Bookshelf
From Global Research: Fundamentally, this book is a call to action. Author Robert J. Burrowes uncovers the critical role played by the global power elite in creating our present predicament. If we cannot persuade the global power elite to respond sensibly to that predicament, or nonviolently compel it to do so, humanity’s time on Earth is indeed limited….
Read More about Giants: The Global Power Elite
ALTERNATIVES
From The Revelator: In the year ahead we all need to stand up and let our elected officials and unelected corporate power-brokers know what really matters to us and to the planet. We need to demand transparency and the truth, rapid change, renewed protections for imperiled species and a commitment to sustainability on all fronts….
Read More about 2018: The year things fell apart — or the year the tide turned?
ALTERNATIVES
In this book, Kerryn Higgs traces the rise of economic growth to the status of the number one goal of nations, and how this pernicious idea prevailed over carefully reasoned counter-arguments through well-funded, carefully orchestrated propaganda. Its a kick in the head for those of us who believe in the persuasive power of reasoned argument….
Read More about Herman Daly reviews ‘Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet’
Development/Growth
From The Independent: Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources….
Read More about Nafeez Ahmed: This is how UN scientists are preparing for capitalism’s demise
Consumerism/Lifestyle
From The Tyee: Ellul predicted the chaotic tyranny we pretend is the good life in technological society. Just as Marx deftly outlined how capitalism threw up new social classes, political institutions and economic powers in the 19th century, Ellul charted the ascent of technology and its impact on politics, society and economics in the 20th….
Read More about Jacques Ellul: The Karl Marx of the 20th century
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The Guardian: On the eve of the UN’s annual climate conference, many experts believe the world may no longer be hovering at the edge of destruction but has probably crossed a crucial point of no return. Climate catastrophe now looks inevitable; we’ve simply left it too late to hold global temperatures to under 1.5C….
Read More about Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe
CLIMATE CRISIS
The recent Special Report by the IPCC was widely described as giving a stark warning about risks faced by humanity if climate change is not dealt with urgently. What exactly does this imply, and how reliable is this document? We present analyses by Michael Mann, Richard Heinberg, Ratheesh Pisharody, Adam Markham, Kevin Anderson and Padmini Gopal….
Read More about The IPCC Special Report on climate change: A dissection
William Nordhaus
Bookshelf
William Nordhaus’ low-ball estimates of the costs of climate change and high-ball estimates of the costs of containing the threat contributed to a lost decade in the fight against climate change, lending intellectual legitimacy to denial and delay. The IPCC report, released the day Nordhaus got his Nobel, heightens the award’s absurdity, writes Eugene Linden….
Read More about The economics Nobel went to a guy who enabled climate change denial and delay
ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
From The Guardian: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5 billion years….
Read More about Extinction is now outpacing evolution; humans are ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists
ALTERNATIVES
We’re on track for four degrees of warming, more than twice as much as most scientists believe is possible to endure without inflicting climate suffering on hundreds of millions or threatening at least parts of what we call, grandly, “civilization.” The only thing that changed is that the scientists, finally, have hit the panic button….
Read More about David Wallace-Wells: UN says climate genocide is coming. It’s actually worse.
CLIMATE CRISIS
A Special Report on Global Warming has been released today by the IPCC, considered the international benchmark on climate change. Ahead of it, Donald Brown reviewed three independent studies which show that climate change is a much more urgent and serious threat than indicated by past IPCC reports, and examines the ethical questions they raise….
Read More about The IPCC systematically underestimates climate risks: here’s the proof
Development/Growth
Ten years after the global financial crisis, a debt-fuelled world economy is headed towards another crash, the IMF has warned. With the Rupee at a record low, unemployment at a 20-year high, and 78 of its largest corporations defaulting on massive debts, India’s rapidly emerging as the epicentre of a crisis that could dwarf 2008….
Read More about Red Alert: India and world hurtling towards financial meltdown
CLIMATE CRISIS
From The New Republic: Climate scientists predict deadly tropical cyclones will become rainier; that they may move more slowly and venture further into the northern hemisphere; and the hurricane season may become longer. The developed world’s emissions will be responsible for these changes. But it is the developing world that may suffer the most from it….
Read More about The less you did to cause climate change, the more likely you are to pay its price
Illustration by Cathryn Virginia
Culture/Cognition
David A. Banks writes in The Baffler: Engineering has not strayed far from its military origins… Engineers are trained to “plug into chain-of-command decision making structures… In times like these it is important to remember that border walls, nuclear missiles, and surveillance systems do not work, and won’t even exist, without the cooperation of engineers….
Read More about Engineered for Dystopia
CLIMATE CRISIS
Douglas Rushkoff writes: (The billionaires I recently met) were preparing for a digital future that transcends the human condition altogether while insulating themselves from a very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is really about just one thing: escape….
Read More about How the wealthy are plotting to leave us behind: An inside account
ALTERNATIVES
It’s no longer possible to separate the health of the planet from the health of its people. Disease patterns are changing as the climate does, and human health is at risk from loss of biodiversity, depleted water supplies, environmental toxins, and collapsing food systems. From this realisation has come a new research field: planetary health….
Read More about Science in the Anthropocene: The emerging field of Planetary Health
Appuppen
Conserve/Resist
Gopal Sathe writes: The AP government now has access the intimate personal details of 43 million of the state’s 50 million residents: GPS coordinates of their homes, medicines they use, the food rations they eat, real-time feeds of thousands of security cameras, their castes and sub-castes, their religion, and of course — their Aadhaar numbers….
Read More about How Andhra Pradesh built India’s first police state using Aadhaar and a Census
CLIMATE CRISIS
From Grist Magazine: It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of civilization, and the world is being battered by extreme weather events – unprecedented heatwaves in japan, wildfires in Greece and the Arctic Circle, and flooding in Philippines and Laos, where a dam was washed away, forcing thousands to flee….
Read More about The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.
CLIMATE CRISIS
Climate science has consistently underestimated the effect of biology on climate. A geomechanical bias holds sway, seeing life as hostage to fluctuations in atmospheric components. In contrast, a living planet view holds that fundamentally it’s life itself that maintains the conditions for life, and the depletion of life is the biggest threat to the climate….
Read More about Charles Eisenstein: Why I am afraid of global coolingCLIMATE CRISIS
4200 years ago, a sweeping mega-drought devastated agricultural societies across the globe, wiping out civilizations from Ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia, Palestine and the Yangtze River Valley. Now, scientists say the cataclysmic event marks the beginning of a new geologic age: Late Holocene Meghalayan, which encompasses everything from the start of the drought to the present….
Read More about Welcome to the Meghalayan Age, the latest stage in Earth’s history
