writeaboutwarming

March 24, 2014 – The Post Carbon Institute has put together a fine talking heads documentary called “Agriculture in a Changing World.”   I learned a bit from it, so I thought I might summarize it for you.   You can find the film at www.postcarbon.org/video/2111138-agriculture-in-a-changing-world . The half hour film consists of brief remarks made by leaders in the agriculture and climate change worlds.   I’ll start with Lester Brown, formerly of the World Watch Institute, now heading up the Earth Policy Institute.   He shocked me by stating that families in a number of countries around the world, among them Nigeria, Haiti, Ethiopia, India, and Peru, must go without food a certain number of days during the week.   While I was aware that Haitians have suffered this degree of deprivation for decades, I didn’t know that food supply was so precarious in other parts of the world.   He went on to say that water shortages are now a problem everywhe...

November 26, 2013 - Just about a year ago, Bill McKibben took to the road in a sustainably-fueled bus, intent upon provoking actions in the board room and the classroom opposing dirty energy.   McKibben told students they had more power than they knew, and could speak truth to power in guiding their institutions of higher learning to divest themselves of shares of stock belonging to petroleum companies.   Then he went even further, suggesting to university students that civil disobedience could turn these same companies into a focal point for political action.   Did he convince them? It would appear so.   According to Chloe Maxmin, a junior at Harvard and a leader of Divest Harvard, “Students have organized divestment groups on about 400 campuses.”   She expressed the conviction that American government has been “taken over by the fossil fuel industry.”   Due to that supremacy, “we’re going to pressure the fossil-fuel industry itself.” ...

April 15, 2013 - Bill McKibben’s brilliant article in the Rolling Stone of April 11 was not just thought provoking, it was right on target.   Entitled “The Fossil Fuel Resistance,” McKibben details why the laughter of oil industry barons rings a bit hollow these days.   There’s so much good information to be found in McKibben’s latest call-to-arms, I’m going to give it the fine-tooth comb treatment it deserves. “My philosophy is to make money.”   Rex Tillerson’s obscenely redundant declaration followed his announced intention, as CEO of ExxonMobil, to more than double the acreage over which his company is exploring for fossil fuel.   (Isn’t there something about that word “fossil” that’s just so inadvertently accurate, that describes Tillerson and his fellow old-white-guys-who- honor-the-almighty-dollar-more-than-their-mothers with an achingly awful degree of precision?)   He elaborated contemptuously that renewable energy would account for just one percen...

March 7, 2011 – It’s time to call for a General Strike. That’s extremely hard to write, for so very many reasons. Every single chicken is on its way home to roost – peak oil, economic collapse, climate disruption – and the roost consists of a continent full of people with their heads stuck in the sand. When would have been a better time? Never. Is there ever a good time? Yes. The present. Right now. Why? Because so much is so wrong, and it’s up to us to try to make it right. It won’t happen the first day of the strike, or the second. In fact, things might get worse, for a while. The best place for the strike is Washington, D.C., so groups of people would need to charter buses to get there. The reason DC is the best place is because our representatives are so unaware of us. They think they’re far enough away from us that they can do whatever they want and not be found out. We need to get up close and personal, remind them of who is boss, impress upon them what needs to be...