Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Climate Links: May 2018

11 key themes as countries take stock of Paris Agreement progress. Megan Darby, Climate Change News. May 1, 2018.
In the next two weeks in Bonn, national negotiators will meet assorted academics, campaigners and lobbyists in parallel sessions to exchange ideas. They have been asked to answer three questions – the third being the hardest and most important: Where are we? Where do we want to go? How do we get there? 
More than 400 submissions have been made, which give a flavour of the discussions to come. Come the COP24 climate summit in Katowice this December, these will bubble up to the political level. 
Here are 11 of the key themes.
1. 1.5C v 2C 
It may be academic, given emissions trends put us on course for 3-4C of warming, to note that there is still some ambiguity around the Paris Agreement temperature target. 
Small island states cleave to the tougher 1.5C limit – essential, they say, to their survival. China, meanwhile, mentions only the 2C goal, noting development priorities such as energy access, food security and poverty eradication “could not be overridden” by climate targets. 
The EU walks a line between them, reciting verbatim the Paris compromise to hold temperature rise “well below 2C” and “pursue efforts” to 1.5C. In a nod to vulnerable allies, the bloc refers repeatedly to the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on 1.5C. 
2. The blame game 
While Fiji has stressed the process is to be “non-confrontational”, with an emphasis on solutions, there is no getting away from the politics of burden-sharing. 
It is particularly blatant in Saudi Arabia’s input on behalf of the Arab Group, which adds its own question: why are we here? Their answer, of course, is the historic emissions of industrialized economies, with no mention of the oil exporting countries profiting from their energy use. Despite being ranked as high income by the World Bank, Saudi Arabia harks back to its 1990s classification as a developing country. 
The Paris Agreement blurred the rich-poor divide, but did not erase it. China too emphasizes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility” – citing research by UK-headquartered NGO Oxfam to argue developed countries need to deliver more climate finance. 
3. Money, money, money 
Financial support is a key theme for the Africa Group, in particular for adapting to the impacts of climate change and redressing damages. 
That should include a “significant increase” in money from public sources and “not simply offload finance to [the] private sector,” they urged – plus access to clean technology and expertise. 
“We need to go to a world where developed countries stop making promises but live up to their promises,” the submission said.
4. Early action 
The Paris Agreement is a long-term plan, but deadlines are looming already for commitments developed countries made in earlier rounds of talks. 
... 
As Maldives environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim writes for Climate Home News: “It would be a profound tragedy if we get to 2020 only to discover we waited too long to do what was needed.” 
... 
6. Focus on fossils 
One of the most targeted country-led submissions comes from Switzerland, Costa Rica, Finland, New Zealand and Sweden, making the case for scrapping fossil fuel subsidies. 
An easy win in theory, but reform has been held up in practice by special interests. 
More contentious, but gathering force, are policies to limit production of fossil fuels. The Stockholm Environment Institute outlines how blocking oil exploration, new coal mines and fuel pipelines can complement efforts to curb demand.
... 
7. Eat your greens 
How can we feed a growing population on a warming planet, while cutting the food sector’s greenhouse gas emissions? There is no easy technology fix, which puts lifestyle choices in the frame. 
The meat-rich diets of industrialised countries have a hefty carbon footprint.
... 
11. Beware false saviours 
Models for holding temperature rise below 2C or 1.5C rely heavily on removing carbon dioxide out from the air, on top of cutting emissions. 
Some of this can be done with old-fashioned tree-planting, but many scenarios assume large-scale use of unproven technologies.



Most of the IPCC scenarios for limiting global warming to 2°C assume that humanity will burn twice as much fossil fuel as the current carbon budget allows, but that unproven technologies for carbon capture and atmospheric removal eliminate the excess.
Robert Rohde, Berkley Earth. Twitter.


 Twenty eight years since the first IPCC report - this a sad indictment of our collective failure to give a damn for anything other than our own short-term self interest. Are these scenarios really the pinnacle of our climate change community’s ingenuity & analysis? 
Kevin Anderson. Twitter.



CO2 Levels Have Reached a Scary New Milestone, But You're Gonna Ignore It Anyway, Aren't You. David Nield, ScienceAlert. May 8, 2018.

No worries, CO2 at just a 3-million year high.


Melting Arctic Sends a Message: Climate Change Is Here in a Big Way. Mark Serreze, The Energy Collective. May 6, 2018.
Evidence that the Arctic is warming rapidly extends far beyond shrinking ice caps and buckling roads. It also includes a melting Greenland ice sheet; a rapid decline in the extent of the Arctic’s floating sea ice cover in summer; warming and thawing of permafrost; shrubs taking over areas of tundra that formerly were dominated by sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens; and a rise in temperature twice as large as that for the globe as a whole. This outsized warming even has a name: Arctic amplification.

World Is Not on Track to Meet UN’s 2030 Sustainable Energy Goals. Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News. May 3, 2018.


Aligning fossil fuel production with the Paris Agreement. Stockholm Environment Institute. March, 2018.
Key messages 
• The 2018 Talanoa Dialogue is a crucial opportunity to increase climate mitigation ambition and effectiveness by putting fossil fuel supply on the international climate agenda. 
• Managing a decline in global fossil fuel production is essential to meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5-2°C temperature limits. 
• Policies that restrict the supply of fossil fuels – as a complement to those that limit their demand – can lead to greater mitigation potential, cost-effectiveness, benefits to health and the local environment, enhanced popular support for climate action, and reduced carbon lock-in. 
• Supply-side policies are gaining ground globally, from moratoria on new production exploration licenses, to divestment from fossil fuel holdings, to transition plans for workers. But much work remains to be done. 
• Parties should plan the transition away from fossil fuel production to ensure that it is well managed, just and equitable. To this end, NDCs and long-term strategies provide a platform to set and discuss targets and policies. 
• The UNFCCC process can play a key role in raising the profile of supply-side policies and em- powering Parties and non-Party stakeholders to take action in support of effective policies.

Addressing fossil fuel production under the UNFCCC: Paris and beyond. SEI. Sept 2017.
This working paper describes how countries can more explicitly address the phasing out of fossil fuel production within the current architecture of the Paris Agreement.

The influence of social movements on policies that constrain fossil fuel supply. Georgia Piggot, T and F Online. Dec. 8, 2017.
ABSTRACT
Mounting evidence suggests that a large portion of the world's fossil fuel reserves will have to remain in the ground to prevent dangerous climate change. Yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to invest in new infrastructure to expand fuel supply. There appears to be a prevailing logic that extraction is inevitable, in spite of growing climate change concerns. Few political leaders seem to be willing to challenge this logic. The absence of adequate political action on climate change has sparked a burgeoning social movement focused on constraining fossil fuel supply. This article describes this movement, and explores the role that social mobilization may play in enabling policies that limit fossil fuel extraction. Drawing from literature on social mobilization and political change, this work: (1) discusses some of the social and political barriers to mobilization focused on restricting fossil fuel supply; (2) describes the pathways through which mobilization efforts may influence climate policy; and (3) highlights insights from studies of successful social movements that have relevance for the issue of fossil fuel extraction. The article concludes with directions for future research on social mobilization focused on supply-side climate policy.

Are Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaigns Working? A Conversation With Economist Robert Pollin. C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout. May 28, 2018.
There is, rather, one fundamental reason why policy makers in most countries throughout the world are unwilling to cut their CO2 emissions sufficiently, notwithstanding the ever-mounting ecological threat. It is because the only way countries can achieve serious CO2 emissions cuts is to stop burning so much oil, coal and natural gas to produce energy.  
Confronting this reality in turn creates three problems that are distinct but interrelated. 
The first is that workers and communities throughout the world whose livelihoods depend on people consuming fossil fuel energy will face major losses — layoffs, falling incomes and declining public-sector budgets to support schools, health clinics and public safety.  
The second is that profits will fall sharply and permanently for the colossal fossil fuel companies, such as Exxon-Mobil, Shell and the range of energy-based businesses owned by the US mega-billionaires David and Charles Koch. The world’s publicly owned energy companies — such as Saudi Aramco, Gazprom in Russia and Petrobras in Brazil, which together control about 90 percent of the world’s total oil reserves — will take still larger hits to their revenues.  
The third problem pushes us beyond the fossil fuel industry itself and into broader issues of jobs and prospects for economic growth. According to most analysts, economies will face higher energy costs when they are forced to slash their fossil fuel supplies. It will therefore become more expensive to operate the full gamut of buildings, machines and transportation equipment that drive all economies forward. 
Just to say briefly, these three problems may seem overwhelming, but they are actually less daunting than they appear. First, it is not the case that economies will face higher energy costs through a clean energy transformation. The two critical features of a clean energy transformation are investments in energy efficiency and clean renewable energy sources, which will then supplant oil, coal and natural gas as energy sources. These clean energy sources, in combination, are already cheaper than fossil fuels on average in delivering a given amount of energy. 
Second, building the clean energy economy — through a Green New Deal — will generate 2-3 times more jobs overall in all regions of the globe than maintaining our existing fossil-fuel dominant energy infrastructure. Third, there will certainly be job losses and displacement for workers and communities that are presently dependent on the fossil fuel industry. These workers and communities simply need to be supported through generous Just Transition policies, as one critical feature of the Green New Deal. 
And finally, what about the private and public fossil fuel companies? The only answer here is that we simply cannot worry about their profits when we are facing a planetary emergency. Smart investors need to get the message that it is time to move their money out of fossil fuels and into more benign endeavors — starting with clean energy. And even if the investors plug their ears and cover their eyes to reality, we need to succeed in delivering the message anyway through effective political struggles that foreclose their profit opportunities.

Global carbon budgets and the viability of new fossil fuel projects. Mark Jaccard et al, Springer. May 1, 2018.
Abstract
Policy-makers of some fossil fuel-endowed countries wish to know if a given fossil fuel supply project is consistent with the global carbon budget that would prevent a 2 °C temperature rise. But while some studies have identified fossil fuel reserves that are inconsistent with the 2 °C carbon budget, they have not shown the effect on fossil fuel production costs and market prices. Focusing on oil, we develop an oil pricing and climate test model to which we apply future carbon prices and oil consumption from several global energy-economy-emissions models that simulate the energy supply and demand effects of the 2 °C carbon budget. Our oil price model includes key oil market attributes, notably upper and lower market share boundaries for different oil producer categories, such as OPEC. Using the distribution of the global model results as an indicator of uncertainty about future carbon prices and oil demand, we estimate the probability that a new investment of a given oil source category would be economically viable under the 2 °C carbon budget. In our case study of Canada’s oil sands, we find a less than 5% probability that oil sands investments, and therefore new oil pipelines, would be economically viable over the next three decades under the 2 °C carbon budget. Our sensitivity analysis finds that if OPEC agreed to reduce its market share to 30% by 2045, a significant reduction from its steady 40–45% of the past 25 years, then the probability of viable oil sands expansion rises to 30%.


Nationalization or Buyout: What Should be Done with the Fossil Fuel Companies? Robert Delano, Left Voice. May 18, 2018.
Writing in Jacobin, Peter Gowan argues that the government should buy a "controlling stake" in the fossil fuel companies. Does this offer a true solution for the economic and ecological crises?
In the U.S., more natural gas was extracted in 2017 than in any year prior. Crude oil was produced at levels 60 percent higher last year than in the year 2000 and on par with the record years of the early 1970s. With all the advances that have been made in renewable energy technology in recent decades, fossil fuels are still responsible for 81 percent of all energy on the grid in the U.S., while non-nuclear renewable resources such as wind, water and solar account for just 10 percent. China’s emissions of greenhouse gases also rose to a new record last year after falling slightly in 2015 and 2016. 
Given the complete lack of the will of governments to take action to cut fossil fuel production meaningfully and the obvious impossibility of corporations to self-regulate, what program can we put forward to avert climate catastrophe? 
Writing in Jacobin, Peter Gowan notes that market solutions are “incapable of spurring the economic transition needed” and argues that the only way to quickly move from oil, gas and coal to renewable energy sources is to nationalize the fossil fuel companies.
But what kind of nationalization exactly does Gowan suggest?
... 
Rather than buyouts — purchasing a controlling stake in the fossil fuel companies and creating public-private partnerships — what socialists should demand is the immediate nationalization, without compensation, of the entire energy sector, including the public utilities and the fossil fuel companies. Further, these companies must be placed under the democratic control of their workers and consumers in order to achieve an immediate transition to a renewable energy system. 
Federal and state government bureaucrats have no interest in ushering such a transition and therefore cannot be trusted to manage the industry. The fact that some of the world’s biggest polluters are state enterprises — such as PDVSA in Venezuela or public-private partnerships such as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco or Russia’s Gazprom — shows clearly that state management does not necessarily lead to an ecologically-sustainable energy industry. Only workers and working-class consumers have an interest in moving toward new renewable energy projects, and only they are capable of putting the revenue from fossil fuels toward the needs of the majority of the population.



Is the 1.5°C target possible? Exploring the three spheres of transformation. Karen O’Brien, Science Direct. April, 2018.
Carbon roadmaps and pathways are important for describing, planning and tracking the technical, managerial and behavioral changes that are consistent with the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, roadmaps and pathways for decarbonization often gloss over a fundamental question: ‘How do deliberate social transformations happen?’ Often the social complexity of transformation processes is downplayed or ignored in favor of technical solutions and behavioral approaches. In this article, I explain why they are incomplete and unlikely to ‘bend the curves’ to reduce emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. I first discuss the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges and why this is relevant. I then review and describe the dynamics of social change in relation to three related and interacting ‘spheres’ of transformation: the practical, political, and personal spheres. Finally, I explore how these three spheres can be used to identify leverage points for transformations that support the 1.5°C target.

Comparing extraction rates of fossil fuel producers against global climate goals. Saphira A. C. Rekker, Katherine R. O’Brien, Jacquelyn E. Humphrey & Andrew C. Pascale. Nature Climate Change. May 7, 2018.
Abstract
Meeting global and national climate goals requires action and cooperation from a multitude of actors1,2. Current methods to define greenhouse gas emission targets for companies fail to acknowledge the unique influence of fossil fuel producers: combustion of reported fossil fuel reserves has the potential to push global warming above 2 °C by 2050, regardless of other efforts to mitigate climate change3. Here, we introduce a method to compare the extraction rates of individual fossil fuel producers against global climate targets, using two different approaches to quantify a burnable fossil fuel allowance (BFFA). BFFAs are calculated and compared with cumulative extraction since 2010 for the world’s ten largest investor-owned companies and ten largest state-owned entities (SOEs), for oil and for gas, which together account for the majority of global oil and gas reserves and production. The results are strongly influenced by how BFFAs are quantified; allocating based on reserves favours SOEs over investor-owned companies, while allocating based on production would require most reduction to come from SOEs. Future research could refine the BFFA to account for equity, cost-effectiveness and emissions intensity.

UN forest accounting loophole allows CO2 underreporting by EU, UK, US – “There may not be a pathway to 1.5 degrees anymore — at all. Carbon capture and storage is a fantasy.” Desdemona Despair. May 06, 2018.
Booth is darkly pessimistic — a price she pays for knowing too much, she told me. 
... 
Booth’s research opens up the IPCC to charges that its policymaking decisions regarding emissions accounting have been politicized — crafted by negotiators to include built-in loopholes that allow nations to underreport certain emissions while appearing to achieve their carbon-reduction targets.

Earth’s atmosphere just crossed another troubling climate change threshold. Chris Mooney, WashPo. May 3, 2018.



Pakistan may have endured the hottest April temperature ever recorded on Earth. Ajay Nair, Sky News. May 4, 2018.
The hottest April temperature ever witnessed on Earth may have been recorded in Pakistan after meteorologists saw the weather reach a scorching 50.2C (122.4F)


The catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs created a global hothouse for 100,000 years, study says. Joel Achenbach, WashPo. May 24, 2018.
On a very bad day 66 million years ago, a mountain-sized object from space slammed into the Earth, initiating a cascade of calamities that eradicated three-fourths of the species on the planet, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The buried remnants of the 125-mile-wide crater have been identified on the Yucatan Peninsula and in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have long theorized that an initial pulse of heat was followed by a devastating global winter. After that, as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged, the planet became a hothouse. 
A new study published Thursday in the journal Science has produced hard data to support that global warming hypothesis, and it may have unnerving implications for the world we live in today. The effects of the Chicxulub impact, named for a Yucatan town, produced 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) average warming in a subtropical sea, and this heating persisted for 100,000 years, the researchers concluded. 
“This is crocodiles at the poles and large areas of the tropics uninhabitable on land,” explained lead author Ken MacLeod, a University of Missouri paleontologist.
The study suggests that even a relatively brief pulse of CO2 can have a lingering effect. That's relevant today given many countries' massive greenhouse-gas emissions, which are creating a spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide and associated global warming. 
“The cascading implication of our finding is that carbon dioxide loading would have occurred for just maybe a decade, and the greenhouse warming persisted for 100,000 years,” MacLeod said. “Even if we go back to 1850 levels of CO2 emissions today, we’re locked into 100,000 years of the Earth responding to the CO2 we’ve already put in.”


Bearing Witness to a Disappearing World. Michael Malay, Dark Mountain Issue 13. May 9, 2018.
It is easy to become despondent, indeed sorrowful, about these losses: each day we are confronted with appalling statistics about the loosening footholds (and wing-holds) of mammals and birds in the UK, not to mention thousands of insect species whose habitats are being fundamentally changed by human intervention. As Ursula Heise reminds us, however, narratives of ecological decline, which often borrow from genre conventions such as tragedy and elegy, can easily turn into narratives of human decline. 
Environmental ‘crisis typically becomes a proxy for cultural concerns,’ she writes in Imagining Extinction, a way of telling stories about the fallen experience of modernity. We therefore need to understand when sorrow is misplaced – when it is a projection of cultural anxieties onto nature – and when it stems from a genuine reckoning of what is being lost. The risk of not doing so is to tell a story that begins to tell us – a hopeless story about inevitable decline. 
The other risk of declensionist narratives is that they ignore the capacity of certain creatures to adapt during times of change. As Chris Thomas argues in Inheritors of the Earth, some animals seem to be thriving in the present era. We have damaged the planet beyond any reasonable measure, he admits, altering its ‘great chemical cycles’ and acidifying its oceans, but ‘we are still surrounded by large numbers of species, many of which appear to be benefiting from our presence’ and adapting to ‘this human-altered world’. He also argues that we should situate today’s changes in their ‘appropriate historical context, which involves time spans much longer than we are used to thinking about in our everyday lives.’ This is ‘necessary because the story of life on Earth is one of never-ending change: be that the arrival and disappearance of species from a particular location (ecological change) or the longer-term formation of new species and extinction of others (evolutionary change).’ 
This is not to discount the losses of anthropogenic extinction, which are immense, nor the profligacy with which capitalism exploits human and non-human life. The long view that Thomas takes may also come with a subtle danger. Deep time consoles us by reminding us of earth’s endurance and continuity, but such a view may also desensitise us to the present, to the precious and fragile life being lost now. We are thus relieved of the duties we have as citizens of the earth: the duty to articulate an alternative to the economic systems that are ravaging the planet, the duty to preserve our green and blue commons for future generations, and the duty to foster a notion of citizenship that places the human in humble relations to other creatures, as one ecological fellow among others. Nevertheless, the persistence Thomas celebrates in the natural world is real. And this persistence may offer its own form of hope – that we too may find ways of flourishing in uncertain times, or, more selflessly, that animal life will continue evolving and proliferating with or without their human fellows, inheritors of a future that will continue despite us.

Forever Empty. Guy McPherson, Nature Bats Last. May 3, 2018.
as with most of you, I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived here.
So far, my record isn’t that great. I was born into captivity as a first-world human. That right there is a helluva burden to shoulder. 
I’ve got a lifetime of conspicuous consumption in my rear-view mirror. It’s not pretty. I’ve got “must go faster” ringing in my ears. I’ve got Mother Culture whispering “success” and “money” in the same breath, yet I know better. I’ve known better since August of 1979. 
What is one poor, conflicted, privileged, Caucasian man supposed to do about abrupt, irreversible climate change on a polluted planet? That’s the nagging question. That’s the never-ending, forever-empty feeling raging at my nonexistent soul at 3 o’clock every goddamned dark morning. 
Enlightenment is a curse. How can I push it away? How can I switch off my relentless mind, when the problems and predicaments keep piling up?

Negative Emission Technologies: maybe we can still save the world, after all! Ugo Bardi. May 8, 2018.
Before I went to hear Klaus Lackner in Les Houches in March 2018, I had a very poor opinion of direct atmospheric capture (DAC) and negative emission technologies (NET). If you had asked me, I would have said that there is no need for these technologies: why can't we just avoid emissions, instead? And if you were to tell me about "artificial trees," I would have told you that Mother Nature spent some 350 million years to develop trees, and She knows better than us how to remove CO2 from the air. 
Well, I changed my mind. I came out of Lackner's seminar convinced that DAC/NET may give us a fighting chance to survive. Consider that it is perfectly possible that we already passed the "tipping point" that will lead Earth's climate to move to a different climate state. In that case, reducing emissions or even zeroing them will not help us. And, in any case, we are not doing that fast enough. So, DAC/NET as the last hope to save civilization? (*) Possible and even likely. Let me explain. 
First of all, let me state a point which is clear to me: the energy transition is NOT a technological problem. We could go through the transition fast enough to avoid running out of energy and before climate change destroys us. But only if we were willing to invest enough in the transition, and we aren't. The problem is financial and political. And, at present, it seems to be impossible to solve since the idea that civilization (and perhaps humankind) is at risk is just not penetrating into the consciousness of the decision makers.
worth reading the (skeptical) comments


Kinder Morgan Sold the Pipeline. Roy L. Hales, CleanTechnica. May 31, 2018.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims that buying the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline is acting in the national interest. Ben Parfait put his feeling about the $4.5 billion purchase to music: “Broken hands on broken ploughs, Broken treaties, broken vows, Broken pipes, broken tools/ People bending broken rules.” Economist Robyn Allan estimates Canadian taxpayers will spend $20 billion before the controversial pipeline expansion is finished; if it is finished. Is anyone surprised to hear that Kinder Morgan sold the pipeline?

Say hello to Justin Trudeau, the world's newest oil executive. Bill McKibben, The Guardian. May 30, 2018.
The Canadian prime minister presents himself as a climate hero. By promising to nationalise the Kinder Morgan pipeline, he reveals his true self. 
... 
Now it’s Trudeau who owns the razor wire, Trudeau who has to battle his own people. All in the name of pouring more carbon into the air, so he can make the oil companies back at the Alberta end of his pipe a little more money. We know now how history will remember Justin Trudeau: not as a dreamy progressive, but as one more pathetic employee of the richest, most reckless industry in the planet’s history.
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Thursday, May 17, 2018

Closing the Collapse Gap: Dmitry Orlov

CLOSING THE ‘COLLAPSE GAP’: THE USSR WAS BETTER PREPARED FOR COLLAPSE THAN THE US. Dmitry Orlov, Resilence.org. originally published by Energy Bulletin. Dec. 4, 2006.




Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.

My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the “Collapse Gap” – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.



Slide [2] The subject of economic collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at that point yet.

And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what I’ve seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S. economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won’t be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the Soviet collapse to good use.



Slide [3] I anticipate that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.



Slide [4] The USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me just mention four.

The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop.

The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one.

The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever.

The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It’s easy now that they don’t have anyone to compete against.



Slide [5] Continuing with our list of superpower similarities, many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well. Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents. Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production. Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.



Slide [6] An economic collapse is amazing to observe, and very interesting if described accurately and in detail. A general description tends to fall short of the mark, but let me try. An economic arrangement can continue for quite some time after it becomes untenable, through sheer inertia. But at some point a tide of broken promises and invalidated assumptions sweeps it all out to sea. One such untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.



Slide [7] I’ve described what happened to Russia in some detail in one of my articles, which is available on SurvivingPeakOil.com. I don’t see why what happens to the United States should be entirely dissimilar, at least in general terms. The specifics will be different, and we will get to them in a moment. We should certainly expect shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity, gas, and water, breakdowns in transportation systems and other infrastructure, hyperinflation, widespread shutdowns and mass layoffs, along with a lot of despair, confusion, violence, and lawlessness. We definitely should not expect any grand rescue plans, innovative technology programs, or miracles of social cohesion.



Slide [8] When faced with such developments, some people are quick to realize what it is they have to do to survive, and start doing these things, generally without anyone’s permission. A sort of economy emerges, completely informal, and often semi-criminal. It revolves around liquidating, and recycling, the remains of the old economy. It is based on direct access to resources, and the threat of force, rather than ownership or legal authority. People who have a problem with this way of doing things, quickly find themselves out of the game.

These are the generalities. Now let’s look at some specifics.



Slide [9] One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don’t need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. In the Soviet Union, all housing belonged to the government, which made it available directly to the people. Since all housing was also built by the government, it was only built in places that the government could service using public transportation. After the collapse, almost everyone managed to keep their place.

In the United States, very few people own their place of residence free and clear, and even they need an income to pay real estate taxes. People without an income face homelessness. When the economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the car-dependent nature of most suburbs, and what you will get is mass migrations of homeless people toward city centers.



Slide [10] Soviet public transportation was more or less all there was, but there was plenty of it. There were also a few private cars, but so few that gasoline rationing and shortages were mostly inconsequential. All of this public infrastructure was designed to be almost infinitely maintainable, and continued to run even as the rest of the economy collapsed.

The population of the United States is almost entirely car-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil import, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. The cars themselves require a steady stream of imported parts, and are not designed to last very long. When these intricately interconnected systems stop functioning, much of the population will find itself stranded.



Slide [11] Economic collapse affects public sector employment almost as much as private sector employment, eventually. Because government bureaucracies tend to be slow to act, they collapse more slowly. Also, because state-owned enterprises tend to be inefficient, and stockpile inventory, there is plenty of it left over, for the employees to take home, and use in barter. Most Soviet employment was in the public sector, and this gave people some time to think of what to do next.

Private enterprises tend to be much more efficient at many things. Such laying off their people, shutting their doors, and liquidating their assets. Since most employment in the United States is in the private sector, we should expect the transition to permanent unemployment to be quite abrupt for most people.



Slide [12] When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn’t make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.

In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.



Slide [13] To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.

In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.



Slide [14] Soviet consumer products were always an object of derision – refrigerators that kept the house warm – and the food, and so on. You’d be lucky if you got one at all, and it would be up to you to make it work once you got it home. But once you got it to work, it would become a priceless family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation, sturdy, and almost infinitely maintainable.

In the United States, you often hear that something “is not worth fixing.” This is enough to make a Russian see red. I once heard of an elderly Russian who became irate when a hardware store in Boston wouldn’t sell him replacement bedsprings: “People are throwing away perfectly good mattresses, how am I supposed to fix them?”

Economic collapse tends to shut down both local production and imports, and so it is vitally important that anything you own wears out slowly, and that you can fix it yourself if it breaks. Soviet-made stuff generally wore incredibly hard. The Chinese-made stuff you can get around here – much less so.



Slide [15] The Soviet agricultural sector was notoriously inefficient. Many people grew and gathered their own food even in relatively prosperous times. There were food warehouses in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme. There were very few restaurants, and most families cooked and ate at home. Shopping was rather labor-intensive, and involved carrying heavy loads. Sometimes it resembled hunting – stalking that elusive piece of meat lurking behind some store counter. So the people were well-prepared for what came next.

In the United States, most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks. Many people don’t even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation’s girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.



Slide [16] The Soviet government threw resources at immunization programs, infectious disease control, and basic care. It directly operated a system of state-owned clinics, hospitals, and sanatoriums. People with fatal ailments or chronic conditions often had reason to complain, and had to pay for private care – if they had the money.

In the United States, medicine is for profit. People seems to think nothing of this fact. There are really very few fields of endeavor to which Americans would deny the profit motive. The problem is, once the economy is removed, so is the profit, along with the services it once helped to motivate.



Slide [17] The Soviet education system was generally quite excellent. It produced an overwhelmingly literate population and many great specialists. The education was free at all levels, but higher education sometimes paid a stipend, and often provided room and board. The educational system held together quite well after the economy collapsed. The problem was that the graduates had no jobs to look forward to upon graduation. Many of them lost their way.

The higher education system in the United States is good at many things – government and industrial research, team sports, vocational training… Primary and secondary education fails to achieve in 12 years what Soviet schools generally achieved in 8. The massive scale and expense of maintaining these institutions is likely to prove too much for the post-collapse environment. Illiteracy is already a problem in the United States, and we should expect it to get a lot worse.



Slide [18] The Soviet Union did not need to import energy. The production and distribution system faltered, but never collapsed. Price controls kept the lights on even as hyperinflation raged.

The term “market failure” seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities. During World War II, the United States government understood this, and successfully rationed many things, from gasoline to bicycle parts. But that was a long time ago. Since then, the inviolability of free markets has become an article of faith.



Slide [19] My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better-prepared for economic collapse than the United States is.

I have left out two important superpower asymmetries, because they don’t have anything to do with collapse-preparedness. Some countries are simply luckier than others. But I will mention them, for the sake of completeness.

In terms of racial and ethnic composition, the United States resembles Yugoslavia more than it resembles Russia, so we shouldn’t expect it to be as peaceful as Russia was, following the collapse. Ethnically mixed societies are fragile and have a tendency to explode.

In terms of religion, the Soviet Union was relatively free of apocalyptic doomsday cults. Very few people there wished for a planet-sized atomic fireball to herald the second coming of their savior. This was indeed a blessing.



Slide [20] One area in which I cannot discern any Collapse Gap is national politics. The ideologies may be different, but the blind adherence to them couldn’t be more similar.

It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.

The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart’s content?

The American approach to bookkeeping is more subtle and nuanced than the Soviet. Why make a state secret of some statistic, when you can just distort it, in obscure ways? Here’s a simple example: inflation is “controlled” by substituting hamburger for steak, in order to minimize increases to Social Security payments.



Slide [21] Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It’s as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.



Slide [22] I will now sketch out some approaches, realistic and otherwise, to closing the Collapse Gap. My little list of approaches might seem a bit glib, but keep in mind that this is a very difficult problem. In fact, it’s important to keep in mind that not all problems have solutions. I can promise you that we will not solve this problem tonight. What I will try to do is to shed some light on it from several angles.



Slide [23] Many people rail against the unresponsiveness and irresponsibility of the government. They often say things like “What is needed is…” plus the name of some big, successful government project from the glorious past – the Marshall Plan, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program. But there is nothing in the history books about a government preparing for collapse. Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” is an example of a government trying to avert or delay collapse. It probably helped speed it along.



Slide [24] There are some things that I would like the government to take care of in preparation for collapse. I am particularly concerned about all the radioactive and toxic installations, stockpiles, and dumps. Future generations are unlikely to able to control them, especially if global warming puts them underwater. There is enough of this muck sitting around to kill off most of us. I am also worried about soldiers getting stranded overseas – abandoning one’s soldiers is among the most shameful things a country can do. Overseas military bases should be dismantled, and the troops repatriated. I’d like to see the huge prison population whittled away in a controlled manner, ahead of time, instead of in a chaotic general amnesty. Lastly, I think that this farce with debts that will never be repaid, has gone on long enough. Wiping the slate clean will give society time to readjust. So, you see, I am not asking for any miracles. Although, if any of these things do get done, I would consider it a miracle.



Slide [25] A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren’t part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.



Slide [26] It’s important to understand that the Soviet Union achieved collapse-preparedness inadvertently, and not because of the success of some crash program. Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch. It is not necessary for us to embrace the tenets of command economy and central planning to match the Soviet lackluster performance in this area. We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them “boondoggles.” They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve.

Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it. So if somebody comes to you and says “I want to make a boondoggle that runs on hydrogen” – by all means encourage him! It’s not as good as a boondoggle that burns money directly, but it’s a step in the right direction.



Slide [27] Certain types of mainstream economic behavior are not prudent on a personal level, and are also counterproductive to bridging the Collapse Gap. Any behavior that might result in continued economic growth and prosperity is counterproductive: the higher you jump, the harder you land. It is traumatic to go from having a big retirement fund to having no retirement fund because of a market crash. It is also traumatic to go from a high income to little or no income. If, on top of that, you have kept yourself incredibly busy, and suddenly have nothing to do, then you will really be in rough shape.

Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens. The people who are most at risk psychologically are successful middle-aged men. When their career is suddenly over, their savings are gone, and their property worthless, much of their sense of self-worth is gone as well. They tend to drink themselves to death and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers. Since they tend to be the most experienced and capable people, this is a staggering loss to society.

If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.



Slide [28] I hope that I didn’t make it sound as if the Soviet collapse was a walk in the park, because it was really quite awful in many ways. The point that I do want to stress is that when this economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse. Another point I would like to stress is that collapse here is likely to be permanent. The factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here.

In spite of all this, I believe that in every age and circumstance, people can sometimes find not just a means and a reason to survive, but enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom. If we can find them even after the economy collapses, then why not start looking for them now?
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Sunday, May 13, 2018

Topic: Abrupt Climate Change

Abrupt climate change is here. Robert Hunziker, Counterpunch. Feb. 2, 2015.

Abrupt climate change. Q&A. Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Could abrupt climate change lead to human extinction within 10 years? Charlie Smith, straight.com. Feb. 11, 2017.

Abrupt climate change: past, present and future. Jim White, via youtube. Dec. 2014.



Scientific articles:

 Abrupt Climate Change. Stefan Rahmstorf, Elsevier. 2009.
Introduction  
High-resolution paleoclimatic records from ice and sediment cores and other sources have revealed a number of dramatic climatic changes that occurred over surprisingly short times – a few decades or in some cases a few years. In Greenland, for example, temperature rose by 5–10 1C, snowfall rates doubled, and windblown dust decreased by an order of magnitude within 40 years at the end of the last glacial period. In the Sahara, an abrupt transition occurred around 5500 years ago from a relatively green shrubland supporting significant populations of animals and humans to the dry desert we know today. 
One could define an abrupt climate change simply as a large and rapid one – occurring faster than in a given time (say 30 years). The change from winter to summer, a very large change (in many places larger than the glacial–interglacial transition) occurring within 6 months, is, however, not an abrupt change in climate (or weather), it is rather a gradual transition following the solar forcing in its near-sinusoidal path. The term ‘abrupt’ implies not just rapidity but also reaching a breaking point, a threshold – it implies a change that does not smoothly follow the forcing but is rapid in comparison to it. This physical definition thus equates abrupt climate change with a strongly nonlinear response to the forcing. In this definition, the quaternary transitions from glacial to interglacial conditions and back, taking a few hundred or thousand years, are a prime example of abrupt climate change, as the underlying cause, the Earth’s orbital variations (Milankovich cycles), have timescales of tens of thousands of years. On the other hand, anthropogenic global warming occurring within a hundred years is not as such an abrupt climate change as long as it smoothly follows the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Only if global warming triggered a nonlinear response, like a rapid ocean circulation change or decay of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), would one speak of an abrupt climate change.
Abrupt Climate Change. R.B. Alley et al, Science. March, 2003.

Abstract:
Large, abrupt, and widespread climate changes with major impacts have occurred repeatedly in the past, when the Earth system was forced across thresholds. Although abrupt climate changes can occur for many reasons, it is conceivable that human forcing of climate change is increasing the probability of large, abrupt events. Were such an event to recur, the economic and ecological impacts could be large and potentially serious. Unpredictability exhibited near climate thresholds in simple models shows that some uncertainty will always be associated with projections. In light of these uncertainties, policy-makers should consider expanding research into abrupt climate change, improving monitoring systems, and taking actions designed to enhance the adaptability and resilience of ecosystems and economies.


Rapid climate change: lessons from the recent geological past. Jonathan Holmes et al, Science Direct. Dec. 2011.
Abstract 
Rapid, or abrupt, climate change is regarded as a change in the climate system to a new state following the crossing of a threshold. It generally occurs at a rate exceeding that of the change in the underlying cause. Episodes of rapid climate change abound in the recent geological past (defined here as the interval between the last glacial maximum, dated to approximately 20,000 years ago, and the present). Rapid climate changes are known to have occurred over time periods equal to or even less than a human lifespan: moreover, their effects on the global system are sufficiently large to have had significant societal impacts. The potential for similar events to occur in the future provides an important impetus for investigating the nature and causes of rapid climate change. 


Holocene climate variability. Paul A.Mayewski et al, ScienceDirect. Nov. 2004.
Although the dramatic climate disruptions of the last glacial period have received considerable attention, relatively little has been directed toward climate variability in the Holocene (11,500 cal yr B.P. to the present). Examination of ∼50 globally distributed paleoclimate records reveals as many as six periods of significant rapid climate change during the time periods 9000–8000, 6000–5000, 4200–3800, 3500–2500, 1200–1000, and 600–150 cal yr B.P. Most of the climate change events in these globally distributed records are characterized by polar cooling, tropical aridity, and major atmospheric circulation changes, although in the most recent interval (600–150 cal yr B.P.), polar cooling was accompanied by increased moisture in some parts of the tropics. Several intervals coincide with major disruptions of civilization, illustrating the human significance of Holocene climate variability.


Policy tradeoffs under risk of abrupt climate change. Yacov Tsura and Amos Zemel, Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization. Dec. 2016.
Highlights
  • Serious threats of climate change are associated with abrupt catastrophic events.
  • Mitigation efforts delay the event occurrence.
  • Adaptation efforts minimize the damage inflicted upon occurrence.
  • The role of climate policy is to balance between mitigation and adaptation efforts.
Abstract

By now it is widely recognized that the more serious threats of climate change are associated with abrupt events capable of inflicting losses on a catastrophic scale. Consequently, the main role of climate policies is to balance between mitigation efforts, aimed at delaying (or even preventing) the occurrence of such events, and adaptation actions, aimed at minimizing the damage inflicted upon occurrence. The former affects the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; the latter determines the impact of loss once the event occurs. This work examines the tradeoffs associated with these two types of policy measures by characterizing the optimal mitigation–adaptation mix in the long run.
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Wednesday, May 9, 2018

War and Empire Links: A Sampler

So, you watch CNN or NBC and don't know what to think... about Syria, about Iran, about Yemen, about Russia.
Consider that you're not getting the full story from mainstream media.
In fact, that's all propaganda. It really is an Orwellian world.

And its been going on for a very long time... at least since Edward Bernays, circa 1928.

If you want to immunize yourself from the government-approved talking-points, you need to read non-mainstream media, which has been labelled by some as "fake news" but is actually the real journalism that is being done to try to counter the actual fake news we're inundated with all the time by the usual sources (Washington Post, ABC, BBC, etc.)


For starters, read anything and everything by


Caitlin Johnstone,
including:

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/how-you-can-be-absolutely-certain-that-mainstream-media-lies-about-everything-a5eec69a9264

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/09/we-are-being-lied-to-about-yet-another-middle-eastern-country-by-yet-another-us-president/

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/04/12/the-us-empire-has-been-trying-to-regime-change-syria-since-long-before-2011/

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/04/10/when-a-government-declares-a-verdict-before-an-investigation-its-because-theres-a-preexisting-agenda/

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/04/25/never-let-anyone-call-you-crazy-for-doubting-establishment-war-narratives/

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/08/why-you-should-celebrate-loudly-and-unapologetically-when-john-mccain-dies/

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/03/israel-is-trying-to-manufacture-support-for-iran-sanctions-to-effect-regime-change/


Chris Hedges

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-pandoras-box-of-war-3/

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/deadly-rule-oligarchs/

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/empty-piety-american-press/

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trump-tyranny



 Eric Zeusse

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/04/30/how-facebook-etc.-suppress-key-truths.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/04/17/why-trusting-us-government-and-mainstream-media-makes-you-dupe.html


Dmitry Orlov

https://toolatefor2.blogspot.ca/2018/03/the-incomparable-dmitry-orlov.html

https://toolatefor2.blogspot.ca/2017/11/dmitry-orlov-explains-world-like-few.html

https://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2018/04/the-importance-of-looking-dangerous.html


 Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/article/syria-iran-chaos-international-relations/


William Engdahl

http://thesaker.is/the-rape-of-russia-saker-blog-exclusive-interview/


William Blum

https://williamblum.org/aer/read/140

https://williamblum.org/aer/read/156


Stephen Cohen

https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-is-revealing-alarming-truths-about-americas-political-media-elites/


 James Howard Kunstler

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/state-of-failure/



 Howard Zinn

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176052/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_howard_zinn%2C_the_end_of_empire



John Bellamy Foster



Andrew Bacevich



Tom Englehardt



Chalmers Johnson



Jeremy Scahill



Laurie Calhoun






 Other Sites:

Sic Semper Tyrannis

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/10/america-desperately-seeking-an-enemy-by-publius-tacitus.html#more


Vineyard of the Saker

http://thesaker.is/when-sanity-fails-the-mindset-of-the-ideological-drone/#f1

http://thesaker.is/the-warmakers/


Moon of Alabama

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/11/yemen-having-lost-the-war-saudis-try-genocide-.html#more

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/09/a-short-history-of-the-war-on-syria-2006-2014.html

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/trump-ends-the-nuclear-deal-with-iran-whats-next.html
Other random links, for further background

https://toolatefor2.blogspot.ca/2018/04/war-and-empire-links-april-2018.html

https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-325-the-information-industrial-complex/

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/27/weapons-inspector-refutes-u-s-syria-chemical-claims/

https://www.mintpressnews.com/state-of-fear-how-historys-deadliest-bombing-campaign-created-todays-crisis-in-korea/235349/

http://lobelog.com/killing-more-innocents-than-we-admit/

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/libya-the-forgotten-reason-north-korea-desperately-wants-23129?page=show

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/11/war-making-age-imperial-presidency-war-without-war-powers-not-new-american-way.html

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/04/middle-east-nightmare-made-washington.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/07/war-and-empire-american-way-life.html

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/04/22/ukraine-korea-syria-iran-falsifying-history-uncle-sam-way-war.html

https://israelpalestinenews.org/oil-for-israel-the-truth-about-the-iraq-war-15-years-later/

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Tuesday, May 8, 2018

War and Empire Links: May 2018

Had Enough, Yet? Guy McPherson, Weekly Hubris. Apr. 28, 2018.

Fascism has come to the industrialized world, and the evidence is particularly clear in the United States.

As I wrote in my 2005 book, Killing the Natives: Has the American Dream Become a Nightmare? , regarding the executive branch of the US government:

“[The administration] is characterized by powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism, identification of enemies as a unifying cause, obsession with militaristic national security and military supremacy, interlinking of religion and the ruling elite, obsession with crime and punishment, disdain for the importance of human rights and intellectuals who support them, cronyism, corruption, sexism, protection of corporate power, suppression of labor, control over mass media, and fraudulent elections. These are the defining elements of fascism.”

The situation has progressed, and not in a suitable manner from the perspective of the typical self-proclaimed progressive. Along with fascism, we’re now firmly ensconced in a totalitarian, surveillance-obsessed police state. The United States has been in this condition for many years and the situation grows worse every year, but most people prefer to look away and then claim ignorance while politicians proclaim our exceptionalism as they secure our privileges with extreme violence.

As long as you’re not in jail (yet) or declared a terrorist (yet) and subsequently killed outright (yet), you’re unlikely to bring attention to yourself, regardless of what you know and feel about the morality of the people running/ruining the show.

But why? Is fear such a great motivator that we allow the complete destruction of the living planet to give ourselves a few more years to enable and further that destruction? Is the grip of culture so strong that we cannot break free in defense of the planet we call home? Have we moved so far away from the notion of resistance that we can’t organize a potluck dinner without seeking permission from the Department of Homeland Security?

I know many parents who claim they can’t take action because they want a better world for their children. Their version of a “better world” is my version of a worse world, as they long for growth of the industrial economy at the expense of clean air, clean water, healthy food, the living planet, runaway greenhouse, and human-population overshoot.

I’ve come to call this response “the parent trap.” Trapped by the culture of make believe, these parents cannot bring themselves to imagine a different world. A better world. A world without the boot of the police state on the necks of their children. A world with fewer carnivores every year, instead of more. A world with less pollution, less garbage, and less lying—to ourselves and others— each and every year.

All evidence indicates we prefer Fukushima forever, if it means we can have electric toys. We prefer near-term extinction by climate chaos, if it means we can cool the house to 68 F in the summer. We prefer genocide, if it comes with a milkshake and an order of fries.

Henry Ford was wrong when he pointed out, “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

On the other hand, General Omar Bradley’s sentiments from 1948 ring true: 
“The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.”

We clearly don’t care about the environmental consequences of our greed, at least collectively. So, we keep soldiering on, wishing for a miracle and ignoring the evidence of imperial decline, human-population overshoot, runaway climate change, and a profound extinction crisis.

Ultimately, and sadly, I suspect it comes down to this: When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. We simply can’t be bothered to contemplate a single issue of importance when the television calls or the shopping mall beckons.

Political “activists” spend hours every day elaborating the many insignificant differences between the two dominant political parties in the United States, but they cannot bring themselves to throw a wrench into the gears of industry. They continue to ignore the prescient words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu long after the consequences of inaction are obvious: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

We’re clearly unwilling to begin the process of safely shutting down the nuclear reactors that are poised to kill us. Instead, we steadily increase the number of these uber-expensive sources of electricity, which means means shoving more ammunition into the Gatling gun pointed at our heads. One bullet does the trick. In classic American style, we prefer more. Always more.

How much of this is too much? When have you had enough?
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