White House Releases Sustainability Performance Plans

Sourced from Warmer Bulletin e-news, 17 September 2010

'The White House has announced the release of a performance plan focused on environmental, economic and energy goals that marks the first time agencies have developed and submitted Sustainability Plans.

Channel 6 News reports that the Federal Agency Strategic Sustainability Performance Plans traces back to the Executive Order on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance signed by President Obama on October 5, 2009,

Under the Executive Order, Federal agencies were required to submit their plans to the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Executive Order also required Federal agencies to set a 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target, increase energy efficiency, reduce fleet petroleum consumption, conserve water, reduce waste, support sustainable communities, and leverage Federal purchasing power to promote environmentally-responsible products and technologies.

Agencies were asked to develop, implement and annually update a plan that prioritizes sustainability actions based on a positive return on investment for the American taxpayer and to meet energy, water, and waste reduction targets.

The Federal government occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services.

As the single largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy, the Federal Government spent more than $24.5 billion on electricity and fuel in 2008 alone.

To promote accountability, annual progress will be measured by the Office of Management and Budget and reported online to the public.

Previous announcements related to this executive order include a goal of a 28 percent reduction by 2020 in direct greenhouse gas pollution, such as those from fuels and building energy use, and a 13 percent reduction by 2020 in indirect greenhouse gas pollution, such as those from employee commuting and landfill waste.

Combined, these two goals could result in a cumulative reduction of 101 million metric tons of CO2 emissions equivalent to the emissions from 235 million barrels of oil.'

Becoming the Greenest Government Ever

Sourced from Warmer Bulletin e-news

A new report published recently by the UK Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) shows that moves towards greater sustainability made by the previous administration already save government £60-70 million every year, and calls for the Coalition Government to step up its green ambitions in order to benefit from further efficiency savings.

Becoming the Greenest Government Ever: Achieving Sustainability in Operations and Procurement, is the fifth of the SDC's annual watchdog reports which scrutinise Government's progress towards more sustainable operations. It finds that the savings made to date are only the tip of the iceberg, and concludes that extending its commitment to become the 'Greenest Government ever' beyond carbon to a wider range of sustainability issues including water and waste would enable the new Government to save hundreds of millions more over the course of this Parliament.

Analysis of progress made under the previous Government suggests that, despite the slow pace of change, improvements in energy and water consumption, waste, recycling and road transport performance are likely to add up to £300-350 million over the next five years, even if no further progress is made. This includes:

• £13.7M fuel savings from reduced road travel in 2008-09 alone. This also saved the equivalent of 1.7million hours of staff time - over 1,000 full time staff working a full year - without counting the savings from reduced car purchases, repairs and administration
• savings of 18 million cubic metres of water - the equivalent of 7,200 Olympic swimming pools, adding up to £13M worth of water bills in 2008-09
• landfill cost savings from reducing waste by 126,000 tonnes in 2009-08 - the equivalent of the total waste produced by over 250,000 UK individuals

The report estimates that, if the new Government succeeds in meeting its commitment to cut carbon emissions from Government offices by 10% over 12 months, this will result in benefits to society equivalent to £13 million, in addition to any reduction in energy bills.

However, it argues that focusing on carbon alone is not enough, calculating that:

• cutting road transport by Government staff by a further 10% could save £7.5M in fuel costs, 14,927 tonnes of carbon, and around 102,000 days of employee time with minimal investment
• a further 10% reduction in waste arisings and water consumption would allow Government to benefit from savings of a further £6.5 million annually
• increasing the lifespan of staff computers from three to five years is already saving the Department of Work and Pensions £35 million. Adopting similar approaches to demand management across Government could multiply the savings many times
• meeting the 2022 target for energy usage set out in the Low Carbon Transition Plan would deliver between £79 million and £235 million savings from reduced electricity, gas and petroleum bills'

Positive Money

Sourced from Positive Money

'If money makes the world go round - who gets to make money?

Money and banking is at the root of most of our social and economic problems. The global economy currently runs on a system called ‘fractional reserve banking’, this system causes huge recessions and piles incredible amounts of debt upon the ordinary people.

It is unstable, unsustainable, unproductive and unfair.

But it doesn’t have to be like this, we can fix it, and we need to fix it now. In order for us to really move society forward in the 21st Century, we need to move away from the fractional reserve banking system that is holding the economy and society back, and move to something that works.

Something that is stable, sustainable, productive and fair.

Positive Money is not anti-banks, or anti-bankers. We believe that money and banking can help society and unlock our productive potential – but not if the foundations of the economy are fatally flawed. We want to make money and banking constructive, not destructive, and positive, not negative. And we need you to get involved.'

Rediscovering Simplicity: The Cyclists of Italy

See the original post for all the great photos, taken by the author in Lucca, Italy!

Excerpt from Daily Kos via Ecocity Builders, 27 August 2010

'Whenever I travel to different countries and cities, one of the things I’m interested in is how locals move around in their daily lives. Call me a transportation glutton, but I’m a sucker for trains, boats, rickshaws, trams, buses, gondolas, back alleys, and sidewalks.

Then, of course, there’s the most sublime transit invention of them all: the bicycle. It’s so simple — even a non-techie like myself understands how it works — and yet so deliciously useful, relieving traffic, getting you anywhere quickly, reducing CO2, keeping you in shape, letting you see a place and interact with its people.

One thing I noticed on my trip to Italy a few months ago was how much bikes were part of everyday life. With David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries as my companion I strolled through the streets of cities and towns, trying to capture the mundane beauty of cycling.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in changing the ways we move around, eat, or do business, is the common perception that living a less fossil fueled life means sacrifice and inconvenience, even drudgery. In the case of the bicycle, the danger factor is often added to the list of reasons of why it would be such a bad idea to get out of our cars.

But aren't the 5000 pound metal boxes we use to schlep ourselves around in the very reason bicycling is so dangerous? What if there were more bikes than cars in the streets?

And what if the cars that were left to do the heavy lifting were much smaller, on eye level with bikes?

It's hard to imagine from an American perspective that cycling could be so safe you don't even have to wear a helmet. Understandably so, but it really shows how much cars have not only occupied our physical but mental space.

David Byrne makes an interesting observation:

I personally sense that helmets might be an interim step toward integrated urban biking. Although they might always be a good idea, the wearing of helmets implies that cycling is dangerous, which at present it often is in cities like New York and London. But in other cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin and Reggio Emilia in Italy, the bike paths and lanes are so safe that the riders don’t feel the need to protect themselves. Cyclists in these places — kids, young creative types, business people, seniors — also tend to ride upright with an elegant bearing; they're well dressed, and even sexy. It's a different attitude than the New York City head-down-into-battle approach.

As David continues:

Maybe, for some, part of the thrill would go away if urban cycling became safe. But that might be the price to pay if it means more people will start using bikes to get around. That thrill isn't really an appropriate thing to oblige schoolkids and seniors to be burdened with. Living in New York used to be a lot more dangerous in general, but that's hardly something to get nostalgic about. So, while we might need a cool, stylish helmet to be available right now, for everyone in a more perfect world it might be optional.

I think this really cuts to the heart of it. While it's still far from being a reality in U.S. cities and towns, in a post-carbon world the bicycle won't need to be an environmental, political or fashion statement. You can make the same case for everything from solar panels to urban gardens to pedestrian zones. If biking is just part of our daily routine it can't be marginalized and politicized as a boutique hipster activity, another "green" fad. And you know you have a bicycle culture when your elders are leading the way...

And speaking of running errands, doing it on a bicycle is only a drag if your infrastructure is completely skewed in favor of cars, and you're forced to traverse high traffic roads, breathe exhaust, and don't have any social interaction. Within that trajectory it's understandable how cycling would be considered a chore, a step backwards, a joyless sacrifice you only do because you want to do something good for the earth.

See how easily doing something good for the earth gets equated with drudgery? That's how the clever marketeers of cars and oil and big air-conditioned shopping malls like it. As long as we're stuck in their paradigm of what's normal, bicycling and so many other natural ways of living together will continue to be cute but marginalized "only for some" leisure activities.

I don't know about you, but to me the idea of riding a bike to the market and chatting with the farmers about which fruits and vegetables are in season is a lot more appealing than parking my car in a big concrete lot and then wandering through the aisles of a neon-lit supermarket in search for food that I don't know where it came from and how it got there.

Somehow we've come to believe that more technology always equals more progress, that the more metal, concrete, middlemen, and terrabytes we can get between us the more advanced, independent and emancipated we get. In turn, we've developed an innate suspicion of simplicity as something arcane and dreadful, leaving us permanently dissatisfied with where we are and what we have, yearning for new and ever more complicated ways to get to where we imagine ourselves wanting to be, without ever arriving.

And isn't what we humans ultimately still want the most — no matter how much stuff we own or how many miles we drive — to be connected, understood, treated with love and respect, and live a dignified life?

David quotes Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá (Colombia) who revolutionized the transportation and parks movement in that city:

Transportation is not an end — it is a means to having a better life, a more enjoyable life — the real goal is not to improve transportation but to improve the quality of life...All this pedestrian infrastructure shows respect for human dignity. We’re telling people, "You are important — not because you’re rich or because you have a Ph.D., but because you are human."

If people are treated as special, as sacred even, they behave that way. This creates a different kind of society.

Looking at the comfort and ease with which these Italians ride their bikes makes me think that perhaps our own propensity to create "convenience" by adding ever more invisible layers of complexity is like a road to nowhere that we need to get off of...

or pedal in another direction...

One of the ostensible paradoxes inherent in the realities of peak oil and climate change is that we have to take action while at the same time slowing our pace. Yes, there has to be drastic change politically and economically, but how can we possibly implement and live those changes if speed and consumption are branded in our minds as the vehicles to get us there?

I think we have to understand that the challenges we face will not be met by politics and technology alone. In order to change the infrastructure of our cities and towns, we have to change the infrastructure within ourselves.

...we have to build cities and infrastructures that support cycling not as a radical act for a few daredevils but as a common means of transportation. Can we shift the way we live, breathe and move as if normal is the new green? I think we can, but we've got to de-clutter our minds, slow the pace, and rediscover the power and joy of simplicity.'

Researchers Fight To Save Fruits Of Their Labor

Reposted in full from National Public Radio, 30 August 2010

'Buried amid the stories of World War II heroism is this one: With German forces blocking food and supplies to the Russian city of St. Petersburg — then known as Leningrad — a group of scientists guarded a rare collection of potatoes and plant seeds. They feared years of research into food would be ruined.

The potatoes and seeds survived. The scientists, refusing to consume their collection, starved to death. Now, 70 years later, their research institute is under threat again — this time by real estate developers.

A court has cleared the way for the Russian government to sell off acres of land used by the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry, which grows hundreds of varieties of fruit and berry plants there. The gardens — in the picturesque village of Pavlovsk, 45 minutes from downtown St. Petersburg — hold clues to how different strands of fruit and berries can survive harsh climates and provide important vitamins.

The collection is rare, scientists say, one in a handful of places around the world where scientists carefully study fruit that could sustain through future generations even if temperatures warm and the world's food supply is threatened.

A law gives clear authority for the government to sell off state-owned agricultural property that is deteriorating in order to meet the demand for housing. Government officials have visited the gardens, insisting they see little value, while suggesting the institute should just move its collection elsewhere. Scientists at Vavilov say moving thousands of plants that have been growing for decades would be impossible.

"They are doing everything right, from the point of view of the law," says Sergei Alexanian, the institute's vice director for foreign relations. "But we are talking about the morality."

Wealthy land developers are lining up to purchase the land from the government. The property is idyllic — near Catherine the Great's famous palace — and water, sewage and phone service are already in place. It won't take much for developers to turn the gardens into suburban living.

"These plots are not being used," says Andrei Anisimov, deputy director general of the government's Federal Fund for Housing Construction Assistance. "The buildings are neglected and going to ruin. That's why the commission has every reason to make this decision."

Gardens Flourish

After visiting the institute's Pavlovsk Experimental Station, it is difficult to come away with a clear picture. On a recent Friday afternoon, the acres of gardens felt close to abandoned, and weeds took over some spots.

But without a doubt, the plants themselves appeared well-maintained, exploding with colorful berries even after one of Russia's worst droughts in history. And scientists say that in gardens like this, a lack of people and activity on a given day does not mean the collection isn't vitally important.

It's been important for centuries, says Leonid Burmistrov, a fruit and crop researcher at the institute for 40 years. Scientists have left over the years, he says, as the government cut funding. But through it all, he says, the research station has collected fruit and berry varieties from around the world, stayed in touch with scientists abroad and cataloged everything.

"Like [what is] winter-resistant, resistant to different kind of fungi, diseases or bacteria," Burmistrov says. "What is the quality? What is the taste? And so, so on."

The idea of ripping these plants from the ground for the sake of development?

"No," he says sternly, standing amid fruit trees. "It's not possible to think about the possibility."

International Campaign

Scientists from around the world have rallied to Pavlovsk's defense. There's a campaign urging people to send tweets to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. And on Aug. 13, a surprise, Medvedev — or maybe the manager of his Twitter account — tweeted that the appeals had been noted and the president had ordered an 11th-hour inquiry.

So far, though, no final word from the Kremlin.

"To me, this feels like a watershed type of decision," says Hugh Pritchard, a veteran genetic resources researcher with Britain's Kew Gardens. With the world's population growing and temperatures warming, he says, future generations will increasingly seek new strands of fruit and crops that can survive tougher climates.

Pavlovsk's collection is rare, he says. "Probably three-quarters of it is not duplicated elsewhere."

Peter Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says the institute's collections are sacred, as is the legacy of the scientists who died defending them. "In doing so, they provided a real model of drawing a line in the sand for biodiversity that's inspired everyone."

Just not so many people around St. Petersburg.

Dire Situation

Residents seem more fired up about another battle — to make sure the energy giant, Gazprom, doesn't build a massive skyscraper amid St. Petersburg's historic palaces. Many brush off the Pavlovsk situation as something typical in modern Russia: a spat over property that will just end up making somebody very rich.

There is also a perception that Pavlovsk — special as it may be — was lost long ago.

"Look at these gardens — they're neglected," says 78-year-old Antonina Khrestina, who lives nearby. "They used to have everything here — fruit and vegetables. Now there's nothing. Soon, they'll probably have to sell potatoes just to pay their workers."

In truth, the situation is even more dire. Barring action by the Kremlin, the first land auction could take place as soon as Sept. 23.

The Vavilov Institute, based in downtown St. Petersburg, would carry forward, and it has collections of grain and other crops that would be preserved, for now.

But losing acres of the Pavlovsk collection — including hundreds of varieties of strawberries, plums, blue honeysuckle and other fruits that appear at risk, depending on the precise plots sold — would be the latest chapter in a long story that may say a lot about Russia.

A Legacy Threatened

In 1940, Josef Stalin imprisoned the institute's namesake, Nikolai Vavilov, because he didn't agree with Vavilov's genetic research. Vavilov died in prison. But the land he chose at Pavlovsk, for its perfect soil and climate, was maintained by fellow scientists, some of whom starved during the German siege.

In the Cold War, the Kremlin was committed to science like this as a way to outshine the U.S.

Today, the man leading the Pavlovsk facility, Fyodor Mikhovich, waxes nostalgic about later Soviet times. He calls himself "a simple Soviet director" and says Communist leaders would have figured out a way to save his collection.

"This feels like deliberate destruction," Mikhovich says, "a continuation of the '30s, '40s and '50s, when famous scientists were destroyed, along with the science of genetics. Today, they want to bury the legacy of the genetics founded by the great scientist Nikolai Vavilov. What will we, the Russian nation, have to be proud of if we ourselves destroy this?"'

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy

Sourced from Warmer Bulletin, 27 August 2010

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States by Amanda D. Cuellar and Michael E. Webber, both of the University of Texas at Austin, uses energy from agriculture, transportation (both from the field to the processor and from the processor to the store), processing, sales, storage, and preparation (home and restaurant) to calculate the amount of energy used in each step.

This work estimates the energy embedded in wasted food annually in the United States. The authors calculated the energy intensity of food production from agriculture, transportation, processing, food sales, storage, and preparation for 2007 as 8080 ± 760 trillion BTU. In 1995 approximately 27 per cent of edible food was wasted.

Synthesizing these food loss figures with their estimate of energy consumption for different food categories and food production steps, while normalizing for different production volumes, shows that 2030 ± 160 trillion BTU of energy were embedded in wasted food in 2007. The energy embedded in wasted food represents approximately two per cent of annual energy consumption in the United States, which is substantial when compared to other energy conservation and production proposals.

References:

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States

Amanda D. Cullar, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, The University of Texas at Austin & Michael E. Webber, Mechanical Engineering, Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, The University of Texas at Austin

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2010, 44 (16), pp 6464-6469
DOI: 10.1021/es100310d
Publication Date (Web): July 21, 2010
Copyright © 2010 American Chemical Society

Communities Get Gardening Bug

Reposted in full from The Ottowa Citizen, 24 August 2010

'New York City is dotted with more than 10,000 acres of unused land and Stacey Murphy would like to see it lush with tomatoes, cucumbers and arugula.

The architect-turned-urban farmer started a business in Brooklyn last summer that's turning backyards, vacant lots, and school property into organic garden plots.

With the motto, " You have the land, we grow the produce," Ms. Murphy's company, B K Farmyards, offers a new twist on sharecropping.

In exchange for some "seed" money and a sizable share of the harvest, her team will show up in private backyards and empty lots to install planting beds and irrigation systems, plant, and then tend to the crops for the growing season.

"Urban farming can have a direct impact on a very local community," says Ms. Murphy, a 36- year old Michigan native. "A lot of neighbourhoods don't have access to fresh produce." Her ultimate aim is to help create a financially sustainable model for urban agriculture with a large network of tiny farms throughout the city.

As little as 250 square feet can grow enough produce to feed four or five people for six months.

From two small backyard plots seeded in Brooklyn last summer, her business network has expanded to include a 50-hen chicken coop, rooftop honey-bee hives and a one-acre educational farm on the front lawn of a high school that sells low-cost produce to the community at a weekly farmer's market run by students.

Ms. Murphy's effort is part of a growing urban farm movement in cities across the United States.

While city gardens have often sprung up over the past century during economic downturns and wartime, the latest crop also has a new driver: food awareness and sustainability.

Many neighbourhoods in New York are "fresh food deserts," with no supermarkets to serve local residents.

In some communitie s , the dearth of food options besides convenience stores selling candy, ice-cream and soft drinks has led to chronic health problems for residents, a tremendous burden on the already financially ailing U.S. health-care system.

In New York, community gardens, which are typically cultivated on vacant lots owned by the city, have long helped fill that gap.

In most of New York's roughly 500 community gardens, members get their own plots to grow food to help supplement their needs.

Little is known about how much food New York's tiny gardens produce.

In an attempt to figure out the worth of the city's annual harvest, Mara Gittleman is corralling a group of volunteers with scales to weigh produce as part of a project she calls Farming Concrete.

"Quantifying how much farming is done would enhance the perceived value of these community gardens as public land and also give them a defined space in the urban food system," says Ms. Gittleman.

A similar project in Philadelphia found the city's community gardens grew around US$10-million worth of food in one season.

Typically, any profit generated by selling produce from such gardens at farmers markets is plowed back into the community gardens themselves.

Ms. Murphy's BK Farmyards launched last year is based on a different concept.

Unlike most community gardens, which usually only serve the needs of a limited number of residents, she wants to cultivate a network of tiny farms involved in high-yield food production, ultimately run by urban farmers who can make money at the ventures.

"Community gardens are an amazing resource," says Ms. Murphy, who grew up gardening in her mother's 2,000 square-foot plot in the Detroit area. "But it's a little different than what we're doing." Ms. Murphy says her company started out as a for-profit venture when it was mainly looking to convert people's backyards and other privately owned outdoor spaces into gardens.

One of her biggest projects to date is a youth farm in partnership with the High School for Public Service in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a mainly low-income neighbourhood with very limited fresh food options.

Over the next four years or so, BK Farmyards expects the one-acre farm on the school's front lawn to grow enough affordable and healthy produce for 80 families, as well as provide employment and educational opportunities for youth and adults in the area.

Because it's on public land, any money made on the farm goes back into the school and the community.

Now Ms. Murphy is weighing whether to split her company in two: a for-profit business, which would include her little farms on privately owned land, and a not-for- profit business that would focus on education and include her new partnerships on public lands, such as the high school project and city-owned public garden spaces.

"The logistics of having a for-profit business doesn't really fit well," she says. "When we're on public land, the big goal is to do education." More important than any profit, she says, "it's a basic human right to have fresh food."'

Lloyd's Adds its Voice to Dire 'Peak Oil' Warnings

Reposted in full from The Guardian, 11 July 2010

'One of the City's most respected institutions has warned of "catastrophic consequences" for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Lloyd's insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for "peak oil" and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by the BP oil spill and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming.

"Companies which are able to take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences," says the Lloyd's and Chatham House report "Sustainable energy security: strategic risks and opportunities for business".

The insurance market has a major interest in preparedness to counter climate change because of the fear of rising insurance claims related to property damage and business disruption. The review is ground-breaking because it comes from the heart of the City and contains the kind of dire warnings that are more associated with environmental groups or others accused by critics of resorting to hype. It takes a pot shot at the International Energy Agency which has been under fire for apparently under-estimating the threats, noting: "IEA expectations [on crude output] over the last decade have generally gone unmet."

The report says the world is heading for a global oil supply crunch and high prices owing to insufficient investment in oil production plus a rebound in global demand following recession. It repeats warning from Professor Paul Stevens, a former economist from Dundee University, at an earlier Chatham House conference that lack of oil by 2013 could force the price of crude above $200 (£130) a barrel.

It also quotes from a US department of energy report highlighting the economic chaos that would result from declining oil production as global demand continued to rise, recommending a crash programme to overhaul the transport system. "Even before we reach peak oil," says the Lloyd's report, "we could witness an oil supply crunch because of increased Asian demand. Major new investment in energy takes 10-15 years from the initial investment to first production, and to date we have not seen the amount of new projects that would supply the projected increase in demand."

And while the world is gradually moving to new kinds of clean energy technologies the insurance market warns that there could be shortages of earth metals and other raw materials needed to help them thrive.

Lloyd's also calls on manufacturers, retailers and the wider business community to reassess global supply chains and their just-in time models because the "current system is increasingly vulnerable to disruption."

The report says government needs to do much more to bring additional price stability and transparency if the global carbon market is to become a reality.

Richard Ward, chief executive of Lloyd's, said the failure of the Copenhagen climate change talks last December has helped lull many business leaders into a false sense of security about the challenges ahead. "We are in a period akin to a phony war. We keep hearing of difficulties to come, but with oil, gas and coal still broadly accessible - and largely capable of being distributed where they are needed - the bad times have not yet hit ... all businesses ... will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive."

This article was amended on 12 July 2010. The original referred to Chatham House as being the Institute of Strategic Studies. It is the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

UK Conservative Push to End Fractional Reserve Banking

This is intriguing, particularly as it comes from the conservative right in the UK - this bill would stop private banks being able to create money as debt, which is a key driver of the need to keep growing an economy.

Excerpt from conservative home | Centre Right, 13 September 2010

'...on Wednesday, immediately after Prime Minister's Questions, Douglas Carswell MP will be introducing a moderate and conservative ten-minute rule bill which would introduce sound property rights and contract to monetary deposits. It is potentially of profound importance and I am delighted to support him.

Allow me to explain.

If you deposit securities at the bank, they are held in safe custody, ready for immediate use. They are your property, not the bank's. If you wish to increase the yield of your securities by lending them, then you enter into a securities lending agreement with the bank, which borrows your shares for a period, lending them on at a premium. You have forgone your shares for a term in exchange for a fee. The bank is contractually obliged to return your property at the end of the term.

In other words, you either deposit your securities on demand or you save them by lending them to the bank for a term.

I was once intimately involved in the design of a securities lending system for a major international prime broker. There was no requirement to take securities held in safe custody and lend them while maintaining a liability to return them on demand. Lending securities not contractually designated for the purpose would have been an infringement of property rights in breach of trust, that is, a fraud.

While banks maintain clear property rights in securities on deposit, the same cannot be said of monetary deposits. Thanks to a base of judicial decisions, when you deposit your money on demand at the bank, ready for immediate withdrawal without penalty, it is not your property, but the bank's. Banks can lend money held on demand and of course they do so.

This is fractional reserve banking and it may not be the good thing most bankers think it is.

Fractional reserves on demand deposits allow banks to extend credit in excess of real savings. That leads to the creation and destruction of fiduciary media: claims on money for which there is insufficient money to meet all claims. It is what makes bank runs possible. It means that, as the great economist Irving Fisher wrote in 1935,

our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks; and our thousands of checking banks are, in effect, so many irresponsible private mints.

As I explained in my maiden speech:

Unlike the situation in respect of any other commodity, in the case of money, price controls do not drive the product off the market. Artificially lowered interest rates increase the demand for credit, and decrease the supply of savings, but the legal privilege granted to banks means that they can meet demand by extending credit that is unbacked by real savings. There is a good argument to say that that causes the boom-and-bust cycle, the misdirection of resources in the capital structure of production, and over-consumption by consumers.

And since the money supply contracts when banks lend less, we find central banks injecting new money through QE, further distorting an economy already distended by excess credit expansion, in an attempt to cope with the anarchy of money creation and destruction caused by fractional reserve banking.

To repeat: demand deposits of money are not subject to the same principles of property and contract as any other commodity. Banks enjoy the legal privilege of open access to money which they are liable to return on demand. In concert with the central planning of interest rates and a range of government interventions, this is what is wrong with capitalism.

It is around this point that scholars of banking theory begin disagreeing, often with very great passion. However, it is a fact that various economists of the three great traditions - Keynesian, Monetarist and Austrian - have, at various times and for various reasons, proposed ending the system of fractional reserve banking.

Douglas's Bill would assert property rights over demand deposits. Real savings - term deposits - would be loaned to entrepreneurs, delivering an economy built on save and invest.

There is a great deal to communicate on this subject, some of which you can find through the links below. In the meantime, I will conclude with some remarks by Nobel Laureate James M Buchanan at the Mont Pelerin Society in 2009:

The market will not work effectively with monetary anarchy. Politicization is not an effective alternative. We must commence meaningful dialogue with acceptance of these elementary verities.

Moreover:

Let us not waste this set of crises by exclusive recourse to jerry-built efforts to patch up the failed monetary anarchy we have witnessed.

Douglas is attempting to begin the process of correcting capitalism by asserting sound property rights and contract in banking. I hope Parliamentary colleagues and activists will hear him out, particularly those who wish us to have an economy built on the investment of real savings.'

Let The Environment Guide Our Development

Sourced from TED, July 2010

'Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in protecting our planet's many overlapping ecosystems.

Johan Rockstrom is a leader of a new approach to sustainability: planetary boundaries. Working with a team of 29 leading scientists across disciplines, Rockstrom and the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified nine key Earth processes or systems - and marked the upper limit beyond which each system could touch off a major system crash. Climate change is certainly in the mix - but so are other human-made threats such as ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, chemical pollution.'

The Happy Planet Index

Sourced from TED, July 2010

TED Talk by Nic Marks of the new economics foundation

'Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation's success by its productivity - instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn't have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.'

When Sea Levels Attack

Sourced from Information is Beautiful, January 2010

Click image below for larger version, follow link for high resolution image

Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

...one wonders whether we are going to WAKE UP in time, or sleepwalk our way to collapse?!

Oil is the linchpin not only for transportation systems, but global trade AND global food supplies which rely on fossil fuel based fertilisers and pesticides!!!

Peak oil is a MAJOR ECONOMIC AND FOOD SECURITY issue and we are faffing about changing goddamn lightbulbs!

Reposted in full from De Speigel, 1 September 2010

'A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document - leaked on the Internet - shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis - and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.

The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.

The lead author, Will, has declined to comment on the study. It remains doubtful that either the Bundeswehr or the German government would have consented to publish the document in its current form. But the study does show how intensively the German government has engaged with the question of peak oil.

Parallels to activities in the UK

The leak has parallels with recent reports from the UK. Only last week the Guardian newspaper reported that the British Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is keeping documents secret which show the UK government is far more concerned about a supply crisis than it cares to admit.

According to the Guardian, the DECC, the Bank of England and the British Ministry of Defence are working alongside industry representatives to develop a crisis plan to deal with possible shortfalls in energy supply. Inquiries made by Britain's so-called peak oil workshops to energy experts have been seen by SPIEGEL ONLINE. A DECC spokeswoman sought to play down the process, telling the Guardian the enquiries were "routine" and had no political implications.

The Bundeswehr study may not have immediate political consequences, either, but it shows that the German government fears shortages could quickly arise.

According to the German report, there was "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later." The Bundeswehr prediction is consistent with those of well-known scientists who assume global oil production has either already passed its peak or will do so this year.

Market Failures and International Chain Reactions

The political and economic impacts of peak oil on Germany have now been studied for the first time in depth. The crude oil expert Steffen Bukold has evaluated and summarized the findings of the Bundeswehr study. Here is an overview of the central points:

Oil will determine power: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center writes that oil will become one decisive factor in determining the new landscape of international relations: "The relative importance of the oil producing nations in the international system is growing. These nations are using the advantages resulting from this to expand the scope of their domestic and foreign policies and establish themselves as a new or resurgent regional, or in some cases even global leading power."

Increasing importance of oil exporters: For importers of oil more competition for resources will mean an increase in the number of nations competing for favour with oil producing nations. For the latter this opens up a window of opportunity which can be used to implement political, economic or ideological aims. As this window of time will only be open for a limited period, "this could result in a more aggressive assertion of national interests on the part of the oil producing nations."

Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. "The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts," the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market, will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. "Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the seventies, will once again come to the fore."

Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. "Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise" as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95% of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. "In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse."

Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a "partial or complete failure of markets," says the study. "A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis."

Global chain reaction: "A restructuring of oil supplies will not be equally possible in all regions before the onset of peak oil," says the study. "It is likely that a large number of states will not be in a position to make the necessary investments in time," or with "sufficient magnitude." If there were economic crashes in some regions of the world, Germany could be affected. Germany would not escape the crises of other countries, because it's so tightly integrated into the global economy.

Crisis of political legitimacy: The Bundeswehr study also raises fears for the survival of democracy itself. Parts of the population could comprehend the upheaval trigged by peak oil "as a general systemic crisis." This would create "room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government." Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could "in extreme cases lead to open conflict."

The scenarios outlined by the Bundeswehr Transformation Center are drastic. Even more explosive, politically, are recommendations to the government that the energy experts have put forward based on these scenarios. They argue that "states dependent on oil imports" will be forced to "show more pragmatism toward oil-producing states in their foreign policy." Political priorities will have to be somewhat subordinated, they claim, to the overriding concern of securing energy supplies.

For example: Germany would have to be more flexible in relation toward Russia's foreign policy objectives. It would also have to show more restraint in its foreign policy toward Israel, to avoid alienating Arab oil-producing nations. Unconditional support for Israel and its right to exist is currently a cornerstone of German foreign policy.

The relationship with Russia, in particular, is of fundamental importance for German access to oil and gas, the study says. "For Germany, this involves a balancing act between stable and privileged relations with Russia and the sensitivities of (Germany's) eastern neighbors." In other words, Germany, if it wants to guarantee its own energy security, should be accommodating in relation to Moscow's foreign policy objectives, even if it means risking damage to its relations with Poland and other Eastern European states.

Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study. "A readjustment of Germany's Middle East policy … in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change," the authors write.

When contacted by SPIEGEL ONLINE, the Defense Ministry declined to comment on the study.'

US Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion

Reposted in full from The Onion, 16 February 2010

'WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.

What began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world's largest economy.

"Though raising interest rates is unlikely at the moment, the Fed will of course act appropriately if we…if we…" said Bernanke, who then paused for a moment, looked down at his prepared statement, and shook his head in utter disbelief. "You know what? It doesn't matter. None of this—this so-called 'money'—really matters at all."

"It's just an illusion," a wide-eyed Bernanke added as he removed bills from his wallet and slowly spread them out before him. "Just look at it: Meaningless pieces of paper with numbers printed on them. Worthless."

According to witnesses, Finance Committee members sat in thunderstruck silence for several moments until Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) finally shouted out, "Oh my God, he's right. It's all a mirage. All of it—the money, our whole economy—it's all a lie!"

Screams then filled the Senate Chamber as lawmakers and members of the press ran for the exits, leaving in their wake aisles littered with the remains of torn currency.

As news of the nation's collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground to a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings.

At the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday morning's opening bell echoed across a silent floor as the few traders who arrived for work out of habit looked up blankly at the meaningless scrolling numbers on the flashing screens above.

"I've spent 25 years in this room yelling 'Buy, buy! Sell, sell!' and for what?" longtime trader Michael Palermo said. "All I've done is move arbitrary designations of wealth from one column to another, wasting my life chasing this unattainable hallucination of wealth."

"What a cruel cosmic joke," he added. "I'm going home to hug my daughter."

Sources at the White House said President Obama was "still trying to get his head around all this" and was in seclusion with his coin collection, muttering "it's just metal, it's just metal" over and over again.

"The president will be making a statement very soon," press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. "At the moment, though, his mind is just too blown to comment."

A few U.S. banks have remained open, though most teller windows are unmanned due to a lack of interest in transactions involving mere scraps of paper or, worse, decimal points and computer data signifying mere scraps of paper. At a Bank of America branch in Spokane, WA, curious former customers wandered aimlessly through a large empty vault, while several would-be robbers of a Chase bank in Columbus, OH reportedly put their guns down and exited the building hand in hand with security guards, laughing over the inherent absurdity of the idea of $100 bills.

Likewise, the real estate industry has all but vanished, with mortgage lenders seeing no reason to stop people from reclaiming their foreclosed-upon homes.

"I don't even know what we were thinking in the first place," said former banker Nathan Collins of Brandon, MS, as he jimmyed open a door to allow a single mother and her five children to move back into their house. "A bunch of people sign a bunch of papers, and now this family has no place to live? That's just plain ludicrous."

The realization that money is nothing more than an elaborate head game seems to have penetrated the entire country: In Wilmington, DE, for instance, a collection agent reportedly broke down in joyful sobs when he informed a woman on the other end of the phone that he had absolutely no reason to harass her anymore, as her Discover Card debt was no longer comprehensible.

For some Americans, the fog of disbelief surrounding the nation's epiphany has begun to lift, with many building new lives free from the illusion of money.

"It's back to basics for me," Bernard Polk of Waverly, OH said. "I'm going to till the soil for my own sustenance and get anything else I need by bartering. If I want milk, I'll pay for it in tomatoes. If need a new hoe, I'll pay for it in lettuce."

When asked, hypothetically, how he would pay for complicated life-saving surgery for a loved one, Polk seemed uncertain.

"That's a lot of vegetables, isn't it?" he said.'

Crybaby Capitalists

LOVE IT!

'The big guys on Wall Street, they can't take their losses - they're crybaby capitalists, they preach capitalism for everybody but themselves!' - Gerald Celente at 23:50

'Overdose', a documentary on global financial crisis (43 mins total)

Modernising Henry George

Herman Daly, Professor of Ecological Economics, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, says nineteenth century economist Henry George has much to teach us about how to share the value of common natural resources...

Reposted in full from the new economics foundation, 19 July 2010

'Economists have traditionally considered nature to be infinite relative to the economy, and therefore not scarce, and therefore properly priced at zero. But the biosphere is now scarce, and becoming more so every day as a result of growth of its large and dependent subsystem, the macro-economy.

As the macro-economy expands into the ecosystem it displaces what was there before, namely habitat of other species (and of indigenous and poor members of our own species). Consequently, biodiversity decline is a salient index of the increasing scarcity of nature, as is involuntary resettlement of people to make way for dams, mines, soybeans, and cattle; and of course increasing depletion and pollution.

Sacrifice of nature’s scarce services constitutes an increasing opportunity cost of growth, and that in turn means that nature must be priced, either explicitly or implicitly. But to whom should this price be paid? Nature would prefer not to sell herself, but if forced to it by growth, would at least like to divide equally among her children the revenue from the forced sale of her previous gifts.

From the point of view of efficiency it does not matter who receives the price, as long as it is counted and paid by the users. But from the point of view of equity it matters a great deal who receives the price for nature’s increasingly scarce services. Such payment is the ideal source of funds with which to finance public goods, and to redistribute to the poor.

“Value added” belongs to whoever added it. But the original value of that to which further value is added by labor and capital, the value of scarce natural resources and natural services, should belong to everyone. It is the original commonwealth. These “payments to nature” should be the focus of redistributive efforts. Payment for what is now too scarce to be treated as a free gift is measured and appropriated by markets as a rent (payment in excess of necessary supply price). Rent is unearned income to the recipient, but allocative efficiency requires that it be paid by the user of the resource. Taxation of value added by labor and capital is certainly legitimate. But it is both more legitimate and less necessary after we have, as much as possible, captured natural resource rents for public revenue.

The above seems to be the basic insight of early American economist Henry George (1839-1897) who applied it specifically to rent on the scarcity of desirable locations of land rather than to rents on natural resource scarcity in general. Could we not extend Henry George’s logic to resources in general? For resources the necessary supply price is the cost of extraction — so any payment above cost of extraction is rent. Since land has no cost of extraction all payment for land is rent. If no rent is paid, land does not cease to exist. Neoclassical economists accept this definition of rent but resist Henry George’s ethical emphasis on rent as unearned income.

The modern form of the Georgist insight is to tax the rent from land, and by extension from natural resources and services of nature, and to use these funds for fighting poverty and for financing public goods. Or we could simply create a trust fund from these rents, and disburse the earnings from it to all citizens, as in the Alaska Permanent Fund.

Our present practice of taxing away a lot of the value added by individuals from applying their own labor and capital creates resentment, and discourages the supply of labor and capital.

Taxing away value that no one added, scarcity rents on nature’s contribution, does not create as much resentment, and the resentment it does cause is less justified. In fact, failing to tax away the scarcity rents to nature and letting them accrue as unearned income to a landlord class has long been a primary source of resentment and social conflict. Furthermore, taxing land and resource rent does not diminish their quantity. Soviet communists tried for a while to abolish the category of rent because it represented unearned income — a part of “surplus value” like profit and interest. They jumped to the conclusion that therefore resources and land must be free. But that makes it impossible to allocate resources efficiently. Better to follow Henry George and retain rent as a necessary price for measuring opportunity cost, but to then tax it away as unearned income to the landlords. The more we tax away rent the less we have to tax the value added by human labor and capital.

Charging scarcity rents on natural resources and redistributing them to the commonwealth can be effected either by ecological tax reform, or by quantitative cap-auction-trade systems. In differing ways each would limit expansion of the scale of the economy into the biosphere, thereby preserving biodiversity and also providing revenue to run the commonwealth. I will not discuss their relative merits here, but rather emphasize the advantage that both have over the currently favored strategy. The currently favored strategy might be called “efficiency first” in distinction to the “frugality first” principle embodied in each of the policies mentioned above.

“Efficiency first” sounds good, especially when referred to as “win-win” strategies, or more picturesquely as “picking the low-hanging fruit.” But the problem of “efficiency first” is with what comes second. An improvement in efficiency by itself is equivalent to having an increased supply of the resource whose efficiency increased. The price of that resource will decline. More uses for the now cheaper resource will be made. We will end up consuming perhaps as much or more of the resource than before, albeit more efficiently, as pointed out in the nineteenth century words of economist William Stanley Jevons:

“It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical [efficient] use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” (The Coal Question, 1866, p. 123)

We need frugality (diminished consumption) more than efficiency. “Frugality first” induces efficiency as a secondary consequence, an adaptation; efficiency first does not induce frugality — it makes frugality less necessary, and it does not give rise to a scarcity rent that can be redistributed. Let us put frugality first by reducing physical throughput with ecological tax reform and/or cap-auction-trade systems for basic resources, and by so doing both avoid the Jevons effect and collect the scarcity rents on nature for the commonwealth rather than the elite.

If we could directly limit population and per capita resource use (scale of the macro-economy) to a level that nature could easily sustain, then nature’s services could remain free. But if we insist that population and per capita consumption must be free to grow, then the rising cost of natural resources must indirectly limit growth, and the question of who receives the increasing rent (who owns nature) will become ever more pressing, and Henry George’s thinking ever more relevant. Alternatively, our increasing takeover of nature will, beyond some point, render moot the question of distribution of rents by eliminating all potential claimants! When an overloaded ship sinks all aboard drown — even if the overload is justly distributed and efficiently allocated!'

Calling All Future-Eaters

Confronting piece by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Chris Hedges...

Reposted in full from TruthDig, 19 July 2010

'The human species during its brief time on Earth has exhibited a remarkable capacity to kill itself off. The Cro-Magnons dispatched the gentler Neanderthals. The conquistadors, with the help of smallpox, decimated the native populations in the Americas. Modern industrial warfare in the 20th century took at least 100 million lives, most of them civilians. And now we sit passive and dumb as corporations and the leaders of industrialized nations ensure that climate change will accelerate to levels that could mean the extinction of our species. Homo sapiens, as the biologist Tim Flannery points out, are the “future-eaters.”

In the past when civilizations went belly up through greed, mismanagement and the exhaustion of natural resources, human beings migrated somewhere else to pillage anew. But this time the game is over. There is nowhere else to go. The industrialized nations spent the last century seizing half the planet and dominating most of the other half. We giddily exhausted our natural capital, especially fossil fuel, to engage in an orgy of consumption and waste that poisoned the Earth and attacked the ecosystem on which human life depends. It was quite a party if you were a member of the industrialized elite. But it was pretty stupid.

Collapse this time around will be global. We will disintegrate together. And there is no way out. The 10,000-year experiment of settled life is about to come to a crashing halt. And humankind, which thought it was given dominion over the Earth and all living things, will be taught a painful lesson in the necessity of balance, restraint and humility. There is no human monument or city ruin that is more than 5,000 years old. Civilization, Ronald Wright notes in “A Short History of Progress,” “occupies a mere 0.2 percent of the two and a half million years since our first ancestor sharpened a stone.” Bye-bye, Paris. Bye-bye, New York. Bye-bye, Tokyo. Welcome to the new experience of human existence, in which rooting around for grubs on islands in northern latitudes is the prerequisite for survival.

We view ourselves as rational creatures. But is it rational to wait like sheep in a pen as oil and natural gas companies, coal companies, chemical industries, plastics manufacturers, the automotive industry, arms manufacturers and the leaders of the industrial world, as they did in Copenhagen, take us to mass extinction? It is too late to prevent profound climate change. But why add fuel to the fire? Why allow our ruling elite, driven by the lust for profits, to accelerate the death spiral? Why continue to obey the laws and dictates of our executioners?

The news is grim. The accelerating disintegration of Arctic Sea ice means that summer ice will probably disappear within the next decade. The open water will absorb more solar radiation, significantly increasing the rate of global warming. The Siberian permafrost will disappear, sending up plumes of methane gas from underground. The Greenland ice sheet and the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers will melt. Jay Zwally, a NASA climate scientist, declared in December 2007: “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming. Now, as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”

But reality is rarely an impediment to human folly. The world’s greenhouse gases have continued to grow since Zwally’s statement. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from burning fossil fuels since 2000 have increased by 3 per cent a year. At that rate annual emissions will double every 25 years. James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world’s foremost climate experts, has warned that if we keep warming the planet it will be “a recipe for global disaster.” The safe level of CO₂ in the atmosphere, Hansen estimates, is no more than 350 parts per million (ppm). The current level of CO₂ is 385 ppm and climbing. This already guarantees terrible consequences even if we act immediately to cut carbon emissions.

The natural carbon cycle for 3 million years has ensured that the atmosphere contained less than 300 ppm of CO₂, which sustained the wide variety of life on the planet. The idea now championed by our corporate elite, at least those in contact with the reality of global warming, is that we will intentionally overshoot 350 ppm and then return to a safer climate through rapid and dramatic emission cuts. This, of course, is a theory designed to absolve the elite from doing anything now. But as Clive Hamilton in his book “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” writes, even “if carbon dioxide concentrations reach 550 ppm, after which emissions fell to zero, the global temperatures would continue to rise for at least another century.”

Copenhagen was perhaps the last chance to save ourselves. Barack Obama and the other leaders of the industrialized nations blew it. Radical climate change is certain. It is only a question now of how bad it will become. The engines of climate change will, climate scientists have warned, soon create a domino effect that could thrust the Earth into a chaotic state for thousands of years before it regains equilibrium. “Whether human beings would still be a force on the planet, or even survive, is a moot point,” Hamilton writes. “One thing is certain: there will be far fewer of us.”

We have fallen prey to the illusion that we can modify and control our environment, that human ingenuity ensures the inevitability of human progress and that our secular god of science will save us. The “intoxicating belief that we can conquer all has come up against a greater force, the Earth itself,” Hamilton writes. “The prospect of runaway climate change challenges our technological hubris, our Enlightenment faith in reason and the whole modernist project. The Earth may soon demonstrate that, ultimately, it cannot be tamed and that the human urge to master nature has only roused a slumbering beast.”

We face a terrible political truth. Those who hold power will not act with the urgency required to protect human life and the ecosystem. Decisions about the fate of the planet and human civilization are in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls such as BP’s Tony Hayward. These political and corporate masters are driven by a craven desire to accumulate wealth at the expense of human life. They do this in the Gulf of Mexico. They do this in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, where the export-oriented industry is booming. China’s transformation into totalitarian capitalism, done so world markets can be flooded with cheap consumer goods, is contributing to a dramatic rise in carbon dioxide emissions, which in China are expected to more than double by 2030, from a little over 5 billion metric tons to just under 12 billion.

This degradation of the planet by corporations is accompanied by a degradation of human beings. In the factories in Guangdong we see the face of our adversaries. The sociologist Ching Kwan Lee found “satanic mills” in China’s industrial southeast that run “at such a nerve-racking pace that worker’s physical limits and bodily strength are put to the test on a daily basis.” Some employees put in workdays of 14 to 16 hours with no rest day during the month until payday. In these factories it is normal for an employee to work 400 hours or more a month, especially those in the garment industry. Most workers, Lee found, endure unpaid wages, illegal deductions and substandard wage rates. They are often physically abused at work and do not receive compensation if they are injured on the job. Every year a dozen or more workers die from overwork in the city of Shenzhen alone. In Lee’s words, the working conditions “go beyond the Marxist notions of exploitation and alienation.” A survey published in 2003 by the official China News Agency, cited in Lee’s book “Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt,” found that three in four migrant workers had trouble collecting their pay. Each year scores of workers threaten to commit suicide, Lee writes, by jumping off high-rises or setting themselves on fire over unpaid wages. “If getting paid for one’s labor is a fundamental feature of capitalist employment relations, strictly speaking many Chinese workers are not yet laborers,” Lee writes.

The leaders of these corporations now determine our fate. They are not endowed with human decency or compassion. Yet their lobbyists make the laws. Their public relations firms craft the propaganda and trivia pumped out through systems of mass communication. Their money determines elections. Their greed turns workers into global serfs and our planet into a wasteland.

As climate change advances, we will face a choice between obeying the rules put in place by corporations or rebellion. Those who work human beings to death in overcrowded factories in China and turn the Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone are the enemy. They serve systems of death. They cannot be reformed or trusted.

The climate crisis is a political crisis. We will either defy the corporate elite, which will mean civil disobedience, a rejection of traditional politics for a new radicalism and the systematic breaking of laws, or see ourselves consumed. Time is not on our side. The longer we wait, the more assured our destruction becomes. The future, if we remain passive, will be wrested from us by events. Our moral obligation is not to structures of power, but life.'

Chris Hedges '...spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism.'

Cup of Cold Undies?

...surely one of the more ridiculous examples of unnecessary consumption and packaging!



Sourced from Business Unusual, 23 August 2010

'In reaction to one of the longest heat waves in Japan’s history stores everywhere have been stocking ice cold panties in disposable cups.

Is this some fetish or just a gimmick…how much relief can one get from cold panties?

I wonder, do stores provide a booth to put on your newly purchased, cold panties?

What about ice padded bras? Or ice packed boxers?'

Chinese Traffic Jam Extends 60 Miles and Nine Days

Excerpt from The Australian, 25 August 2010

'China's hellish 10-day-old traffic jam now stretches 100km and could last another three weeks.

Triggered by road construction, the snarl-up reaches almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts and villages along the route are making a killing providing supplies for stranded drivers.

It's a metaphor for a nation that sometimes chokes on its own breakneck growth.

In the worst-hit stretches of the road in northern China, drivers pass the time sitting in the shade of their immobilised trucks, playing cards, sleeping on the asphalt or bargaining with price-gouging food vendors. Many of the trucks that carry fruit and vegetables are unrefrigerated and the cargoes are assumed to be rotting.

On Sunday, the eighth day of the near-standstill, trucks moved just a kilometre on the worst section, said Zhang Minghai, a traffic director in Zhangjiakou, a city about 150km northwest of Beijing.

China Central Television reported that some vehicles had been stuck for five days.

No portable toilets were set up along the highway, leaving only two apparent options - hike to a service area or into the fields...

The traffic jam built up on the Beijing-Tibet highway, on a section that links the capital to the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. The main reason traffic has increased on this partially four-lane highway is the opening of coal mines in the northwest, vital for the booming economy that this month surpassed Japan's in size and is now second only to the US...

The car invasion is widely felt. Guo Jifu, head of the Beijing Transportation Research Centre, told a symposium on Monday that vehicles on Beijing's roads multiplied by 1900 per day on average in the first half of this year.

The immediate cause of the traffic jam that began August 14 is construction on one of three southbound highways feeding into Beijing.'

Stop Wasting Food, Save The World's Energy

Excerpt from the New Scientist, 18 August 2010

'...we could save an enormous amount of energy by tackling the huge problem of food waste. Doing so is likely to be quicker than many of the other options on the table, while also saving money and reducing emissions.

The energy footprint of food is enormous. Consider the US, where just 5 per cent of the global population consumes one-fifth of the world's energy. Around 15 per cent of the energy used in the US is swallowed up by food production and distribution. Most of that comes from farming with mechanised equipment, fertilisers and pesticides, irrigation and so on. Then there's the energy cost of sorting, processing and packaging.

On top of that, each item of food on an American plate has made an average trip of over 2400 kilometres by boat, plane, train or automobile. Then there's unloading, stocking grocery stores and meal preparation. By the time all of these steps are accounted for, food takes a significant bite out of the US's total annual energy budget of about 100 million terajoules.

We have to eat, of course, but what about the food that we produce but do not eat?

Between one-quarter and one-third of the food produced in the US gets wasted, for a variety of reasons. A great deal spoils or is discarded before even reaching consumers, on farms, in fisheries and during processing. Buyers often reject perfectly edible produce because of minor blemishes. Food gets tossed in the trash in the home just because we bought or served too much, or let food spoil. Over a year, the average American family of four spends almost $600 on food that they do not eat.

Between one-quarter and one-third of all the food produced in the US gets wasted Whatever the reason, food waste has a large cumulative impact. A recent analysis by one of us (Michael Webber) and Amanda Cuéllar at the University of Texas at Austin found that close to 2.2 million terajoules embedded in food waste was discarded in the US in 2007 - the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es100310d).

This means that at least 2 per cent of the total US energy budget is literally thrown in the trash. For comparison, 350 million barrels of oil is nearly double Switzerland's total annual energy consumption. Only a small fraction of what is wasted is ever recovered.

Global energy consumption is projected to increase by close to 50 per cent between 2006 and 2030. That makes reducing our dependency on fossil fuels even more challenging.

Tackling food waste should be added to the toolbox of policy options because its relative impact is on the same scale as more popular measures such as biofuel production and offshore drilling...'