Latest Articles
-
Obama calls for clean energy activists in commencement speech
From Barack Obama’s commencement speech at Wesleyan University, 25 May 2008 (he was standing in for Ted Kennedy): At a time when our ice caps are melting and our oceans are rising, we need you to help lead a green revolution. We still have time to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change if we […]
-
-
One of permaculture’s founder envisions possible futures
He writes, "The simultaneous onset of climate change and the peaking of global oil supply represent unprecedented challenges for human civilisation. Each limits the effective options for responses to the other."
An important new site from David Holmgren, one of the fathers of permaculture: Future Scenarios.Holmgren uses a scenario planning framework to bring to life the likely cultural, political, agricultural and economic implications of peak oil and climate change.
"Scenario planning allows us to use stories about the future as a reference point for imagining how particular strategies and structures might thrive, fail or be transformed," says Holmgren.
Future Scenarios depicts four very different futures. Each is a permutation of mild or destructive climate change, combined with either slow or severe energy declines. Scenarios range from the relatively benign Green Tech to the near catastrophic Lifeboats scenario.(h/t to Adam at Energy Bulletin)
-
Bush may designate large marine reserves
Hoping to burnish President Bush’s conservation legacy, the White House is considering creating some of the largest marine reserves in the world, NPR reports. The plan — now being discussed, but not a sure thing — would have Bush use his powers under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create “marine monuments,” which would not […]
-
Fox News anchor calls for assassination of Barack Obama
“… and now we have what … uh…some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama … uh … um … Obama [after being prompted by the FNC anchor] … well both if we could [laughing] …” — Fox News anchor Liz Trotta, commenting on Hillary Clinton’s invocation of Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination […]
-
Somebody forgot to tell Rockport that coal is cheap
How much would your town pay to stabilize the electric bills of every home and business in it for the next 25 years?
-
Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine
Every now and then, one hears complaints about solar energy: "But it takes too much land!" "An entire Idaho!" "Three Californias!" 
Nevada Solar One takes up about 400 acres, mostly for mirrors and heat engines. You would have to mine about 5,300 acres to feed a coal-fired powered plant producing the same amount of electricity. Even acre for acre, I'll take Solar One's pleasant campus over a coal mine.
Math below the fold.
-
-
Direct and indirect ways of killing people
“We’re just damn glad to live in a free country where you can have a gun if you want to.” — Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, which is giving away a free handgun with each purchase of a vehicle
-
Militarization and progressive change are not compatible
The U.S. military push for coal-based synthetic fuels reminds us that in the long run, solving climate chaos is incompatible with an aggressive military policy. Solutions will ultimately have to draw on traditional American virtues of thrift and cleverness, not the domination and power expressed in the new U.S. Air Force motto: Air Force Above All, which probably sounded more impressive in the original German.
Militarization has a long history of pushing us down less sustainable paths in the U.S. Part of that is direct meeting of Pentagon needs. For example, one reason we have today's super-highway system is that Eisenhower was impressed by the military advantages of the German autobahn network -- both for the Germans and for the allies when their turn came to use it.
The "National Defense Highway System," as it was called when first inaugurated, was built wide enough to allow tanks and military convoys to travel freely across the U.S. without depending on rail. The financial structure was similar to the autobahn's as well. The national highways trust is based largely on fuel taxes paid by both rail and trucks, but which rail gets almost no benefit from -- that helped ensure the gradual shift of freight from trains to trucks.
