tedious text of Marx and shows how it fits chapter and verse with the 19th century ascension of the Industrial Revolution.

Fortunately for Malm, 19th century England is one of the most thoroughly documented periods and he find much empirical support for his thesis. The records are quite clear, voluminous data is available for parsing and analysis and he takes full advantage to make his case.

“Fossil Capital” starts with a debunking of the two prevailing mainstream theories as to how we evolved into a fossil fuel economy. The first, the so-called “Elizabethan leap” contains the more common bourgeoisie understanding of how 16th Europe migrated from burning wood for heat and cooking, to the use of coal. The superficial explanation is that wood was a declining resource experiencing scarcity in England and Continental Europe, and the migration to coal was an entirely natural progression to a more dense and efficient energy source.

There are a couple of problems with this, not the least of which is that coal did not make any significant inroads into energy consumption (in England anyway) until the late 18th century, so there is the small matter of a 200 year discrepancy.

But Malm considers even this to be a red herring, he suggests that the use of either wood or coal for heating and cooking purposes (the dominant uses in this time period) is really not a very interesting story, in his words this is a “proto-fossil fuel” economy, the real story begins when these fuels are used for purposes other than cooking and heating.

As all of this late 18th century stuff was taking place in England, to supplement the superficial, the theories of Ricardo, Malthus, and our dear friend Adam Smith all get roped into contributing to this explanation. Ricardo, as he posits that the available land for photosynthesis (the main vehicle for organic fuel production) is insufficient to support an exponential expansion of energy in the soon to occur industrial revolution. Malthus, with his converging and exponential population growth, needs to preserve at least some arable land for food instead of fuel production, and of course, Smith for his division of labor theories.

The author calls this first explanation the “Ricardo-Malthusian” theory, which seeks to explain the evolutionary and entirely “necessary” conversion from wood to coal because of insufficient land mass, and a geometrically expanding population with arithmetically expanding food production. As the organic economy of pre-industrial England is in effect dependent on plants (photosynthesis) for energy production, these arguments might make some sense.

A review of the historical data reveals some troubling problems with the Ricardo-Malthusian explanation. First of all, the use of organic fuels such as wood for cooking and heating cannot explain the explosion of energy expansion in 19th century England. Between 1800 and 1870 the population of England grew by 160%, yet energy consumption grew by some 4,000%.

Next, these theories were applied after the fact, using a modern interpretation (within the last century) to explain what is now a self evident problem, but this is less than convincing as no one in 19th century Britain sat down with quill and ink and forecast the energy demands of the forthcoming industrial revolution, concluding that we must switch to a coal economy toute de suite.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Malm finds no evidence of scarcity of either arable land for wood production, or of wood as a commodity as seen by market forces, e.g. there were no price spikes in this time period that would indicate a shortage, or of pending scarcity. Now there are plenty of papers and scholarly opinions that conclude that large scale shortages were present in this time period, but Malm disagrees.

Malm theorizes with some justification, that if there were resource limits to organic energy production (wood) in this time period there would be at least some price anomalies- he found none.

What then? What could be the cause for a several thousand percent increase in energy consumption- and a paradigm shift away from an organic energy economy to one wholly sustained by fossil fuels?

The genesis can be found in James Watt’s 1784 patent of the steam engine.

Knowledge of the nature of the phase change of water when boiled, and the resulting energy release had been known for centuries. What Watt had done with his steam engine patents was to harness this effect in a self contained boiler, converting steam pressure into smooth, rotative motion. This system converted the choppy, erratic motion of a steam piston into a spinning wheel, which could then be used to power other machines through belt drive connections.

Machines which would soon be called “means of production”.

With twice the BTU’s and half the volumetric density of wood, coal was the perfect fuel to propel the steam engine into mainstream use. In the period of 1800-1870, the vast majority of all coal burned was used to power steam engines, and the largest use of steam engines was in the production of cotton.

And here is where it gets really interesting.

In 19th century in Britain, the economy was all about the production of cotton. By 1870, cotton accounted for nearly 40% of the UK GDP. So cotton was a big deal, not just in sheer numbers, but in the rapid adoption of Capitalist modes of production in the industrial scale up of this commodity. In 1780, it took approximately 600 man hours to process a single bale of cotton, with the invention of the cotton gin (1793), this dropped to around 12 man hours per bale. Adding to the efficiencies, the spinning jenny (1764) and Richard Arkwright’s water frame (1768) which was designed to be powered by water flow- all represented an ushering in of a crude form of machine age- centered around cotton production.

Significantly, the main competitive fuel to coal in the early 19th century was water power. It wasn’t even close, by far water power was the first choice of any and all sources of rotative power. The reasons were simple and compelling- it did not cost anything to run. Water flow was free. Any fuel that burned, be it wood or coal, had a cost associated with it and factory owners did not want to pay when water was readily available and free for the taking.

Water was clean, reusable, quiet, and put forth no emissions. And it was cheap. So why then would anyone want to abandon this cheap and abundant energy source and switch to the dirtier, and far more expensive coal?

Well initially anyway, no one did. But as the production of cotton began to scale, and as Britain shed its mercantilist mode of production for Capitalist tendencies, issues of property and social relations began to rear their ugly heads.

Another consideration was that the use of water flow was by its very nature collective. No one owns the water, and if other mill owners shared the same water source for their own mills, which was common, there could be a conflict between users of the same resource.

So as Malm describes it, the problems began to originate from the spatial attributes of the water mills, they were by necessity located near water sources, which meant that they were generally not near urban centers, and generally located in rural or countryside locations. So it became difficult to attract and keep labor at these semi-remote locations. There was little external infrastructure, often no towns or support resources for life, however short it might be, outside of the factory mills. And retaining labor once so located was also difficult as they might just run off, converting to a ruthless and grueling factory pace of 16-18 hours days, 6 days a week was a difficult adjustment from an agrarian lifestyle which marked the previous way of life.

So the ascendant Industrial revolution began to experience labor strife, it was to become acute, perhaps more acute than any time in modern history, as large numbers of people migrated from agrarian lifestyles to a wage labor supported factory life- they did not make the change with open arms.

The mill owners quickly came up with a brilliant solution as the realties of Capitalist property relations began to settle in. It seemed that the local orphanages were full to brimming with abandoned and runaway children from all walks of life, and surely, the mill owners would be doing all a tremendous favor to “rescue” these misfits and delinquents from their stultifying existence, unshackling them for a vigorous and meditative visit to the British countryside, where they might partake in fresh air and healthy exercise.

For around 20 years.

Ever the social liberals, the headmasters of the orphanages insisted that room and board be offered to each child, and perhaps an hour per week of study so as to insure that some level of education be maintained.

Other than that, they were happy to see them go.

 

To support this newfound labor pool, the Capitalist mill owners often had to construct at their own expense a compound, buildings to house workers, eating halls, etc. in effect all the necessities of a labor camp.

There were still more problems. Not all workers were children of course- most were not. Some of the labor classifications, such as spinners were highly skilled and these in-demand workers began to demand high wages. If a group of spinners left a mill, they could cripple production and the prospects for replacement staff was not good- given the remote locales of the water mills. As the water mills became more widespread throughout Britain, child labor also grew. Soon, the moral prospect of working young orphans 16 hours a day began to wear on society as a whole, and a bitter struggle for reformed labor laws ensued lasting throughout most of the first half of the 19th century. A brief listing:

-The Cotton Mills and Factories Act of 1819. Limited employment to children age 9 or older, children aged 9-12 could not work more than 12 hours per day.

– The Cotton Mills Regulation Act 1825. Limited work hours to 10 hours on Sat, added a one hour lunch break. The mill owners were having problems with inconsistent water flow, so they needed “make up” time, e.g. extra hours during the day when workers could be forced to work longer to make up for poor flow or equipment failures. This Act accommodated these conditions by imposing limits as to how many hours could be worked and how late they could be enforced, typically no later than 11:00 PM.

– Labor in Cotton Mills Act of 1831. Extended the 12 hour day limit to anyone under 18, no night work allowed for minor children.

– Numerous legislation passed between 1831-1867 essentially limiting children, and ultimately most adults to no more than 10 hours a day of work.

One might wonder why it took 50-60 years to resolve which seems like a simple issue of social justice, using children for indentured labor. The answer is twofold, first, the capitalist class put enormous pressure on British parliament to refrain from interfering with any regulations that might impede production, the “compromise” was a highly publicized effort to address the children, as the lawmakers understood that the optics of defending this egregious practice was not going to stand, so they made much of these paltry reliefs specific to child labor. The other reason was that of male suffrage. Incredibly, throughout the 19th century, men without property ownership simply could not vote. This held until the early 20th century, indeed until the 1918 Representation of the People act, which removed the restriction of property ownership and allowed all men (and some women) the right to vote.

All of these acts and legislations were bitterly opposed by the Capitalist class- but none more vigorously than the provision allowing mill owners to work extra hours if the water flow fell off during a production day, or if equipment broke. This provision allowed the mill owner to enforce a labor effort not just by the clock, but to make sure that this labor product could be productively deployed when all the conditions of production were operational- which they often weren’t. So if you were signed up for a 12-16 hour day, and water flow dropped off midday so as to deny production, you had to stay at the mill and make the time up when the water flow returned.

A typical workday might be 16 hours. And in this workday we are reminded of Marx’s principle of abstract surplus value, which says that the workday is organized to first cover the cost to reproduce the worker, then additional hours are used to provide surplus value to the Capitalist. That’s how we get to 16 hour days. 10 hours in this example to reproduce (cover costs) and 6 hours for surplus.

But when forced by regulations to limit the workday to 10 hours, with limited ability for make up time, we have a big problem as now we have to ask where does the surplus value come from?

And the answer is that it comes from intensification of production, e.g. with speeding up the machinery. This now gives us relative surplus value, so named as the surplus is now recovered by extending backward into the workday, by working faster we can reproduce the workers cost in 8 hours and get the same surplus as before in 10 hours total.

But we have to run the machines and the people faster to achieve this result.

And as it turns out, it is pretty easy to speed up a steam engine, not so much for a water wheel. And in fact according to Malm, the sum of these attributes outlines the fundamental reason for the shift to fossil fuels- they were infinitely more tolerant to the demands of the Capitalist class than renewable resources, even though they cost more.

Steam engines could be placed conveniently next to coal mines, or to even greater advantage in the middle of population centers where there was not scarcity of labor. If a crew of experienced spinners up and quit, a replacement crew could be assembled without too much trouble. Also, population centers did not need the infrastructure build out for living quarters for example, that the water mills needed, it already existed.

And this is exactly what happened, despite the more attractive cost model of renewable energy resources, the labor relations outcome was disastrous for the water mill owners and the shift to coal powered steam engines proved unstoppable. By 1840, the battle between water power and coal was largely over, coal fueled steam engines had made significant headway into the sphere of production. This however, was no panacea, labor revolts and labor strikes grew to epic proportions, as capitalists tried to lower wages, with roving bands of strikers marauding through the cities destroying the hated steam engines as Capitalist property owners reduced wages to increase profits.

In 1842 one of the largest strikes ever was assembled, involving some 500,000 striking workers. They took to destroying steam engines, many by pulling the plugs on the pressure vessel rendering the engines useless. The phrase “pulling the plug” is still in common use today and stems from this calamitous riot in Britain.

Soon after, intentionally damaging steam engines became a crime punishable by death in Britain.

Interestingly, the word ‘Power’ in the English language has two meanings, one meaning, the noun, describes ‘…the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events…’

The other usage is as a verb, “…..to supply (a device) with mechanical or electrical energy….’

In no other language does this word share this duality. This is instructive, as it became apparent that those that controlled the power, indeed had social power. We can still see evidence of this today in modern politics.

If Malm had been unkind to the Ricardo-Malthusian explanation for the onset of fossil fuels, he is not particularly generous to the more contemporary Anthropocene narrative. Malm’s objection with this movement is not necessarily to deny the labeling of this as an ecological epoch, rather, he takes issue with the notion that somehow man was intrinsically and irreversibly responsible as a species for the onset of fossil fuel usage and the resulting climate change.

He argues that early man’s mastery of fire does not necessarily implicate humans as destined to destroy the planet, he makes the rather succinct point that ownership of steam engines, and the resulting adoption of coal to feed these engines, was specific to a very small class of people, namely, wealthy white guys involved in the Capitalist mode of production. An average wage laborer did not own a steam engine in the 19th Century, why would she? The Capitalist class acted directly to divert an organic economy that was already successful and underway with renewable hydro power to an economy that relied on fossil fuels, specifically to avoid the untenable social relations present in using a collective energy resource like water power. The Capitalist must own not just the means of production, but the fuel sources as well.

Beyond this Malm ventures into some truly interesting commentary, he discusses in some detail the need for constant exponential expansion intrinsic to Capitalism, and makes a most interesting observation about this expansion from the perspective of fossil fuels.

To do this, he discusses the time honored theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which is the primary failure mechanism of Capitalism in orthodox Marxism. The rate of profit tends to fall, as the organic composition of constant capital to variable capital changes. In plain English, this means that as machines and automation replace people, the profits left for the Capitalist decline. This is because if labor is the source of all value, as labor content declines, so does surplus value.

But this “tendency” is not a hard and fast rule, there are ways that this “tendency” can be mitigated, indeed, the Capitalism of today goes to great pains to deflect these tendencies- largely through State interventions. However, we do know that as more machines are created to replace or accelerate human labor, more fossil fuels will be used to power them- just as it did in 19th century Britain.

Malm suggests that this energy consumption component of value production is a hard and fast rule- not a tendency, and that as the composition of constant Capital increases, the consumption of fossil fuels must also increase- exponentially. He expresses this as an increased carbon content per unit of production. This would suggest a death spiral related to fossil fuel use, unstoppable and with no known restraint under the laws of motion of a Capitalist economy.

To the notion that man as a species is intrinsically responsible and destined to destroy the planet, his view is that if we all are responsible, then no one is responsible. By this he suggests that if all are guilty, then no one can be deposed or held accountable.

And this narrative is starting to sound vaguely familiar, yes, blame the working class and the poor for societies woes, and for good measure be sure to inflict the greatest amount of retribution and payback amongst those least responsible.

This is a time honored strategy unique to class structure. A secondary outcome is the blaming of workers for global warming through consumption.

Malm makes a solid case using historical reconstruction and a Marxist framework to unveil the unity between energy and exploitation. He suggests that the need for exploitation within the Capitalist mode of production is largely the driver towards unfettered fossil fuel consumption. Another thrust, which he is covering in a new book, is the notion that the nexus to petroleum energy was in direct response to the crippling coal miner’s strikes.

So it is not surprising then that we see similar characteristics in our current bourgeoisie government in the persona of Trump. We see the ascension of energy moguls to the levers of power for exactly the same reasons, with exactly the same objectives that were there in 19th century Britain.

The current era Capitalist class is deeply concerned with the declining rate of profit, despite the mitigating influence of neo-liberal expansion. They reflexively return to tried and true restorative strategies, central to this is an expansion of fossil fuel production and simultaneous relaxation of regulations- of which we see abundant evidence that this is underway.

If there is an area of weakness in Malm’s work, it is in his explanation of why man is not acting in his own best interests. While I find his rejection of the culpability of man as a species gratifying, it is hard to connect the dots between the Plug Riots of 1842 and a similar modern day Black Friday mob descending like locusts on a Wal Mart sale. There really is no coherent explanation offered to connect the dots between these disparate behaviors, and it really is one of the more important questions of our time.

Perhaps a narrative that revolves around addiction, and its close companion denial is more appropriate.

Overall in his wrap up to include modern times, Malm is not hopeful for any relief from the fossil fuel madness or any meaningful redress to climate change. He points out that sunk capital costs in coal fired plants, refineries, and other capital intensive investments are unlikely to be unwound until they are fully amortized. Once paid for, there is little motivation to sunset them as after all, they are paid up and can then contribute to supra-profits. The modern day Capitalist class does not make these kind of massive investments without a priori policy assurances from the State- which they actively seek and receive.

In the end Malm accomplishes a great deal with his book, the approach of leaving aside pure science and using tools of sociology to examine causality is very effective. It will be interesting to see where he takes this thread in his upcoming book, continuing with a similar framework around petroleum fuels.

It is more likely that we will find coal a source of sunlight, than sunlight a competitor of coal.

William Stanley Jevons 1860

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Extinction is the End Game

10 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution, Wall Street Fraud

≈ 107 Comments

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6th Mass Extinction, Antarctic Ice Melt, Automation, Capitalism, Cargo Cults, Climate Refugees, Cognitive Dissonance, Donald Trump, Ecological Overshoot, Extinction of Man, Global Die-Off of Forests, Great Permian Extinction, Haber–Bosch Process, Hubris of Man, Jared Diamond, Laissez-Faire Capitalism, Mass Media Manipulation, Normalcy Bias, Nuclear War, Overpopulation, Planetary Tipping Points, Technosphere, The Global Elite, The Growth Imperative of Capitalism, The Invisible Hand of the Free Market, The Wealth Gap, Ugo Bardi

Civilizations are living organisms striving to survive and develop through predictable stages of birth, growth, maturation, decline and death. An often overlooked factor in the success or failure of civilizations are cultural memes—the knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors passed down from generation to generation. Cultural memes are a much more significant driver of human evolution than genetic evolution. Entire civilizations have been weeded out when their belief system proved maladaptive to a changing environment. One such cultural meme holding sway over today’s governments, institutions, and society is our economic system of capitalism. The pillars of capitalism represent a belief system so ingrained in today’s culture that they form a sort of cargo cult amongst its adherents. Cargo cults are any of the various Melanesian religious groups which focused on obtaining material wealth(manufactured Western goods that came on cargo ships) through magical thinking, religious rituals and practices. Today the term “cargo cult” is used to describe a wide variety of phenomena that involve superficial imitation of a process or system in order to fabricate a successful outcome without even the basic understanding of its mechanism.

The tenets of capitalism are ritually followed in the proclaimed belief that “a rising tide lifts all boats”, i.e. so-called improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy. Centuries of unbridled capitalism have demonstrated beyond any doubt that it does not lift all boats. A new study finds that half of Americans are “shut off from economic growth”. The rules of the game are so stacked against the masses that this week a professor said “only all-out thermonuclear war might fundamentally reset the existing distribution of resources.” Capitalism’s imperative for expansion, growing profit levels, and efficiency has ultimately dehumanized our culture. Not even when our basic life support systems are being torn asunder do the vast majority question the path we are on. We are all a captive audience to the system and those few dissident voices are snuffed out under the wheels of “progress”.

Truth be told, the corporate elite have long written off all those people living hand to mouth. Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary said, unlike workers, machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.” Massive global unemployment resulting from the automation revolution has not yet been addressed by governments. Roughly half of all jobs in the U.S. are at risk of automation and two-thirds in the developing countries. This is all coming at a time when humans are fast destroying the ecosystems underpinning the very foundation upon which human civilization has developed over thousands of years. Mass migration of climate refugees will only further destabilize governments, stoke ethnic and cultural tensions, and give rise to fascist political movements. No conspiracy is needed to exterminate the “useless eaters”, just allow mother nature to take its course and climate change will be killing billions by mid century. Those in military planning know this and periodically express their fear of what is coming, but business-as-usual rolls on.

Capitalism’s constant impetus to shift costs, risks, and burdens off industry and onto the environment and society carries on under the guise of “being more competitive”. It’s a way of externalizing costs to maximize profit and if these costs were truly taken into account, none of the world’s top industries would be profitable(Interestingly, the link to this study has been scrubbed from the internet). It’s the height of magical thinking to put so much faith in some mystical “invisible hand of the free market” to solve existential threats such as an ever-widening wealth gap and the wholesale destruction of planetary life-support systems. There is no benevolent “invisible hand” turning individual self-interest into the common good. The primary mandate of capitalism is to protect and grow capital. The “invisible hand” is just a bunch of people scrambling to make as much money as possible, not caring or oblivious to those they hurt in the process. Fuck the invisible hand of the market. The invisible hand of mother nature will punish those who squander Earth’s rich but finite resources.

it’s been clear for some time that we have past the point of no return, triggering multiple tipping points in Earth’s living systems. New findings are continually confirming scientists’ worst nightmares. A key glacier in the Antarctic that holds back 10 feet of sea level rise was just described as breaking apart from the inside out. In other grim news, the long feared carbon bomb has now been quantified and is projected to release the emissions equivalent of an industrial country like the U.S. in the next few decades, prompting researchers to say that “climate change may be considerably more rapid than we thought it was.” Biodiversity loss is another critical threshold we have breeched: “New research shows that local extinctions have already occurred in 47% of the 976 plant and animal species studied.” A new study also reveals that the planet’s tallest animal is facing extinction after its numbers have plummeted in recent years, with the ominous warning that “many species are slipping away before we can even describe them.” Forests are being wiped out by armies of invasive insects. Because of a rapidly changing climate and the vast scale of the problem, the idea that reforestation will somehow save us is a pipe dream. Those forests won’t stay healthy enough to serve as carbon sinks and besides, seven times Earth’s land area would need to be in cultivation in order to reduce the planet’s atmospheric CO2 level down to 350ppm.

Note that the Permian Mass extinction is estimated to have happened anywhere over the course of 200,000 years to 15 million years. The current 6th mass extinction is happening orders of magnitude faster due to a multitude of factors including deforestation, habitat fragmentation, chemical pollution, poaching, etc., making this current disaster very unique in Earth’s history:

The team of geologists and biologists say that our current extinction crisis is unique in Earth’s history due to four characteristics: the spread of non-native species around the world; a single species (us) taking over a significant percentage of the world’s primary production; human actions increasingly directing evolution; and the rise of something called the technosphere. – Link

Perhaps the fate of humans was written in stone once we stood upright and developed tools. To a large degree, modern technology has been an expression of the energy-dense hydrocarbon fuels we discovered and are not willingly giving up anytime soon. Once fossil fuels ignited the Industrial Revolution and the Haber–Bosch process unleashed the human population bomb, nothing could stop the deadly carbon consumption feedback loop, not even decades of scientific warnings.

From a throwback to our primate ancestors, modern humans have been hard-wired to ignore threats that are not immediate or local; global ecological overshoot(of which climate is just one aspect) is imperceptible to the real-time cognitive processing of humans and represents the ultimate under-the-radar threat able to undermine our reasoning and response:

Psychological concepts of how we view the world around us, including ‘creeping normalcy’ or ‘landscape amnesia’, block day-to-day comprehension of what accelerating human activities represent—whether it is human population, the number of dammed rivers, forest destruction, or the impact of motor car emissions in a timespan that is geologically brief. Creeping normalcy refers to slow trends concealed in noisy fluctuations that people get used to without comment, while landscape amnesia describes forgetting how different the landscape looked 20–50 years ago (Diamond 2005: 425).

In his study of how societies fail, biogeographer Jared Diamond calls global warming a pre-eminent example of a ‘slow trend concealed by wide up and down fluctuations’ (2005: 425). He likens the denial of climate change impacts by leading politicians, including former US president George W. Bush (and his contemporary John Howard in Australia), in the late 1990s and early 2000s to the elite of ‘the medieval Greenlanders [who] had similar difficulties recognizing that their climate was gradually becoming colder, and the Maya and Anasazi (in Central and North America) [who] had trouble discerning that theirs was becoming drier’ (2005: 425). – link

We evolved to react to imminent dangers, not slow-rolling and seemingly invisible catastrophes as an unintended consequence of our cushy lifestyle. From lofty corporate boardrooms to the filthy streets of skid row, the mass of humanity is following the same biological script of overshoot and collapse seen in every organism from bacteria to reindeer herds. Fossil fuels only enabled the destruction to multiply a million-fold, culminating in one final and spectacular explosion of human activity that will leave the planet nearly barren for eons.

Open-ended growth appears to be inherent in nature, all the way from the DNA to the arthropods to mammals, including humans. Open-ended growth is the psychology of a cancer cell. I am not sure I know of a species which has learnt how to limit its own growth. Unfortunately species which transcend their environmental resources can hardly survive – the final arbiter of the climate impasse will be nature itself. ~ Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University

The beauty and wonder of this planet is being trashed by a naked ape whose cleverness in tool-building has far outstripped his ability to handle it in any restrained or judicious manner. Nature’s rich book of life is being pancaked into a cheap, crumpled comic book.

Add in the development of mass consumerism, planned obsolescence, and the hypnosis of corporate-sponsored TV and you have a passive, malleable population happily marching towards the slaughterhouse. It’s fitting, then, that the masses would be swindled by a megalomaniac bankruptcy artist who dabbled in Reality TV. Every one of Trump’s cabinet picks is a big middle finger in the faces of those who fell for his pseudo-populist rhetoric: billionaires, Wall Street sharks, Goldman Sachs alumni, and hardcore laissez-faire capitalists chomping at the bit to deregulate, monetize, and privatize every last bit of what remains. The allure of capitalism has always been that you’re just one lucky break away from becoming one of those fat cats, if only someone would give you a chance. A prescient observation by Ugo Bardi from earlier this year:

Trump is a symptom of the ongoing breakdown of the social pact…capitalizing on this breakdown by…playing on the attempt of the white (former) middle class to maintain at least some of its previous prosperity and privileges. Trump is…an unavoidable consequence of resource depletion. – Link

The bottom line is that a swing towards authoritarianism happens when resources become scarce. Climate change is simply a symptom of humans overshooting the planet’s carrying capacity. Free market ideologues are nearly always climate ‘skeptics’ because acknowledging the reality of human-induced climate change would be an admission that industry must be curtailed or controlled. Left-leaning people nearly always accept the science because it goes along with their criticisms of capitalism which externalizes social and environmental costs for the benefit of just a few at the top of the economic hierarchy. Thus we see parasitic Trump surrounding himself with right-wing, climate denying, fossil fuel corporatists and insiders who will be doing everything in their power to dismantle health and environmental regulations including privatizing social services which are barriers to capitalist expansion.

To be blunt, our chance of developing a sustainable culture passed us by a long time ago. People will try to adapt until they cannot, and myths will be created to explain away harsh realities. A dystopic future in all its horrific glory has arrived: baked-in biospheric collapse, the inherent and irreconcilable contradictions of techno-capitalism, a dysfunctional political system unable to come to terms with root causes, and the cognitive dissonance of the masses blind to the bigger picture. Our numbers are not a safeguard from extinction.

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Rise of the Deplorables

15 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by darbikrash in Capitalism, Consumerism, Corporate State, Peak Oil

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Capitalism, Corporatocracy, Inverted Totalitarianism, Neoliberal Capitalism

Well the preprogrammed spectacle that has been the US Presidential election has finally concluded. The enormity of the result is staggering to behold, how exactly a buffoon with a third grade vocabulary can elevate himself to presumably the most powerful position in world politics boggles the mind.

Much political hand wringing awaits, as the punditry tries to make sense of their gross miscalculations, the nonstop media blitz, and the tacit realization that somehow, despite the protestations from the elitist high priests, a professional grifter has taken the top seat.


Accompanied by a rise of the correctly termed deplorables, a bolus of miscreants and malformed post-adolescent actors constituting a wave of lumpenproleteriat, swept the orange haired overlord into the center ring to claim his rightful throne. His superficial gaze ponders the land that he now lords over, a cornucopia of expansive panorama befitting a real estate baron. It is the jackpot, the mother lode, the penultimate land grab, a polity based version of accumulation by dispossession.

The alternative candidate was only marginally better.

So how does this happen? What possible explanation can be given for this outcome?

It turns out that the calculus of this is well understood, a narrative that goes back 150 years to elemental concepts of dialectic materialism and class consciousness. Viewed through the prism of class consciousness, the spectacle of Donald Trump and HRC makes perfect sense, for they are not opposites, not even opponents, they in fact occupy the same class structure. One is the unbridled face of capitalist excess, harkening back to the robber baron age of which he is a direct descendant, the other a sycophant of corporate dictate, a reliable war horse schooled in the art of fealty to the monied set. Both of the same class, he by inherited birthright and subsequent day job, she by studiously apprenticing to the political elites through a subservient career demonstrating pliability to corporate power.

Both textbook examples of the edict that money can be converted directly to social power.

But this is only part of the story, politicians are elected not by largesse and class membership, but by those that elevate them.

Irony in the extreme

It is fashionable for the left to publish scathing screeds denouncing the right wing deplorables, elitist rants that implore the gods to strike down those unworthy primates in their feeble mud huts. Why, they proclaim, we have turned the controls of the spaceship over to pooh flinging Neanderthals ransacking their disheveled Planet-of the Apes dioramas.

What is missing is a Margret Mead style field investigation to visit the deplorable on his home turf, to see him or her in situ, in their natural habitat. To do so is to witness a class decimated by opiate abuse, a cohort reduced to observer status in a consumerist driven economy-unable to participate at anything other than a token level as compared to their elitist contemporaries. A group asphyxiated by a toxic cocktail of service level jobs on the lower end of scale, counter balanced by a vastly underappreciated skilled labor component on the high end. It is this high skill level that is most misunderstood, much has been written about demeaning service jobs, the real story is not in this sector, the real story is in the upper level blue and grey collar worker. It is this group that has animated the Trump campaign

This cohort is typically not college educated, and often not exclusively white male. What it is though is productive skilled labor. On the purely blue collar side, they range from aircraft assemblers, machinists and other skilled craftsmen, to the iterant IT class, programmers, coders and mid-level technology workers.

What this group has in common is exploitation, alienation, and loss of the workmanship ideal. This coupled with an inchoate rage fanned by the fires of AM talk radio, Fox News, alt-right blogs and websites foments a misappropriated ethos of revenge, as an alienated cohort is forced to witness elites- decidedly unproductive workers- achieve high levels of undeserved success- at their expense.

These elites are living in the best houses, driving the nicest cars and fully reaping the bounty of a consumer class resplendent with trinkets and bobbles- and these people don’t know shit and they don’t do shit.

There is no greater insult in a capitalist economy than to see the spoils of plunder go to those who do nothing. And since time immemorial, this is the very essence of capitalist class exploitation, those that do the least get the most. Those of privilege subsume those without.

Deep State My Ass

Although an old story, we have at the same time amnesia and a new twist. We have lost the intellectual narrative of Das Capital, we have endured decades of abusive labor struggles, corrupted unions, and flat out wars with robber barons- and the left has lost. Labor has lost, collectivism has lost- and lost badly.

The New Deal set in motion a negotiated end to wildcat strikes and unruly pockets of labor unrest, in exchange for a social safety net and the newly formed principle of collective bargaining.

Labor disputes were to be centralized, and negotiated en masse to avoid any annoying (and costly) disruption to the capitalist class. Once so centralized, labor management was easy to co-opt, and in a few short decades was rendered impotent.

The intensity of these techniques remained vigorous during the 50’s, 60’s and early ‘70’s coinciding with the more or less chronic post war labor shortage while capital rebuilt and rolled out a highly networked system of value production. Tight labor markets confounded efforts to tamp down labor concessions- and the middle class prospered.

The laws of motion of Capital were not lost on the elites, as they moved to a neo—liberal agenda in the mid ‘70’s, specifically designed to offshore labor to low cost markets, and thwart a growing regulatory environment stateside.

This proved wildly successful (for Capital) by resetting the bar for socially necessary labor time to a new low, by using far eastern labor to dramatically undercut stateside salaries, effectively using soft power to bust labor unions. And, as any student of Marx knows, the cost of labor to Capital is driven by the cost of labor to reproduce itself, the availability of cheap foreign produced goods is consumed disproportionally by lower income workers, further enhancing the effects of globalization to benefit Capital.

These factors comprise the fundamentals of a superstructure that allows the accumulation of capital to purchase social power, and now the recipe is complete- hegemonic control over the political economy in Capital’s pursuit of unfettered value production.

This is an uncomfortable narrative for bourgeoisie economists and the punditry, they prefer to offer a new, pro-capitalist explanation for what we can observe, and they call this the Deep State. This supposedly is a secretive cabal of mysterious power brokers who operate behind the scenes to influence politics, the markets, foreign policy, and just about anything else that needs explaining.

There of course is no such thing, it’s just Capital operating with business as usual.

Early warning signs

I suppose you could trace the first spasms of the deplorables to Ned Ludd pitching his sewing machine out the third story window of 18th century England textile factory- as labor’s reaction to Capital’s scheming to suppress labor costs goes back centuries.

The first contemporary example, at least in the context of the Trump travesty, of the deplorables lashing out, is the appearance of Japanese cars in the parking lots of General Motors and Ford Motor Company, as (some) workers purchased imported cars that were better than what they were manufacturing at lower prices. The reaction from mainstream labor was swift and violent, cars were smashed by incensed co-workers as it was immediately recognized that jobs would be lost and collective labor bargaining defanged.

And of course Capital doubled down, immediately offshoring everything they could, first to the Japanese, then to the Chinese and other peripheral countries when Japanese labor rose to near US levels.

The current rise of the deplorable embodied by Trump’s supporters then is but a reconstitution of a very old sentiment, the lashing out of a cohort of the working class as they come to terms with a diffuse reality permeated with alienation, diminishing social power, and flat or declining wages. Their white collar managers are demonstrably incompetent, products of an overpriced university system turning out graduates with low level skill sets, high debt, and poor prospects for job opportunities.

To be sure, this group attracts truly unsavory subsets and species, these hangers on are not exploited worker class participants, the KKK and various and sundry white supremist groups do find common ground in the nationalist tendencies that are embedded in these movements, and one cannot discount the seriousness of these influences. But for the most part these nationalistic tendencies are reactionary, part of the inchoate response of alienation, and not deliberately predatory as is characteristic of hate groups

Media complicity

Much has been made recently of the role of the media in reporting, inaccurate polling data, the apparent rise of HRC, and the tendency to discount and even outwardly mock Trump’s rise. There are several areas to blame here, but inaccurate polling and disproportionate reporting of emails scandals are not really relevant.

One cannot forget that all the broadcast media accessible to mainstream voters are owned by Capitalist entities. They primarily make money through the sale of advertising, and nothing sells like conflict and controversy.


The instigating event to media complicity was the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. This FCC policy insured that controversial subjects received fair and impartial converge by news media, and a full spectrum of competing viewpoints were to be presented by the broadcast media. The operating theory is that the airwaves were part of the publicly owned commons, and that the privatization of these airwaves could and would lead to capture of what would amount to a corporate owned propaganda tool.

Indeed, within a year of the act’s elimination, Rush Limbaugh’s show hit the AM talk radio circuit, sowing the seeds of a vast communication portal to the disenfranchised lumpen. (Limbaugh reportedly has a $70mm annual salary)

Ten years later we had the beginnings of Fox News, and the official genesis of corporate media capture for the express purpose of policy promotion and influencing elections.

The effect of these efforts was profound- the growing and increasingly vocal discontent of alienated labor was subjected to a propaganda intervention, the media tools were designed to focus this building angst to anti-government/pro-capitalist belief systems. Much of this onslaught revolves around conspiracy theories, and these media portals rely on the technique of fabricating preposterous stories, wrapped in the all knowing glow of insider only knowledge, to reassure the recipient that they are truly privileged thinkers, as they can see what only the wise can see.

All that was missing was the appearance of a strong man- preferably with television media bonafides- to step up and receive the mantle of authenticity from a fawning media hungry for click throughs and profits.

It is important to note the promotion of Stephen Brannon as a senior advisor in the Trump cabinet, this move insures that the alt-right media is directly plugged into the highest level of White House proceedings. The significance of this is that Brannon has now become a de facto Minister of Information for the Trump administration, specifically chosen to disseminate spin to the alt-right media, keeping his proto-Fascist base properly satiated.

The Trump Dominion

So what might the Trump “brand” bring to American governance? We can again view this through the lens of capitalist valorization, as without question Trump’s hyper-capitalist underpinnings will animate his presidency.

First, at the personal level we know that hyper-capitalists in powerful political positions become de facto kleptocrats, using their position to personally enrich themselves, their immediate families, and associated cronies. Look for foreign policy relationships with other kleptocrats such as Putin and Mexican president Enrique Nieto. His business entities are inseparable from his political responsibilities, so we can and should expect an explosion of cross pollinated corruption as he intermingles his empire holdings with American political gravitas.

We should expect these “leadership” qualities to normalize the prioritization of capitalist objectives over any other considerations, and this ethos will quickly trickle down through the entire business ecosystem.

Make no mistake, this election result is an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for social and financial equality, and for the planet. There may well be no recovery from this, as the take away is unbridled, runaway capitalist value production, ironically, that will have the largest negative impact on the deplorable base constituency which elected him in the first place.

To help visualize the form that his rule will likely take, we might look to Mainland China for an example of what happens when State Capitalism intersects authoritarian rule. China may be called a Communist country, but it is very clearly a State Capitalist political economy under authoritarian rule. The State is used to clear the way for capitalist expansion at all costs, no regulations for any initiative that creates value production, the deconstruction of labor into quasi-prison conditions, and plenty of accumulation by dispossession in the form of displacing rice farmers into labor camps dedicated to capitalist production.

Trump’s stated focus on trade policies contain contradictions, but we might postulate that at least some of these policies might mirror Chinese action which attempt to bias trade agreements to allow for one sided tariff systems as well as technology transfers.

A further characteristic of China’s trade policy was massive investment in internal infrastructure, a policy Trump is almost certain to pursue.

We might also expect attempts to repatriate US corporations offshore profits, stockpiled over the last 10 years as a result of quasi-legal tax dodges, as well as significant reduction in corporate tax rates.

Many of his campaign promises contain intrinsic contradictions, or outright measures not favorable to value production. This is almost always due to ignorance of the laws of motion of Capitalism, and will quickly prove untenable.

An example would be his infamous anti-immigration wall. Apparently unbeknownst to Trump, Capital requires a permanent underclass to process seasonal labor, such as migrant farm work. Other low margin industries also require an undocumented underclass that can be further exploited outside of the mainstream minimum wage and benefits systems- such as car washes, restaurants, domestic help and gardeners for the upper class.

None of these industries can support payroll at the prevailing fair market wage. You’d have $10 tomatoes and $100 car washes, which of course just won’t do. This was tried under the Reagan administration when ICE was first formed, workplace raids were soon discontinued at the bequest of Capital as soon as they proved effective. Expect the same results with Trump’s wall, which will be stillborn.

This pattern will continue with most of his campaign promises, expect tangible change only in areas where Capital is the clear winner, such as infrastructure spending which will benefit Trump’s construction cronies. The same fate awaits the vaunted unraveling of Obama care, this will be watered down and ultimately look very similar to what is currently in place.

When will the deplorables first acknowledge that they have been duped?

Revolutions and the decline of the left

This situation is directly attributable to the failure of the left. What passes for the left in this country is not really leftist, but rather progressive. This political energy has been misdirected to insidious social issues, such as whether or not plastic bags should be provided in supermarkets, Big Gulp soft drink bans, and an inordinate amount of attention to LBGT issues. I’m not suggesting these issues are without merit, just not at the current energy spend that is being allocated.

These tactics result in inflaming the value systems of the deplorables, they lash out (rightly so) at the prospect of behavioral overreach of the progressive movement, this coupled with their sanctimonious highbrow attitude delegitimizes progressive causes, and expensive political capital is expended on third tier issues.

This energy is misdirected and disproportionate, the left should stand for anti-Capitalist causes, first and foremost. The left should be demonstrating frequently and loudly with well-defined objectives and messaging, so as to become a thorn in the side of value production, and at the same time, persistently contradicting the alt-right media propaganda that tries to evangelize the Capitalist mode of production.

The center of mass of the right’s “deplorables” is largely alienated labor and this should be recognized and reinforced with consistency.

This cohort shares much in common with Bernie Sander’s coalition for example, but the media shapes the perceptions to create an adversarial identity politics. In the main, the groups share the same sensibilities, but are compartmentalized by fabricated ideologies that bear little resemblance to reality.

Certainly they do not reflect a fundamental understanding of the laws of motion of Capital value production- from either side.

Work still needs to be done by the left to comprehend new forms of value production that are rapidly materializing. Examples would be the emergence of cognitive capital, which is the production of use value without labor participation, and reputational capital, which is the occurrence of supra profits without commiserate labor value through the use of branding and vanity labeling of commodities.

Capital is rolling out new forms of exploitation faster than the left can process these changes into a coherent theory of value.

The right invests in this type of intellectual post processing through the use of corporate funded think tanks, but of course, this is not available to leftist interests for obvious reasons, so other methods must be employed, such as university level study into post Capitalist possibilities.


Next steps

Much of the misdirection of the current election is due to the inability to recognize fundamental symptoms of alienated labor. The Democrats missed it, and so did the mainstream Republicans.

Alienated labor is unquestionably the domain of anti-Capitalist ideology, this is the only group that not only recognizes the depth of the problem, but has a narrative that explains how it occurs and what to do about it.

Any suggested corrective action at the political level is going to be cold comfort to those who recognize the complete collapse of the environment that is occurring around us. We must keep in mind that it took Capital 400 years to get to this point, and it will not be erased overnight excepting some planet scale calamity- which we cannot of course rule out.

But political level initiatives can prove effective in the meantime.

If the focus is kept on discouraging value production and dismantling socially necessary labor time, inroads can be made against the Capitalist mode of production.

Some tactics to achieve this are to shift focus to the point of realization, which is to attack Capital from the retail front. Some of these measures start out as Pollyannaish, such as don’t shop at chain stores, use credit unions not banks, do not use credit cards, look to buy commodity goods from businesses organized as collectives whenever possible.

But quickly we can see some areas that offer the potential for concrete change, if you feel you can start a business do so, but do so as a collective, e.g. structure the business to return profits in an equitable distribution to employees. This collapses the class structure and eliminates exploitation in a shift away from the principle of socially necessary labor time.

A compilation of such businesses at the community scale can then extend favorable conditions to supply chain partners that are also collectives, and non-favorable terms to traditional corporate models, whenever possible.

To promote these types of entities beyond a given community, state wide tax incentives can be used to encourage the creation and operation of collectives. One strategy might be to allow these businesses to operate tax free, while traditional corporate structures have to pay full freight.

Initiatives that support privatization in any form should be vigorously opposed- and protested. Examples would be the obvious attempts to privatize social security, national parks, etc., but awareness and activism should also extend to resisting privatization of intellectual property as well, such as attempts to extend the duration of protection on utility patents, new efforts to privatize internet IP, and drug compound monopolization- to name but a few.

This is a grass roots style build out, when successful at the state or regional level, this can expand to the national level, where with sufficient political strength, more substantial measures can be deployed to discourage traditional corporate value production. Examples might be limiting businesses to less than 500 employees maximum, by applying draconian tax structures when these employment numbers are exceeded.

Longer term, energy production should be nationalized, as well as the financial system.

Taken as an integrated system, these measures redirect, however slowly, towards a more equitable system that ultimately can be based on needs production, instead of the bottomless pit of value production.

Or we can just wait until the next election.

 

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Some Fun Facts for a Dystopic Future

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

≈ 60 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Abrupt Climate Change, Antarctic Ice Melt, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Dr. James Orbinski, Geoengineering, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Hillary Clinton, James Hansen, Mass Coral Bleaching, Overpopulation, Planetary Boundaries, Professor Harold R. Wanless, Sea Level Rise, Techno-Fix, The Great Barrier Reef, The Limits to Growth

“When you cannot feed your children, you will do anything, even if it means going to war. This is the reality of climate change.” ~ Dr. James Orbinski

80% of the world’s productive agricultural land is in river deltas which are vulnerable to flooding from storm and tidal surges as well as salt penetration inland –as much as 20 km in some cases. Just 1 meter(3.28ft) of sea level rise(SLR) would threaten one third of this food-producing land and render nearly all the barrier islands of the world uninhabitable. (Overly-)Conservative estimates from the IPCC in 2013 predicted 1m of SLR rise by 2100, but the last two decades have seen global sea level increase more than twice as fast as it did in the 20th Century and only recently have scientists realized the true rate of SLR has been grossly underestimated(here and here). James Hansen (et al) has argued all along that 5 meters of sea level rise by the end of the century is possible, taking decades to happen rather than centuries. They conclude that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates. The last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm was during the Pliocene Era when sea level was 5 to 40m higher (16-131ft); unfortunately, Earth is warming 50 times faster than when it comes out of an ice age. Professor Harold R. Wanless who has studied the geologic sedimentary record says that we are in for a nasty surprise within this century:

Most of the models projecting future sea level rise assume a gradual acceleration of sea level rise through this century and beyond as ice melt gradually accelerates. Our knowledge of how sea level rose out of the past ice age paints a very different picture of sea level response to climate change. At the depth of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, sea level was some 420 feet below present level as ice was taken up by large continental ice sheets. Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual acceleration and then deceleration process. Rather it was a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise followed by pauses. These rapid pulses of rise, from three to thirty feet, were fast enough to leave drowned reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlet deltas, and other coastal deposits abandoned across the continental shelf. That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilize some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise.

We are already witnessing the demise of the Great Barrier Reef, the oldest and largest living organism on the planet, which continues to suffer the lethal effects of a warming and acidifying ocean. We’ve destroyed the planet’s air conditioner in the Arctic and set the stage for an impending Blue Ocean Event where 24 hours a day of summer sunlight penetrating the uncovered dark Arctic waters will create another tipping point for runaway climate change. The Arctic climate is changing so fast science can barely keep track of what’s happening or predict global consequences. On top of this, nature’s carbon sinks have been severely weakened over the last few centuries, hindering the ability of the planet to absorb ever-increasing greenhouse gases. And these things are happening before a large destructive pulse of SLR hits the planet.

History has proven considerably worse than the Club of Rome’s projections. The original report made only passing reference to some of the most critical environmental problems of today. In response to this, the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a set of nine ecological processes regulating land/ocean/atmosphere and their accompanying boundaries within which humans must stay to avoid biospheric collapse. In 2015, researchers found that four of these planetary boundaries had already been breached: biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use. None of these critical boundaries were picked up by the original Limits to Growth report. We have destroyed the stability of the Holocene Epoch and continue to wreak havoc with every passing day. In other words, there are many other environmental crises too numerous to list that are coming to a head, and catastrophic sea level rise is just the icing on the burned cake. The last time Earth had such a disruptive species, cyanobacteria altered the atmosphere and killed off all the anaerobic life forms including itself. Ironically, oxygen was the byproduct of the cyanobacteria that proved lethal to those ancient lifeforms and paved the way for the rise of photosynthetic organisms. The cyanobacteria had a 500 million year run, but modern man has only been around for 0.01% of that time. Our large brain has made it possible for us to destroy ourselves in record time.

Global warming is happening 5,000 times faster than a major food source can adapt. As the global monoculture food system breaks down and leaves vulnerable Third World countries to fend for themselves, I expect the last remaining vertebrates to be hunted to extinction in short order while wealthy nations carry out land grabs in an effort to keep their citizens fed. Humans are pushing all other life off the planet; the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ is not a metaphor.

So you would think that these stark facts laid out before us would be causing panic in the global markets and seats of power around the world because, clearly, no one is safe from this unfolding apocalypse. In what many call the ‘most powerful nation on Earth’, surely a leader must be on the verge of taking the helm of this sinking ship. In any rational world, they would be compelled to battle this planetary emergency with the war-time urgency it demands. In the election year of 2016 there are only two prospects in our corporatocracy, one of whom is so frightening that hundreds of the world’s scientists felt compelled to issue a warning against his possible election. The other candidate seems much more palatable on the surface, but her record and recent emails illustrate just how tortured her positions are on environmental issues. Anyone who has studied the numerous practices that make modern civilization truly unsustainable, the depths of corruption and waste in its global socio-economic system, and how predatory one has to be in order to survive and “succeed’ in it realizes in the end that it wouldn’t matter much who fills that figurehead position. Toeing the line of the dominant culture is a prerequisite for the job. That’s one reason why nations are building walls in response to climate change refugees and putting faith in unproven and unrealistic techno-fixes to save themselves while at the same time drilling for new oil, financing new coal plants, allowing climate goals for corporations to add up to only a quarter of the amount needed to limit warming to 2°C, and giving the shipping industry a pass on curbing its emissions(if shipping was a country it would be the world’s 8th biggest carbon polluter).

Meanwhile, CO2 levels continue to climb at breakneck speed and recent paleoclimate research indicates today’s greenhouse gas levels could produce a ‘game over’ warming of 7°C within our lifetime. We already have no carbon budget left for a 1.5°C warming limit from 2017 onwards. We’re betting our species’ future on vaporware, and no country on Earth is taking the 2°C climate target seriously. Celebrity breakups get more attention than real threats to the continuation of our species. Apocalypse tourism has become a ‘thing’.

The biosphere is collapsing under the weight of 7.5 billion people living off the combustion of a one time endowment of ancient carbon energy, from the factory-farmed produce they eat to the petroleum-based medical supplies that keep them alive. And global population growth may be accelerating at an even greater rate than recent predictions. As Germany has shown, “renewable energies” are nothing more than ‘fossil fuel extenders’ still wedded to fossil-fueled extraction processes for the production and maintenance of those technologies. It’s a shell game of sorts. Industrialized countries will say their carbon footprint has gone down without telling you they’ve moved their dirty industrial operations to Third World countries. Developing countries will make promises of “green growth” while their state-owned banks and companies expand fossil fuel production overseas. We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.

Most are not listening and our leaders are misleading, so it bears repeating: ‘The Oil Age’ made us all confident idiots with short attention spans. To both candidates: runaway, catastrophic climate change resulting in loss of habitat and mass starvation is our biggest threat.

 

Update 11-10-2016:

The proles have now elected a man who has put a climate science denier in charge of his EPA team, vowed to kill the Paris climate deal, end all efforts to help other countries deal with climate change, stop domestic climate action, reinvigorate coal, and zero out all climate science research & clean energy, but physics doesn’t really care who was elected.

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The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

≈ 45 Comments

Tags

6th Mass Extinction, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Change, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change Denial, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Economic Hitman, Environmental Collapse, Intensified Hydrologic Cycle, Mangled Jet Stream, Noam Chomsky, Sea Level Rise, Sustainability, Techno-Fix, The Unsustainability of Mega-Cities, Warren Buffett

Joe-Webb-Greetings-From-California

In a civilization gone mad with delusions of grandeur, we’re left with tatters of human sociability held together by rancid mythologies.

Despite human fossil fuel burning recently reported to be “flat”, CO2 levels have been on a tear for the last six months, reaching new worrying levels which have some wondering whether permafrost melt may be contributing to the unusually high spike if no decline happens soon. The giant holes in Siberia serve as an ominous sign. Considering that the current El Niño is contributing only 10% to what we are now seeing, runaway global warming may be accelerating worldwide. But don’t worry, Warren Buffett says climate change is no more of a problem than the Y2K bug and will be profitable through increased premiums and inflation.

Ever dire studies continue to reaffirm worst case scenarios, making clear to anyone paying attention that Earth in the next century will be unrecognizable from its current state. Basic planetary geography and atmospheric conditions will be altered through warming oceans and rising sea levels which are now increasing faster than at any time in the past 2800 years. On average, sea levels were between 50 and 82 feet higher the last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm. Glaciologist Jason Box expects ice melt from the West Antarctic to become the biggest contributor to sea level rise in the coming decades due to a feedback loop not in the climate models. CO2 levels have been increasing around 3ppm per year, a twentyfold increase since pre-industrial times when the highest recorded increase was 0.15 ppm per year. We’ve long since passed the tipping point of melting Arctic summer sea ice; 300-350 ppm of CO2 was the threshold for many parts of the climate. These changes are irreversible on a timescale of human civilizations. Even if all human industrial activity magically ceased today, the footprint man has already left will be felt for eons.

In our warming world, the hydrologic cycle is changing and creating extreme weather; crop-destroying droughts and floods are becoming more frequent. The Jet Stream is transforming into something different, becoming wavier with higher ridges and troughs prone to stagnating in the same region. As global temperatures rise over time, hotter air will be trapped under these layers of high pressure from a mangled Jet Stream, cooking everything to death. Rising winter temperatures are beginning to destroy the “winter chill” needed for many fruit and nut trees to properly blossom and produce maximally. Climate change is also disrupting flower pollination and pushing fish toward the North/South poles, robbing poorer countries at the equator of crucial food resources. In a new study, marine scientists are surprised to find a disturbing trend in the increasing numbers of a specific type of phytoplankton, coccolithophores, which have been “typically more abundant during Earth’s warm interglacial and high CO2 periods.”

tumblr_nyyguqJIIG1u6ur2mo1_500

Homo sapiens have only been on the planet for the equivalent of a few seconds in geologic time but have managed to overwhelm and foul up all of earth’s natural processes and interdependencies, leaving a distinct layer in the sedimentary record. There is nothing modern humans do that is truly sustainable. Here are a few glaring examples:

  • Techno-fixes are built into the IPCC’s projections for maintaining a habitable planet for humans.
  • Money megacities spend for adapting to climate change is linked more to protecting valuable capital than vulnerable people (Capitalism is doing an outstanding job of converting the planet into dead dollars.)
  • Nuclear Power: “Even if there were no issues like meltdown or waste proliferation, the cost and time for planning, permitting, and constructing nuclear plants is prohibitive. The Arctic ice will already be gone.
  • Japan prime minister: We came within a “paper-thin margin” of nuclear disaster and the evacuation of 50 million people in 2011
  • Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions increased by an estimated 10 million tonnes from 2014 to 2015, in a blow to the country’s claims to climate leadership.
  • New study published in the journal Environmental Pollution shows that urban soil can emit up to 72% as much CO2 as fossil fuels burned within a city and at a rate of up to twice that of rural soils.
  • 90% of Indigenous in Brazil’s Amazon Suffer Mercury Poisoning: A new study shows that water and food sources for 19 Indigenous communities have been massively affected by illegal mining.
  • Satellite images suggest tropical forests from the Amazon to the Philippines are disappearing at a far more rapid pace than previously thought, a University of Maryland team of forest researchers say.
  • African elephants ‘killed faster than they are being born’
  • Desertification in China is a major problem for Beijing, as the country’s deserts are growing, threatening environmental, economic, and political stability.
  • The environment is now being destroyed by corporations in the name of green growth. Sham greenwashing projects are created, funded, and enforced by the IMF and World Bank.
  • Unknown continental-scale process is dumping phosphorus into streams and lakes across the U.S.
  • According to a new study, efforts to curtail world temps will almost surely fail: “A person living today uses about four times as much energy as a person did in the early 1900s.”
  • Greenpeace says China increasing coal-fired capacity: “There is a very rapid and accelerating net increase in coal-fired generating capacity”
  • UN envoy warns of environmental activist murder ‘epidemic’
  • Remember this headline from 2013?: Arctic methane release could cost economy $60 trillion -study. Our response was to go on a fracking binge which increased our methane emissions by some 30%.
  • While the resource intensity of GDP may be falling (less resources needed to produce 1$ worth of goods/services), the absolute decoupling of resource use, emissions, pollution, etc from GDP growth is the only thing that matters and that is not happening. If the world’s population continues to grow as projected and current lifestyles do not change, global resource consumption will increase anywhere from 2 to 5 times by 2050. It defies logic that a continually growing economy would be able to reduce its resource intensity down to near-zero to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint.
  • According to recent research, even if we converted 100% of farmland to reforestation projects it would only lower temperatures 0.45C by the end of the century. Converting half of global farmland to reforestation would result in just a 0.25C drop. Other recent studies have come to the same conclusion:

No amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves,” Mackey says. “Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia.

ambiente-01

Relying on machines for answers to the existential problems of a species run amok with planet-destroying tools and weaponry is rather ironic and tragic. We’re locked-up inside a complexity trap of our own making. The human propensity for tool-building coupled with our discovery of fossil fuels has created a set of living arrangements in which we are now enslaved to those machines and tools. The globalized capitalist economy externalizes its destruction and atrocities, keeping the masses in a state of ignorance and denial. Our corporate overlords are not conscientious citizens, but mindless organizations whose sole purpose is to grow profits no matter the external damage done to society and the environment. Between the economic oil hitmen who ensure that profits flow smoothly and GOP politicians who openly espouse their science illiteracy, a hospitable climate for future humans seems remote. Hopeful delusions have given way to the stark reality of our predicament as scholars like Noam Chomsky who originally started his career fighting for a modicum of social justice have now set the bar at just the chance of human survival. Despite the best efforts of scientists, environmentalists, and activists, the wealthy countries most able to do something won’t “get it” until famine, disease, and war come to their country. All is being left for the almighty ‘free market’ to sort out at the same time that climate change, a conflict multiplier, ramps up.

imageedit_3_7415100861

The sixth mass extinction gathers steam and climate inertia works to catch up to the catastrophic ecological collapse already baked-in. All the while, modern man engages in the spectacle of tribal politics(building walls, exuding military strength, recapturing past glories of their nation) and presidential candidates discuss the size of their penis.

For those who come to understand modern man’s predicament, it can either be the ultimate mind fuck or an epiphany that helps a person appreciate the fragility of life, the urgency of living in the here and now, and the grand cosmic joke of a global, hi-tech civilization that arose from the burning of ancient fossil remains only to have those fumes become a deadly curse, extinguishing any trace of our lofty accomplishments…

The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.

“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
– Link

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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

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Movies and Videos

  • 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
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  • After Armageddon – A SHTF scenario
  • American Blackout 2013 National Geographic
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  • 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?
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  • BBC Global Dimming Documentary About Geoengineering & Global Warming
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  • Cabot Institute Annual Lecture 2012
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  • Dark Days – Documentary by Marc Singer
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  • Do Fox News Viewers Understand Basic Science At All?
  • Do Fox viewers understand the propaganda they are watching?
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  • 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
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  • Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers • FULL DOCUMENTARY
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  • Lecture on Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter
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  • The Methane Ticking Time Bomb has Struck Again…..
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  • The Permian–Triassic Extinction Event [FULL VIDEO]
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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 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
  • 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
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RSS Arthur Silber

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RSS Big Picture Agriculture

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RSS Bill Moyers

  • The GOP at the Crossroads January 26, 2021
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RSS Bit Tooth Energy

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RSS Breaking the Set

  • Abby Martin Breaks the Set One Last Time February 28, 2015
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RSS Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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RSS Business Insider

  • The best deals and sales happening on Amazon right now⁠⁠ - including iPad Air, Casper Pillow, and Anker cables January 26, 2021
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  • Air Force's top officer says he was compelled to tackle racial injustice, even though his promotion was on the line January 26, 2021
  • Democrats in Congress are preparing to go around Republicans to pass Biden's stimulus package January 26, 2021
  • GameStop short-sellers have lost $5 billion this year as Reddit's day-trader army squeezed their bearish bets January 26, 2021
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  • McConnell and Schumer's Senate deal: Who won, who lost, and what it means for Biden's stimulus plan January 26, 2021

RSS C-Realm

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RSS Cassandra’s Legacy

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RSS Center For Biological Diversity

  • 32 Colorado Groups Support Biden’s Expected Pledge to Halt New Fossil Fuel Leasing, Permitting on Public Lands January 26, 2021
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RSS Charles Eisenstein’s Blog

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RSS Chris Hedges

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  • Amy Westerfelt: The Reason COVID-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation April 27, 2020
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RSS Climate Citizen

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RSS Climate Denial Crock of the Week

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RSS ClimateSight

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RSS Dan Hagen

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  • To Laugh or to Cry? December 29, 2020
  • On Wealth and Perception December 20, 2020

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RSS Deep Green Resistence News Service

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  • Environmental Racism, Green Colonialism, and The Renewable Energies Revolution January 23, 2021

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  • Senate rejects GOP motion to dismiss Trump impeachment trial January 26, 2021
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  • Vatican clears retired US bishop of multiple abuse claims January 26, 2021
  • Biden administration appoints Chris DeRusha as federal CISO January 26, 2021
  • Biden speaks with Putin for first time as president January 26, 2021
  • White House adviser Rice says voting rights a 'real concern', ballot access must be expanded January 26, 2021
  • Teen speaks out after alerting FBI about father's alleged role in US Capitol siege: January 26, 2021
  • Pfizer to Deliver U.S. Vaccine Doses Faster Than Expected January 26, 2021
  • CDC finds with precautions in place, scant spread of coronavirus in schools January 26, 2021
  • Rand Paul to force test vote to gauge Republican support for Trump impeachment trial January 26, 2021

RSS Democratic Underground – Good Reads

  • New Report Warns 'Vaccine Nationalism' of Rich Nations Could Cost Global Economy Over $9 Trillion January 26, 2021
  • After Capitol attack, Republicans are again whitewashing Trump's behavior January 26, 2021
  • First Case of Brazil P.1 Variant Has Been Found In The U.S. Why That's A Big Deal January 26, 2021
  • GOP operatives are sending out clear signals about the next attack on democracy January 26, 2021
  • America's national healing depends on Donald Trump facing real punishment January 26, 2021
  • Former Voice of America overseer hired two law firms to $4 million no-bid contracts. January 26, 2021
  • 50 things that are better already January 26, 2021
  • Moderna: Lab study confirms its COVID-19 vaccine still protects against new variants January 26, 2021
  • The Global Radical Rt Celebrated When Extremists Breached The U.S. Capitol, Drew Lessons From It January 26, 2021
  • Opinion: Why the Trump impeachment trial is crucial January 26, 2021

RSS Democracy Now

  • Inequality Virus: Pandemic Widens Wealth Gap for Women, People of Color as Billionaire Profits Soar January 26, 2021
  • Biden Is Reversing Trump's Anti-Immigrant Acts. Will He Repair Harm from Deportations Under Obama? January 26, 2021
  • Biden Reverses Trump's Trans Military Ban, But Assault on Rights Continues at State Level January 26, 2021
  • Headlines for January 26, 2021 January 26, 2021
  • "They Came Away with Their Dignity": Striking NYC Workers Win Wage Hike After Surge of Solidarity January 25, 2021
  • Rev. William Barber Says Biden Admin Must Not Sacrifice Racial & Economic Justice for False Unity January 25, 2021
  • End the Filibuster: Calls Grow to Retire Relic of Slavery & Jim Crow to Make Senate More Democratic January 25, 2021
  • Headlines for January 25, 2021 January 25, 2021
  • Joe Biden Canceled Keystone XL. Indigenous Leaders Demand the Same for the Dakota Access Pipeline January 22, 2021
  • As Pandemic Rips Through Indian Country, Indigenous Communities Work to Save Elders & Languages January 22, 2021

RSS Derrick Jensen

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RSS Desdemona Despair

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RSS Desertification

  • Team to probe Gansu deforestation January 26, 2021
  • Multi-Billion USD Funding Announced for Sahel Great Green Wall Project January 26, 2021
  • Student strives to stave off spread of sand January 26, 2021
  • Chinese environmentalists up in arms over forest destroyed to make way for vineyards January 26, 2021
  • Burkina Faso: UN dispatches experts to assess contamination in wake of floods January 26, 2021

RSS deSmog Blog

  • UK Climate Diplomacy Staff Cut Again as Post-Brexit Links to Trump and US Deniers Strengthen November 24, 2016
  • Regulators Discuss LNG-by-Rail Safety Concerns — After Approving New Rule To Allow Transporting LNG by Rail January 26, 2021
  • Scenes from a Locked-Down Washington D.C. as Biden Takes the Reins January 22, 2021

RSS Digbys Blog

  • Untitled January 12, 2020
  • They can save the world by @BloggersRUs January 12, 2020
  • Just drifting: R.I.P. Buck Henry By Dennis Hartley January 12, 2020
  • It looks like he wants to take Iraq's oil money January 12, 2020
  • Untitled January 11, 2020
  • Let's not forget who worked with Suleimani's IRGC January 11, 2020

RSS Disinfo – Ecology

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RSS Dispatches from the Underclass

  • Left Bitches w/ Glenn Greenwald teaser: Welcome Home, War On Terror! January 25, 2021
  • US Foreign Policy: Hawkish No Matter Who’s In Charge January 25, 2021
  • Trumpism Will Grow If Dems Don’t Address Root Causes January 21, 2021
  • Censorship will backfire on the left, it already has January 15, 2021
  • US adds Houthis to terrorist list, further starving Yemen January 15, 2021

RSS Dissent Magazine

  • Emotions on Strike January 25, 2021
  • Belabored: Stopping the Spread of Prop 22 January 22, 2021
  • Los Deliveristas Unidos Demand Justice January 21, 2021
  • The Not-So-Strange Death of Right Populism January 20, 2021

RSS Dissident Voice

  • Arizona Pioneer in Wrecking Public Education through Charter Schools January 26, 2021
  • The Will to Believe: Americans and their Divine Masters January 26, 2021
  • The “Insurrection” and Its Discontents: “American Exceptionalism” Revisited  January 26, 2021
  • Rob Malley for Iran Envoy: A Test Case for Biden’s Commitment to Diplomacy January 26, 2021
  • That’s All, Folks! January 26, 2021
  • Farmers’ Protests Reflect Existential Crisis of Indian Agriculture     January 25, 2021
  • A Classic Example of Biased Political Reporting January 24, 2021
  • Fast Culture, Slow Culture January 24, 2021

RSS Do the Math

  • Eclipsed, Lately September 11, 2017

RSS Dollars & Sense Blog

  • January/February 2021 Issue January 1, 2021
  • Polly Cleveland on Monopoly on The Analysis December 2, 2020
  • Our November/December Issue Is Out! November 16, 2020
  • Helen Lachs Ginsburg, Jobs-for-All Scholar-Activist November 10, 2020
  • Review of “Liberty from All Masters,” by Barry C. Lynn October 30, 2020
  • New Issue Drops! September 26, 2020

RSS Doug Stanhope

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RSS Douglas Rushkoff

  • Team Human Serialization #37 & 38: The Damage We Do to Ourselves When We Try to Function Like Computers May 29, 2020
  • Team Human Serialization #36: On the Internet of Things, We People Are the Things May 29, 2020
  • Team Human ep. 157: Tyson Yunkaporta “Everything Indigenous is Human” May 27, 2020

RSS Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

  • Think Three Times Before Taking the Covid Vaccine January 26, 2021
  • The War on Covid Is A War On The People January 26, 2021

RSS Dredd Blog

  • The Shape Shifters of Bullshitistan - 24 January 23, 2021
  • The Young Old Sea Level Change Hoax - 5 January 22, 2021
  • Appendix TsSlc January 22, 2021
  • The Young Old Sea Level Change Hoax - 4 January 21, 2021

RSS Ear to the Ground – Truth Dig

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RSS Early Warning

  • New York Not Close to Exiting Lockdown April 17, 2020
  • Is New York Containing Covid? April 8, 2020
  • New York vs Italy March 23, 2020

RSS Earth First

  • “UNC Dildo-Boy” accosts homophobic preacher, releases anti-technology declaration March 2, 2014
  • Subpoena caps bad week for fossil fuel March 2, 2014
  • Less Than 60 Hours Left to Support Indigenous Land Defenders! February 18, 2014

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

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RSS Earth Observatory: Image of the Day

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RSS Earth Observatory: Natural Hazards

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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

RSS Ecocide Alert

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RSS Ecohuman World

  • Our mission November 23, 2016
  • Ecohumanist society and ecology November 23, 2016

RSS Eco-Shock News

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RSS Ecological Headstand

  • For the Abolition of the Wages System! June 18, 2015
  • The Incredible Shrinking Blog June 9, 2015
  • Keynes "hadn't got round to it" May 25, 2015
  • Napoleon Solow and the Phantom Mechanism May 20, 2015

RSS Ecological Sociology

  • Commons Enabling Infrastucture August 31, 2013
  • A Short History of Progress: Book Review August 26, 2013
  • Foucault, Power, Truth and Ecology August 14, 2013

RSS Ecologise

  • Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation May 16, 2020
  • Visakhapatnam gas leak accident: A preliminary modelling study May 15, 2020
  • The electric car must fail March 30, 2020
  • Economy and ecology are now in conflict; it’s time to integrate them with wisdom March 27, 2020
  • War, mismanagement and climate change: Iraq’s environment on the brink March 20, 2020
  • Big Farms make Big Flu: The deadly connection between industrial farming and pandemics March 17, 2020
  • The Songs of Trees: Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors March 13, 2020
  • Charles Hugh Smith: Could Covid-19 overwhelm us in the months ahead? March 10, 2020
  • Just like the economy, India’s forests too are thriving only on paper March 7, 2020
  • New Zealand’s ‘well-being budget’ and the unnecessary evil of economic growth March 4, 2020

RSS Economic Hardship Reporting Project

  • Utah Lawmaker’s Firm Squeezes Thousands From Renters Months After Evictions January 21, 2021
  • Alissa Quart Interviewed on NBCLX January 15, 2021
  • Housing Is a Right. During a Pandemic, It’s Also a Fight. January 13, 2021
  • Michael Apted Took The Very Long View January 12, 2021
  • How the United States Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness January 9, 2021
  • Foundations That Want to Support Local Journalism Should Take a Close Look at Alt Weeklies January 6, 2021

RSS Economic Undertow

  • Repost From 2015: Pied Piper of Dumb Money January 26, 2021
  • The Arc of the Moral Universe January 13, 2021
  • Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year January 4, 2021

RSS EcoWorldView

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RSS Empire Burlesque

  • The Surrenderists: Dem Leaders Stand Down; No Consequences for Coup January 7, 2021
  • Unwrung Withers: No Downsides for Trumpists From Their Coup Push November 11, 2020

RSS Empirical Magazine

  • From the Empirical Archives: Genius or Folly? August 30, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Nights Such as These August 29, 2013
  • From the Empirical Archives: Second Time Foster Child August 28, 2013

RSS EmptyWheel

  • Peter Strzok Subpoenas Trump’s Soccer Ball from Putin
  • A DOJ IG Investigation Is Insufficient to Investigate Trump’s Attempt to Get DOJ Help to Steal the Election
  • Some Key Gaps in the January 6 Story

RSS End of More

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RSS Energy Balance

  • Covid-19, Fracking and the Global Oil Supply. October 29, 2020
  • Solving the Plastic Problem: from Cradle to Grave, to Reincarnation. October 2, 2020
  • What Kind of a World do We Want? (...really?) August 16, 2020
  • Economic Recovery from Covid-19 and Climate Action: Twin Challenges. July 31, 2020
  • Will the Virus Go Away – “Post-Covid”, or Recalibration? July 21, 2020
  • Year 2020: Last Chance to Avoid Rebound into Carbon Chaos. June 23, 2020

RSS Environment & Food Justice

  • National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Statement on the Climate Crisis October 31, 2019
  • La Lucha por La Sierra | Scion of Texas Oil Barons Seeks to Overturn Historic Use Rights to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant August 30, 2018
  • Biopiracy in Mexico | Foundation stealing wild beehives in Yucatán June 14, 2018

RSS Envisionation Blog

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RSS Extraenvironmentalist Blog and Podcasts

  • [ Episode #95 // Economy of Things ] January 28, 2017
  • [ Episode #94 // Rocking the Google Bus ] October 25, 2016
  • [ Episode #93 // Climate Agreements ] September 5, 2016

RSS ExtraEnvironmentalist’s Videos

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RSS ExtraGeographic

  • Brexit, empire and cultural dementia. David Andress demolishes lazy nationalism
    A leave voter at the Save Brexit Rally wants Brexit so that Britain can “get back to being a British Empire”.… Read more The post Brexit, empire and cultural dementia. David Andress demolishes lazy nationalism first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • Brexit explained in three tweets
    Three recent tweets encapsulate the misinformation, corruption and mess of Brexit Britain. They’re a window into a peculiar time. The UK government’s Department for International Trade (DIT) “helps businesses export, drives inward and outward investment, negotiates market access and trade deals, and champions free trade”.… Read more The post Brexit explained […]
  • Ann Pettifor on Carillion: ‘a grand Ponzi scheme’
    In a recent interview Ann Pettifor, global financial analyst, spoke about the corrupted crony capitalism that led to the collapse of Carillion, a major Government contractor.… Read more The post Ann Pettifor on Carillion: ‘a grand Ponzi scheme’ first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • James Joyce in summary: escape is a key theme in his work
    Throughout his life James Joyce attempted to escape – from war, religion, convention, narrative structure, language… “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight.… Read more The post James Joyce in summary: escape is a key theme in his work first appeared on Extra Geographic.
  • Jeremy Clarkson buys an electric car: an optimistic vision of the UK’s EV future
    A nation’s stories play a large part in its future. Established ideas become conventional wisdom in social institutions. The institutions then draw on this wisdom when enacting public policy.… Read more The post Jeremy Clarkson buys an electric car: an optimistic vision of the UK’s EV future first appeared on Extra Geographic.

RSS Facts for Working People

  • The US Congress: Best Democracy Money Can Buy. January 26, 2021
  • Michael Roberts: Covid and fictitious capital January 25, 2021
  • Review: The Invention of the White Race and the political origins of White Supremacy January 22, 2021

RSS Fair: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

  • Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders February 18, 2020
  • Wired’s Gee-Whiz High-Tech Militarism August 7, 2019
  • NBC News Whitewashes Colombia’s Right-Wing President July 2, 2019

RSS Fairewinds

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RSS Fairfax Climate Watch

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RSS Farooque Chowdhury’s Diary

  • Road rage faces student spirit August 4, 2018
  • Fires within the Arctic Circle July 28, 2018
  • A Facebook post on quota mobilisation July 14, 2018

RSS Feasta

  • Statement on the US Rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement January 20, 2021
  • De-growth discussion 3: Inflation, Deflation or (probably) Stagflation January 19, 2021
  • Podcast: economic narratives and systems innovation December 31, 2020

RSS FireDogLake

  • Dissenter Weekly: Leak Prosecutions Against BLM Protesters, Police Whistleblower In Illinois July 11, 2020
  • US Government Plays Games With Reality Winner’s Life As Coronavirus Outbreak Is Confirmed At Carswell July 8, 2020
  • Beyond Prisons: Historian David Stein Reflects On Ascent Of Abolition July 8, 2020
  • Protest Song Of The Week: ‘All Tomorrow Carry’ By Special Interest July 8, 2020

RSS Fish Out of Water

  • Polar Vortex breaking down now: Major Stratospheric Warming will impact weather all winter December 31, 2020
  • Arecibo Puerto Rico's Huge Radio Telescope Collapses December 1, 2020
  • Hurricane Iota Explodes to Category 5 Will Slam Central America Tonight November 16, 2020
  • I will not forget, but I will open my heart to the possibility of forgiveness November 7, 2020
  • Hurricane Eta, Cat 4, is rapidly intensifying will be catastrophic for Central America November 3, 2020
  • Unprecedented open water & ocean heat has triggered Siberian shelf "methane bomb" October 27, 2020

RSS Foreign Confidential

  • Chinese Virologist, MD, PhD, Says Coronavirus Made in Wuhan Lab September 15, 2020
  • Rebels and Spies: the [GREAT] Graphic Novels of Vittorio Giardino July 18, 2020
  • Deep in Red China ... July 6, 2020
  • Preview Video Comic Strip Hero Battles Totalitarian China July 5, 2020

RSS FracTracker

  • Environmental Health Fellowship Opening – Summer 2021 January 26, 2021
  • Fracking Waste in the Appalachian Basin – A Story Map January 15, 2021
  • Channels of Life: The Gulf Coast Buildout in Texas December 23, 2020

RSS George Monbiot (Alternet)

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RSS George Monbiot (Official Home Page)

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RSS Get Real List: Chris Nelder

  • My new gig December 5, 2015
  • Announcing the Energy Transition Show October 14, 2015
  • Guest appearance on The Energy Gang podcast May 14, 2015

RSS Gil Smart

  • Gil Smart right on development February 8, 2015
  • With Gil Smart on guns, the NRA January 19, 2015
  • Gil Smart makes sense May 19, 2014
  • Right on, Gil Smart February 17, 2014

RSS Glen Ford – Black Agenda Report

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RSS Global Guerrillas

  • The Long Night is Coming January 4, 2019
  • Disruption, Drones, and Big Airports December 20, 2018

RSS Global Occupy News

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RSS Global Oneness Project

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RSS Global Research

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RSS Global Research CA

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RSS Gonzalo Lira

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RSS Green is the New Red

  • Trump Supporter Promises Legislation to Label Protest as “Economic Terrorism” November 22, 2016
  • Violence against environmentalists is now at an all-time high July 8, 2016
  • “To Build a Fire”: New Split EP With “Old Lines” and Will Potter June 13, 2016
  • “It changes who you are—forever. What you do with that change is what defines who you are.” April 28, 2016
  • Exclusive: New Virtual Reality Investigation Goes Inside Factory Farms April 13, 2016
  • New Sticker — Animal Rights Activists Must “Join or Die” February 22, 2016
  • “Truth and Power” TV series features Will Potter on “eco-terrorism,” ag-gag laws, and investigative journalism February 15, 2016
  • This woman rowed straight into a hurricane. And you should too. February 11, 2016
  • 6 Lessons From How the FBI and Media Treat Militia Groups January 12, 2016
  • Here’s How One Activist Convinced the FBI to Leave Him Alone December 7, 2015

RSS Green on Huffington Post

  • State And Local Leaders Push Biden To Protect 30% Of U.S. Land, Waters By 2030 January 26, 2021
  • Tornado Hits Alabama City, Killing 1 And Damaging Homes And Businesses January 26, 2021
  • Brazil's Indigenous Leaders Sue President Jair Bolsonaro For Crimes Against Humanity January 23, 2021
  • How SUVs Won The Pandemic January 22, 2021
  • Climate Change Once Again Appears On White House Website January 22, 2021
  • Confused Penguin Joins The Wrong Group... Only To Be Rescued By A Penguin Pal January 22, 2021
  • Goodbye To 'No Bull Bison,' Trump Admin's Short-Lived, Very Dumb Twitter Account January 21, 2021
  • World Welcomes U.S. Return To Paris Climate Accord, Readies Wish List For Biden January 21, 2021

RSS Greenpeace Blogs

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RSS Greg Palast

  • Why were Capitol rioters allowed to leave a murder crime scene?Palast and Zach D. Roberts on Brian Ross Investigates January 21, 2021
  • Insider: White House was Warned March was IllegalTrump’s Call to March Broke Organizer's Promise to DC Police January 15, 2021

RSS Gregor Macdonald

  • Oil Fall December 31, 2018

RSS Grinning Planet

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RSS Grist

  • In a trash-filled pandemic, low-waste businesses are taking off January 26, 2021
  • The next big climate PR campaign: abolish the filibuster January 26, 2021
  • Climate change will destroy communities. Let’s help them move now. January 26, 2021
  • The unfinished business of Flint’s water crisis January 26, 2021

RSS Growth Busters

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RSS Guernica Mag

  • How to Wash Your Hands in a War Zone January 26, 2021
  • Stitching and Writing on the Margin January 25, 2021
  • The Requirement of Adequacy January 22, 2021
  • Maurice Chammah: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty January 21, 2021

RSS Guy McPherson’s Blog

  • Beginning-of-Week Headlines and Stock-Market Report, 25 January 2021 January 25, 2021
  • Tim Bob: Livestream Doubly Restored January 24, 2021

RSS Health After Oil

  • Public Health’s Response to Decline: Loyalty to the 1% December 15, 2014

RSS Hot Topic: Global Warming and the Future of New Zealand

  • Postcards from La La Land #132: time warps and twaddle June 7, 2018
  • The final cut: crank paper on NZ temperature record gets its rebuttal – warming continues unabated May 2, 2018
  • Anthropogenic climate change is real: pithy post-punk anthem for the Trump generation December 9, 2017

RSS How to Save the World

  • Not So Extreme January 22, 2021
  • IFLS, the Sequel January 18, 2021
  • The Road Not Taken January 16, 2021

RSS I am Not a Number

  • The civil war in the LP was NEVER about antisemitism. November 20, 2020
  • English patriotism and the left – a political conundrum October 3, 2020
  • The new Reclaim Party and the ‘culture wars’ – the incoherence of our two party system and the failure of liberalism October 3, 2020

RSS I Cite

  • "Feudalism Lives on in the Delta" -- Ray Sprigle August 17, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 2 April 2, 2020
  • Critical Theory and Climate Change 1 March 23, 2020
  • Untitled July 18, 2019
  • America's obsession with rooting out communism is making a comeback September 25, 2018

RSS Iamronen

  • Yoga Practice – Winter 2020/21 December 29, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 25, 2020: Love’s Impurities December 25, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 23, 2020: Slow Reach December 23, 2020
  • Mixing Paint December 21, 2020
  • I Shakuhachi – December 18, 2020: Calling Rita December 20, 2020

RSS Ian Welsh

  • Will Bill Gates And mRNA Vaccine Monopolies Be Responsible For Millions of Covid Deaths? January 26, 2021

RSS Idea Explorer

  • Habitat Loss November 9, 2020
  • Marginal Hope August 24, 2020
  • A Pandemic-Altered Future April 15, 2020
  • Bridging the Future March 31, 2020
  • Drop Ratios February 5, 2020

RSS Idea Explorer – Big Pic Explorer

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RSS Idea Explorer: Land of Conscience

  • Responsible Survival January 1, 2020
  • Every Day December 23, 2019
  • Memories of Value July 23, 2019

RSS If You Love This Planet – Helen Caldicott

  • Steven Starr, Bruce Gagnon and William Hartung at the Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium April 18, 2017
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott, Ted Postol, Max Tegmark and Alan Robock at The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction symposium June 23, 2016
  • Dr. Caldicott’s October 2014 speech: The Ukraine Crisis, Is Nuclear Conflict Likely? February 17, 2015
  • Dr. Helen Caldicott interviewed by Bob Herbert about her latest book, “Loving This Planet” December 28, 2012

RSS Indybay Features

  • Fascist Coup Attempt Fails to Overthrow Presidential Election Results
  • Moms for Housing Rack Up Victories
  • Our Long National Nightmare Is Over
  • Rallies Readied for Possible Post-Election Electoral Emergency

RSS Indybay Newswire

  • Corona crisis, capital and politics
  • "Amid Exceptional Uncertainty" IMF Projects Challenges for Developing Countries
  • Resistance against Agropoly
  • High-Level Climate Summit to Launch Action Agenda
  • Facebook escalates attack on socialist left

RSS Information Clearing House

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RSS Inside Left – The OFFICIAL Anti-Olympics Blog™

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RSS Institute for Public Accuracy

  • Groups Organizing Against Tom “Mr. Monsanto” Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture January 25, 2021
  • Calls for Biden to End the War on Yemen January 25, 2021
  • Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty Now in Force: What Does it Mean? January 22, 2021
  • Biden Continuing Trump’s Targeting of Venezuela January 21, 2021
  • Will Biden Continue Bombings? January 20, 2021
  • Leading Big Tech Lawyer May Head Biden Antitrust January 20, 2021

RSS International Debt Observatory

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RSS io9

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RSS iWatch: Global Muckraking

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RSS Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer Blog

  • Five Things We Need to Know About the “Fiscal Cliff” December 10, 2012
  • Wasteful Pentagon Spending and Costly Wars Hurting Minnesota Communities November 6, 2012

RSS Jacobin

  • How Mexico Reshaped the Global Economy January 26, 2021
  • Chicago Teachers May Be on the Cusp of Another Strike January 26, 2021
  • The Meaning of January 6, 2021 January 26, 2021
  • There’s Really No Need to Compromise, Joe January 26, 2021
  • Red London in Tory Britain January 26, 2021
  • Bernie Sanders Gets It. We Should All Have Free Health Care During the Pandemic. January 25, 2021

RSS Jeremy Scahill

  • Biden Should End Espionage Act Prosecutions of Whistleblowers and Journalists January 21, 2021

RSS Jill Stein

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RSS Joe Bageant

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RSS John Cook Video Uploads

  • Climate misinformation: Will Happer on CO2 being plant food January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: David Legates & Willie Soon on CO2 lag January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: Marco Rubio on past climate change January 24, 2021
  • Climate misinformation: Rick Perry compares climate denial to Galileo January 24, 2021

RSS John Hively

  • When the Dust Clears…the Rich Have Been Redistributing $2.5 trillion Every Year for the Last Twenty-Five Years January 23, 2021
  • The Political Games of the Billionaires and Their Political Representatives December 19, 2020

RSS John Pilger

  • THE MOST LETHAL VIRUS IS NOT COVID. IT IS WAR.

RSS John Perkins

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RSS John W. Whitehead

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RSS John Zerzan: Anarchy Radio

  • Anarchy Radio 01 19 2021 January 19, 2021
  • Anarchy Radio 01 12 2021 January 12, 2021
  • Copy Of Tue 1900 0112 ANARCHYRADIO January 12, 2021

RSS Jonathan Turley

  • Twitter Summons “The Birdwatchers” In Expanding Campaign Against “Misinformation” January 26, 2021
  • Impeachment Mania Hits Universities: Students Are Facing Trials Or Removals Over Political Views January 25, 2021
  • Do The Democrats Really Want Unity? January 25, 2021
  • Rhode Island Professor Denounces Science, Statistics, and Technology As “Inherently Racist” January 24, 2021

RSS Karl Grossman

  • I've switched from this site to my website -- www.karlgrossman.com -- for my blog. November 29, 2015
  • The End of Police Raids -- at Long Last -- on Gays of Fire Island July 1, 2015
  • "Fire Island Was Paradise,Truly Paradise" June 21, 2015
  • My First Big Story June 1, 2015
  • Disaster Waiting to Happen at Indian Point May 12, 2015

RSS Karl North Eco-Intelligence

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RSS Kate Ausburn

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RSS Keith Farnish

  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 2) May 7, 2014
  • Uprooting Civilization (Part 1) February 21, 2014
  • The Problem With…Conspiracy Theories January 7, 2014

RSS Knight Science Journalism – MIT

  • The Tracker Now Lives Here … November 1, 2015
  • A farewell post: Three reasons why good science writing is worth defending. January 6, 2015
  • Globe story on non-invasive prenatal testing offers murky argument. December 31, 2014
  • (UPDATED/2*) What Ho? A 2014 List of Lists of best, worst, or otherwisest in 2014 December 30, 2014
  • Cancer & poverty: When a reporter’s journey becomes part of the story. December 23, 2014

RSS Kulture Critic

  • Distraction, Deflection, Diremption July 25, 2020

RSS Kunstler Cast

  • John B. McLemore Email to JHK: Huffing gas fumes in shittown alabama June 1, 2017
  • Release: S-Town Podcast Prequel: KunstlerCast Ready for Binge Listening May 31, 2017
  • KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017
  • James Howard Kunstler on John B. McLemore of S-Town May 31, 2017
  • Transcript: KunstlerCast: S-Town May 31, 2017

RSS Kurt Kobb

  • The latest story of toxic deceit and delay: PFAS January 24, 2021

RSS Lack of Environment

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RSS Law and Disorder

  • Law and Disorder January 18, 2021 January 18, 2021
  • Law and Disorder January 11, 2020 January 10, 2021
  • Law and Disorder January 4, 2020 January 4, 2021

RSS Le Monde diplomatique – English edition

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RSS Le Monde diplomatique – Open Page

  • Toward politically engaged scholarship January 26, 2021
  • Africa's struggle for pharmaceuticals January 24, 2021
  • Biden dreams of rebuilding the international order January 24, 2021
  • Fake news: A false epidemic? January 20, 2021
  • The financiers who backed Brexit January 19, 2021

RSS Leaving Babylon

  • Even Iran is laughing at us November 9, 2020

RSS Lee Camp

  • Gov’t Secrets #26 – JFK Assassination Part 1 & New Fred Hampton Revelations January 26, 2021
  • MOC #35 – It’s Time To Say Goodbye January 25, 2021
  • MOC #34 – Free Assange & Other Actions For Right Now January 22, 2021
  • MOC #33 – Everything Wrong With Biden’s Inauguration Speech January 22, 2021
  • Gov’t Secrets No. 25 – Attack On Capitol Was Coordinated, & The U.S. Nazi Partnership In Ukraine January 20, 2021
  • New Senate Report Shows U.S. Funding Terrorist Orgs (Redacted Tonight) January 20, 2021

RSS Lee Fang

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RSS Leonardo Boff

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RSS Les Leopold

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RSS Life Itself

  • 2020, the Year the US Imploded, so Where is Hope? December 27, 2020
  • The best and worst of my US of A July 4, 2020
  • The little virus that could is not done with us, is it? May 29, 2020

RSS Limited, Inc.

  • In the beginning was the pun January 26, 2021
  • Vandalism and the souring of the world January 24, 2021
  • A blues for the rich girl - Karen Chamisso January 19, 2021

RSS Link TV – Earth Focus

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RSS Low-Tech Magazine

  • How and why I stopped buying new laptops December 20, 2020
  • How to Make Biomass Energy Sustainable Again September 20, 2020

RSS LRB Blog

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RSS Luis J. Rodriguez

  • Stand Firm on Election Day November 3, 2020
  • 50th Anniversary of Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War August 31, 2020
  • Trump's War on the United States July 24, 2020

RSS Mabinogogiblog

  • Zoom Meeting on the Melbourne Isolation Hood to stop spread of Covid in Hospital January 16, 2021
  • We Can Cut the Number of Hospital Acquired Covid Infections January 1, 2021
  • JCVI has not thought through their vaccine prioritisation December 4, 2020
  • The Changing of the Shared Narrative December 3, 2020

RSS Manicore – Accueil

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RSS Marginal Revolution

  • Sad pictures January 26, 2021
  • Why U.S. Immigration Barriers Matter for the Global Advancement of Science January 26, 2021
  • Tuesday assorted links January 26, 2021

RSS Mark Biskeborn – Underground Essays

  • Kafkaesque November 11, 2014
  • Larry Summers Still Living Large April 9, 2013
  • War and Corruption Deficits: Insects and Leviathans January 21, 2013
  • Breaking News: Lt. Col. Shaffer Accuses Former CIA Dir. Tenet December 29, 2012

RSS Mark Fiore

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RSS Mark Lynas

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RSS Martin Wolf

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RSS Matt Bruenig

  • Trump NLRB Smashed Google Guy February 17, 2018
  • Neoliberals Used to Refer to Themselves as New Democrats December 22, 2017
  • Alabama Part II December 16, 2017

RSS Matt Taibbi

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RSS Matt Wuerker

  • Cartoon: Freedom of speech is absolute, but... April 30, 2015
  • Cartoon: Clinton Inc April 23, 2015
  • Cartoon: Reince's Women Issues April 16, 2015
  • Cartoon: The way to win April 9, 2015
  • No Cake for you! April 2, 2015

RSS Max Keiser

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RSS Media Lens

  • ‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction January 20, 2021
  • Media Bias, Activism And Meditation – Secular Buddhist Network Interview With David Edwards January 13, 2021
  • Stuck In A Lift With John Pilger – ‘News And How To Use It’ by Alan Rusbridger December 4, 2020

RSS Media Matters – Environment

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RSS Media Matters – Everything

  • Fox guest on possible troop withdrawal from Afghanistan: "The solution is more blood, sweat, and tears" 
  • Fox host defends Trump: "Just because you use harsh language doesn't mean your intent is to denigrate another race"
  • Fox News is talking more about abortion than the Democratic debates did

RSS Media Roots

  • Media Roots Radio: Sex Workers Battled Big Tech First, Obscenity Laws & Cuckolding in the Trump-era w/ Dr. Susan Block January 22, 2021
  • Empire Files Podcast: Jan. 6 Was An Inside Job January 19, 2021
  • Media Roots Radio: QAnonEleven, DC Military Lockdown & Trump’s #StopTheSteal Wack Pack w/ gumby4christ January 19, 2021

RSS Methane Hydrates

  • Joint New Zealand - German 3D survey reveals massive seabed gas hydrate and methane system May 12, 2014
  • Noctilucent clouds: further confirmation of large methane releases December 10, 2013
  • Earthquake M6.7 hits Sea of Okhotsk October 2, 2013

RSS Michael Hudson

  • Multipolarity and Financial Capitalism January 7, 2021
  • Rentiers a bunch of gangsters January 7, 2021
  • A Hard Look at Rent and Rent Seeking December 14, 2020

RSS Michael Miller – Viewpoint

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RSS Michael Parenti

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RSS Mike Philbin – Free Planet

  • LAST OF THE CATHEDRA available in trade paperback from Amazon. October 24, 2020
  • OUR ELECTRIC MOON October 21, 2019
  • Best Real-time in-game Physics engine EVER by Dennis Gustafsson September 13, 2019

RSS Mondoweiss

  • Israel issues demolition of Palestinian clinic in midst of pandemic January 26, 2021
  • B’Tselem casts Israel as a racist endeavor, correcting the ethical grammar of Israel/Palestine January 26, 2021

RSS Mons Angelorum: Deadly Serious 3

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RSS Mons Angelorum: Waiting for Good Weather

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RSS Mother Jones

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RSS MR Zine

  • Yoshie Furuhashi, "After MRZine" January 1, 2017
  • Louis Allday, "Controlling the Narrative on Syria" December 14, 2016
  • Marta Harnecker, "Fidel, Today and Forever" December 11, 2016
  • Prabhat Patnaik, "Developing 'Infrastructure'" December 9, 2016
  • Susie Day, "Forward Ever, Normal Never: Taking Down Donald Trump" December 6, 2016
  • Samir Amin, "The Election of Donald Trump" December 1, 2016

RSS Musings on Iraq

  • Iraq Delays Early Elections Due To Technical And Political Issues January 26, 2021
  • This Day In Iraqi History - Jan 26 January 26, 2021
  • Security In Iraq Jan 15-21, 2021 January 25, 2021

RSS Nafeez Ahmed

  • IDF's Gaza assault is to control Palestinian gas, avert Israeli energy crisis | Nafeez Ahmed July 9, 2014
  • World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme 'complicit' in genocidal land grabs - NGOs | Nafeez Ahmed July 3, 2014
  • The open source revolution is coming and it will conquer the 1% - ex CIA spy | Nafeez Ahmed June 19, 2014
  • Iraq blowback: Isis rise manufactured by insatiable oil addiction June 16, 2014

RSS Naked Capitalism

  • 2:00PM Water Cooler 1/26/2021 January 26, 2021
  • Poor Lives Matter, But Less January 26, 2021
  • Links 1/26/2021 January 26, 2021
  • Michael Hudson: Finance Capitalism vs. Industrial Capitalism – The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover January 26, 2021
  • Why Is Everyone Talking About Squatters’ Rights in Covid-Ravaged Spain? January 26, 2021

RSS Naomi Klein

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RSS Naomi Klein – Guardian.UK

  • We were told Joe Biden was the 'safe choice'. But it was risky to offer so little | Naomi Klein November 8, 2020
  • Covid-19 spreads to every African country - as it happened May 13, 2020

RSS Nature Protects, As She is Protected

  • No Name Calling Please, Give Us Evidence Which Proves GM Crops Are Safe March 30, 2017
  • Let’s Be Honest About Genetically Modified Crops March 9, 2017

RSS Navdanya’s Diary

  • Rewilding food, rewilding farming January 25, 2020
  • Which future of food do we want? November 24, 2019
  • Vandana Shiva : No to Junk Food in Schools, Yes to Climate Change Education in Schools November 12, 2019

RSS New Internationalist

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RSS New Left Project

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RSS New World Notes

  • Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse January 2, 2021
  • Clutter December 27, 2020
  • Scooter's War on Christmas Kickstarter December 24, 2020

RSS News Junkie Post

  • Capitol Riots: The Day of Infamy When Populism Became Fascism January 12, 2021
  • The Three Farm Laws: Not Only a Fight of Farmers for Themselves but Also for India’s Food Security December 17, 2020
  • COVID-19 Behavior Policing: Rehearsal for Crackdown on Dissent Ahead of Climate Collapse? December 4, 2020
  • Slavery of Fear July 28, 2020
  • COVID-19: Confirmed Wuhan Man-Made Coronavirus Chimera Enters Vaccine Design July 8, 2020
  • COVID-19 Cold War: Will the Second Wave Come from Vaccine Trials? June 16, 2020

RSS NOAA: Monthly State of the Climate Report

  • December 2020 National Climate Report

RSS Notes from the Aboveground

  • On Inequality July 27, 2015
  • Shameless is as shameless does July 21, 2015

RSS NYT Examiner

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RSS Occupy.com

  • Sedition caucus mimics Trump’s worst sin: Demolition of content—legal, moral, democratic or electoral January 14, 2021
  • Tell Congress to #StopLine3 January 12, 2021
  • UK’s 5-day Hiatus from Christmas Lockdown May Pave the Way for Ill-Fated New Year for Britain's Poorest January 10, 2021
  • The worst president January 9, 2021
  • Green New Deal, Part VIII: New Zealand’s Zero-Covid-19 Strategy Shows how Politics Can Serve the Common Good January 7, 2021
  • Finding a Home for the ‘Politically Homeless’: Could a UK Version of Spain’s Podemos Party Work In Britain? December 11, 2020
  • ‘Bye-bye, Betsy DeVos. You won’t be missed,’ says Sanders as billionaire education secretary attacks push for tuition-free college December 7, 2020
  • House passes comprehensive marijuana reform legislation historically de-scheduling marijuana December 7, 2020

RSS Occupy las Vegas

  • Bitcoin s’élève à 1 700 $ en 48 heures : Plus de 19 000 dollars pour une capitalisation boursière de 20 milliards de dollars (Market Watch) January 25, 2021
  • Crypto-kriminalitet falder, men Bitcoin-ransomware steg i 2020! January 20, 2021
  • The advantages and disadvantages of consensus building January 2, 2021

RSS Occupy Wall Street

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RSS Oddity Central

  • Man Who Strained His Back Picking Up Company Car Keys to Receive Compensation January 26, 2021
  • Japanese Company Creates “Smart Glasses” That Can Allegedly Cure Myopia January 26, 2021
  • Man Prefers His Hyper-Realistic Doll Girlfriend Because It Doesn’t Ask For Anything January 26, 2021
  • Thousands of Colored LEDs Turn Dutch Farmland Into Nighttime Wonderland January 25, 2021
  • Jealous Wife Allegedly Attacks Husband Over Photos of Him With Her as a Younger Woman January 25, 2021
  • Cat Survives Three-Week Journey Locked in Shipping Container With No Food or Water January 25, 2021

RSS Of Two Minds

  • Everything Is Broken January 25, 2021
  • How the Fed Fails January 22, 2021
  • The Dangerously Diminishing Returns on Monetary and Fiscal Stimulus January 20, 2021

RSS One Penny Sheet

  • Easy Ways for Disabled Entrepreneurs to Find Financing May 13, 2020
  • Can You Take Out A Personal Loan And Use It For Your Business? May 13, 2020

RSS One Struggle – South Florida

  • Teachers Resist! Lessons in Solidarity from Haiti November 13, 2020
  • WTF Is Still Happening? What isn’t Progressive: the Biden/Harris Capitalist Alternative November 7, 2020
  • WTF Is Still Happening? The Supreme Court is Still Capitalist October 29, 2020
  • WTF is still happening?!: Elections 2020 October 23, 2020

RSS Orion Magazine

  • A Deeply Imperfect Democracy January 8, 2021
  • Foreword: The Most Radical Thing You Can Do January 5, 2021
  • Thank You, Barry: Margaret Atwood December 29, 2020

RSS Our Finite World

  • 2021: More troubles likely January 12, 2021
  • 2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong December 23, 2020
  • Humans Left Sustainability Behind as Hunter-Gatherers December 2, 2020

RSS Pando Daily

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RSS Paul Haeder

  • Rumble Inside the Chaos of Capitalism January 23, 2021
  • USA: Unsafe at any Speed January 10, 2021
  • Dreaming Inside the Egg Sac of a Basking Shark January 10, 2021

RSS Paul Kingsnorth – Elswhere

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RSS Paul L. Street

  • Shock and Awe: This Happened During Trump’s First and Hopefully Only Term* November 16, 2020
  • “The Envy of the World”: Still No Functioning Democracy Here November 16, 2020
  • Avoiding the Real Issue to the be Faced November 16, 2020
  • Make a Plan to Resist November 16, 2020

RSS PBD – Progressive Blog Digest

  • 46 January 21, 2021
  • HIS LEGACY January 20, 2021
  • THE END GAME January 19, 2021

RSS PeakOil.com News

  • Glimpse into dynamics of post-pandemic oil industry January 25, 2021
  • Kunstler: Flying Blind January 25, 2021
  • Why The Future Still Means Fossil Fuels, For Now January 25, 2021

RSS Peak Prosperity Blog

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RSS Peak Prosperity: Daily Digest

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RSS Peak Prosperity: Featured Voices

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RSS People Before Profit Blog

  • "Blacklisted Again" Michael Berkowitz on "Trumbo" by Norman Markowitz December 10, 2015
  • A Corrected and Updated Version of The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 9, 2015
  • The "Madness" of Donald Trump by Norman Markowitz December 8, 2015

RSS Phlegm

  • "we fight each other while it devours us" Belgium June 2017 December 1, 2017
  • West Didsbury Manchester. May 2017 December 1, 2017
  • Dulwich picture gallery. April 25th 2017 December 1, 2017

RSS Phyllis Bennis

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RSS Physicist-Retired Newsvine

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RSS Pink Tank

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RSS PlanetSave – Climate

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RSS Political Violence @ a Glance

  • Trump’s Legacy in Yemen: Why Terrorist Listing May Jeopardize Peace Talks January 25, 2021
  • Gender and White Supremacist Violence January 21, 2021
  • The Escalatory Nature of Violence in Undermining (American) Democracy January 20, 2021

RSS Popular Resistance

  • CTU Rank-And-File Votes To Save Lives January 26, 2021
  • How The Nuclear Ban Treaty Impacts The United States January 26, 2021
  • Defund The Police Is Not Abolition January 26, 2021
  • The Economics Lesson Taught By The Pandemic January 26, 2021

RSS PRN with Danny Schechter

  • The Gary Null Show – 08.15.16 August 15, 2016
  • Leid Stories – Election 2016: Primaries Deliver A Big Payday for Clinton, An Inevitable Payout for Sanders – 06.08.16 June 8, 2016
  • The Gary Null Show – 05.10.16 May 10, 2016
  • Meditations and Molotovs – 05.02.16 May 2, 2016
  • Focus on the Facts – 02.29.16 February 29, 2016
  • Warrior Connection – 02.28.16 February 29, 2016
  • Resistance Radio – Darcia Narvaez – 02.28.16 February 29, 2016
  • Meria Heller Show – 02.28.16 February 28, 2016
  • Expat Files – 02.28.16 February 28, 2016

RSS Progressive Radio Network

  • The Gary Null Show – 01.26.21 January 26, 2021
  • LOA Daily – The Sad Truth About Goals January 26, 2021
  • Webinar With Dr. Gary Null: Embracing the Future, Honoring the Past January 26, 2021
  • What In The Cell Is Going On – 01.26.21 January 26, 2021
  • The Hour of Lateral Thinking – 01.26.21 January 26, 2021
  • Ask Beatty – 01.25.21 January 26, 2021

RSS ProPublica

  • How the CARES Act Forgot America’s Most Vulnerable Hospitals January 26, 2021
  • The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try. January 25, 2021
  • “We’ve Let the Worst Happen”: Reflecting on 400,000 Dead January 23, 2021
  • The Unfinished Business of Flint’s Water Crisis January 22, 2021
  • Global Right-Wing Extremism Networks Are Growing. The U.S. Is Just Now Catching Up. January 22, 2021

RSS Project Censored

  • Capitol Coup d’Trump January 26, 2021
  • Monopoly Chokes Oxygen Supply to African Hospitals Amid Covid-19 Pandemic January 26, 2021
  • Philippines’ National Biometric ID System Raises Concerns over Privacy January 26, 2021

RSS Public Intelligence

  • Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Report: Protecting Against the Threat of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)
  • (U//FOUO) DHS-FBI-USSS Joint Threat Assessment: 59th Presidential Inauguration
  • (U//FOUO) Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Domestic Terrorism Threat Likely Amid Political Transitions
  • Operation Warp Speed Therapeutics: Monoclonal Antibody Playbook Version 2.0
  • Asymmetric Warfare Group Study: Russian Private Military Companies in Operations, Competition, and Conflict
  • Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Mail-In Voting in 2020 Infrastructure Risk Assessment
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Russia Likely to Continue Seeking to Undermine Faith in US Electoral Process
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Some Violent Opportunists Probably Engaging in Organized Activities
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Violent Opportunist Tactics Observed During Civil Disturbances 26-31 May
  • (U//FOUO) DHS Bulletin: Ongoing Violence, Information Narratives Nationwide Poses Continued Threat to Law Enforcement

RSS Pulse

  • “Undignified”, “humiliating”, “belittled”—BAME experience at the BBC June 13, 2020
  • How Disinformation Works April 2, 2020
  • Satis House: On a Women’s Revolution January 7, 2020
  • Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria: Western Inaction and Radicalisation December 1, 2019

RSS Quartz

  • How foreign operators exploit weak protections in Africa’s extractive sectors January 26, 2021
  • Disney is finally rethinking its racist theme park rides January 26, 2021
  • Janet Yellen’s greatest mistakes will haunt her toughest job yet January 26, 2021
  • More countries have banned travel from South Africa as its Covid-19 variant poses a vaccine challenge January 26, 2021
  • Another random Elon Musk tweet sends a stock soaring January 26, 2021
  • China is testing the UK and Europe’s balance between trade and human rights January 26, 2021
  • Protesting farmers break into Delhi’s historic Red Fort on India’s Republic Day January 26, 2021
  • How do I keep my team engaged when the world is on fire? January 26, 2021
  • Elon Musk just bought $100 million in publicity for the carbon capture industry January 26, 2021
  • How to make your home your happy place January 26, 2021

RSS Question Everything

  • Starting a New Blog: Rethinking Everything December 31, 2020
  • Merry Winter Solstice 2020 December 21, 2020
  • Autumnal Equinox Greetings September 22, 2020

RSS R-Squared Energy

  • Notice: New R-Squared Is rrapier.com June 3, 2017
  • Contact Information And Blog Migration Update May 19, 2017
  • Guest Post: Offshore Wind Power Cost Update April 20, 2017
  • The Peak Oil Estimate You Won’t Believe: A Tale Of Two Sigmoids March 28, 2017

RSS Rabett Run

  • Just putting this here January 21, 2021
  • Journalism needs more than the Truth Sandwich - maybe Truth Dragging instead December 20, 2020
  • Can't quit him just yet December 19, 2020

RSS Rabble.Ca

  • Canada should stand back as U.S. pivots to China January 26, 2021
  • Film documents a grandmother's journey from Auschwitz to Winnipeg January 25, 2021
  • Who is a front-line worker anyway? January 22, 2021
  • New bill promises major U.S. electoral reform January 21, 2021

RSS Radical Philosophy

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RSS Ran Prieur

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RSS Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge

  • Can problem-solving itself be problematic? (Sense-making, Part 6) January 26, 2021
  • The Challenge of Listening and Healing (on US Inauguration Day 2021) January 21, 2021

RSS RANTINGS ON MARKETS, ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS STRATEGY

  • Timely Remarks Regarding Systemic US Corporate State Social, Economic & Democratic Fragility Exposed By Pandemic January 25, 2021