George Monbiot writes: If humanity fails to prevent climate breakdown, the industry that bears the greatest responsibility is not transport, farming, gas, oil or even coal. All of them can behave as they do, shunting us towards systemic collapse. The problem begins with the industry that, wittingly or otherwise, grants them this licence: the media….
Read More about The climate crisis is already here – but no one’s telling us
Common Dreams reports: Environmental records of all kinds are being shattered as climate change takes effect in real time, a new climate research report says. 2015 was the hottest year on record since at least the mid-to-late 19th century, confirming the “toppling of several symbolic milestones” in global temperature, sea level rise, and extreme weather….
Read More about Climate change is here and now, warns dire new report
National Geographic reports: Around the world, alarms are being sounded about groundwater depletion. Underground water is being pumped so aggressively globally that land is sinking, civil wars are being waged, and agriculture is being transformed. According to scientist Jay Famiglietti, the areas where aquifiers are under the greatest threat are also the most heavily populated….
Read More about What you need to know about the world’s water wars
Green anarchist John Zerzan is arguably the world’s most prominent anti-technology philosopher. His new book, Why Hope? The Stand Against Civilization, published by Feral House, makes the startling argument that ‘nothing produced by civilization can ever redeem the systematic attempt it has undertaken these few millennia to destroy or alienate human connection with the earth.”…
Read More about The Anarcho-Primitivist who wants us all to give up technologyChris Martenson writes: The main issue is simple: putting in steel reinforcing bars lowers the cost and weight of installing reinforced concrete, but at the severe expense of reducing its lifespan. In other words, literally everything you see today that’s made of concrete will need to be replaced within a hundred years of its installation….
Read More about How industrial civilisation is (literally) built on a foundation with an expiry dateJohn Cook writes: An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about the threat of climate change, starring former US vice president Al Gore, was released ten years ago. It has undoubtedly made a mark, winning two Oscar awards, and the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Gore. But has the film achieved what it set out to do?…
Read More about Ten years on: how Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ made its mark
IISc
Recent research by IISc reveals startling numbers on Bangalore’s reckless urbanization and its consequences: during 1973–2016 (1005% concretization or increase of paved surface) has had a telling influence on the natural resources, such as decline in green spaces (88% decline in vegetation), wetlands (79% decline), higher air pollutants and a sharp decline in groundwater table….
Read More about Red alert: India’s technology capital headed for system failure
Bharat Dogra writes: The full dimensions of the environmental crisis in the 21st century need to be understood in wider terms of several critical parameters, together disrupting the life-creating conditions on earth to such an extent as to pose nothing less than a survival crisis for many forms of life and ultimately for human beings….
Read More about Environment: It’s a question of survival now
What the flashing neon words on the wall seem to be saying is: negative interest rates are on the way throughout the “developed world.” In due course, they will demolish any remaining value of the US dollar, and blow up the bond bubble. In turn, this financial collapse will trigger the next stage: commercial collapse….
Read More about Dmitry Orlov: Negative interest rates and the impending global financial collapse
David Blittersdorf writes: Our industrial society can handle about a 10% voluntary energy reduction across the board, doing things like walking more and carpooling. To get to the necessary level (which, by some estimations, will be about a 60-80% decrease in energy usage), will be impossible unless we change the way we think about things….
Read More about The Peak Oil dilemma
Gail Tverberg writes: Growth in energy consumption is dependent on the growth of debt. Both energy and debt have characteristics that are close to “magic” when it comes to economic growth, which can only take place when debt (or a close substitute, such as company stock) is available to enable the use of energy products….
Read More about Debt: The key factor connecting energy and the economy
Sea level rise has washed away more than 50% of Ghoramara island, Sunderbans
Daesung Lee
Kanti Bajpai writes: India’s water crisis is a clear sign that a storm of epic proportions is on its way. India’s per capita water availability is now below the threshold level of 1,400 cubic metres per person. If so, India is heading from ‘water stress’ to ‘water scarcity’ and the possibility of internal water wars….
Read More about India’s perfect storm: Environmental and demographic stresses building up
Donna Harraway: I’m going to propose that the Cthulucene might be a way to collect up the questions for naming the epoch, for naming what’s happening in the airs, waters, and places, in the rocks, oceans, and atmospheres. Perhaps needing both the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene, but offering something else, something just maybe more livable….
Read More about Anthropocene, or the art of living on a damaged planet
The essential argument of Satyajit Das’ new book is: “The 2008 crisis showed that perpetual growth is an illusion. It exposed the high debt levels, credit-driven consumption, global imbalances and excessive financialisation that underpinned an unsustainable economic model, coinciding with an emerging scarcity of energy, food and water, and increasing evidence of climate change impact.”…
Read More about A Banquet of Consequences: A compelling critique of all that is wrong with the world economy
Ugo Bardi writes: Their oversized antlers were beneficial for Irish Elk males in sexual competition. However, the weight of the antlers was also a burden and it has been argued that it was perhaps the main reason that led to the extinction of this species. With humans, we may consider language to be the same. …
Read More about How the greatest technology ever developed backfired on us
John Michael Greer writes: We are about to witness the disintegration of everything that counts as business as usual, and the opening phases of a bleak new reality that author Frank Landis has sketched out in his Hot Earth Dreams—a brilliant fictional take on what the world will look like in the wake of severe climate change….
Read More about Bookshelf: Hot Earth Dreams by Hank Landis
Ugo Bardi writes: Something like Trump was unavoidable. He is best defined as the visible effect of the ongoing social phase transition. A symptom of the ongoing breakdown of the social pact in the West. A discrete change in our path in the direction of collapse, in turn precipitated by depletion of resources, especially energy….
Read More about Connecting the rise of Donald Trump with global resource depletion
In this article, Sagar Dhara examines Capitalism’s crucial tipping points: The first, the impending energy and natural resource crisis, related to the sourcing of raw materials. The second, inequality, related to the production of goods and services. The third, global warming, which is related to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in excess of the earth’s sink capacity….
Read More about Global capitalism is facing three tipping pointsChris Martenson writes: The data seems to confirm this: Humanity is not going to painlessly wean itself off of fossil fuels. Instead, we will hit some sort of a wall: a food/population crisis, a climate crisis, or a debt/fiscal/economic crisis. Each of those candidates has its roots in our global society’s addition to fossil fuels….
Read More about Industrial civilisation can’t wean itself off fossil fuels painlessly
Elanthemag.com
Virtually everything in our homes, everything in our stores, got there on a truck. Prior to that, 90 percent of those items were transported on a ship and/or a train. If trucks, trains, and ships stopped running, our global economy and way of life would stop too. Alice Friedemann’s new book examines precisely this prospect….
Read More about Bookshelf: When trucks stop running, so does civilization
