Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet

May 13, 2013

 

By David Swanson

It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. Of course it is.

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It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas.  Of course it is.  And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing in green energy.  But saying the right thing to a pollster on a phone or in a focus group is hardly the extent of what one ought sensibly to do when the fate of the world is at stake.

Nor do we get a complete explanation by recognizing that our communications system is in bed with our political system, cooperatively pushing lies about our climate and our budget (defunding wars and billionaires is not an option, so there’s just no money for new ideas, sorry).  Of course.  But when the planet’s climate is being destroyed for all future generations, most of which will therefore not exist, the only sensible course of action is to drop everything and nonviolently overthrow any system of corruption that is carrying out the destruction.

Why don’t we?

Misinformation is a surface-level explanation.  Why do people choose to accept obvious misinformation?

Here’s one reason: They’ve already chosen to accept other obvious misinformation to which they are deeply and passionately attached and which requires this additional self-deception.  The beliefs involved correlate with poor education, so government choices to fund fossil fuels and highways and prisons and Hamid Karzai rather than schools certainly contribute.  But perhaps we should confront the misinformation directly, even while pursuing the creation of an education system worthy of a civilized country.

According to a Newsweek poll, 40 percent of people in the United States believe the world will end with a battle between Jesus Christ and the Antichrist.  And overwhelmingly those who believe that, also believe that natural disaster and violence are signs of the approach of the glorious battle — so much so that 22 percent in the U.S. believe the world will end in their lifetime.  This would logically mean that concern for the world of their great great grandchildren makes no sense at all and should be dismissed from their minds.  In fact, a recent study found that belief in the “second coming” reduces support for strong governmental action on climate change by 20 percent.

Apart from the corruption of money, whenever you have 40 percent of Americans believing something stupid, the forces of gerrymandering in the House, disproportionate representation of small states in the Senate, the Senate filibuster, the winner-take-all two-party system that shuts many voices out of the media and debates and ballots while allowing Democrats to get elected purely on the qualification of not being Republicans, and a communications system that mainstreams Republican beliefs almost guarantees that the 40-percent view will control the government.

Congressman John Shimkus, a Republican from a gerrymandered monstrosity in southeastern Illinois says the planet is in fine shape and guaranteed to stay that way because God promised that to Noah.

Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma (a state whose citizens get 10 times the representation in the Senate that Californians do — if one can accuse Diane Feinstein of representing anyone), says that only God could possibly change the climate, and we should stop being so arrogant — as if taking $1.4 million in campaign “contributions” from fossil-fuel profiteers and imagining that your positions are purely determined by your access to an all-powerful being who runs the universe on behalf of the 30 percent of the world raised on the same fairy tales as you isn’t an arrogant belief.

Another senator who claims to be a theist but not of the Inhofe-Shimkus variety, publicly denounced an unnamed colleague this week for pushing the don’t-worry-God-is-on-the-job line in a recent meeting.

When a large portion of the population believes that catastrophe is a good thing, rather than a bad thing, and wars are celebrated and crises bring excitement and solidarity to our lives, the influence is toxic.  Of the 40 percent who believe Jesus is on his way, some no doubt believe it more than others, allow it to shape more of their other beliefs and actions.  Of the other 60 percent, some are no doubt influenced to varying degrees by the armageddonists.

Belief in theism itself reaches as much as 80 percent in the United States and includes strong activists for sustainable policies, including some who passionately proselytize using the argument that only theism can save us from our apathy in the face of global warming.  And there is no question that our most dedicated peace and justice activists include some strong religious believers.  But theism is essentially the belief that some more powerful being is running the show.  Perhaps the armageddonists haven’t really found a solution to the problem of evil (“If there is a God, he’ll have to beg forgiveness from me,” said a prisoner in a Nazi camp), but the non-armageddonist theists have never found a logical solution to the problem of free will, either.  Theists can go either way and all make as little sense as each other.  But they must all of necessity promote the notion that a more powerful being is in charge.

And where does that belief show up to damaging effect?  In our politics it shows up primarily as an attitude toward presidents.  While President Obama has spent five years working diligently to destroy our natural environment for all time to come, the largest block of those concerned about global warming have spent their time telling each other to trust in Him, that he works in mysterious ways, that he is up against the Evil One and must be allowed time to succeed in his battle.  You see, the problem with theism is not that some of its spin-off beliefs succeed in an undemocratic system.  The problem is that theism is anti-democratic at its core.  It moves us away from relying on ourselves.  It teaches us to rely on someone supposedly better than we.  And the same 80 percent or so also believe in something called heaven, which renders real life far less significant even for those generations that get to experience it.

This, in turn, fuels a belief in optimism.  We are all told to be optimists regardless of the facts, as if it were a personal lifestyle choice.  Combine that with a belief that everything is part of a secret master plan, and you’ve got a recipe for submissive acceptance.  I’ve had great activists tell me that everything will work out for the best, either because that keeps them going, or because they’ve learned that saying anything else earns them fewer speaking invitations.  Hardcore optimism is compatible with active engagement.  But the net effect is almost certainly a contribution to apathy.

I wish it were needless to say that I am not advocating the equally dumb position of willful pessimism.  I’m proposing the unpopular position of taking the facts as they come, acting accordingly, and acting cautiously when it comes to the fate of generations as yet unborn — even if that caution requires huge sacrifices.

There are other powerful forces weighing against action as well.  There is our love of technology, including our fantasies about inventing our way out of catastrophe, colonizing other planets, re-creating species.  Maybe our senator friend is onto something after all when he points to arrogance.  There is also greed, including our fear that living sustainably would involve living with less of the materialistic crap that currently clutters our lives and fuels our obesity.  There is also the con job continuously played on us by our government that persuades so many of us that we are powerless to effect change.  It’s not enough to believe that the world is being destroyed and that we humans are on our own with the plants and the other animals, if we’ve fallen for the biggest scam governments pull on their people, the lie that says they pay no attention to us.  History teaches the opposite.  People’s influence on their governments is much more powerful than we usually imagine.  It’s weakened primarily by people’s failure to do anything.  Impotence is a self-fulfilling loop.  Those longing for the end of the world are far from alone in imagining that we don’t have the power to make the world over ourselves.  Nonetheless, among the things we should be doing right now is explaining to our neighbors that Jesus isn’t coming back.

Submitters Website: http://davidswanson.org

Submitters Bio:

David Swanson is the author of “When the World Outlawed War,” “War Is A Lie” and “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org

Twelve Reasons Why Globalization is a Huge Problem

Posted on February 22, 2013by Gail Tverberg

Globalization seems to be looked on as an unmitigated “good” by economists. Unfortunately, economists seem to be guided by their badly flawed models; they miss  real-world problems. In particular, they miss the point that the world is finite. We don’t have infinite resources, or unlimited ability to handle excess pollution. So we are setting up a “solution” that is at best temporary.

Economists also tend to look at results too narrowly–from the point of view of abusiness that can expand, or a worker who has plenty of money, even though these users are not typical. In real life, the business are facing increased competition, and the worker may be laid off because of greater competition.

The following is a list of reasons why globalization is not living up to what was promised,  and is, in fact, a very major problem.

1. Globalization uses up finite resources more quickly.  As an example, China joined the world trade organization in December 2001. In 2002, its coal use began rising rapidly (Figure 1, below).

Figure 1. China’s energy consumption by source, based on BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy data.

In fact, there is also a huge increase in world coal consumption (Figure 2, below). India’s consumption is increasing as well, but from a smaller base.

Figure 2. World coal consumption based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy

2. Globalization increases world carbon dioxide emissions. If the world burns its coal more quickly, and does not cut back on other fossil fuel use, carbon dioxide emissions increase. Figure 3 shows how carbon dioxide emissions have increased, relative to what might have been expected, based on the trend line for the years prior to when the Kyoto protocol was adopted in 1997.

Figure 3. Actual world carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, as shown in BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy. Fitted line is expected trend in emissions, based on actual trend in emissions from 1987-1997, equal to about 1.0% per year.

3. Globalization makes it virtually impossible for regulators in one country to foresee the worldwide implications of their actions. Actions which would seem to reduce emissions for an individual country may indirectly encourage world trade, ramp up manufacturing in coal-producing areas, and increase emissions over all. See my post Climate Change: Why Standard Fixes Don’t Work.

4. Globalization acts to increase world oil prices.

Figure 4. World oil supply and price, both based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy data. Updates to 2012$ added based on EIA price and supply data and BLS CPI urban.

The world has undergone two sets of oil price spikes. The first one, in the 1973 to 1983 period, occurred after US oil supply began to decline in 1970 (Figure 4, above and Figure 5 below).

Figure 5. US crude oil production, based on EIA data. 2012 data estimated based on partial year data. Tight oil split is author’s estimate based on state distribution of oil supply increases.

After 1983, it was possible to bring oil prices back to the $30 to $40 barrel range (in 2012$), compared to the $20 barrel price (in 2012$) available prior to 1970. This was partly done partly by ramping up oil production in the North Sea, Alaska and Mexico (sources which were already known), and partly by reducing consumption. The reduction in consumption was accomplished by cutting back oil use for electricity, and by encouraging the use of more fuel-efficient cars.

Now, since 2005, we have high oil prices back, but we have a much worse problem. The reason the problem is worse now is partly because oil supply is not growing very much, due to limits we are reaching, and partly because demand is exploding due to globalization.

If we look at world oil supply, it is virtually flat. The United States and Canada together provide the slight increase in world oil supply that has occurred since 2005. Otherwise, supply has been flat since 2005 (Figure 6, below).  What looks like a huge increase in US oil production in 2012 in Figure 5 looks much less impressive, when viewed in the context of world oil production in Figure 6.

Figure 6. World crude oil production based on EIA data. *2012 estimated based on data through October.

Part of our problem now is that with globalization, world oil demand is rising very rapidly. Chinese buyers purchased more cars in 2012 than did European buyers. Rapidly rising world demand, together with oil supply which is barely rising, pushes world prices upward. This time, there also is no possibility of a dip in world oil demand of the type that occurred in the early 1980s. Even if the West drops its oil consumption greatly, the East has sufficient pent-up demand that it will make use of any oil that is made available to the market.

Adding to our problem is the fact that we have already extracted most of the inexpensive to extract oil because the “easy” (and cheap) to extract oil was extracted first. Because of this, oil prices cannot decrease very much, without world supply dropping off. Instead, because of diminishing returns, needed price keeps ratcheting upward. The new “tight” oil that is acting to increase US supply is an example ofexpensive to produce oil–it can’t bring needed price relief.

5. Globalization transfers consumption of limited oil supply from developed countries to developing countries. If world oil supply isn’t growing by very much, and demand is growing rapidly in developing countries, oil to meet this rising demand must come from somewhere. The way this transfer takes place is through the mechanism of high oil prices. High oil prices are particularly a problem for major oil importing countries, such as the United States, many European countries, and Japan. Because oil is used in growing food and for commuting, a rise in oil price tends to lead to a cutback in discretionary spending, recession, and lower oil use in these countries. See my academic article, “Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis,” available here or here.

Figure 7. World oil consumption in million metric tons, divided among three areas of the world. (FSU is Former Soviet Union.)

Developing countries are better able to use higher-priced oil than developed countries.  In some cases (particularly in oil-producing countries) subsidies play a role. In addition, the shift of manufacturing to less developed countries increases the number of workers who can afford a motorcycle or car. Job loss plays a role in the loss of oil consumption from developed countries–see my post, Why is US Oil Consumption Lower? Better Gasoline Mileage? The real issue isn’t better mileage; one major issue is loss of jobs.

6. Globalization transfers jobs from developed countries to less developed countries. Globalization levels the playing field, in a way that makes it hard for developed countries to compete. A country with a lower cost structure (lower wages and benefits for workers, more inexpensive coal in its energy mix, and more lenient rules on pollution) is able to out-compete a typical OECD country. In the United States, the percentage of US citizen with jobs started dropping about the time China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Figure 8. US Number Employed / Population, where US Number Employed is Total Non_Farm Workers from Current Employment Statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Population is US Resident Population from the US Census. 2012 is partial year estimate.

7. Globalization transfers investment spending from developed countries to less developed countries. If an investor has a chance to choose between a country with a competitive advantage and a country with a competitive disadvantage, which will the investor choose? A shift in investment shouldn’t be too surprising.

In the US, domestic investment was fairly steady as a percentage of National Income until the mid-1980s (Figure 9). In recent years, it has dropped off and is now close to consumption of assets (similar to depreciation, but includes other removal from service). The assets in question include all types of capital assets, including government-owned assets (schools, roads), business owned assets (factories, stores), and individual homes. A similar pattern applies to business investment viewed separately.

Figure 9. United States domestic investment compared to consumption of assets, as percentage of National Income. Based on US Bureau of Economic Analysis data from Table 5.1, Savings and Investment by Sector.

Part of the shift in the balance between investment and consumption of assets is rising consumption of assets. This would include early retirement of factories, among other things.

Even very low interest rates in recent years have not brought US investment back to earlier levels.

8. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, globalization leads to huge US balance of trade deficits and other imbalances. 

Figure 10. US Balance on Current Account, based on data of US Bureau of Economic Analysis. Amounts in 2012$ calculated based on US CPI-Urban of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

With increased globalization and the rising price of oil since 2002, the US trade deficit has soared (Figure 10). Adding together amounts from Figure 10, the cumulative US deficit for the period 1980 through 2011 is $8.6 trillion. By the end of 2012, the cumulative deficit since 1980 is probably a little over 9 trillion.

A major reason for the large US trade deficit is the fact that the US dollar is the world’s “reserve currency.” While the mechanism is too complicated to explain here, the result is that the US can run deficits year after year, and the rest of the world will take their surpluses, and use it to buy US debt. With this arrangement, the rest of the world funds the United States’ continued overspending. It is fairly clear the system was not put together with the thought that it would work in a fully globalized world–it simply leads to too great an advantage for the United States relative to other countries. Erik Townsend recently wrote an article called Why Peak Oil Threatens the International Monetary System, in which he talks about the possibility of high oil prices bringing an end to the current arrangement.

At this point, high oil prices together with globalization have led to huge US deficit spending since 2008. This has occurred partly because a smaller portion of the population is working (and thus paying taxes), and partly because US spending for unemployment benefits and stimulus has risen. The result is a mismatch between government income and spending (Figure 11, below).

Figure 11. Receipts and Expenditures for all US government entities combined (including state and local) based on BEA data. 2012 estimated based on partial year data.

Thanks to the mismatch described in the last paragraph, the federal deficit in recent years has been far greater than the balance of payment deficit. As a result, some other source of funding for the additional US debt has been needed, in addition to what is provided by the reserve currency arrangement. The Federal Reserve has been using Quantitative Easing to buy up federal debt since late 2008. This has provided a buyer for additional debt and also keeps US interest rates low (hoping to attract some investment back to the US, and keeping US debt payments affordable). The current situation is unsustainable, however. Continued overspending and printing money to pay debt is not a long-term solution to huge imbalances among countries and lack of cheap oil–situations that do not “go away” by themselves.

9. Globalization tends to move taxation away from corporations, and onto individual citizens. Corporations have the ability to move to locations where the tax rate is lowest. Individual citizens have much less ability to make such a change. Also, with today’s lack of jobs, each community competes with other communities with respect to how many tax breaks it can give to prospective employers. When we look at the breakdown of US tax receipts (federal, state, and local combined) this is what we find:

Figure 12. Source of US Government revenue, by year, based on US Bureau of Economic Analysis Data.

The only portion that is entirely from corporations is corporate income taxes, shown in red. This has clearly shrunk by more than half. Part of the green layer (excise, sales, and property tax) is also from corporations, since truckers also pay excise tax on fuel they purchase, and businesses usually pay property taxes. It is clear, though, that the portion of revenue coming from personal income taxes and Social Security and Medicare funding (blue) has been rising.

I showed  that high oil prices seem to lead to depressed US wages in my post, The Connection of Depressed Wages to High Oil Prices and Limits to Growth. If wages are low at the same time that wage-earners are being asked to shoulder an increasing share of rising government costs,  this creates a mismatch that wage-earners are not really able to handle.

10. Globalization sets up a currency “race to the bottom,” with each country trying to get an export advantage by dropping the value of its currency.

Because of the competitive nature of the world economy, each country needs to sell its goods and services at as low a price as possible. This can be done in various ways–pay its workers lower wages; allow more pollution; use cheaper more polluting fuels; or debase the currency by Quantitative Easing (also known as “printing money,”) in the hope that this will produce inflation and lower the value of the currency relative to other currencies.

There is no way this race to the bottom can end well. Prices of imports become very high in a debased currency–this becomes a problem. In addition, the supply of money is increasingly out of balance with real goods and services. This produces asset bubbles, such as artificially high stock market prices, and artificially high bond prices (because the interest rates on bonds are so low). These assets bubbles lead to investment crashes. Also, if the printing ever stops (and perhaps even if it doesn’t), interest rates will rise, greatly raising cost to governments, corporations, and individual citizens.

11. Globalization encourages dependence on other countries for essential goods and services. With globalization, goods can often be obtained cheaply from elsewhere. A country may come to believe that there is no point in producing its own food or clothing. It becomes easy to depend on imports and specialize in something like financial services or high-priced medical care–services that are not as oil-dependent.

As long as the system stays together, this arrangement works, more or less. However, if the built-in instabilities in the system become too great, and the system stops working, there is suddenly a very large problem. Even if the dependence is not on food, but is instead on computers and replacement parts for machinery, there can still be a big problem if imports are interrupted.

12. Globalization ties countries together, so that if one country collapses, the collapse is likely to ripple through the system, pulling many other countries with it.

History includes many examples of civilizations that started from a small base, gradually grew to over-utilize their resource base, and then collapsed. We are now dealing with a world situation which is not too different. The big difference this time is that a large number of countries is involved, and these countries are increasingly interdependent. In my post 2013: Beginning of Long-Term Recession, I showed that there are significant parallels between financial dislocations now happening in the United States and the types of changes which happened in other societies, prior to collapse.  My analysis was based on  the model of collapse developed in the bookSecular Cycles by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov.

It is not just the United States that is in perilous financial condition. Many European countries and Japan are in similarly poor condition. The failure of one country has the potential to pull many others down, and with it much of the system. The only countries that remain safe are the ones that have not grown to depend on globalization–which is probably not many today–perhaps landlocked countries of Africa.

In the past, when one area collapsed, there was less interdependence. When one area collapsed, it was possible to let cropland “rest” and deforested areas regrow. With regeneration, and perhaps new technology, it was possible for a new civilization to grow in the same area later. If we are dealing with a world-wide collapse, it will be much more difficult to follow this model.

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About Gail Tverberg

My name is Gail Tverberg. I am an actuary interested in finite world issues – oil depletion, natural gas depletion, water shortages, and climate change. The financial system is also likely to be affected.

View all posts by Gail Tverberg →

This entry was posted in Energy policy, Financial Implications and tagged account current, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide emissions, coal, collapse, finite resources,fossil fuel, globalization, trade deficit. Bookmark the permalink.

 

Earth Is Dying, Yet Climate And Forest Movements Lack Urgency And Substance

 

By Dr. Glen Barry

25 February, 2013
Ecological Internet

Human industrial growth is systematically liquidating the natural ecosystems that are the habitat for humans and for all life. Earth is dying, one logged old-growth tree and tank of gasoline at a time, yet most environmental groups are shilling solutions that are inadequate and ill-conceived – such as logging old-growth forests to protect them. Nothing shows this better than Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network – in an age of mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse – wanting us to wipe our asses with toilet paper from “certified” old-growth forest pulp.

A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia – the Earth System or biosphere – is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth’s land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it “development.”

Industrial growth’s destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.

Life begets life. It is a miracle of nature that life, together in ecosystems, creates conditions necessary for life. Yet multidimensional ecological crises – climate, forests, water, food, overpopulation and inequitable consumption, and others – are undermining life. A time of great dying looms as humans are destroying their habitat, all life, and the Earth System.

Together either we end fracking, tar sands, coal, old-growth logging, overpopulation, and inequitable overconsumption all at once or our one shared biosphere collapses. Not only do we need to protest, but we need the right solutions. These must be derived from the best ecological minds in broad consultation, not by hipster, non-ecologists who have tapped into celebrity and foundation money.

Protection of old-growth forests is a vital climate solution being given short thrift by the self-appointed, often underqualified environmental movement elite. Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace USA’s obstinate support for Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) massive old-growth logging – across an area twice the size of Texas – for throwaway consumer products is a major obstacle to going forward on climate. I have written at length, including at http://bit.ly/rainforest_heist, how virtually every major NGO greenwashes old-growth forest logging in what I have termed the “Great Rainforest Heist.”

In 2009 Lindsey Allen (now Rainforest Action Network’s new acting director, then with Greenpeace Canada) claimed victory and ended a campaign against Kleenex because they agreed to have their old-growth boreal forest clearcuts for toilet paper certified by FSC as being sustainable. Ms. Allen has gone on to greenwash old-growth Gucci shopping bags and Disney books with RAN. Before her, Michael Brune, now chief accountant for Sierra Club, did similarly.

Greenpeace and RAN want us to wipe our asses with old-growth forests. Old-growth forest logging and its terrible impacts upon species, climate, and the biosphere will never end as long they – as members of FSC – falsely certify it as sustainable.

I recently presented a scientific paper in Kerala, India, now being prepared for publication, which seeks to quantify how many terrestrial ecosystems – including old-growth forests – can be lost without biosphere collapse. This is an attempt to set an easily understood threshold for old-growth forest loss, like the 350ppm limit on carbon to avoid abrupt climate change.

Based upon an amazing landscape metric called “percolation,” I hypothesize that a loss of more than 40 percent of terrestrial ecosystems long-term – including old-growth forests – collapses the biosphere. This is the point where critical deterioration in ecosystem connectivity occurs across scale, from landscapes to bioregions and continents, and on to the biosphere. Instead of humanity existing within a context of nature, ecosystems become fragmented, disconnected, and surrounded by humanity.

We are now at 50 percent natural ecosystem loss globally. I conclude that Earth needs to maintain some two-thirds of its land area as natural and seminatural ecosystems to meet local needs and to maintain local and global ecological sustainability. Along with a number of other planetary boundaries, including climate change and biodiversity loss, Earth is already in ecological overshoot and will collapse unless we pull back from the brink.

It is clear that global ecological sustainability and universal well-being depend critically upon protecting old-growth forests and ending fossil fuel emissions. Large, intact, and connected standing old-growth forests are required for local prosperity and ecosystem service continuity – and for an enduring, naturally evolving, global biosphere.

It is still possible to avoid abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse – but only if we both dramatically cut fossil fuel emissions AND protect and restore natural ecosystems immediately. Based upon ecological science, an end to their industrial destruction is vital to limiting climate change.

It is time for the climate movement, led by 350.org, to call for protection of all old-growth forests. And for Greenpeace, RAN and other NGOs supporting their logging to re-examine their position and resign from FSC.

Ending poverty doesn’t justify endless ecocidal growth for all, at the ever-advancing cost of liquidating old-growth ecosystems and fouling our atmosphere, an impossible path on a finite planet. Rather the focus for ecologically and socially sustainable development should be meeting basic needs with some of life’s luxuries for all, with a reasonable bit more for those who work hard and are gifted.

Earth’s people want universal democracy, freedom, economic justice, and sustained ecology for everyone, for the whole world, and they want it now. And governments and corrupt NGOs had better get out of the way.

Your biosphere, old-growth forests, human family, and kindred species need you. Go to them now.

Dr. Glen Barry is an internationally recognized political ecologist, environmental advocate, writer, and technology expert. He is well-known within the environmental community as a leading global ecological visionary, public intellectual, and environmental policy critic. Dr. Barry’s work as the President and Founder of Ecological Internet – the Earth’s largest biocentric ecological advocacy web portals – was recently recognized as one of “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by the Utne Reader. More: http://forests.org/staff/glen.asp

Please support Ecological Internet’s campaigns to protect and restore old
forests at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/

 

- See more at: http://www.countercurrents.org/barry250213.htm#sthash.AxDnlwq8.dpuf

Climate Crisis Pushes Sierra Club to End Civil Disobedience Ban

Published on Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by Common Dreams

After 120 years of using ‘lawful means,’ group’s executive director says ‘time is running out’ to stop climate disaster

- Jon Queally, staff writer

After 120 years of advocating on behalf of nature, one of the the nation’s largest and oldest environmental organizations—The Sierra Club—has atlast decided to end its refusal to participate in acts of civil disobedience.

In a letter to the group’s membership, which numbers over one million, executive director of Sierra Club, Michael Brune, announced: “For 120 years, we have remained committed to using every ‘lawful means’ to achieve our objectives. Now, for the first time in our history, we are prepared to go further.”

What spawned the decision? As Brune explained—and recognizing that many will comment “what took you so long?”—the change in direction was spurred by recognizing “the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet’s climate.”

Specifically, Brune said, “the Sierra Club will officially participate in an act of peaceful civil resistance” at the White House next month on President’s Day weekend.

Brune continued:

We are watching a global crisis unfold before our eyes, and to stand aside and let it happen – even though we know how to stop it – would be unconscionable. As the president said on Monday, “to do so would betray our children and future generations.”  It couldn’t be simpler: Either we leave at least two-thirds of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, or we destroy our planet as we know it. That’s our choice, if you can call it that.

The Sierra Club has refused to stand by. We’ve worked hard and brought all of our traditional tactics of lobbying, electoral work, litigation, grassroots organizing, and public education to bear on this crisis. And we have had great success — stopping more than 170 coal plants from being built, securing the retirement of another 129 existing plants, and helping grow aclean energy economy. But time is running out, and there is so much more to do. The stakes are enormous. At this point, we can’t afford to lose a single major battle. That’s why the Sierra Club’s Board of Directors has for the first time endorsed an act of peaceful civil disobedience.

That protest, organized by Sierra Club and the climate justice organization 350.org, hopes to see thousands of Americans heading to Washington to create “the largest climate rally in history.” The aim will to be to urge President Obama and other political leaders to cancel plans for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and spawn meaningful climate action.

The organizers for the protest released this on video on Tuesday to urge support for attendance at the rally:

The decision to rescind the long-held ban on civil disobedience was made at the highest levels of the organization.

Allison Chin, board president of Sierra Club, added: “The recent decision made by the Board of Directors is not one we take lightly. As a nation, we are beginning to achieve significant success in the fight against climate disruption. But allowing the production, transport, export and burning of the dirtiest oil on Earth now would be a giant leap backwards in that progress. The Board is answering the urgency of this threat with our decision to engage, for one time, in civil disobedience.”

And the San Francisco Chronicle adds:

This is a major symbol of how The Club — and enviros in general — are jacking up pressure on President Obama. Yeah, they say, he gave a major shout-out Monday in his Inaugural Address to taking on climate change, but now is the time to back up the talk with action, they say.

We know that because major enviro — and major Obama donor — Susie Tompkins Buell told us almost a year ago that she was going to hold up giving Obama more cash unless he showed more “leadership” on climate change issues.

_____________________

The Laws of Global Warming: How to Regulate Geo-Engineering Efforts to Fight Climate Change?

Dec. 19, 2012 — With policymakers and political leaders increasingly unable to combat global climate change, more scientists are considering the use of manual manipulation of the environment to slow warming’s damage to the planet.

 

But a University of Iowa law professor believes the legal ramifications of this kind of geo-engineering need to be thought through in advance and a global governance structure put in place soon to oversee these efforts.

“Geo-engineering is a global concern that will have climate and weather impacts in all countries, and it is virtually inevitable that some group of people will be harmed in the process,” says Jon Carlson, professor of law at the UI College of Law. “The international community must act now to take charge of this activity to ensure that it is studied and deployed with full attention to the rights and interests of everyone on the planet.”

Carlson is an expert in environmental law and international law who believes geo-engineering is inevitable and will likely happen sooner than later. He considers the issue in a new paper, “Reining in Phaethon’s Chariot: Principles for the Governance of Geoengineering,” published in the current issue of the journal Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. His co-author, Adam D.K. Abelkop, is a UI law graduate now in the doctoral program at the Indiana University School of Public Health and Environmental Affairs.

Carlson says the concept of geo-engineering goes back to at least the 19th century, when scientists proposed seeding clouds to increase rainfall. Today, scientists have a long list of geo-engineering ideas that could be used to slow the impact of global warming while other methods are developed to actually mitigate the damage. Some ideas are simple and locally focused, such as planting new forests to absorb carbon dioxide, or painting roofs and paved areas white to reduce solar heat absorption.

Others are more complex and controversial — manually cooling oceans so carbon dioxide-laden water sinks to the bottom more quickly; building space-based shields and mirrors to deflect solar heat from the planet; or injecting chemicals like hydrogen sulfide or sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, creating an aerosol shield that reduces the amount of solar heat reaching Earth’s surface.

But Carlson says geo-engineering comes with obvious international legal implications because no one country can implement its own geo-engineering plan without causing weather or climate changes in other countries. There’s also the law of unintended consequences, because while many geo-engineering concepts have proved hopeful in the lab, nobody knows what will happen when actually put into practice. For instance, Carlson says that while manually cooling the ocean may be seen as a generally good idea, what impact will that have on farmers in India whose crops depend on rain from heat-induced tropical monsoons?

To address these issues, Carlson urges the creation of an international governing body separate from any existing organization that approves or rejects geo-engineering plans, taking into consideration the best interests of people and countries around the world. He says any legal regimen involving geo-engineering activities should require they be publicly announced in the planning stage, and all countries are notified so they have a voice in deliberations.

As a model for his oversight body, Carlson suggests theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF). Like the IMF, his proposed organization would give all countries a place during discussions, but decisions would be made by a relatively small group of directors, each of which has a weighted vote that’s based on their country’s greenhouse gas production. That is, countries that produce more greenhouse gases will spend more money to combat global climate change, and so will have more votes.

Carlson’s proposed body would oversee a compensation fund to help people and countries that are harmed by other country’s approved geo-engineering activities, or by unseen effects of those activities.

Who Owns the World? Noam Chomsky on U.S. Fueled Dangers from Climate Change to Nuclear

Amy Goodman/

Democracy Now/Video Report

Published: Friday 26 October 2012

“The U.S. had been by far the richest country in the world even before the Second World War, although it wasn’t—was not yet the major global actor.”

In the week when President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney debated issues of foreign policy and the economy, we turn to world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and MIT Professor, Noam Chomsky. In a recent speech, Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign: China, the Arab Spring, global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the military threat posed by Israel and the U.S. versus Iran. He reflects on the Cuban missile crisis, which took place 50 years ago this week, and is still referred to as “the most dangerous moment in human history.” He delivered this talk last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, at an event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. Chomsky’s talk was entitled, “Who Owns the World?”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road in Portland, Oregon. We are here as part of our 100-city Silenced Majority tour. On this week when President Obama and Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney debated issues of foreign policy and the economy, we turn to world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author, MITProfessor Noam Chomsky. In a recent speech, Professor Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign, from China to the Arab Spring, to global warming and the nuclear threat posed by Israel versus Iran. He spoke last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at any event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. His talk was entitled “Who Owns the World?”

NOAM CHOMSKY: When I was thinking about these remarks, I had two topics in mind, couldn’t decide between them—actually pretty obvious ones. One topic is, what are the most important issues that we face? The second topic is, what issues are not being treated seriously—or at all—in the quadrennial frenzy now underway called an election? But I realized that there’s no problem; it’s not a hard choice: they’re the same topic. And there are reasons for it, which are very significant in themselves. I’d like to return to that in a moment. But first a few words on the background, beginning with the announced title, “Who Owns the World?”

Actually, a good answer to this was given years ago by Adam Smith, someone we’re supposed to worship but not read. He was—a little subversive when you read him sometimes. He was referring to the most powerful country in the world in his day and, of course, the country that interested him, namely, England. And he pointed out that in England the principal architects of policy are those who own the country: the merchants and manufacturers in his day. And he said they make sure to design policy so that their own interests are most peculiarly attended to. Their interests are served by policy, however grievous the impact on others, including the people of England.

But he was an old-fashioned conservative with moral principles, so he added the victims of England, the victims of the—what he called the “savage injustice of the Europeans,” particularly in India. Well, he had no illusions about the owners, so, to quote him again, “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” It was true then; it’s true now.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history. Britain could only aspire to be its junior partner as the British foreign office ruefully recognized. At that point, 1945, the United States had literally half the world’s wealth, incredible security, controlled the entire Western Hemisphere, both oceans, the opposite sides of both oceans. There’s nothing—there hasn’t ever been anything like that in history.

And planners understood it. Roosevelt’s planners were meeting right through the Second World War, designing the post-war world. They were quite sophisticated about it, and their plans were pretty much implemented. They wanted to make sure that the United States would control what they called a “grand area,” which would include, routinely, the entire Western Hemisphere, the entire Far East, the former British Empire, which the U.S. would be taking over, and as much of Eurasia as possible—crucially, its commercial and industrial centers in Western Europe. And within this region, they said, the United States should hold unquestioned power with military and economic supremacy, while ensuring the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by states that might interfere with these global designs.

And those were pretty realistic plans at the time, given the enormous disparity of power. The U.S. had been by far the richest country in the world even before the Second World War, although it wasn’t—was not yet the major global actor. During the Second World War, the United States gained enormously. Industrial production almost quadrupled, got us out of depression. Meanwhile, industrial rivals were devastated or seriously weakened. So that was an unbelievable system of power.

Actually, the policies that were outlined then still hold. You can read them in government pronouncements. But the capacity to implement them has significantly declined. Actually there’s a major theme now in foreign policy discussion—you know, journals and so on. The theme is called “American decline.” So, for example, in the most prestigious establishment international relations journal, Foreign Affairs, a couple of months ago, there was an issue which had on the front cover in big bold letters, “Is America Over?” question mark. That’s announcing the theme of the issue. And there is a standard corollary to this: power is shifting to the west, to China and India, the rising world powers, which are going to be the hegemonic states of the future.

Actually, I think the decline—the decline is quite real, but some serious qualifications are in order. First of all, the corollary is highly unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future. China and India are very poor countries. Just take a look at, say, the human development index of the United Nations: they’re way down there. China is around 90th. I think India is around 120th or so, last time I looked. And they have tremendous internal problems—demographic problems, extreme poverty, hopeless inequality, ecological problems. China is a great manufacturing center, but it’s actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial—more advanced industrial centers—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe—and it basically assembles them. So, if, say, you buy one of these i-things—you know, an iPad from China—that’s called an export from China, but the parts and components and technology come from outside. And the value added in China is minuscule. It’s been calculated. They’ll move up the technology ladder, but it’s a hard climb, India even harder. Well, so I think one should be skeptical about the corollary.

But there’s another qualification that’s more serious. The decline is real, but it’s not new. It’s been going on since 1945. In fact, it happened very quickly. In the late 1940s, there’s an event that’s known here as “the loss of China.” China became independent. That’s a loss of a huge piece of the grand area of Asia. And it became a major issue in American domestic policy. Who’s responsible for the loss of China? A lot of recriminations and so on. Actually, the phrase is kind of interesting. Like, I can’t lose your computer, right? Because I don’t own it. I can lose my computer. Well, the phrase “loss of China” kind of presupposes a deeply held principle of kind of American elite consciousness: we own the world, and if some piece of it becomes independent, we’ve lost it. And that’s a terrible loss; we’ve got to do something about it. It’s never questioned, which is interesting in itself.

Well, right about the same time, around 1950, concerns developed about the loss of Southeast Asia. That’s what led the United States into the Indochina wars, the worst atrocities of the post-war period—partly lost, partly not. A very significant event in modern history was in 1965, when in Indonesia, which was the main concern—that’s the country of Southeast Asia with most of the wealth and resources—there was a military coup in Indonesia, Suharto coup. It led to an extraordinary massacre, what the New York Times called a “staggering mass slaughter.” It killed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly landless peasants; destroyed the only mass political party; and opened the country up to Western exploitation. Euphoria in the West was so enormous that it couldn’t be contained. So, in the New York Times, describing the “staggering mass slaughter,” it called it a “gleam of light in Asia.” That was the column written by James Reston, the leading liberal thinker in the Times. And the same elsewhere—Europe, Australia. It was a fantastic event.

Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security adviser for Kennedy and Johnson, in retrospect, he pointed out that it probably would have been a good idea to end the Vietnam War at that point, to pull out. Contrary to a lot of illusions, the Vietnam War was fought primarily to ensure that an independent Vietnam would not develop successfully and become a model for other countries in the region. It would not—to borrow Henry Kissinger’s terminology speaking about Chile, we have to prevent what they called the—what he called the “virus” of independent development from spreading contagion elsewhere. That’s a critical part of American foreign policy since the Second World War—Britain, France, others to a lesser degree. And by 1965, that was over. Vietnam was—South Vietnam was virtually destroyed. Word spread to the rest of Indochina it wasn’t going to be a model for anyone, and the contagion was contained. There were—the Suharto regime made sure that Indonesia wouldn’t be infected. And pretty soon the U.S. had dictatorships in every country of the region—Marcos on the Philippines, a dictatorship in Thailand, Chun in South—Park in South Korea. It was no problem about the infection. So that would have been a good time to end the Vietnam War, he felt. Well, that’s Southeast Asia.

But the decline continues. In the last 10 years, there’s been a very important event: the loss of South America. For the first time in 500 years, the South—since the conquistadors, the South American countries have begun to move towards independence and a degree of integration. The typical structure of one of the South American countries was a tiny, very rich, Westernized elite, often white, or mostly white, and a huge mass of horrible poverty, countries separated from one another, oriented to—each oriented towards its—you know, either Europe or, more recently, the United States. Last 10 years, that’s been overcome, significantly—beginning to integrate, the prerequisite for independence, even beginning to face some of their horrendous internal problems. Now that’s the loss of South America. One sign is that the United States has been driven out of every single military base in South America. We’re trying to restore a few, but right now there are none.

AMY GOODMAN: MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. Coming up, he discusses global warming, nuclear war and the Arab Spring, in a minute.

ABOUT AMY GOODMAN

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

14 Signs That The World Economy Is Getting Weaker

The United States is not the only one with massive economic problems right now.  The truth is that just about wherever you look around the globe things are getting even worse.  China is experiencing a substantial economic slowdown, and Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in an effort to keep the Japanese economy moving.  Unemployment in Europe continues to get even worse, and the riots this week in Spain and in Greece have been absolutely frightening at times.  In the United States there are a whole host of signs that another recession is approaching, and the number of American CEOs that say that they plan to eliminate jobs in the coming months is rapidly rising.  The world economy is more interconnected today than ever before, and that means that we are all in this together.  Just remember what happened back in 2008 and 2009.  The economic pain that started on Wall Street was felt in every corner of the planet.  So anyone that believes that the United States (or any other major nation for that matter) is going to escape the next wave of the economic crisis is simply not being realistic.  Why do you think central banks all over the world are in “panic mode” right now?  They are firing all of their ammunition and printing money like there is no tomorrow in an attempt to keep the system together.  Unfortunately, it is not going to work.

If the powers that be had an “easy button” that would quickly fix everything, they would have pressed it by now.  But despite all of their efforts things continue to unravel.  If you want to get an idea of where we are headed,  just look at what is already happening in Europe.   Unemployment has risen above 24 percent in Greece and above 25 percent in Spain.

Those two nations are on the “bleeding edge” of the next wave of economic problems.  Unemployment is rising almost everywhere else in Europe as well, and things are eventually going to get really bad in Asia and in North America too.

So hold on to your seat belts – it is going to be a bumpy ride.

The following are 14 signs from around the globe that the world economy is getting weaker….

#1 Things in China do not look good right now.  The Shanghai Composite index fell to its lowest point in over 3 years earlier this week.  Will the S&P 500 soon follow suit?

#2 The Bank of Japan has resorted to yet another round of money printing in a desperate attempt to try to bolster the faltering Japanese economy….

In Asia, the Bank of Japan has long been manufacturing money out of thin air. It has just announced an eighth round of money printing to prop up the ailing Japanese economy. The Bank of Japan is to purchase 10 trillion yen of bonds to add further liquidity into the financial system. Now it has 80 trillion yen of bonds in its portfolio, equivalent to 20 per cent of Japan’s gross domestic product.

#3 In Spain, violent demonstrations over the state of the Spanish economy just outside the national Parliament building in Madrid on Tuesday evening made headlines all over the globe.  You can view video of police brutally beating young Spanish protesters during those demonstrations right here.

#4 As unemployment hovers around the 25 percent mark, foraging through garbage bins for food has become so rampant in Spain that one city has actually started putting locks on supermarket garbage bins “as a public health precaution“.

#5 Despite all of the money printing that the ECB has been doing, the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds has risen back up to about 6 percent again.

#6 The economic protests in Greece are getting completely and totally out of control.  Just check out this descriptionof the “Day of Rage” that took place in Greece earlier this week….

Police fired stun grenades and tear gas at protesters yesterday as tens of thousands poured into the streets of Athens as part of a nationwide strike to challenge a new round of austerity measures that are expected to cut wages, pensions and healthcare once again.

Dozens of youths, some masking their faces with helmets and T-shirts, hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police who fired back in an effort to scatter the angry crowds around the parliament building. More than 50,000 people are believed to have participated in the mass walk-out in Athens alone.

#7 The unemployment rate in France has risen for 16 months in a row and is now the highest that it has been in over a decade.

#8 As I wrote about recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has increased by more than 37 percentover the past year.

#9 New orders for durable goods in the United States fell by a whopping 13.2 percent in August.  That was the largest decline that we have seen since the middle of the last recession (January 2009).

#10 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP only grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2012 as opposed to the 1.7 percent annual rate previously reported.

#11 The U.S. Postal Service is about to experience itssecond financial default in just the past two months….

The U.S. Postal Service will default this week on a $5.6 billion congressionally mandated obligation to pre-fund retiree health benefits, marking the second time in two months the cash-strapped agency has done this.

#12 It looks like General Motors is on a path that will lead to bankruptcy (again).

#13 According to a recent survey conducted by State Street Global Advisors, 71 percent of “investors in a survey of 300 around the world, including the largest pension funds, asset managers and private banks, fear an imminent Lehman-like event.”

#14 According to a recent survey of American CEOs by Business Roundtable, the number of CEOs that plan to eliminate jobs has risen significantly from earlier this year….

The CEOs’ decline in confidence comes alongside a worsening employment outlook. Thirty-four percent of the 138 CEOs surveyed said in this quarter’s survey that they expected their companies to cut jobs in the next six months, compared to just 20 percent in the second quarter. Likewise, only 29 percent say they expect employment to grow in the next half year, down from 36 percent last quarter.

But the mainstream media in the United States would like us to believe that everything is getting better.

The mainstream media would like us to believe that QE3 is going to stimulate lots of new hiring all over America, and they are greatly celebrating the fact that the S&P 500 hit a five year high on Thursday.

Well, those on Wall Street should celebrate this monetary “sugar high” while they still can.  Of course QE3 was going to cause stock prices to rise in the short-term, but the reality of the matter is that QE3 is not going to do a thing to stop the financial markets from crashing when the time comes for them to crash.

Economies tend to flourish in a stable, predictable environment.  When you start recklessly printing money, it may help your economic numbers in the short-term, but it disrupts the stability of the system.

And once you have created a tremendous amount of instability, it is really, really hard to convince people that you can create stability once again.

When it comes to economics, confidence is one of the most important ingredients.  If people lose confidence in the system, it almost does not matter what else you do.

As I wrote about the other day, quantitative easing worked for the Weimar Republic for a little while, but in the end it resulted in total disaster.

It will also end in total disaster for us.

All over the globe financial authorities are playing all sorts of games in an attempt to keep the system functioning smoothly.  But these games are going to steadily undermine confidence in the system, and that is going to prove to be absolutely deadly.

Take advantage of this period of relative stability while you still can, because when it is gone it is not coming back.

The End Is Near

By David Swanson

26 June, 2012
Warisacrime.org

Apocalypse has been given a bad name.  The Seventh Day Adventists are still around.  The Nike sneaker cult failed to open Heaven’s Gate.  The new millennium brought us George W. Bush, not Jesus H. Christ.  And everybody’s terrified of “drinking the Kool-Aid.”

But our species is living beyond its means.  If we continue down this path, the planet, our food supplies, our climate, and life as we know it will collapse.  If we bring population growth, consumption, and pollution under control, the damage already set in motion will play out for centuries, but complete catastrophe will likely be averted.

Nobody likes to be told that the end might be near.  Either it is or it isn’t.  And the question is resolved by a personal lifestyle choice.  Do I wish to be a pessimist or an optimist?  Of course, optimist is far more popular.  Even most predictors of apocalypse have actually believed they were predicting a good thing.  The world was to be replaced with something better.  Even our best environmentalists who understand the radical changes needed for survival guarantee they will happen.  Harvey Wasserman says he simply believes in happy endings.

Meanwhile, we can barely get half of us in the United States to “believe” that global warming is happening.  Of course, we step outside and there’s a sauna, but that could just be “natural.”  So what if the ocean is a few inches higher?  The people who’ve been predicting that for decades have been wrong until now, and now they’re only a little right — if you even believe them.  The ocean looks about the same to me.  And if they predict exponential acceleration of such changes, meaning that once the changes have become visible it won’t be long before they’re enormous, well that just proves one thing: they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.  They’re pessimists.

In 1992, governments finally got together in Rio and took some baby steps.  In 2012, they reconvened andcollectively proclaimed , “To hell with all that.  This rock may be doomed, but that’s our great-grandchildren’s problem.  Screw them! This is Rio.  Roll down the windows.  Turn up the air conditioning.  Pass me a drink!”  Well, actually, a few scientists and diplomats stood off to the side and muttered , “What we need to save us is a really bad catastrophe.”  And a 17-year-old girl stood up and blurted out the truth, which made everybody feel really important.  Imagine: you were at the meeting that could have chosen to save the planet; how cool is that?  Imagine how the judge feels who is sitting in Washington, D.C.,deliberating on whether the atmosphere ought to be protected or destroyed.  The atmosphere!  Of the earth!  Now that’s power, and the longer you deliberate the longer you can fantasize about possibly even using that power.

In 1972 a group of scientists published a book called Limits to Growth .  It passionately urged the changes needed before human growth and destruction exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet.  In 1992, the same authors published Beyond the Limits .  There were by then, they found, too many humans doing too much damage.  We were beyond sustainable limits and would need to change quickly.  In 2004, they published an update, arguing that we were already 20 percent above global carrying capacity, and that we had “largely squandered the past 30 years.”  Their warnings grew sharper: “We do not have another 30 years to dither.”

The updated book charts the course we’ve been on these past 30, now 40, years.  Population has exploded in less industrialized countries.  Many millions of poor people have been added to our species, while a shrinking percentage of the world’s population has continued to hoard most of the wealth.  The planet has become less equitable through the repeated act of giving birth.  Then it has become less equitable still through economic growth that has been made to benefit most those least in need.  Meanwhile, nations with high population growth have been least able to invest in infrastructure, being obliged to take care of their people’s immediate needs.  This has resulted in still greater poverty, triggering higher birth rates in families dependent on children to survive.  These vicious cycles can be broken, and have been broken, but not by wishing or hoping.  And time is running out.

Sustainable agriculture is being practiced in some places and could feed us all if practiced everywhere and the food distributed to everyone.  The problem is not figuring out what to do so much as simply doing it.  But we can’t do it individually, and we can’t wait for those in power to do it on their own.

Corporations will not learn to make more money by behaving responsibly, not to a sufficient extent to reverse current trends.  The logic of the market will not correct itself, except in the most brutal sense.  If we wait for Wall Street to decide that destroying the Earth is a bad idea, the basic systems of life on Earth will collapse in shortages, crises, and widespread suffering.  Instead, we have to enforce change as a society, and we have to do it now.  If we’d acted in 1982, write the authors of Limits to Growth , we might have avoided serious damage.  If we’d acted in 2002, we also still had a fighting chance.  By 2022, it will be too late to avoid decline.  We’re halfway there.

Limits to Growth offers the crisis of the ozone layer as evidence that humanity can face up to a global environmental disaster and correct it.  Of course, we can.  We have always had that option and always will.  Even beyond 2022, we will have the option of lessening the destruction to as great an extent possible.  But slowing the damage to the ozone layer required changes to a relatively small industrial cartel, nothing to compare to big oil.  The question is not, I think, whether the world can act collectively on behalf of the Earth.  The question is whether the world can act collectively against the organized strength of the fossil fuels industry, its closely aligned military forces in the United States and NATO, and governments far gone down the path of inverted totalitarianism.

For you optimists, I should point out that living sustainably need not mean suffering.  We could live better lives with less consumption and destruction.  Our culture can grow while our population declines.  Our society can advance while our production of waste products retreats.  Our mental horizons can broaden while our food sources narrow.  Millennia from now, people living sustainably on this planet could look back with wonder at the insanity of the notion that everything had to grow , and with gratitude toward those who gave their fellow passengers an awakening smack to the face.

Here’s one small place to start .

David Swanson’s books include “ War Is A Lie .” He blogs at http://davidswanson.org andhttp://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org . He hostsTalk Nation Radio . Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook .

FUKUSHIMA: The “Japanese Chernobyl” – A Year Later and Still Politics ‘Trump’ Safety

Jeanine Mollof

NationofChange/Op-ed

Published: Friday 27 April 2012

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda declared that nuclear units 3 & 4 at the Ohi Nuclear Plant were safe for operation. Prime Minister Noda based this declaration on ‘stress tests’, which were nothing more than computer simulations.

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”All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US.”

(Source)  Arnie Gundersen on soil samples taken recently from parks, playgrounds and rooftop gardens throughout Tokyo.

The Japanese Prime Minister Declares Nuclear Plant Safe:

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda declared that nuclear units 3 & 4 at the Ohi Nuclear Plant were safe for operation.  Prime Minister Noda based this declaration on ‘stress tests’, which were nothing more than computer simulations.  (Source)   The computer simulations merely estimate any given reactor’s ability to withstand large earthquakes and/or tsunamis, allegedly like last year’s Fukushima disaster. (Source)   No other studies, expert testimony or other considerations were mentioned.  Unfortunately, for Japan—and the world—Noda couldn’t be more wrong.

Several weeks ago, noted nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen visited Tokyo for the express purpose of collecting soil samples.  The results were damning.  To quote Gundersen:

”… I was in Tokyo and when I was in Tokyo, I took some samples.   Now, I did not look for the highest radiation spot. I just went around with five plastic bags and when I found an area, I just scooped up some dirt and put it in a bag.   One of those samples was from a crack in the sidewalk.  Another one of those samples was from a children’s playground that had been previously decontaminated.   Another sample had come from some moss on the side of the road.   Another sample came from the roof of an office building that I was at.   And the last sample was right across the street from the main judicial center in downtown Tokyo.   I brought those samples back, declared them through Customs, and sent them to the lab.   And the lab determined that ALL of them would be qualified as radioactive waste here in the United States and would have to be shipped to Texas to be disposed of.”  (Source)

And yet Japanese Prime Minister Noda is fervently lobbying to restart nuclear reactors, fearing power losses in the hot summer.  It is reported that without the restart of the Ohi nuclear plant and some unnamed others, the plant operator—Kansai Electric—would only generate some 80% of previous electric output.  (Source)

Reports Leaking Citing 14 Reactors in Similar Condition as Fukushima:

In the meantime, various reports are leaking out of Japan including a video on Asahi TV which shows mutated plants in Tokyo, and a report on ENE News citing a former Fukushima Daiichi Reactor Operator claiming that they routinely falsified data and rewrote operations reports.  (Source)

Ironically, sources as conservative as Bloomberg News have cited similar safety concerns.  A piece by Jason Clenfield which ran on March 22, 2011, detailed how  engineer  Mitsuhiko Tanaka helped cover-up a ‘manufacturing defect’ in Fukushima Daiichi No. 4 reactor while employed by Hitachi Ltd. in 1974.  Tanaka has dubbed Reactor #4 as a ‘time bomb,’ and has pleaded with government officials repeatedly only to be pushed aside and ignored.  Yuichi Izumisawa, a Hitachi spokesman explained how the company conferred with Tanaka back in 1988, concluding no further safety concern existed.  Izumisawa was recently quoted stating that…”We have not revised our view since then.”  (Source)

Kenta Takahashi from the Japanese Trade Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency would not confirm if an investigation into Tanaka’s allegations had been initiated by its predecessor, the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.  (Source)

Tokyo Electric Power Co. Spokesman Naoki Tsunoda declined to comment.  Tokyo Electric or TEPCO owns the plant and is the same vendor tapped to build new nuclear plants in the U.S. currently planned by the Obama administration.

The fatal flaw in reactor #4:

According to Tanaka, the reactor pressure vessel had warped walls which caused the vessel to sag, resulting in a height and weight differentiation of more than 34 millimeters.  During the last step in a manufacturing process at the Babcock-Hitachi foundry in Kure City, a deadly mistake was made.  Braces which had to be placed inside the reactor pressure vessel during a blast furnace firing were absent.  It’s unclear whether the braces collapsed or were forgotten entirely.  The omission of these braces produced a reactor pressure vessel with warped walls.

While politicians may mock or belittle the importance of ’34 millimeters’—that miniscule difference is a vital safety concern.  34 millimeters can mean the difference between an intact reactor or– a chain reaction bomb.   Nuclear regulations mandated that the vessel be scrapped.  Had the warped reactor walls been discovered; the replacement cost of the vessel would have bankrupted the company.  Tanaka claimed that his boss …”asked him to reshape the vessel so that no one would know it had ever been damaged.”  Tanaka further claimed that workers at the plant covered the damaged vessel with a sheet.  It is noted that the same ‘protective covering’ of a white sheet is still employed at Fukushima in 2012.  (Source)

Tanaka’s fix involved using pumpjacks to ‘pop out’ the warped areas on the walls.  The company was happy because the end result looked like nothing had ever been damaged or compromised.  There is no record of stress tests to determine ongoing viability of these compromised vessel walls on its own structural integrity, yet this same reactor pressure vessel is the sole defense protecting Fukushima’s No. 4 reactor. (Source)

‘Luckily’ reactor #4 was shut for maintenance on March 11th, 2011—the day the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit.    Tanaka claims, “I could be the father of a Japanese Chernobyl.”

The GE Connection to Fukushima:

Tanaka has not been the only engineer involved in the building and operation of ‘boiling-water’ reactors who became a whistle-blower against corporate practices deemed scientifically negligent in the nuclear industry.  Dale G. Bridenbaugh, Gregory C. Minor and Richard B. Hubbard, all former engineers with GE resigned in protest over major design flaws in the Mark 1 nuclear reactor designs they were reviewing.  Dubbed the “GE Three”—these engineers switched sides and joined the anti-nuclear movement in 1975.  The GE Three were reviewing the Mark 1 system which is among the oldest reactors in use.  Arguing that the Mark 1 system was a disaster in the making to deaf corporate ears—the three engineers quit in disgust.  It should be noted that 5 of the 6 reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi are GE manufactured Mark 1 systems.   To add further insult to injury—the GE Mark 1 reactors at Fukushima—have “23 sisters in the US.”  According to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) data, 23 of the 104 existing nuclear plants in the US are GE boiling-water reactors with GE’s Mark 1 radiation containment systems.  (Source)

Bridenbaugh was interviewed March 15, 2011 by ABC News and explained the concerns:

“The problems we identified in 1975 were that, in doing the design of the containment, they (GE) did not take into account the dynamic loads that could be experienced with a loss of coolant.” (Source)

 

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In other words, the integrity of the nuclear reactor’s coolant system to withstand what engineers call a “station blackout”—(where a power loss compromises or totally destroys the coolant system)– must be reexamined in older and newer nuclear plants.  Without a coolant system in play for these ‘boiling water’ reactors—there is no way to prevent spent radioactive fuel from going ‘critical’ and exploding into the atmosphere.   As Bridenbaugh explains in more genteel tech-speak:

”The impact loads the containment would receive by this very rapid release of energy could tear the containment apart and create an uncontrolled release.”  (Source)

Subsequently, secondary or back-up power generators are critical to public safety.  Without such precautions, nuclear reactors such as those at Fukushima are little more than a radioactive time-bomb …”looking for a place to happen.’

Fukushima—revolving door:

The problems of Fukushima are endemic to the nuclear industry at large, where executives are frequently selected from government or business ranks rather than the scientific community.  Fukushima was no exception.  In a WikiLeaks revelation—cables sent from the US Embassy in Vienna to Washington DC cited Tomihiro Tanguchi’s weak leadership as head of Safety and Security for the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA).  Complaints mounted concerning Taniguchi’s incompetence and negligence especially with regards to the Japanese nuclear industry—eighteen months before the Fukushima disaster.

“For the past 10 years, the Department has suffered tremendously because of (deputy director general) Taniguchi’s weak management and leadership skills,” said one despatch on Dec 1, 2009.

“Taniguchi has been a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan’s own safety practices, and he is a particular disappointment to the United States for his unloved-step-child treatment of the Office of Nuclear Security,” said another, which was sent on July 7, 2009

(Source)

TEPCO’s history of fraud on top of a flawed Mark 1 design:

The operator responsible for Fukushima Daiichi, namely TEPCO has a history of fraud allegations.  In 2002, five TEPCO executives resigned over allegations they falsified nuclear plant safety records.  Five reactors were shut down as a result.  In 2006 the Japanese government discovered false water coolant temperature readings at Fukushima Daiichi in 1985 and 1988 and ordered TEPCO to re-inspect past data.  The re-check of the suspicious data occurred after the government caught TEPCO using the earlier bogus data to satisfy mandatory inspections completed October of 2005.  In short, TEPCO appears to be guilty of malpractice. (Source)

 

“TEPCO’s ‘malpractices’ included:

• Falsification of inspection records over many years;

• covering up data about cracks in water circulation pumps and pipes which are critical for reactor cooling;

• failure to report cracks in reactor core shrouds (stainless steel cylinders surrounding the reactor core), steam dryers, access hole covers, and components associated with jet pumps (which circulate cooling water inside the reactor);

• in 1991 and 1992, tests of the leak rate of a Fukushima reactor containment vessel were faked by surreptitiously injecting compressed air into the containment building;

• written records of cracks in neutron-measuring equipment at Fukushima were deleted by contractor Hitachi at TEPCO’s request; and

• eight TEPCO reactors were still operating although required repairs had not been carried out.” (Source)

Japan Times—TEPCO covers up situation again…

Mitsuhiko Tanaka, the same engineer who designed the flawed pressure vessel for Fukushima-Daiichi Reactor #4, is now a whistle-blowing science journalist exposing TEPCO’s ongoing pattern of propaganda, obstruction and outright lies.  Tanaka accuses TEPCO of ‘blacking out documents,’ and rigging the computer simulation used to justify restarting additional reactors.

TEPCO defends denying full access to scientific records on the grounds that such information constitutes ‘proprietary trade secrets.’ (Source)

Obama administration pushing new nukes:

While Japan ‘burns’ from radioactive fires—the Obama administration has been actively pushing new nuclear plants, with the first 2 plants to be built at Plant Vogtle (south of Augusta, Georgia).  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved these plants with one sole dissenter—Gregory Jaczko, the Chairman of the NRC.  Jaczko is concerned that TEPCO (the chosen building partner of this dubious enterprise); will follow the same reckless path it followed regarding Fukushima.  Specifically Jaczko cited…

“Significant safety enhancements have already been recommended as a result of learning the lessons from Fukushima.”…”and there is still more work ahead of us.  Knowing this I cannot support these licenses as if Fukushima never happened.”  (Source)

Jaczko’s position has been supported by Senator Ron Wyden’s recent visit to Japan.  Sen. Wyden sent out an alarm to the US government via Reuters concerning the spent fuel at Reactor #4.  In the event of another tsunami, all that separated the spent fuel pools from damage was …”a small makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock.”  (Source)    Wyden sent a letter of concern to Secretary of State Clinton, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and—Chairman Gregory Jaczko of the NRC.   His letter to Chairman Jaczko of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was particularly telling.  Wyden sums up the greater danger of the spent or irradiated fuel:

…”Loss of containment in any of these pools especially the pool at Unit 4 which has the highest inventory of the hottest fuel could result in an even greater release of radiation than the initial accident.  TEPCO’s December 21, 2011 remediation roadmap proposes to take up to ten years to complete spent fuel removal from all of the pools on the site.  Given the compromised nature of these structures due to the events of March 11th, this schedule carries extraordinary and continuing risk if further seismic events were to occur.  The true earthquake risk for this site was SERIOUSLY UNDERESTIMATED and remains unresolved. “  (Source)

TEPCO—placing profits above safety….backup generators?

Primary responsibility for the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster falls on TEPCO, as they failed to safeguard something as basic as ‘backup power generators.’  It is increasingly clear that for TEPCO—profits trump safety.

Blame can also be assessed on the Japanese ‘nuclear village, i.e. METI, NISA and the NSC (Nuclear Safety Commission)—who stands accused of favoring corporate profits by compromising public safety.

Japanese Government Investigation Committee:

The Japanese Government Investigation Committee cited TEPCO on the following planning and safety concerns :

– inadequate preparation against Station Blackout (SBO), including lack of DC power supplies;

–omitted operational manuals essential for recovering instrumentation equipment and power supplies;

–omitted plan for emergency water injection and seawater injection in the event of a coolant failure;

–omitted preparation for emergency telecommunications lines in order to coordinate rescue plans,

–no preparation for securing equipment, materials and operators.

The report highlighted the fact that many of the emergency power generators were stored in the basement of a turbine building, rather than a more secure reactor building.  Space constraint was listed as the official reason for such ineffectual placement of emergency equipment.  The tsunami of March 11, 2011 destroyed all 10 water-cooled generators in the pursuant flood.   Placement of power generators should have been more strategically planned.

To quote the report on the appropriate placement of backup generators at nuclear plants:

“An MIT report into the Fukushima disaster states: “Emergency backup generators, needed to keep the systems running when outside power is cut off as it was in this case, should be well separated into at least two locations— one situated high up, to protect against flooding, and the other down low to protect against hazards such as an airplane crash. These generators should also be housed in watertight rooms, as they already are at many U.S.plants.”  (Source)

In conclusion…

The loss of human life and environmental safety caused by the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster of March 11, 2011 was not inevitable.  Due to a deadly combination of incompetent planning, obfuscation of facts and corporate greed—an environmental disaster of potentially global proportions has been set loose on all of us.  Allowing corporations to hide behind ‘proprietary trade secrets’ when they commit environmental crimes has become a legal sanctuary favored by the most blue blood of law firms.  This last item is the most damning of all these crimes.  A crime against humanity—and this entire world is unfolding.  How we deal with this disaster will determine whether future generations survive.   To quote nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen:

“Now think about the ramifications for the nation’s capital, whether it is Tokyo or the United States. How would you like it if you went to pick your flowers and were kneeling in radioactive waste? That is what is happening in Tokyo now. And I think that is the point that Chairman Jaczko was trying to make. When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does it’s cost benefit analyses now, it does not take into account the cost to society if you have to evacuate for generations or if you have to move 100,000 people, perhaps forever.” –Arnie Gundersen (Source)

Keep in mind—forever is a very long time.