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Thomas H. Naylor: A Community of Small Nations for a Sustainable Planet

3 Aug

World-wide localization. To cure the cancer, shrink it.

I believe it is high time for the smaller nations of the world to begin withdrawing from the United Nations. The U.N. is morally, intellectually, and politically bankrupt. It is time for these smaller nations to confront the meganations of the world and say, “Enough is enough. We refuse to continue condoning your plundering the planet in pursuit of resources and markets to quench your insatiable appetite for consumer goods and services.” These small nations should call for the nonviolent breakup of the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, and the other meganations of the world.

A small group of peaceful, sustainable, cooperative, democratic, egalitarian, ecofriendly nations might lead the way. Such a group might include Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Could it happen? Who knows. The Soviet Empire fell apart under its own weight, and Russia’s still struggling. Back in 1400 who’d have thought that the British Empire would span the globe. And look what happened to that.

via Thomas H. Naylor: A Community of Small Nations for a Sustainable Planet.

Sure Cure for Debt Problems Is Economic Growth [Yeah, right! But…]

31 Jul

The super-rich: have got it figured out: How to keep their part of the economy, that part that feeds their bank accounts, growing. The neat thing is they can keep things growing in their back yard even when the overall economy is stagnant. Which means that,for the rest of us, the economy is shrinking. Back  in the old days, the economy grew for everybody: win-win. Now it grows for the rich, but not for us: win-lose.

And the rich don’t care. Why should they, they hardly even notice. Because it just doesn’t affect them.

“The basic issue is that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal track,” says Dean Maki, the chief United States economist at Barclays Capital. “From that point, none of the choices are fun.” The most obvious choices, Mr. Maki says, are to reduce spending (ouch), raise taxes (yuck), let inflation run (gasp) or default (thud).

We wouldn’t need any of that if we could restore economic growth. If that happened, Americans would become richer and pay more taxes. Et voilà! — we’d pay down the debt painlessly.

via Sure Cure for Debt Problems Is Economic Growth – NYTimes.com.

JOURNAL: Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire – Global Guerrillas

30 Jul

The always interesting John Robb notes that Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of bad decisions made through central planning. Lots of resources were used badly. That wasn’t supposed to happen in market-driven USofA. Now it has:

The succession of market bubbles, the global financial collpse of 2008, and the recent US debt problem is prima facie evidence that gross misallocation has occurred for decades. The wealth of the West, particularly the US, is being spent on the wrong things year after year, decade after decade. We are now as fragile as the Soviet Union in the late 80’s.

What happened?

Central planning took over the decision making process in the US, both through the growth of government and through an unparalleled concentration of wealth.

The emergence of a class of the SUPER-RICH, Robb argues, has led to a form of central planning:

The concentration of wealth is now in so few hands and is so extreme in degree, that the combined liquid financial power of all of those not in this small group is inconsequential to determining the direction of the economy.   As a result, we now have the equivalent of centralized planning in global marketplaces.  A few thousand extremely wealthy people making decisions on the allocation of our collective wealth.  The result was inevitable:  gross misallocation across all facets of the private economy.

via JOURNAL: Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire – Global Guerrillas.

Joe Penny – Why we all have the right to a share of city space | NEF

20 Jun

… many spaces that we could once call our own, where we could linger at our leisure and experience some of the joys of urban life, have been privatised and increasingly securitised. This in turn fragments our access to the city, limiting it to those who can pay for the privilege and those who conform to narrowly defined social norms.

This problem has been most acutely felt in the great cities of America: New York and Los Angeles being prime suspects. Here, as Sharon Zukin and Don Mitchell eloquently point out, the ability to access and enjoy once freely cherished spaces has come under the almost relentless pressure of market-driven forces, often in the guise of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) which, in a predictable desire to secure their businesses and loyal consumers (and inevitably surrounding spaces), have driven out transgressive deviants – read those less likely to ‘consume’ the city, and whose presence may deter paying customers; the homeless, ‘winos’, skateboarders, and the like.

via Joe Penny – Why we all have the right to a share of city space | the new economics foundation.

Rethinking GDP: Why We Must Broaden Our Measures of Economic Success | The Nation

18 Jun

The first step is to abandon GDP, for it does more harm than good. The more difficult task is to agree on a basic set of alternative global indicators. Sustainability must be the guiding principle. Once better common metrics are established, the world market could actually begin to function as a valuable enforcement mechanism.

via Rethinking GDP: Why We Must Broaden Our Measures of Economic Success | The Nation.

Green jobs are real: U.S. solar employs more people than steel

16 Jun

With roughly 93,500 direct and indirect jobs, the American solar industry now employs about 20,000 more workers than the U.S. steel production sector. The American steel industry has historically been a symbol of the country’s industrial might and economic prosperity. But today, the solar industry has the potential to overtake that image as we build a new, clean-energy economy.

via Green jobs are real: U.S. solar employs more people than steel | Grist.

Germany to abandon nuclear power by 2022 – USATODAY.com

30 May

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s coalition government agreed early Monday to shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022, the environment minister said, making it the first major industrialized power to go nuclear-free since the Japanese disaster.

via Germany to abandon nuclear power by 2022 – USATODAY.com.

Peak Oil: A Chance to Change the World | Common Dreams

15 May

Peak Oil: A Chance to Change the World | Common Dreams.

Richard Heinberg to graduates of Worcester Polytechnic Institute:

ExxonMobil is inviting you to take your place in a fossil-fueled twenty-first century. But I would argue that Exxon’s vision of the future is actually just a forward projection from our collective rear-view mirror. Despite its high-tech gadgetry, the oil industry is a relic of the days of the Beverly Hillbillies. The fossil-fueled sitcom of a world that we all find ourselves still trapped within may, on the surface, appear to be characterized by smiley-faced happy motoring, but at its core it is monstrous and grotesque. It is a zombie energy economy.

Preserving Biodiversity, Making our Food Supply Resilient

4 May

In the 19th century there were 7100 named varieties of apples in America. Now 6800 of those varieties are gone. That’s a terrible loss.

Not just for the principle of the thing – be kind of Mother Earth and all that – but because our survival depends on biodiversity. Now more so than ever because we’re entering an era of rapid and unpredictable climate change. No matter what we do to stem global warming, some amount of climate change is inevitable. If we act prudently in the next few decades we can slow the change, but we can’t stop it.

And that means the the world’s food plants are going to face new weather pattens. Is there enough biodiversity in our food crops to survive the coming changes?

Gary Fowler has been addressing the problem:

Tucked away under the snows of the Arctic Circle is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Sometimes called the doomsday vault, it’s nothing less than a backup of the world’s biological diversity in a horticultural world fast becoming homogenous in the wake of a flood of genetically identical GMOs.

For Cary Fowler, a self-described Tennessee farm boy, this vault is the fulfillment of a long fight against shortsighted governments, big business and potential disaster. Inside the seed vault, Fowler and his team work on preserving wheat, rice and hundreds of other crops that have nurtured humanity since our ancestors began tending crops — and ensuring that the world’s food supply has the diversity needed to stand against the omnipresent threats of disease, climate change and famine.

You can listen to his TED talk at this link (17 minutes). Here’s his organization, the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

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Fracking Discussion on Blogging Heads TV

23 Apr

Andrew Revkin and Abrahm Lustgarten discuss fracking (27 minutes). This discussion is going to become more and more intense as fracking itself becomes more intense. Fracking makes more natural gas available than before, but at what cost? Do we even know how to estimate the costs? What about the physician’s oath: Do no harm?

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