Limits to Growth for Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Fish Farms and Our Big Economy Crucial
Our individual and collective human effort seems to have a momentum, a predictable trajectory that tracks a compulsive course from less to more and from little to bigger. In the progression from deep to deeper and from some to many, our technology increases in sophistication, our problems rise in complexity and our risks multiply in tandem. So far we have been able to race just ahead of catastrophe. But this basic strategy is an invitation to eventual calamity, as the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico attests, as our mining pollution proves and as our fish farm problems confirm.
In the great scheme of things – should anyone feel confused about all that’s happening these days – we are presently engaged in the search for a fundamental sense of proportion and balance. This arduous process begins with global awareness. But it’s really about our inner growth and maturation, about our discovery of limits.
Moratorium on Offshore Drilling Across Top of North America Critically Important
It Could Happen Here: Canada should demand a moratorium on Arctic oil drilling until we’re certain it will be done safely – Article by Professor Michael Byers on the danger of drilling for oil in the fragile Arctic and how Canadian waters would be affected.
Imagine an Oil Rig Blowout in the Arctic. Oil Drilling There Must Be Prevented.
Two items:
Press Release from the World Wildlife Federation: All Drilling Must Be Halted in Arctic Pending Full Investigation of Gulf of Mexico Blowout; Despite calls for drilling “time-out,” Shell still set to begin exploratory drilling in Arctic on July 1 -
PARIS, May 5, 2010 (IPS) – The disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given increased urgency to the fifth Global Oceans Conference taking place here at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Changing Our Moral Consciousness, One Heron at a Time
Robert Kennedy, Jr. files lawsuit against BP. “The leak had been misreported in the media days ago when it was thought that only 5,000 gallons were spilled per day which was again incorrectly report as it turns out the oil is more than 200,000 gallons per day and it is being blown t the south coast shore of the USA.
The suit represents the fishing industry and the first suit was filed by 2 commercial shrimpers from Louisiana which research and experts have said the wetlands will never be rid of the oil – ever. This means the wetlands will be poisoned with oil that cannot be removed at any cost but the clean up alone after the oil is stopped will be into the billions and billions of dollars.”
Warnings of the Approach of Peak Oil and Its Effect on World Food Supply
There’s been a lot of stale argument recently about oil – is it running out? Are we approaching/at/passed Peak Oil (the point when global oil production goes into irrevocable decline)? Business, unsurprisingly, isn’t waiting for the answer; it’s working out what will happen next.
Take the recent report from Deutsche Bank, entitled ‘The Peak Oil Market: Price Dynamics at the End of the Oil Age’. This describes a world where the effect of failing global reserves is compounded by incoherent politics. If the US Government was honest about the cost of oil, for example, it would slap another 50c on a gallon of gasoline to pay the cost of the war in Iraq. Ludicrously, as global oil supplies dwindle, the increasingly precious part that remains is concentrated in the hands of those who give it away to their citizens for almost nothing – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq.
Governments should be planning how best to manage the limited supply of oil sensibly, for the long-term, the bankers write:
‘We believe, based on the history of the past decades, years, and months, that they will do the exact opposite.’
Is Cap and Trade Really Dead? Part III
Different models of carbon cap legislation serve different interests. Videos of Parts 4 and 5 of The Real News Network’s coverage of Carbon Cap Legislation. Paul Jay interviews Professor James Boyce of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who is also associated with the PERI Institute
“Put the polluters on trial, not the planet!”
The epic fight to ward off global warming and transform the energy system that is at the core of our planet’s economy takes many forms: huge global days of action, giant international conferences like the one that just failed in Copenhagen, small gestures in the homes of countless people. But there are a few signal moments, and one comes March 15-18, when the federal government puts Tim DeChristopher on trial in Salt Lake City. Tim—“Bidder 70”– pulled off one of the most creative protests against our runaway energy policy in years: he bid for the oil and gas leases on several parcels of federal land even though he had no money to pay for them, thus upending the auction. The government calls that “violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act” and thinks he should spend ten years in jail for the crime; we call it a noble act, a profound gesture made on behalf of all of us and of the future.
Tim’s action drew national attention to the fact that the Bush Administration spent its dying days in office handing out a last round of favors to the oil and gas industry. After investigating irregularities in the auction, the Obama Administration took many of the leases off the table, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar criticizing the process as “a headlong rush.” And yet that same Administration is choosing to prosecute the young man who blew the whistle on this corrupt process.
We cannot let this stand. When Tim disrupted the auction, he did so in the fine tradition of non-violent civil disobedience that changed so many unjust laws in this country’s past. Tim’s upcoming trial is an occasion to raise the alarm once more about the peril our planet faces. The situation is still fluid—the trial date has just been set, and local supporters are making plans for how to mark the three-day proceedings. But they are asking people around the country to flood into Salt Lake City in mid-March. If you come, there will be ample opportunity for both legal protest and civil disobedience.
