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
The focal point of The Oracle of Oil, the first biography of King Hubbert, is his distinction as the first person to recognize the phenomenon of peak oil. Hubbert spent decades studying petroleum and natural gas reserves data, hypothesizing that output from large regions—such as the United States, or the whole world—would tend to follow a bell-shaped curve….
Read More about Bookshelf: The Oracle of Oil: A Maverick Geologist’s Quest for a Sustainable Future
Pratham Books
The full text of a recent talk given by prominent ecologist Madhav Gadgil, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010. It tries to explore the significant issue of when and why people turn against conservation….
Read More about Development is for the people: A talk by Madhav Gadgil
Shunya.net
Some of us have recently created a small group called ‘Ecologise Hyderabad’. The aim of the group is to look at the many ecological crises of the city holistically, interact with experts and social activist and run programmes to strengthen the efforts of the activists in running green programmes in different localities of the city….
Read More about Ecologise Hyderabad: Workshops for Sustainability and Equality
Nesta.org.uk
Rob O’ Grady explains why none of the existing large-scale systems —be they capitalist or communist— would work. For a community to function well, it must resolve conflicts as they arise. It can only operate if we personally know every other person. This limits the maximum size of the community to Dunbar’s Number—around 150 individuals….
Read More about Bookshelf: 150 Strong – A Pathway to a Different FutureThe physics of energy and the economy evokes some trepidation. An economy seems to be a dissipative system, but what does this really mean? Not many people understand dissipative systems, and very few understand how an economy operates. The combination leads to an awfully lot of false beliefs about the energy needs of an economy….
Read More about Gail Tverberg: The Physics of Energy and the Economy
Martin Simpson writes: It is impossible to read Farmageddon without coming to the conclusion that the world’s food and agriculture system is screwed. This is a system that produces enormous quantities of food, yet wastes up to a third of it… What it also produces is environmental disaster, ill health in humans and stressful and unhealthy animals….
Read More about Bookshelf: Farmageddon – The True Cost of Cheap Meat
Mashable.com
George Dvorsky writes: Last year, SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk warned that Artificial Intelligence could “take over the world”. The day when machines become smarter than humans has never appeared closer— yet we seem no closer in grasping the implications of this epochal event. Indeed, we are clinging to some serious—and even dangerous—misconceptions about artificial intelligence….
Read More about Everything you know about Artificial Intelligence is wrongKurt Cobb writes: Latour understands that the natural world — which politics has always held at arm’s length while nevertheless dealing daily with nature’s demands — must now explicitly invite that natural world to the bargaining table. This is not about being a “nature lover” who only cares about animals and plants, but not about humans….
Read More about Bookshelf: The Politics of Nature by Bruno Latour
"The Logic of Neo-Liberalism"
John Ledger
George Monbiot writes: So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom recognise it as an ideology. We accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power….
Read More about Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems
Riber Hansson
A new study finds that climate change is triggering a massive reallocation of resources to the world’s wealthiest countries. Fish and other important resources are moving toward the Earth’s poles as the climate warms, and wealth is moving with them, according to a new paper by scientists at Rutgers, Princeton, Yale, and Arizona State universities….
Read More about Study: Climate change takes from the poor, gives to the richCowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary produced and directed by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn. It follows the intrepid filmmakers as they uncover the real impact of the livestock industry. The film investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations, including Greenpeace and Rainforest Action Network, are afraid to talk about it….
Read More about Cowspiracy: ‘The film that environmental organisations don’t want you to see’Nikhil VJ writes: Although water is a liquid, it breaks nearly all the rules that liquids follow, and has characteristics that are totally unique. It is precisely the rule-bending characteristics of water that make life possible. In what other systems can a little breaking of the rules be essential to making life possible, sustainable, thriving?…
Read More about Video: Learning from water – What if we need to disobey to survive?
From the point of view of greens, the Left in general, and Marxism in particular, is often seen as being myopic about the looming environmental crisis. Here we present a selection of articles and essays by leading writers from the Left, who are among the most interesting and constructive voices to engage with the issue….
Read More about Special: A view from the Left: Capitalism, climate change and the environment
“Some Possible Ideas For Going Forward” is a manifesto for global change, signed by leading activists, academics and intellectuals, including Noam Chomsky, to “help inspire more conversations within groups and movements that, over time, come to a synthesis… We believe only program that is fully understood and owned by grassroots participants can win lasting change.”…
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Charles Hugh Smith writes: If we don’t change the way money is created and distributed, we will never change anything. The Panama Papers offer damning proof of this: increasing concentrations of wealth and power free of constraint (like taxes) is not just the consequence of centralized money and state power, but its only possible output….
Read More about The Panama Papers: Consequences of centralised money and power
The climate crisis is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, which threatens not only global civilization, but the very survival of our species and many others. This book gives a lucid explanation of the science of climate change and illuminates the role of capitalism in creating and perpetuating the climate crisis and related dangers….
Read More about Bookshelf: Capitalism and Climate Change: The Science and Politics of Global Warming
Gail Tverberg writes: Economists have put together models of how an economy works, but these models were developed years ago, when the world economy was far from limits. These models may have been reasonably adequate when they were developed, but there is increasing evidence that they don’t work in an economy that is reaching limits….
Read More about Economic growth: How it works; how it fails; why wealth disparity occursThe world may be much closer to an abrupt and catastrophic climate shift than previously thought. That’s the warning from modern climate science pioneer James Hansen. His latest research suggests that polar ice sheet disintegration may cause sea level rise enough to drown coastal cities, not in a few centuries, but in a few decades….
Read More about Video: Climate science pioneer Hansen warns of disastrous climate shift
Much of the mainstream media, corporate lobbyists and politicians would like the public to think of climate change as something akin to a natural phenomenon. In this second part of our series on Capitalism and Climate Change, we present a selection of articles that examine the deep-seated connections between climate change and a rapacious global economic order….
Read More about Digest: Climate crisis and the myth of ‘green’ capitalism
