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The 2017 Center For Progressive Urban Politics Summit brought together an amazing panel that consisted of John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martenson, Frank Morris, and Dmitry Orlov. In this video, the panelists talk about global issues ranging from politics, the economy, the food we eat, immigration, labor, poverty, minorities, war, and much more.
As 2017 dawns, in a great many ways, modern industrial civilization has flung itself forward into a darkness where no stars offer guidance and no echoes tell what lies ahead… We’re not discussing the end of the world; events like those that can be found repeated many times in the histories of other failing civilizations.
I think the label “Anthropocene” does not represent reality. Not because I doubt that human beings are having a major impact on geology, far from it. My reasons are somewhat complex, and will require a glance back over the history of geology— specifically, the evolution of the labels we use to talk about the past.
John Michael Greer writes: I’ve had any number of well-meaning climate change activists ask me, in tones of baffled despair, why they can’t get ordinary people to take climate change seriously. My answer is not one they want to hear, because I tell them that it’s because well-meaning climate change activists don’t take climate change seriously.
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.
John Michael Greer writes: While the standard peak oil scenario did not happen, quite a bit of the economic, political, and social turmoil we’ve seen since 2005 or so was in fact driven by the impact of peak oil—but that impact didn’t follow the linear model that most peak oil writers expected it to follow.
Recently, after a great deal of debate, the passengers aboard the Titanic voted to impose modest limits sometime soon on the rate at which water is pouring into the doomed ship’s hull. Despite the torrents of self-congratulatory rhetoric that flooded into the media afterwards, that is the sum of what happened at the COP-21 climate conference in Paris.
John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report (Click here to view original essay and comments) There are certain advantages to writing out the ideas central to this blog in weekly bursts. Back in the days before the internet, when a galaxy of weekly magazines provided the same free mix of ideas and opinions that fills the
Can Solar be the Backbone of India’s Energy System by 2035? Tobias Engelmeier, The Energy Collective Around 70% of India’s power comes from coal, less than 1% from solar. Will that change in the next 20 years? Can solar become the new backbone of the Indian energy system? I think there is a good possibility
OPEC Chief Claims Oil Could Rebound to $200 a barrel Oilprice.com OPEC’s secretary-general says the 7-month-old plunge in oil prices finally may have bottomed out and may be ready to rise again. In fact, Abdullah al-Badri hypothesized that a decision by his cartel to cut production conceivably could lead to oil at $200 a barrel.
“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.” – Bertolt Brecht (Editor’s Note: As a necessary corrective to the unbridled optimism of the mainstream media, here’s a selection of forecasts for 2015 by some of the most insightful alternative voices on world politics, energy and the economy. For those in a hurry, here’s a one-line
The Oil Price Crash of 2014 Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute Oil prices have fallen by half since late June. This is a significant development for the oil industry and for the global economy, though no one knows exactly how either the industry or the economy will respond in the long run. Since it’s almost
India Struggling Between International Image & Equity at Lima Climate Talks Dispatches from COP 20, Lima by Kabir, What’s With The Climate Indian government delegation is warming up for a test match like scenario at COP 20 in Lima. It seems that India in coordination with other developing countries will push for Adaptation, Adaptation, and Adaptation
Oil Price Slide – No Good Way Out Gail Tverberg The world is in a dangerous place now. A large share of oil sellers need the revenue from oil sales. They have to continue producing, regardless of how low oil prices go unless they are stopped by bankruptcy, revolution, or something else that gives them
Could Fighting Global Warming Be Cheap and Free? Paul Krugman, The New York Times In his latest column, well-known NYT columnist Krugman attacks, among others, the Post Carbon Institute, a leading think tank on Peak Oil and Climate Change, as wrong-headed and inducing “climate despair”. In a piece titled Paul Krugman’s Errors and Omissions the Post Carbon Institute’s Richard
If We Release a Small Fraction of Arctic Carbon, ‘We’re Fucked’: Climatologist From Vice.com Recently, scientists have made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw “vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor,” as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’? A new study sponsored by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution. Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study
India’s Dangerous Food Bubble Lester Brown, an expert on population and resources and a former consultant to the Government of India on its five year plans, writes on India’s looming food crisis. According to him, while the adoption of higher-yielding crop varieties and the spread of irrigation have led to a remarkable tripling of grain
