That title says it all. The lives of our children and their children depend on biodiversity. We need all the species, alive and well.
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Rare Species Of Frog May Hold Cure To…Ah, Never Mind, It’s Extinct | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
15 MayPeak Oil: A Chance to Change the World | Common Dreams
15 MayPeak 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.
The People vs. Goldman Sachs
12 MayHere’s the kicker for Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone:
A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges
And here’s the first paragraph:
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Yep. What’re the chances that they’ll get more than a slap on the wrist, if that? The answer to that depends, in part, on how much We the People kick up a fuss. And even then, it’s iffy if anything more than a wet noodle will be used to slap those wrists with the gold handcuffs.
Truth and Traditions Defined
12 MayWhat do we mean by Truth with a capital T?
The Republican Party is based on a growing cluster of denials, distortions and outright lies that some of us will not forgive or forget. Dennis Kucinich put together a list of 35 impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors that included the particulars of lies that pushed us into very costly (in innocents killed and a trillion borrowed dollars) and unwinnable wars. Both the admitted and the unconfessed spying activities which invaded the privacy of millions of Americans, plus the manipulation of intelligence and intelligence gathering agents — go read the list of 35 articles and weep for the shredded Constitution and Bill of Rights, the lost 9th Amendment rights to privacy and to a clean conscience as a citizen. The Declaration of Independence was trashed too. In 8 years of Bush/Cheyny building up their personal wealth with war operations, we lost everything of quality, every virtue, that America ever stood for: morality, integrity, honesty, humility, rule of law., freedom, justice — all out the window.
That’s one inconvenient truth: our loss of everything good we ever stood for.
The inconvenient truth of climate change is another. The inconvenient truths of peak oil now, peak drinkable water now, peak everything on the horizon, as far as the eye can see. The many, many ugly truths of war and waste have been systematically unexamined by our corporate owned mass media who stand to profit by ignoring news unfit for them to print or speak.
Green Branding: Authenticity Matters
10 MayGreen marketing expert Jacquelyn Ottman remarks on a recent NYTimes piece reporting
… that green brands launched in recent years by mainstream marketers such as Clorox (Green Works) and S.C. Johnson (Nature’s Source), had experienced sharp sales declines during 2009 and that introductions of green brands were off during that period, too. And then I perked up. The article went on to report that, in stark contrast —even during the recession—brands like Seventh Generation and Method experienced double-digit growth and market share gains, too.
She goes on to observe: “It’s easy for consumers to tell that Green Works and Nature’s Source are made by the same companies that produce the ‘brown’ products consumers are trying to shift away from.” Perhaps the green community actually cares about deep company values and genuine commitment to sustainability.
Encyclopedia of Earth
10 May“The Encyclopedia is a free, expert-reviewed collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and experts who collaborate and review each other’s work. The articles are written in non-technical language and are useful to students, educators, scholars, professionals, as well as to the general public.”
Check it out. For, example, here’s the article on US Nuclear Policy Issues; the next big earthquake in Northern California: overgrazing: and Energy Transitions, Past and Future.
“Omnivorous Energy” – A Strategy for Local Resilience
9 MayJohn Robb at Global Guerrillas has a provocative pair of posts. First, on energy omnivores vs. specialists:
- The generalist (aka The Omnivore). Able to consume a wide variety of energy although at an efficiency penalty.
- The specialist. Able to access and consume a very narrow type of energy in a highly efficient way.
We’re in an era of change, so the specialist is vulnerable, as the specialist’s favored resources may disappear. But the omnivore can take whatever’s available and so has an advantage. Thus “we need to adopt more of an omnivore strategy in regards to nearly everything we do.” So, broaden your skill set, diversify investments, really diversify: “An omnivorous investment strategy puts resources into communities and technologies that will be there even when most financial assets are imploding.”
A second post talks more directly about energy:
One of the methods I recommend to reduce that vulnerability is to use microgrids. Microgrids are essentially a local controlled electricity network that makes it possible for communities to create dynamic local markets for electricity production and consumption that can zoom innovation and investment. When we first began to talk about microgrids, the technologies involved were merely plans on paper. Now, a mere three years later, we see offerings from many major technology companies (with the potential of open source projects that can open up this tech for everyone).
Moving along:
A truly resilient strategy for the local production of energy (both heat and power) should be able to consume nearly any type of fuel. In essence, our energy consumption strategy needs to be omnivorous — it can eat anything. Currently, the vast majority of the energy we consume is produced through purchasing and running dedicated systems — i.e. furnaces that burn natural gas, oil, or wood. Also, these systems must be able to produce a range of outputs, from heat to electrical power as needed.
14 inches, what does it mean?
7 MayThe Northwest coast may see a 14-inch rise in sea level by 2050. Emma Mustich reports in Salon:
Salon spoke to professor Peter Ward, author of “The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps” (whom we’ve interviewed before), who explained that while a 14-inch sea level rise is frightening enough on its own, it’s the specter of a resulting “storm surge” — and the failure of many local authorities to plan effectively for the future — that actually worries him the most.
Better start Transition planning NOW.
Why the TNT Party WILL Make a Difference
6 MayThe Truth and Traditions Party will make a difference because it stands on the side of history. A simple claim, but true. We do not claim we’re alone in standing on the side of history, not at all. But we do claim that, in their allegiance to Big Money, the Democrats and Republicans have consigned themselves to the dust bins of history.
In a searching and imaginative examination of American history from colonial times to the present, William Robert Fogel, economic historian and Nobel Laureate, has argued that our history is driven by periodic revivals asserting egalitarian claims over against social hierarchy that creates increasing gaps between the rich and the poor. His book, The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism (Chicago 1999), is built on anthropological work on revivalism and on religious history.
From the publisher’s blurb:
To understand what is taking place today, we need to understand the nature of the recurring political-religious cycles called “Great Awakenings.” Each lasting about 100 years, Great Awakenings consist of three phases, each about a generation long.
A cycle begins with a phase of religious revival, propelled by the tendency of new technological advances to outpace the human capacity to cope with ethical and practical complexities that those new technologies entail. The phase of religious revival is followed by one of rising political effect and reform, followed by a phase in which the new ethics and politics of the religious awakening come under increasing challenge and the political coalition promoted by the awakening goes into decline. These cycles overlap, the end of one cycle coinciding with the beginning of the next.
Here’s the four cycles laid out in brief form. As the blurb has notes each cycle of revivalist activity lasts a century or more and goes through three phases. The American Revolution happened during the second phase of the first revival cycle and the Civil War happened during the second phase of the second revival cycle. The third cycle gave us the labor reforms, civil rights, and women’s rights movements of mid-20th century America.
Preserving Biodiversity, Making our Food Supply Resilient
4 MayIn 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.
Truth and Traditions 