Over 1000 Arrests Outside White House But Media Still Silent

More than a thousand people have so far been arrested protesting the construction of the Keystone-XL Tarsands pipeline through the Ogalalla Aquifer.

Still not heard anything about this on the radio or other media here.

Why not?

Dr Mountebank's Perpetual Motion Machine

Rob Dietz at think-tank CASSE highlights the work of a top economist whose "work has been highly influential among elite political and corporate leaders. Ronald Reagan is a prominent example. President Reagan once famously said, “There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams.” That’s a close paraphrasing of Dr. Mountebank’s conclusion to his magnum opus, Infinity and Beyond: The Magical Triumph of Economics over Physics ..."

Read the full hagiography here.

Threat Multipliers

Man unkind chooses to build his vulnerable industrial complexes in hurricane, flood, earthquake and volcano areas. When natural disaster hits, as it obviously does, these go down like dominoes, piling man-made onto natural and creating mega disasters, or as Garry Peterson puts it, cascading disasters, which in turn may likely be magnified by a deliberately globalised financial system.

Ever more people, ever more industry, ever more threats.

Oh yes, man’s so clever he cuts himself on a regular basis.

Cries Unheard

Easter Island, Rapa Nui, seems almost legendary and untouchable to us here, being far distant and with a mysterious history. So it ought to shock us to find that the indigenous people of even this remote UNESCO World Heritage Centre are under attack. In this instance, from the Chilean government.

The Rapa Nui people have been reduced to less than half of the island’s population now. Chileans have taken over their land without compensation and built over parts of it. The Rapa Nui have good reason to fear that the government wants to turn their land and their heritage into a theme park for its own profit. So now that people are standing up and peacefully protesting, the Chilean state has sent in military forces to attack them.

And what is the UN doing? What of human rights and international law?

The media just carry on ignoring these issues as ever. I only heard of this thanks to Intercontinental Cry.

Managing the Descent

When you have vertigo it's best to get your feet back on the ground. You'll feel a lot better for it.

Dr Mathis Wackernagel  of ecological footprint fame on Post Growth blog:　
　
"Our current palliative economic therapies have compromised our economies’ potential to deliver in the future. These investments have not helped us access cheap, abundant resources (which no longer exist), but have brought us more deeply into “peak everything.”

Hence the questions are not: do we want growth, nor how much growth is desirable? Rather they become: What will be the consequences of a resource-imposed “end of growth?” How can economies cope with non-linearities such as unexpected contractions? How can we avoid uneven contractions that would lead to social unrest? How can economies be stable, resilient and prosperous in a peak everything world?"

Read more ...