Multiple Crises
Paradise LOST
It’s 2002, and JJ is pitching his concept of a TV show called “PARADISE LOST” to Lloyd, a big shot at ABC. JJ: So this NASA spaceship takes off to colonize Mars, but it flies through some sort of magnetic field and gets lost and crashes onto a planet a lot like Earth. LLOYD: Lost [...]
Earth becoming a smoking, glowing, oily mess
“We . . . are turning our planet into a smoking, glowing, oily mess . . . plundering Mother Earth of her treasures . . . refusing to recognize the growing evidence that our reliance on oil, coal and nuclear threatens our health, our security, our economy, our nation and the world,” said Rep. Dennis [...]
Earth Day(dreaming)
This 40th annual Earth Day — April 22, 2010 — follows last month’s 4th annual Earth Hour and 12th annual World Water Day. Forgive me, but this blitz of environmental days is leaving me dazed. It’s not that I don’t concur with Earth Day’s high-minded objective “to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and [...]
Is Earth past the tipping point?
Once a tipping point is passed, a major change occurs, one that may be difficult or impossible to reverse. If a business crosses the tipping point threshold, the worst that can happen is that it goes bankrupt. But what if Earth passes that point with respect to its environment? The April, 2010, issue of Scientific [...]
Guest essay: Life after growth
Life after growth by Richard Heinberg What if the economy doesn’t recover? In 2008 the U.S. economy tripped down a steep, rocky slope. Employment levels plummeted; so did purchases of autos and other consumer goods. Property values crashed; foreclosure and bankruptcy rates bled. For states, counties, cities, and towns; for manufacturers, retailers, and middle- and [...]
Searching for intelligent life on Earth and beyond
Sometimes I wonder if Earth’s leading candidate for an “intelligent” species, Homo sapiens, is really any smarter than yeast. For the purposes of this post, however, I’ll concede that humans qualify as intelligent, because my subject today is extraterrestrial intelligence. Does our failure to find even one other civilization in the cosmic expanse tell us [...]
Industrial civilization is killing the planet
“It should be clear to everyone by now—even those with a vested interest in ignorance—that industrial civilization is killing the planet. It’s causing unprecedented human privation and suffering. Unless it’s stopped, or somehow stops itself, or most likely collapses under the weight of its inherent ecological and human destructiveness, it will kill every living being [...]
Infinite monkeys, finite resources
Ever heard of The Infinite Monkey Theorem? It goes something like this: Given infinite time, a monkey banging randomly on typewriter keys would reproduce a given work, such as Hamlet. Variations of the theorem add more monkeys to reproduce more works, such as the complete plays of Shakespeare, or all the books in the British [...]
The end of the era of American possibility
“We may be approaching the end of the era of American possibility,” writes Orville Schell in TomDispatch. He despairs over “the best” of America’s public educational institutions “driven into the ground thanks to devastating, repeated budget cuts; a national energy system . . . terminally strung out on oil and coal . . . the [...]
The economy is the least of our problems
Despite a non-stop barrage of overly optimistic press releases based on phony statistics, ongoing coverups of fraud, and tea readings, the economy is closer to complete collapse today than it was at this time last year. The truth that the spinmeisters dare not speak is that the gears of trade, from the ports of Asia [...]
Main Menu
- About
- Twelve crises [UPDATED]
- Scenarios [UPDATED]
- Ten safe places to put money in 2010 [UPDATED]
- Fifty items for extended emergencies [UPDATED]
- Boring legalisms
- Credits
- Contact
- Description
Recommended sites
- Charles Hugh Smith
- Global Climate Change - NASA
- James Howard Kunstler
- Joseph Romm
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Mother Earth News
- National Geographic - Environment
- No-Dig Vegetable Garden
- Post Peak Living
- Sharon Astyk
- The Oil Drum
