THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take ?

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The Future Of Mankind

C O L L A P S E

Earth Days

Paradise or Oblivion

The Tyranny of Big Oil

the hundredth monkey

collapse

Leaked Text: EU pressing Obama to expand U.S. fracking, offshore drilling in secret

Twitter / PCGTW: Leaked Text: #EU pressing #Obama ...

Global Trade Watch‏@PCGTW

Leaked Text: #EU pressing #Obama to expand U.S. #fracking, offshore drilling in secret #TAFTA: http://huff.to/1jMFklf  pic.twitter.com/ciFMQvpAwv

#NoFRACKING #Fracking ::  #NoKXL | #RE_TOOL NOW!

the collapse

paradise or oblivion

deep water

David Suzuki on Rio 20, "Green Economy" & Why Planet’s Survival Requires Undoing Its Economic Model

As the Rio+20 Earth Summit — the largest U.N. conference ever — ends in disappointment, we’re joined by the leading Canadian scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster David Suzuki. As host of the long-runningCBC program, "The Nature of Things," seen in more than 40 countries, Suzuki has helped educate millions about the rich biodiversity of the planet and the threats it faces from human-driven global warming. In 1990 he co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation which focuses on sustainable ecology and in 2009, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award. Suzuki joins us from the summit in Rio de Janeiro to talk about the climate crisis, the student protests in Quebec, his childhood growing up in an internment camp, and his daughter Severn’s historic speech at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when she was 12 years-old. "If we don’t see that we are utterly embedded in the natural world and dependent on Mother Nature for our very well-being and survival ... then our priorities will continue to be driven by man-made constructs like national borders, economies, corporations, markets," Suzuki says. "Those are all human created things. They shouldn’t dominate the way we live. It should be the biosphere, and the leaders in that should be indigenous people who still have that sense that the earth is truly our mother, that it gives birth to us. You don’t treat your mother the way we treat the planet or the biosphere today." [Includes rush transcript]

> David Suzuki on Rio 20, "Green Economy" & Why Planet’s Survival Requires Undoing Its Economic Model | democracynow.org

The Prize

thanks BP

plastic trash that lasts forever

this has to stop

December brings the biggest showdown with Illinois' and possibly the nation's most gluttonous corporate freeloader: the corn ethanol industry.

Symbolically, the upcoming battle of budget hawks against ethanol's special pleaders is as significant as the fight over continuing the Bush tax cuts.

At issue is whether Congress will allow corpulent ethanol subsidies and a tariff against some imported ethanol to expire on Dec. 31. The ethanol industry has been tromping around Washington like starving bears, hoping to get the deal done during this lame-duck session of Congress, before budget-cutting hunters arrive in the next Congress.

Ethanol's supporters assert that it is an environmentally friendly, renewable and cost-effective gasoline additive. Its opponents dispute it on every point, arguing, among other things, that ethanol costs more than gasoline to make, raises food prices, increases tailpipe pollution and encourages cultivation of fragile lands. But dare to question ethanol, which consumes 41 percent of the corn crop, and snowstorms of studies are produced, from both sides. Clearly, the science supporting ethanol is "unsettled." Which makes spending billions of taxpayers' and consumers' dollars on ethanol at best a costly crapshoot.

Despite that, the Environmental Protection Agency recently decided that we aren't consuming enough of it. Instead of mandating that 10 percent of gasoline sold at the pump be ethanol, as has been required for years, the EPA issued its so-called E15 rule, which raised to 15 percent the allowable blend of ethanol for cars and certain trucks built since 2007. In that, the EPA ignored studies pointing to the harmful effects that 50 percent increase will have on cars, including the agency's own conclusion that it would damage the catalytic converters of tens of millions of cars now on the road.

Wait, that's only the start. The ethanol industry also receives a tax credit amounting to 45 cents a gallon and is aided by a tariff on sugar-cane ethanol valued at 54 cents. In addition, the 2007 energy act mandates the use of renewable fuels, including ethanol: 10.5 billion gallons in 2009, 14 billion in 2011 and 36 billion by 2022.

This is extraordinary. And insane. Here, the government creates a fake market for ethanol, then subsidizes the market, and then protects the market against foreign competition.

This has to stop. But don't count on it.

Agribusiness is an American biggie, especially in Illinois, loaded as we are with ethanol giant Archer Daniels Midland Co., commodities markets, corn farmers and countless refiners, processors, haulers and investors. Their people sit on important corporate boards and their campaign contributions flow into Congress and state legislatures. Even cost-cutters will pretend not to notice the need to carve away at this turkey, one of the most heavily subsidized businesses in America. And, I haven't even mentioned the tens of billions of federal dollars that go for crop subsidies and other boons for wheat, cotton, sugar, peanuts, dairy, wool and other types of farmers.

Critics of these subsidies get it from the right and the left. But opposing the subsidies is a growing coalition from the right and left. Among them are the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Working Group, Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, International Dairy Foods Association and Grocery Manufacturers Association. As their Web site (followthescience.org) illustrates, they are united in their opposition to the EPA's E15 rule for a variety of environmental and economic reasons, including, no doubt, their own self-interest. The coalition earlier this month filed a federal lawsuit charging that the EPA exceeded its statutory powers by issuing the rule. (chicagotribune.com)

Sorry Ain't Enough...

There is nothing left

to you

at this moment

but to have a good/big laugh.

from the Zen.

Not With A Bang...

I apologise in advance to this sort-of-a-downer of a post. I believe there are some things that need to be faced head-on, with our proverbial heads out of the proverbial sand.

This is a post I hoped I would never write. As you, my readers, know, I practice the virtue of chardi kala, translated in many different ways, but all having the meaning of eternal optimism and never giving up. I am still practicing, but it is hard.

No doubt by now you have heard about the massive oil spill by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, truly a paradise on earth. Or at least it was until 20 April 2010. On that day the Deepwater Horizon oil rig - owned and run by British Petroleum - exploded, caught fire and began gushing massive amounts of crude oil into the pristine waters around it. Eleven were killed and 17 injured. That was tragic, but it is just the beginning.

The amount of oil gushing into the Gulf is estimated at somewhere between 1,475,000 and 4,200,000 gallons per day ( 5,583,432 and 15,828,729 liters/day). No one knows how much oil is in this well, how long it can keep gushing. Years or decades, if it is not somehow stopped. So far nothing has worked. In fact, efforts have actually made it worse.

Here's a nice little widget to help you calculate.

Those are pretty dry figures for most people, so here's a more graphic look. This is what the spill looks like right now (30 June 2010):

I realise that most of my readers really can't relate to southern Louisiana, so here is the spill in other locations where I have readers:

If I happened to miss your locale, go to Ifitwasmyhome to move the spill to wherever you live.

Perhaps you'd like to see it as it happens.

If that's not enough to bring it home to you, here are a few oil-soaked pelicans. I find this horribly painful to look at.

In addition, massive amounts of methane gas has been released into the water. This may well turn out to be even more dangerous than the oil. The methane depletes the water of oxygen, leaving all the sea life devoid of the element that is necessary to all life on earth. It is feared that the methane will cause a dead zone where nothing can live, possibly for decades. Also, scientists believe that a huge methane bubble is forming under the water. When it bursts, it could release a tsunami of 20-60 ft (6.1-18.3 m), certainly enough to engulf most of the Caribbean islands. For more information on the gas leak, go here:
Gas Leak 3000 Times Worse Than Oil.


And, by the way, with our current technology we have no way to cap or contain the methane.

I guess that's not enough bad news. It is now hurricane season. (For those of you in Asia, those are typhoons.) There will be hurricanes. In fact, the first one is blowing right now. Hurricane Alex did not move close to the spill, but there will be another hurricane and another and another.


The next thing to consider is the ocean currents. The Gulf Stream is an ocean river that runs from the Caribbean to Europe.

Eventually this oil and methane and all their problems will reach Europe. They will also travel up the Atlantic coast of North America all the way to Canada and all points north. No one knows how much of the ocean will die. Certainly a large part of the Caribbean Sea will and it will take decades to recover. In the meantime the many people who make their livings along the Gulf, either fishing or in the tourist trade, have lost their means of livelihood. It is even possible that the land they live on will become uninhabitable. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana has been alerted that a mass evacuation may become necessary, if a hurricane again hits the state. It is likely that once gone, the people will not be allowed to return due to the toxic oil and gas along the coast.

The earth is one big ecosystem, based primarily on our oceans. If a large part of one ocean dies, that will have a cascade effect on the rest of the planet. How far could this go? Worst case scenario: Bye-bye. "Not with a bang, but a whimper." If you don't recognise those lines, they are the conclusion of T. S Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men. To hear the whimper go to Power Without Petroleum and listen hard at 0:25.

Best case scenario: the southern coast of the United States becomes uninhabitable for a period of time and much of the sea life in the Gulf of Mexico dies, with devastating consequences to the people who now live there. As it is impossible that there be no hurricanes in the season, we can be sure that the winds will carry the oil throughout the region, damaging all it touches. That damage cannot be estimated at this time, except to say it will be extensive.

This morning (1 July 2010), going through my inbox, I found this article in the daily UN bulletin:

Biologists find 'dead zones' around BP oil spill in Gulf

Methane at 100,000 times normal levels have been creating oxygen-depleted areas devoid of life near BP's Deepwater Horizon spill, according to two independent scientists

As long as I can remember, the scientists have been screaming "Wolf!" alerting us to this or that which they claim is going to wipe us out. As I child I grew up with "nuclear annihilation." That was the biggie. There have been others: the hole in the ozone layer, swine flu (twice), bird flu, global climate change and I'm sure others that I have forgotten. And it seems, life causes cancer. There is truth in all these scientific assertions, but there was also something we could do to stop or at least alleviate the disaster. As I see it, this is different because we are helpless to do anything except pray. Of course, I am not a scientist, and the only way I see out of this is divine intervention. Even if the spill can somehow be stopped, we can do nothing about the methane. This is the time more than ever before that we need to dig deep within ourselves and find the high spirits, the chardi kala, that is a part of us. It takes courage to look tragedy in the face and carry on without panic or depression.

And what caused all this? Of course it was British Petroleum cutting corners on safety to save money and increase profit. It was Pres. Clinton who authorised the deep sea drilling. It was Pres. George W. Bush who so favoured the oil interests and permitted a lack of oversight to allow BP not to follow the safety measures. It was Pres. Obama who did not immediately step in to correct this corruption from the previous administration. But it was also all of us who are dependent on petroleum, who refuse to cut back on our usage, we who demand more and more. In the end, if we had not demanded this oil, if we had lost our lust it, BP wouldn't have been able to make the profit that drove them to build this rickety structure upon the rickety structure of our economy. So what now? We have learned why greed is such an evil thing. Whither our good, green beautiful earth?

I keep thinking about the ending of Dr. Strangelove. (A great movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you see it while you still can.)

Remain in chardi kala, my dear brothers and sisters!

pictures:

the fire - United States Coast Guard (via Wikipedia)
dead fish - Sean Gardner (Reuters)
the pelicans - Charlie Riedel (AP)
the earth - courtesy of NASA

deepwater kill

BP Death

Ahh Ha Haa Haaa...


You want oil ???


I'll give you oil !!!

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

(11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997)

was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist,

filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and

researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water.

He co-developed the aqua-lung,

pioneered marine conservation and

was a member of the Académie française.

He was commonly known as "le Commandant Cousteau"

or "Captain Cousteau".

Happy 100th birthday,

from the people of earth.



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