World is at its hottest since prehistory

The world is now hotter than at any stage since prehistoric times, a top climatologist announced last week. His startling conclusion comes as Nasa reported that 2005 has been the hottest year ever recorded.

Cows are better off than half the world

"For half the world's population the brutal reality is this: you'd be
better off as a cow. The average European cow receives $2.20 (£1.40)
a day from the taxpayer in subsidies and other aid. Meanwhile, 2.8
billion people in developing countries around the world live on less
than $2 a day."

"One World Bank economist has warned that as television and cinema
bring home to the poor the gap between their lives and the west, the
rich may have to lock themselves in gated enclaves to keep out the
dispossessed and angry masses."

Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?

It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning.

Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes.

PLATFORM - Social & Ecological Justice

Since 1983 PLATFORM has established itself as one of Europe’s leading exponents of social practice art, combining the talents of artists, social scientists, activists and environmentalists to work across disciplines on issues of social and environmental justice. PLATFORM works in London and the Thames Valley, but its methodologies and strategies travel far beyond Britain’s capital.

PLATFORM’s projects have been recognised for their innovation and imagination both in Britain and internationally - over recent years it has been invited to make major presentations of its work in Germany, Yugoslavia, Canada, Bulgaria, Ireland and the U.S.A.

The Insane Society

Climate Change and the Media

In his classic book, The Sane Society, published in 1955, psychologist Erich Fromm proposed that, not just individuals, but entire societies "may be lacking in sanity". Fromm argued that one of the most deceptive features of social life involves "consensual validation":

"It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth... Just as there is a 'folie a deux' there is a 'folie a millions.' The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane." (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 1955, pp.14-15)

Fromm concluded that modern Western society was indeed insane and that this insanity threatened the very survival of the human species.

If this sounds extreme, consider the media response to the most terrifying threat of our time - global climate catastrophe. In 2004 a paper in the leading science journal Nature warned that, as a result of climate change, fully one-quarter of all plant and animal species could be doomed to extinction by 2050. The danger signals have been coming thick and fast since then.

In considering the sanity of the media reaction there is little point analysing the worst media - trashy magazines, gossip-filled tabloids and the like. Instead let us consider the performance of the very best media on climate change. In Britain this means the Independent newspaper. On December 3, a front-page banner headline in the Independent declared:

"Climate Change: Time For Action. Today, protestors unite in 30 nations - this is what lies ahead if nothing is done."

Read the full article by clicking on the title of this posting.

See also: http://www.medialens.org/

Bhutan - Zen and the art of Happiness

"If Bhutan can prove that a healthy economy, democracy, social equality, sustainable development, environmental protection and energy independence are all within reach of even the poorest nations, this tiny Buddhist country will turn 100 years of economic and political theory on its head and possibly even inspire other nations to take a chance on this Bhutanese style of Zen economic development."

As King Wangchuk stated at last year’s GNH conference, “I believe that while Gross National Happiness is inherently Bhutanese, its ideas may have a positive relevance to any nation, peoples or communities. … I also believe that there must be some convergence among nations on the idea of what the end objective of development and progress should be. There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent—if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the earth among ourselves.”

Bhutan is certainly in the best position today to put this philosophy to the test. Let us hope that GNH proves the cynics wrong or at least remains part of the solution, rather than becoming part of the problem in Bhutan. The real test lies ahead. The world is watching. If GNH proves over time to be little more than empty words, it will be our loss too.

Oil prices enter "super-spike" phase

LONDON (Reuters) - Already sky-high oil prices have entered a "super spike" phase that could last for four more years as global demand booms and supply growth slows, Goldman Sachs analysts said Tuesday.

"We disagree with what appears to be a growing consensus that crude oil prices reached their peak levels earlier in 2005," said the firm's Global Investment Research.

The analysts said oil demand remained resilient and supply growth lackluster, prompting them to keep their average U.S. crude price forecast for next year unchanged at $68 a barrel.

and also:

US Energy Department: $50-plus oil here to stay

WASHINGTON - Oil prices are projected to remain well above $50 a barrel for years to come, resulting in a greater shift to more fuel efficient cars and alternative energy sources, according to an analysis released Monday by the Energy Department.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10437549/from/RSS/

The Elephant in the Room

To be opposed to growth is to be politically eccentric at best. However, it is also to be a heretic or (worse still in these pseudoegalitarian times) an elitist, willing to deprive others of the ‘benefi ts’ of all the consumer goods we take for granted. Critics of growth are accused of denying their fellow humans the inalienable right to ever-increasing living standards, regardless of the planetary or social costs.

Where issues of development are concerned, the charge of elitism has the sharpest sting, and acts as the most effective silencer. The critic of growth is portrayed as standing between the world’s poor and material liberation. Growth is identified with opportunity and choice for all, with ‘the future’ and historical inevitability. Opposition to growth is seen as restricting choice in favour of ‘romantic’ notions about the past. It is depicted as the preserve of privileged Canutes, trying to turn back the tide of progress. Many economists and more thoughtful politicians from all parties are profoundly worried by the environmental and social impact of continuous growth. But few dare to challenge the orthodoxies of development and progress head-on. Few bring themselves to think the apparently unthinkable – that growth itself is the root of the problem.

US walks out of Climate talks as 150 nations move forward

MONTREAL - The Bush administration's unwillingness to seriously confront global warming was increasingly at odds with the rest of the world last night as more than 150 other nations were poised to move forward with the Kyoto protocol.

The US faced widespread condemnation after persistently rejecting even the mildest commitment to deal with climate change.

Former US president Bill Clinton told the meeting that the Bush administration was "flat wrong" to reject the Kyoto accord and said cutting greenhouse gases was good for business and the planet. In an impassioned speech to hundreds of delegates and nongovernmental groups, Clinton rejected a major tenet of the Bush administration's argument for pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol emissions pact in 2001.

Clinton, whose administration negotiated Kyoto in 1997 but never submitted it to a skeptical Senate for ratification, said the belief that Kyoto would hurt the economies of developed nations was incorrect. "We know from every passing year we get more and more objective data that if we had a serious, disciplined effort to apply on a large scale existing clean energy and energy conservation technologies that we could meet and surpass the Kyoto targets easily in a way that would strengthen, not weaken, our economies," he said.

The Montreal meeting is the latest in a 17-year string of sessions aimed at moving both industrial powers and fast-growing developing countries toward cutting emissions of the greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide, which are an unavoidable byproduct of burning
coal, oil and forests.

They have produced two agreements. The first, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), was accepted by nearly all the world's countries, including the United States, but includes no binding targets and never defines an unacceptably dangerous concentration
of greenhouse gases.

The Kyoto Protocol, an addendum to the first treaty, took effect in February but only requires about three dozen industrial countries to make cuts in the gases. It was rejected in 2001 by President Bush.

At the Montreal meeting on Friday, countries bound by the Kyoto pact were close to agreeing on a plan to negotiate a new set of targets and timetables for cutting emissions after its terms expire in 2012.

Invitation to build a new civilization

Never before has the close link between the limits of the current development model based of hydrocarbons been seen so clearly.

Never, until now, has the relationship between oil and the networks of power that control the world been so clearly understood, nor have the relationships between oil and the principal causes of misery which affect humanity been so evident.

Behind the worst wars of the last century and the current,
Behind the wastage of industrial, economic and financial resources,
Behind the instability and impoverishment of many nations,
Behind innumerable State coups, dictatorships and manipulations of democracy,
Behind the age-old exploitation of workers,
Behind the most dangerous chemical industries,
Behind the systematic and uncountable extinction of indigenous peoples,
Behind the contamination of the world’s fresh water, the water of the seven seas and the air of our cities,
Behind the accumulation of enormous amounts of chemical and plastic wastes,
Behind climate change that includes cyclones, floods and hurricanes which are ever more extreme,
Behind the appearance and manifestation of numerous degenerative illnesses and therefore, behind the extinction of life on the planet and as main cause of human deaths in the world,

Is Oil.

The 20th century was the century of poisoning and mass death of people and life on the planet. This poisoning is the product not only of the wastes caused during extraction of oil, oil spills on land and sea and acid rain, it is also consequence of agrochemicals, Organic Persistent Contaminants, fuels, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pharmaceuticals, hospital wastes and other components produced from oil. These are being spilled and accumulated on the planet….and is killing the Land.

During the 20th century we have suffered the worst threats to the sovereignty of our nations causing wars and intrigues due to oil. The large empires define their principal forms of economic and military power in relation to the possibilities of obtaining their own black gold, or to obtain secure access to it in other regions.

The 20th century has been highlighted as the era of supreme power of the transnational, where pressure, manipulation and corruption also promote the loss of sovereignty of nations. That is why one of the most audacious moves of the southern nations was to form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC.

The 20th century has created from its industrial oil bases a culture based on a pattern of energy consumption and the latest and addictive material consumption which has affected in a degenerative manner hundreds of millions of people, whilst it confronted and exterminated thousands of traditional cultures separating them from their healthy and ecological customs. Only very few have managed to survive, in a way that is ever more of isolation, impoverishment and defenselessness.

The crisis of the oil civilization has reached its climax. But how to free ourselves of this crisis is not being carried forward. On the contrary, our exit is delayed whilst the effects of this crisis increase in a manner which is ever more lethal.

Which are the organizations and networks which we could start a positive collaboration in the fight against the oil civilization? Which are the most important social local and global movements that we cannot ignore in our efforts? Which are the international agreements and agendas that we could best take advantage of in this process? Which are the new initiatives that we could and should invent?

To answer these and other needs Oilwatch is inviting sympathetic networks to initiate a joint dialogue of our struggles and launch a global Campaign against the civilization based on oil.

We invite you to send your opinions, considerations and ideas that may consolidate this concept, so that we can build a way together.

We invite you to organize a joint event in which we can establish coordinated work strategies and a common campaign, in which we can see reflected each one of our struggles which currently we work on separately and in which each and every one of our battles develops a new dimension.

OILWATCH

OILWATCH is a network that was born urged by the need of developing global strategies for the communities affected by the oil operations and of supporting their processes of resistance in the struggle against those activities. Among the organization functions are: the exchange of information about oil companies operations in each affected country; about their operation practices as well as about the different resistance movements and international campaigns against specific companies. Oilwatch makes an effort to raising, at the global level, the environmental conscience, exposing the oil operations impacts in tropical forests and in local populations, also establishing the relationship between this activity and the destruction of biodiversity, the climate change and the unpunished violation of human rights.

Please Pray for a beginning Bible class and time to prepare the curriculum, provision for the ministry costs, and protection from evil surrounding our families. Please include in your prayers protection and well-being for my mentor Cindella.

Blessings to you and your family!
2>Blessings to you and your family!

The Psychology of Global Warming: Alarm-ist Versus Alarm-ing

Psychologists tell us that denial is an inevitable and natural first reaction to such news. We don't want to think we can actually have had such effect on the entire planet any more than a young child wants to believe it can hurt its protective and nurturing parent. Nor do we like to think about drastic change. Nor feel moved to fix the leaks in the roof when it isn't raining, especially when we have never experienced a rain storm.

If 95 of the world's best, most experienced experts in child well-being were to tell you that your child was under lethal attack-- and with dramatic signs already visible if you only look -- would you say, "I think I'll wait until the other five experts are convinced before I do anything about it?"

Earth's permafrost starts to squelch

In parts of Fairbanks, Alaska, houses and buildings lean at odd angles.
Some slump as if sliding downhill. Windows and doors inch closer and closer to the ground.
It is an architectural landscape that is becoming more familiar as the world's ice-rich permafrost gives way to thaw.

Water replaces ice and the ground subsides, taking the structures on top along with it.
Alaska is not the only region in a slump. The permafrost melt is accelerating throughout the world's cold regions, scientists reported at the recent Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

In addition to northern Alaska, the permafrost zone includes most other Arctic land, such as northern Canada and much of Siberia, as well as the higher reaches of mountainous regions such as the Alps and Tibet. All report permafrost thaw.

Global assembly calls for human right to renewables

Energy is the fundamental prerequisite of every life, and all humans have a right to renewable energy, concludes the World Renewable Energy Assembly 2005.

“There is no more time to waste for the mobilisation of renewable energy,” says the final communique issued by 450 delegates to the week-long meeting in Germany staged by the World Council for Renewable Energy.

UN organizations and multilateral development banks are not willing to shift their priorities towards renewables, and the Kyoto Protocol “falls far short of its requirements” because the focus is on emission trading “instead of reducing emissions by a change of a paradigm shift towards renewables.”

“Any further postponing is irresponsible,” it concludes. “There are economic reasons, ecological reasons and the question of peace that speak in favour of renewable energy. All together, a basic ethic decision in favour of renewable energy is resulting from these reasons.”

Press release

The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change

A recent article on the website Gristmill.org entitled 'Peak Oil : Not an environmental silver bullet' argued that environmentalists hoping that awareness of peak oil will increase support of renewable, decentralised energy is naïve when the likely situation is that there will be a stronger turn to environmentally damaging, dirtier fossil fuels. Does that mean that Climate Change activists should shun Peak Oil? Absolutely not. Peak Oil and Climate Change have to be understood as an overall package, not separately, and we should all be looking at this, shouting clearly that “If we’re not careful, we might just end up where we’re heading!”

The main thing about Peak Oil - and this could be what everyone needs to grasp hold of - is that it is symbolic of much more than just oil supplies. Because oil is so important to everything that modern industrial society is based upon, including the assumptions of continuous growth, we can see that the decline of oil will pose serious questions about how we live and the systems, structures and culture we have developed. Peak Oil is therefore a symbol of the high-watermark of the hydrocarbon human and everything associated with it. Care for our environment and our climate should be a big part of the answer because that is what we will have left when the hydrocarbons are gone, and we must place proper value on that. The confluence of Peak Oil and Climate Change means that it is now time to ask ourselves, as a species, the biggest questions we can.

So let's ask those questions now. What do we want to achieve with our remaining oil (and gas) resources? What do we want our legacy to be? What are we aiming towards as a species and does that meet what we want to achieve as individuals? How do we want to achieve this? Do we want to make the transition as easy as possible? Do we eschew personal responsibility and have blind faith that ‘the markets’ or ‘technology’ will solve everything, thus putting off doing anything?

We can clearly see that things are going to change, but are we going to be led by events or do we lead them? Do we create a way of living that brings us more in balance with the environment and dramatically reduces greenhouse gases through a combination of efficiency and absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? Or is the current way of doing things so important to try to cling on to (even though it is so ultimately futile that we’ll destroy so much in the process) way beyond the point of no return?

It simply does not make sense to expand the use of energy resources that will increase Climate Change if our ability to deal with those magnified consequences will be even more depleted further down the road. This is what has to be made absolutely clear. The great decline of global oil production is bad enough without Climate Change and vice versa - but do we want to make things worse for ourselves and those who follow? Is that to be our legacy? What kind of fool would cover an infected wound with a poisoned bandage?

Peak Oil and Climate Change are a bigger threat together than either are alone. Our biggest hope is to similarly converge our understanding of them, and how to deal with the problems they present. Peak Oil and Climate Change must be fused as issues – an approach is needed to deal with them as a package. If we are looking for answers, the environmental movement has pushed suitable ones for a long time. Peak Oil presents a tremendous chance to push those solutions ahead, failure to incorporate a full understanding of Peak Oil into the solutions argument for Climate Change would be an abject failure.

The bottom line is that business can live with Climate Change to an extent but it is the threat of declining oil supplies that really strikes fear into politicians, economists, and many other people who prefer to ignore Climate Change as a problem, because it will hit them financially, and soon. The Climate Change movement can sell the green solutions to the challenge of oil decline. The Climate Change movement has been saying for a long time that we should change, Peak Oil means categorically we have to change. Fuse them together and hopefully we’ll get more momentum moving us in the right direction.

Written by: James Howard of PowerSwitch.Org.Uk – Raising awareness of Peak Oil in the UK.

World Bicycle Production

World turning to bicycle for mobility and exercise - EarthPolicy Institute

World Bicycle Production recovers - World Watch Institute

Ocean changes 'will cool Europe'

Changes to ocean currents in the Atlantic may cool European weather within a few decades, scientists say.

Researchers from the UK's National Oceanography Centre say currents derived from the Gulf Stream are weakening, bringing less heat north.

Gulf Stream 'engine' weakening

Donate your Dessert

WFP has joined forces with a leading advertising agency to build public empathy in Europe for the more than 850 million people who still go hungry, despite a clear abundance of food worldwide and a growing epidemic of obesity.

The viewer is asked to donate the cost of a dessert to WFP, which could feed someone in the developing world for a month for the same price. Click here to view the commercial.