Two items I came across today:
1 -
CBC News - Saturday, January 8, 2011
Icelandic singer Bjork is on a three-day karaoke marathon to protest the potential takeover of one of her country's largest geothermal companies by a Canadian firm. The event, called Voice of the People, is the singer's way of encouraging her countrymen to sign a petition forcing the government to hold a referendum on the sale of HS Orka to Vancouver's Magma Energy.
"I had no idea at all that we would be so controversial in Iceland," Magma CEO Ross Beaty told stockhouse.com recently.
2 -
http://www.alterrapower.ca/ - Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Alterra Power Corp is a leading global renewable energy company, formed in 2011 through the merger of Magma Energy Corp and Plutonic Power Corp.
We have an extensive portfolio of exploration and development projects, a skilled international team of explorers, builders & operators and strong financial capacity to support our aggressive growth plans.
Mt summary of these two items:
"I had no idea at all that our aggressive growth plans would be so controversial in Iceland."
Then you should start listening!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Could the "Doomers" be right?
All the books I've been reading lately have predicted the riots in the streets (currently in the UK and before that Greece) which are occasioned by government austerity programs. They have also predicted chaos and collapse in financial systems around the world, increases in the price of petroleum products and food, and increases in severe weather events. It's beginning to look as if they are right . . . . . isn't it?
Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Ingenuity Gap, The Upside of Down), Carolyn Baker (Sacred Demise), Richard Heinberg (Peak Everything, The Oil Depletion Protocol), James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency), Bill McKibben (Eaarth), David C. Korten (The Great Turning) and Rob Hopkins (The Transition Handbook) along with many others, have alluded to this kind of mayhem as a reaction to the twin crises of the decline of cheap oil and global climate change so I am reading the forecasts and the actual news reports alongside one another.
These same authors have offered ways of softening the transition required by the collapse of the industrial world, all of which require a single starting point; that we get through the denial stage and start to take positive action, both in our personal lives and in the life and structure of the communities in which we live. Re-localization, re-skilling and down-sizing all rate high on the list of necessary actions to prepare for, and cope in a post-oil world.
Eventually, our children, our grandchildren, our friends and our neighbours will all be facing the water cannon, tear gas, pepper spray and plastic bullets as our police and military are put in the untenable position of propping up a system of law, order and governance which has become obsolete. This burgeoning obsolescence is due to our overindulgence and our view of the world as being a host of resources spread before us for our use. The truth is that we are but one very recent evolutionary quirk which is currently looking to be short lived.
If we would like to extend the tenure of our species, we need to accept the facts, prepare and act. There is the distinct possibility of a new humanity being created out of the detritus of the industrial world but it will be very different from anything we have experienced in the last 150 years. Many aspects of that new humanity will be diminished from the present but many could actually be beneficial, especially to our well-being and quality of life.
Think about it, read about it and talk about it; you may find it hard to converse with a great many people so find other people who share your vision and talk to them. Creating this New Humanity may seem hard and may put you at odds with friends and family but ultimately, there will be no alternative.
So, stay positive, look for the silver lining in the gathering clouds and start picking up those new/old skills from the past that will be required to transition into the future with some comfort and confidence.
Tweet
Thomas Homer-Dixon (The Ingenuity Gap, The Upside of Down), Carolyn Baker (Sacred Demise), Richard Heinberg (Peak Everything, The Oil Depletion Protocol), James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency), Bill McKibben (Eaarth), David C. Korten (The Great Turning) and Rob Hopkins (The Transition Handbook) along with many others, have alluded to this kind of mayhem as a reaction to the twin crises of the decline of cheap oil and global climate change so I am reading the forecasts and the actual news reports alongside one another.
These same authors have offered ways of softening the transition required by the collapse of the industrial world, all of which require a single starting point; that we get through the denial stage and start to take positive action, both in our personal lives and in the life and structure of the communities in which we live. Re-localization, re-skilling and down-sizing all rate high on the list of necessary actions to prepare for, and cope in a post-oil world.
Eventually, our children, our grandchildren, our friends and our neighbours will all be facing the water cannon, tear gas, pepper spray and plastic bullets as our police and military are put in the untenable position of propping up a system of law, order and governance which has become obsolete. This burgeoning obsolescence is due to our overindulgence and our view of the world as being a host of resources spread before us for our use. The truth is that we are but one very recent evolutionary quirk which is currently looking to be short lived.
If we would like to extend the tenure of our species, we need to accept the facts, prepare and act. There is the distinct possibility of a new humanity being created out of the detritus of the industrial world but it will be very different from anything we have experienced in the last 150 years. Many aspects of that new humanity will be diminished from the present but many could actually be beneficial, especially to our well-being and quality of life.
Think about it, read about it and talk about it; you may find it hard to converse with a great many people so find other people who share your vision and talk to them. Creating this New Humanity may seem hard and may put you at odds with friends and family but ultimately, there will be no alternative.
So, stay positive, look for the silver lining in the gathering clouds and start picking up those new/old skills from the past that will be required to transition into the future with some comfort and confidence.
Tweet
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Monday, February 9, 2009
The Real Scarecrows
I have to point you to an article on the CBC News site, I hope you read it.
My comment:
I know those birds have really good eyesight but a scarecrow on the shore of a 3 km wide lake, gimme a break. This without the fact that migrating birds usually land after sunset.
A better idea would be to have the CEO of Syncrude and the ministers from both the Alberta and federal governments who are supposed to be responsible for the environment dress up as scarecrows and spend one full migratory cycle (N to S and S to N) on an island of floating crude in the middle of the lake making noise and looking scary.
If no birds died in the hellish "Pit of Doom" during this period, let The Three Stooges come ashore. It just might work, they sure scare the hell out of me.
My comment:
I know those birds have really good eyesight but a scarecrow on the shore of a 3 km wide lake, gimme a break. This without the fact that migrating birds usually land after sunset.
A better idea would be to have the CEO of Syncrude and the ministers from both the Alberta and federal governments who are supposed to be responsible for the environment dress up as scarecrows and spend one full migratory cycle (N to S and S to N) on an island of floating crude in the middle of the lake making noise and looking scary.
If no birds died in the hellish "Pit of Doom" during this period, let The Three Stooges come ashore. It just might work, they sure scare the hell out of me.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Will Democracy Destroy the Earth?
Having taken a short break to pursue other forums to rant and rave in, here I am back after only one year. From the number of comments I get, I am probably ranting almost exclusively to myself but hey, beats banging your head against the wall (although the music isn't as good).
It is my contention that the world is now up against a set of problems which democratically elected governments don't have a snowball's chance in hell of solving; the Earth and humanity are doomed and we are all gonna die, taking a goodly portion of Life on Earth with us. Sound crazy, over the top, demented? I think so too but unfortunately I can't see any real hope of avoidance. This set of problems, which I will call the Kapoofoo Syndrome is dominated in the public conscience by "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" but it goes far beyond that. To clarify the name, it is from the mythical Kapoofoo Bird which, having one wing shorter that the other, flies around in a decreasing spiral until it goes "KAPOOFOO", up its own butt. This gives the bird a non-existent vision of the future, or anything else.
Problems which comprise the syndrome are, in no particular order:
- population growth
- personal and corporate greed for both money and power
- lack of stewardship
- lack of leadership
- the end of cheap energy
- denial
- inequality of opportunity
- loss of civility
Why is democracy so ill-equipped to cope? Because almost all of the solutions which might have a meaningful effect in turning around the runaway degradation of our one-and-only home would require pain and suffering of the rich on a par with that currently endured by the poor. No personal transportation, no accumulation of wealth, greatly reduced variety and quality of food, greatly reduced use of water, land and all other natural resources and almost complete loss of individual rights and freedoms. If that's not enough, how about forced sterilization of half of all male infants and all other males after the siring of one child. This might be avoided if enough pandemics arose to reduce the world population by at least one half. If you do the math you will find the discrepancies I have built in to allow for, at best, 50% compliance with even the most totalitarian and heavy-handed governance.
So what politician is going to run on that platform? If one did, what chance would he/she have of being elected? If one was elected on false promises and then attempted to introduce the necessary measures, would he/she even manage to survive? We still have people bitching about laws to reduce exposure to second hand smoke, one pub owner was quoted in today's paper as saying her business will be destroyed because her customers will buy booze and drink it at home. So could allowing them to gather in one place, expose themselves and each other to smoke while getting pissed enough to drive home be part of the solution to over-population? Probably no more acceptable than sterilizing them at birth.
Of course the irony is that left unchecked, humanity will bring down even worse calamities on itself through drought, flooding, storms, pandemics, eradication of food sources and other un-natural disasters. Many populations are already dependent on non-sustainable resources for existence. Typically, a newly found fisheries resource is reduced to worthless in less than 10 years. Subsistence farming destroys rainforest and causes desertification of previously productive land in many parts of the world. In the so-called developed world, water tables are being lowered, aquifers are being polluted by agricultural waste and arable land is still being built over and now used to produce fuel instead of food. Water is being pumped down oil wells and used to extract oil from the Canadian tarsands.
I have decided to take a break (not another year, just a day or two) and continue with The Kapoofoo Syndrome, Part 2 ........
PS: The short break did turn into a year after all but maybe I'll get back to the Kapoofoo Syndrome yet. In the meantime , I have a few other things I want to persue.
Some backup material
Tweet
It is my contention that the world is now up against a set of problems which democratically elected governments don't have a snowball's chance in hell of solving; the Earth and humanity are doomed and we are all gonna die, taking a goodly portion of Life on Earth with us. Sound crazy, over the top, demented? I think so too but unfortunately I can't see any real hope of avoidance. This set of problems, which I will call the Kapoofoo Syndrome is dominated in the public conscience by "Global Warming" or "Climate Change" but it goes far beyond that. To clarify the name, it is from the mythical Kapoofoo Bird which, having one wing shorter that the other, flies around in a decreasing spiral until it goes "KAPOOFOO", up its own butt. This gives the bird a non-existent vision of the future, or anything else.
Problems which comprise the syndrome are, in no particular order:
- population growth
- personal and corporate greed for both money and power
- lack of stewardship
- lack of leadership
- the end of cheap energy
- denial
- inequality of opportunity
- loss of civility
Why is democracy so ill-equipped to cope? Because almost all of the solutions which might have a meaningful effect in turning around the runaway degradation of our one-and-only home would require pain and suffering of the rich on a par with that currently endured by the poor. No personal transportation, no accumulation of wealth, greatly reduced variety and quality of food, greatly reduced use of water, land and all other natural resources and almost complete loss of individual rights and freedoms. If that's not enough, how about forced sterilization of half of all male infants and all other males after the siring of one child. This might be avoided if enough pandemics arose to reduce the world population by at least one half. If you do the math you will find the discrepancies I have built in to allow for, at best, 50% compliance with even the most totalitarian and heavy-handed governance.
So what politician is going to run on that platform? If one did, what chance would he/she have of being elected? If one was elected on false promises and then attempted to introduce the necessary measures, would he/she even manage to survive? We still have people bitching about laws to reduce exposure to second hand smoke, one pub owner was quoted in today's paper as saying her business will be destroyed because her customers will buy booze and drink it at home. So could allowing them to gather in one place, expose themselves and each other to smoke while getting pissed enough to drive home be part of the solution to over-population? Probably no more acceptable than sterilizing them at birth.
Of course the irony is that left unchecked, humanity will bring down even worse calamities on itself through drought, flooding, storms, pandemics, eradication of food sources and other un-natural disasters. Many populations are already dependent on non-sustainable resources for existence. Typically, a newly found fisheries resource is reduced to worthless in less than 10 years. Subsistence farming destroys rainforest and causes desertification of previously productive land in many parts of the world. In the so-called developed world, water tables are being lowered, aquifers are being polluted by agricultural waste and arable land is still being built over and now used to produce fuel instead of food. Water is being pumped down oil wells and used to extract oil from the Canadian tarsands.
I have decided to take a break (not another year, just a day or two) and continue with The Kapoofoo Syndrome, Part 2 ........
PS: The short break did turn into a year after all but maybe I'll get back to the Kapoofoo Syndrome yet. In the meantime , I have a few other things I want to persue.
Some backup material
Tweet
Monday, March 19, 2007
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.
Its not a great time in history for American presidents as the last two have been proposed for impeachment, based on the fact that they are Liar, Liars, although the "Pants on Fire" part is only applicable to Bill Clinton as far as we know. However, the difference in scope of the lies that these Liar, Liars have been accused of telling is huge, in the order of a multitude of football fields different to (mis)use the favourite analogy of US news services.
Bill Clinton took Bible in hand and claimed that, according to the definition of sexual relations therein, he didn't have them with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Whether or not he didn't understand that what was going on under the Oval Office desk was sexual in nature, he was trying only to save his marriage. (I wonder if Dubya uses the same Oval Office chair hmmm .... but I digress).
George W. Bush figuratively took his Bible in hand, although apparently open to Revelation rather than Exodus, and told us about nooquoolar weapons, various other "W.M.D's" and uranium from Africa, none of which existed of course. His intent was to take the most powerful nation in the world to war, the result of which has been the killing of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of (mostly innocent) Iraqis. There aren't enough football fields in all of America to lay end-to-end and explain that difference in scope.
Bill Clinton's efforts to save his marriage were understood by a majority of Americans who saw the Clinton family's problems as something to be dealt with by the Clinton family, which they were.
George W. Bush's actions have not only killed thousands of Iraqi women, children and other innocents, but also more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. They have destroyed any positive influence that America had in the world and put the most powerful and aggressive nation facing the majority of the rest of the world squarely across that ever-changing "line in the sand".
It seems the question for everyone outside the USA is "Why", why is George W. Bush still the president? Not only has he not been impeached or taken out of office by whatever means exist, he even won a second term, albeit on a platform of "Vote for me or you'll die". This must be the ultimate proof that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. No wonder the Neocons spend so much time, effort, money and (other people's) lives defending democracy.
Bill Clinton took Bible in hand and claimed that, according to the definition of sexual relations therein, he didn't have them with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Whether or not he didn't understand that what was going on under the Oval Office desk was sexual in nature, he was trying only to save his marriage. (I wonder if Dubya uses the same Oval Office chair hmmm .... but I digress).
George W. Bush figuratively took his Bible in hand, although apparently open to Revelation rather than Exodus, and told us about nooquoolar weapons, various other "W.M.D's" and uranium from Africa, none of which existed of course. His intent was to take the most powerful nation in the world to war, the result of which has been the killing of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of (mostly innocent) Iraqis. There aren't enough football fields in all of America to lay end-to-end and explain that difference in scope.
Bill Clinton's efforts to save his marriage were understood by a majority of Americans who saw the Clinton family's problems as something to be dealt with by the Clinton family, which they were.
George W. Bush's actions have not only killed thousands of Iraqi women, children and other innocents, but also more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. They have destroyed any positive influence that America had in the world and put the most powerful and aggressive nation facing the majority of the rest of the world squarely across that ever-changing "line in the sand".
It seems the question for everyone outside the USA is "Why", why is George W. Bush still the president? Not only has he not been impeached or taken out of office by whatever means exist, he even won a second term, albeit on a platform of "Vote for me or you'll die". This must be the ultimate proof that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. No wonder the Neocons spend so much time, effort, money and (other people's) lives defending democracy.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Those Freakin' Freegans
I recently found the website of an underground culture whose adherents live in a way which I feel just might start to turn around the current helter skelter race to self-destruction which I see happening in the so-called developed world. These are 21st century, urban hippies, living as free as possible from all the trappings of consumerism, capitalism, economic growth, globalization and, some might say, society.
Dumpster divers, perennial protesters, often homeless, usually disheveled, the kind of humans who are looked down upon for living their lives and leaving the smallest possible footprint as they go along.
An excerpt from Freegan.info:
"After years of trying to boycott products from egregious corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself."
That sure strikes a chord with me. I try to use fairly traded products, foods that haven't used too much pesticide to grow or fossil fuel to travel and have been harvested and processed by people who are being paid a fair wage to do so and clothes that haven't been made in sweatshop conditions. However, I still end up feeling that I contribute far too much to others' miseries by the way I live.
If you care about what life is going to be like for our grandchildren or great grandchildren, take the time to read through the material on Freegan.info and try to visualize a world with double or triple the present population, where clean water and safe food are the stuff of legend and housing, health care, education, electrical energy and personal transportation are available only to the elite who live in fortified and guarded mansions.
If this post sounds like the product of a raving lunatic, hey, maybe it is. On the other hand, maybe it isn't. Only time will tell.
Dumpster divers, perennial protesters, often homeless, usually disheveled, the kind of humans who are looked down upon for living their lives and leaving the smallest possible footprint as they go along.
An excerpt from Freegan.info:
"After years of trying to boycott products from egregious corporations responsible for human rights violations, environmental destruction, and animal abuse, many of us found that no matter what we bought we ended up supporting something deplorable. We came to realize that the problem isn't just a few bad corporations but the entire system itself."
That sure strikes a chord with me. I try to use fairly traded products, foods that haven't used too much pesticide to grow or fossil fuel to travel and have been harvested and processed by people who are being paid a fair wage to do so and clothes that haven't been made in sweatshop conditions. However, I still end up feeling that I contribute far too much to others' miseries by the way I live.
If you care about what life is going to be like for our grandchildren or great grandchildren, take the time to read through the material on Freegan.info and try to visualize a world with double or triple the present population, where clean water and safe food are the stuff of legend and housing, health care, education, electrical energy and personal transportation are available only to the elite who live in fortified and guarded mansions.
If this post sounds like the product of a raving lunatic, hey, maybe it is. On the other hand, maybe it isn't. Only time will tell.
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