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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


This is indeed good news. Go get um.
9/3/2009, 5:43 pm Link to this post   Blog
 
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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


24 semptember, 2009, thursday
 
      Transition Towns is attempting to found a working group in Québec province, Canada. I recently joined a Montréal "cell" and offered my services as a researcher / editor / translator for the upcoming Transition Towns launch, Nov 7, 2009.

The longest voyage begins with the first step.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/postcarbonmontreal/

"You mention a Nov 7, 2009 TT event, a possible presentation on Peak Oil Transition. If you need someone to do online research, text writing, editing, or translation (both ways), please call on me. I could put aside 6-10 hours per work for the period leading up to the conference. I want to get involved.

           Ecologically, Frank"
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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


monday, 28 september, 2009

http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-powerdown-show/

This is a video on the work of the Transition Towns initiative. These folks’ philosophy seems to be to search for the silver lining of community empowerment and economic resilience in the dark cloud of Post Peak Oil. I like the “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” attitude.

In my own city, Montréal, Québec, Canada, an attempt to launch a Transition Towns initiative is just begining this autumn. Time will tell what it brings – qui vivra verra!

There is surprising amount of material accessible on the net. Try a google search with

keywords: COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
exact phrase: “PEAK OIL”

http://www.google.ca/search?as_q=community+resilience&hl=fr&num=10&btnG=Recherche+Google&as_epq=peak+oil&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&cr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images

168,000 hits! (Maybe the tide is changing..)

and a search on google BOOKS with the same keys located nearly 30 recent texts:

http://books.google.fr/books?lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&q=community+resilience+%22peak+oil%22&as_brr=0&sa=N&start=0
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Monday, 26 October, 2009

A dangerous book!

David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith: The Climate Cahnge Challenge and the failure of Democracy, Praeger, Westport, Connecticut, 2007, 181 pages

 
Contains index, footnotes, exceedingly well documented

Part of the Praeger Politics and the Environment series. The authors are environmentalists, academics, authors, physician, scientist, lawyer, philosopher - definitely not people to dismiss - which renders the book the more dangerous, being signed by such (apparently) credible witnesses.

The authors are committed environmentalists with quite a few notches on their guns. The book begins with the unoffensive dedication:

This book is dedicated to all who work for a truly equitable and environmentally sustainable world

The authors then procede to a devastating analysis of "liberalism", democracy and "liberal democracy" showing how they have aided and abetted enivronmental crises: climate change, habitat destruction, etc. Their analysis is cogent and deserves reading and reflection upon.

Unfortunately, the authors then procede into a minefield of semantic errors and draw some really dangerous conclusions from their faulted logic.

ERRORS:

1- They conflate "liberalism" with "economic liberalism", ignoring the antinomian, paradoxical nature of the latter: unfettered freedom to accumulate leads necessarily to inequality of power / opportunity thus negating the liberal ideology used to justify economic liberalism.

Liberalism: attitude, philosophy, or movement that has as its basic concern the development of personal freedom and social progress.


http://ca.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761552311/Liberalism.html

2- Critique of Democracy. Representative democracy leads to "temporal myopia". Politicians pander to the electorate's basest drives in order to win the next election. In effect, society ends up incapable of thinking or seeing more than four years ahead. Politicians also must pander to corporate power both for campaign contributions and to provide jobs to buy votes. These critiques are, alas, all too true but do they necessarily apply, to such an extreme degree, to decentralized, community based, participatory forms of democracy? The authors make the mistake of painting all forms of "democracy" with the same brush when, in fact, there may be vital differences which need to be explored and exploited for socity's benefit.
 
3- The authors employ a facile, "common sense", Darwinism-based argument to justify authoritarian, top-down social regulation: authoritarianism is genetically programmed. This is virtually undeniable: man is, after all, a terrestrial vertebrate (mammal) and, at the most primitive level of social behavior should - obviously! - function like other mammals, dduuhhh.. See, for example, Stanley Milgram's pioneering research on "authoritarian compliance":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

The authors then go on, from this sociobiological truism to argue, counter-factually, that democracy can't work and that some form of idealistic authoritarianism is needed to save the world from greed and plunder
 
The big "elephant in the room" that these authors ignore is that man is also, almost certainly, "genetically programmed" for face-to-face, participatory, "tribal village democracy". Stop to think about it for a second: why, exactly, did the human capacity for speech arise? Other higher primates don't have this highly evolved, "genetically programmed" capacity for communication through speech. Not the gorilla, nor the chimpanze, nor even the ourang-outang (though they come closest to us in this ability). Speech communication synergistically co-evolved with face-to-face, participatory, "tribal village democracy", the oldest, primordial form of human governance. That is to say, our ancestors were "naturally selected" to speak - and speak well - because group solidarity and group co-ordination, which possess "survival value", are facilitated by the capacity to communicate effectively vocally.

4- The authors blame liberals for the crimes of the neocons (who intensely hate liberals!). Thus the politics of fear of the Bush Administration as well as the abolition of human rights at Guantanamo Bay are laid squarely at the doorstep of "liberalism, liberals, democracy and liberal democracy". This is painting with a broad brush indeed! (The authors' penchant to conflate all these terms together, wily-nily, is itself a warning that a stretch of faulty logic is ahead. It is reminiscent of the Right's tendancy to conflate "liberals", "socialists", "secularists", "humanists", "secular humanists", "atheists", "communists", etc: escher: )
 
What I find disturbing about this book is not so much its content or its argument - who among us has not proven wrong-headed on occasion? - but the fact that it is published by Praeger in their Politics and the Environment series: the book is intended to be a serious intellectual contribution to a serious social issue. I can't really blame Praegar though: if this is where we have arrived as a society, so be it! It is the fact that we have actually arrived at this level of intellectual bankruptcy as a civilization that is chilling.

The authors themselves seem relatively "blameless" too. From my reading, they arrived at their tragic conclusions out of desperation at the failure of modern society to halt its headlong rush toward ecological suicide. They appear, in effect, to be decent men acting from good, not evil, intent. And THAT really sends chills up my spine.. emoticon

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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


Thursday, 29 October, 2009

The corporate elite and their government cronies will desperately try to re-inflate the burst bubble of the speculative globalized "free market" economy. They haven’t learnt anything from the financial-economic crisis of the past year because they inhabit a bubble universe pinched off from physical reality and founded on abstract flows of currency, the status and false wealth based on those flows. Despite recent green-mouthing, the elite does not grasp that all REAL wealth is ECOLOGICAL in nature, based on living, self-regenerating processes; real wealth is not found in non-renewable resources (which, by definition, deplete and exhaust).
 
The proof is in the pudding!
 
- Industrial economics depleted the planet’s non-renewable resource base in a mere 2 centuries.
 
- Life, on the other hand, has been self-sustaining, self-regenerating (and evolving) for 4 BILLION YEARS; that’s 20,000,000 times longer than the entire life of industrial society!!

Obama and company make the error of attempting to revivify a corpse: the globalized, fossil fuel economy IS ALREADY DEAD. They mistake post-mortem twitches as signs of life and imminent recovery..

In reality - physical reality - the fossil fuel economy is dead because of Peak Oil. The global economy may indeed “recover” in fits and starts for a few years, only to falter again as oil prices spike due to increased demand. The fact is, the days of cheap oil are over and, with them, the globalized “free market” economy based on cheap oil.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50450
(some of these folk work in the oil industry!)

Oil will not run out tomorrow (or the day after) but CHEAP oil production cannot keep pace with rising demand from burgeonning economies (India, China..). Prices will rise, creating a “tight supply” market (Classical Economics 101, freshman year).

Worse, speculation on oil futures will create oil price spikes followed by crashes when bubbles burst and panic selling sets in. This is called “volatility” and will stunt alternative fuel development projects.

Consider Natural Gas Liquification. Infrastructure costs are huge which requires a long “look ahead” period of stable fossil fuel prices in order to ASSURE RETURN ON INVESTMENT. (Oil and gas prices are linked because they can inter-substitute as energy sources, to some degree.)
 
The facts are simple: we waited too long to deploy “bridging technologies” as transitional energies sources to a sustainable, renewable energy future.

Bridging technologies (large sense): natural gas, remaining cheap oil reserves, energy conservation / efficiency, public transport, (even) nuclear energy.. We frittered away these resources and the most precious resource of all, TIME, in order to persue the short term pleasures our ad men programmed us to persue. Now we pay the consequences..

For me, the “golden window of opportunity” to use bridging technologies to transition to a clean energy future was, roughly, 1960 to 1990 (at the very latest).

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”, outlining some of the threats to the environment and the consequences thereof, was published circa 1960. If the political will existed, world governments could have commissioned scientific teams to investigate global environmental challenges and appropriate ways to deal with them. This work could have been completed by 1970. Again, with political will, the UN could have initiated a global “Manhattan Project” (atom bomb program of World War II) to assure that global energy and food requirement would be met in a sustainable, self-regenerating fashion. Such a project could – with political will – have gotten off the ground circa 1975.
This, however, was not the trajectory followed. As a result, we are today IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT BALL GAME WITH A NEW SET OF RULES. The business and political elites are blissfully ignorant of this reality, I feel, although some commentators hypothesize that an "Inner Circle" of hypercynics has understood the implication of Peak Oil for years and is deliberately attempting to profit from the last days of the dying fossil fuel economy to the detriment of future generations. This would explain, I guess, the bizarre behavior of the oil industry friendly US government during the Kyoto Accord discussions: not content with simply not participating in carbon emission reductions, they appeared to willfully sabotage the diliberations for all parties.

to be continued
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Thursday, 29 October, 2009, continued

However, all is not doom ‘n gloom! There is, in fact, reason for hope even with the poo in the fan. Life, science tells us, evolves under the pressure of change, even REQUIRES it: adapt or die off! There is plenty of evidence to support this proposition from the fossil record of early life. “Cephalized” (”brainy”) lifeforms – if they survive an extinction event – respond by becoming brainier, more adaptive. “Necessity is the mother of invention” in the biological and social-cultural realms.

If this is true, we should “look forward” :0 to a time of increasing stress, chaos, and conflict with – on the PLUS SIDE – a real chance to AFFECT REAL POSITIVE CHANGE TOWARDS A BETTER, MORE HUMANE, MORE HUMAN SOCIETY. In Ecolgical Christian terms we are given the challenge \ opportunity of becoming ”co-creators with God in bringing about his Kingdom on Earth”. Researchers like Edgar Morin (“La Méthode”), Illya Prigogine (Nobel Prize for research into self-organizing systems), Robert Reid (“Biological Emergences”, MIT Press) recognize such times as critical phases of RAPID transition / selection that “program” the future evolution of the system in question for long periods of time. Example: the asteroid that slammed into earth 65 million years ago, ending the reign of the dinosaurs and beginning that of the mammals (us!). As Illya Prigogine who won the Nobel prize for his work on self-organizing systems put it, “timing is of the essence” at such times: relatively small efforts or impulses can deflect the system off along one of SEVERAL RADICALLY DIFFERENT evolutionary trajectories. In our times, we could envision “scenarios” like
 
- extinction of life on earth (exceedingly unlikely in the extreme)

- extinction of human life (quite unlikely)

- extinction of SciTech culture (”new stone age” – moderately unlikely)

- a chaotic, nasty transition to a sustainable Space Age culture (a weak version of the previous scenario which includes a rebound / recovery – fairly likely)

- a “utopian” revolution (à la Marx) to a sustainable Space Age (rather unlikely)

- various HiTech dystopias (?? likelihood ??)

and so on (use your imagination!). The point is, THIS IS A TIME OF CHOOSING, SELECTING THAT WHICH WILL COME. The hick is that none of us knows whether or not his action will have the intended outcome. :0 But change things we must; in fact, we cant’t help it: even BREATHING actively maintains the atmosphere at its current chemical composition. In an interconnected world, we are actors WHETHER OR NOT WE LIKE IT.
 
SOME positive outcomes of de-globalization as the fossil fuel economy fizzles out:

- shipping food over god-awful distances will disappear. Food will be grown regionally / locally (except, ideally, for exotics like tropical spices which have a high value per unit weight). This saves energy in transport, reduces pollution. If well managed, this transition could lead to healthier, fresher, more nutritious food which is less contaminated by carcinogenic / mutagenic pesticides. Land management should – and should be MADE TO – improve with less nitrogen and phosphorous runoff to watercourses. Land quality should improve. At present, industrial agrigulture impoverishes the organic, life-sustaining properties of the soil. In an overpopulated planet such practices are non-sustainable, patently insane and MUST BE ELIMINATED! The collapse of globalized agro-industry can aid this process by elimination faulty, unecological farming practices. People will be able to get to know their farmer again: farmer, consumer and farmer / consumer coops are becoming viable business models, all to the benefit of local famers and consumers. We need to ACTIVELY ACCELERATE THESE PROCESSES OF POSITIVE CHANGE IN OUR LOCAL COMMUNITIES as much as we can! “Think globally / act locally” is truer now than it ever was.

- if the transition to “post-growth” economies is well managed, so that people don’t end up starving for example, people will once again begin to make contact with the REAL VALUES OF LIFE like family, community, personal effort and achievement, group effort and achievement, cultural and spiritual expression, artistic creation, etc. Consumerism, in order to function, must expel such vital values from human life. The lack of real satisfactions in life creates an ETERNAL HUNGER for SUBSTITUTE satisfactions which globalized consumer industry feeds off. Man does not live by bread alone.

- localized / regionalized production of energy in DECENTRALIZED / DISTRIBUTED consumer /producer grids, if well designed, produces energy intelligently. Less infrastructure is needed for energy transport and less energy is lost in transmission since most energy (electricity) is consumed close to the point where it is generated. This means less pollution and less use of non-renewable resources. Electric meters should run both ways: you buy electricity from the grid when you need it; your house (or neighborhood) supplies electricity to the grid when you produce a surplus (for this YOU get paid by the electric utility).

- More local / regional production means less road, rail, air or sea transport of goods: less energy consumed, less pollution, less environmental destruction (for example in extraction of energy resources). This means, in practice, cleaner air and water, less climate change, less extreme weather (and geopolitical instability from crop failures). It also means less health problems related to pollution. We have paid a high price for our consumer society! There are many “externalized” – hidden – costs in the present system of production !!! (”Hidden subsidies” to pollutors for example: the pollutor saves money on pollution abatement equipment; the poor sucker living down wind / stream pays with health problems as does the public health system: “socialism for the rich”!)

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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


samhain, 2009

Your not afraid of Global Warming (GW)??

Maybe you ought to be !! Take a look at the critters that some experts claim were wiped out by GW at the end of the Permian:

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/enlarge/dinogorgon-skull.html

SCARED?

WHAT TO DO: let's create writers' circles to research and promote Sustainable Development (SD). Each group will operate on it's home turf or, using the web and other resources, reach out to a larger audience: letters to the editor, op-ed pieces; community, parish, professional or leisure group bulletins; community or student radio, etc. Circles can aid each other using the web to exchange info, texts, experience.. Be creative!

INTERESTED ??

[email protected]

Postscript: would you be kind enough to pass this note on to other persons who could help us? Thanks!

meure UN monde que Le Monde naisse!

Let A world die so that The World be born!


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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


Wednesday, 16 December, 2009 new moon

I am including a part of an e-mail from Agnes here; I hope this doesn't bother you but I think the issue is important enough to share with others.

"This climategate issue is clouding things up at Copenhagen. I watched CNN International on Sat. They were broadcasting live from Copenhagen and climategate was the lead topic.The damage this has done is huge."

I'm not sure the damage is so huge. My argument: The public appears incapable of assessing the real dangers posed by GW and/or our educational system fails to provide the average citizen with the means to understand scientific debates. (I believe both of these conditions are true). If the public were able to appreciate the threat of GW and/or were able to understand scientific debates, the CNN crap coverage would simply roll off their backs like water off a duck's. Since neither of these conditions appears to hold they are susceptible to GW denial crap. In other words, climategate becomes relevant only in a climate of generalized disempowerement of the masses.

On a completely different level, climategate is irrelevant simply because it represents the climate of dirty tricks prevailing (in large part instigated by the GW deniers / fossil fuel lobby). It has nothing to do with the PHYSICAL evidence for GW which, as far as I can see is incontrovertible. Example: the pulse of heat created since the industrial revolution propagates SLOWLY through the earth. Temperature measured in deep mines and bore holes at various depths clearly shows this pulse. What more can I say: it's either their or it ain't - climategate notwithstanding, ddduuuhhhh.. emoticon

http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/~shaopeng/earth1.html

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth501/content/p5_p3.html

see section "measurements from boreholes"

[url]http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:_zRnOCk4kIgJ:
mgg.coas.oregonstate.edu/~rob/5_Harris%26Chapman1_JGR98.
pdf+depth+temperature+borehole+
industrialisation+OR+
industrialization+%22climate
+change%22&cd=5&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=ca[/url]

this is only an abstract. To see original article go to your local college, university or (possibly) municipal library. Be sure to call first to assure they have the Journal!

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/reader/0080453201/ref=sib_rdr_toc?ie=UTF8&p=S006&j=0#reader-page

This one is a scientific text. Note the discussion of contemporary temperature rise. You can buy this on amazon.com or SUGGEST IT TO THE ACQUISITIONS DEPT OF YOUR MUNICIPAL LIBRARY.

You can find oodles of refs on this one aspect of PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF GW by doing your own google search:

all words: depth temperature borehole

exact phrase: climate change

at least one of these terms: industrialisation industrialization

I'm sorry that some of the links given are not active. However, this poses no problemo! Just COPY the url and then PASTE it into your browser window, hit return et le voilà!
12/16/2009, 3:56 pm Link to this post Send Email to HOMBREDELATIERRA Blog
 
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Re: jumping on the activist bandwagon


Perhaps this will answer the question

Why does climategate matter?

http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/energy-climategate-investing/1031

Now heres a good explaination by New Scientist of what science knows and how it knows that GW is real.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18238-why-theres-no-sign-of-a-climate-conspiracy-in-hacked-emails.html?full=true

Needless to say, the deniers are using climategate in an all out war to defeat any action towards reducing CO2 output. Their aim is to delegitimize the science that has been produced by creating doubt in the minds of the dumb populace that all information fed into the computer models is made up by the pro GW scientists. This propaganda is being spoon fed through the media and it has already taken its toll. Polls indicate that the belief in GW has fallen to a low of 41% from a high of 62%. This is not irrelavant.


Last edited by AgnesW, 12/16/2009, 5:13 pm
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Actually, he is saying everything I do.

"We are not only lost in our illusions... we're in love with them."

Have I not said that the word which, for me, sums up best the N. American psyche is "égaré" - French: lost, especially in the sense of "having lost one's way". The MORAL sense is much stronger than in English: "brebis égarées", the lost sheep of the Gospels.

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."


Have I not often posted:

The gods blind those they would destroy - Sophocles

As a man sows, so shall he reap - Jesus


Even the author's conclusions are the same as mine:

"Instead of hoping that your fantasies of wealth will be restored when the economy recovers, think about how you can live within your means if it never does.

And finally, don't wait for leadership in Washington. Be a leader, wherever you are. Work toward sustainable solutions, not at town hall meetings — but with your family, neighbors, friends, and local governments."

I don't find anything I could disagree with.. I've never said we should not do anything! On the contrary, NOW is the time to act - as the author cited suggests: "be a leader.. work toward (concrete) sustainable solutions.. with your family, neighbors, friends, and local governments". I would only add to this "and work with your local businesses, schools, churches, clubs..".

This is exactly why I am implicating myself in the work of the local chapter of Transition Towns which is just starting to get off the ground.

 The GW deniers and the neocons have their day, and it, too, will pass. Tyranosaurus Rex had his day, it too passed.. Sic Semper Tyrannis

The New Economy (post peak oil) will have to be built from the bottom up (primarily though not exclusively). It's up to "civil society", the SOCIETY OF CITIZENS, to accomplish this work: we must empower ourselves, no one else will. One of the big jobs will be, exactly, rebuilding communities destroyed by globalization. Those who engage in this task are the pioneers of the New Economy.

The New Economy (post peak oil): tell your friends you heard about it here first.. emoticon
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