Dahr Jamail: The Scourge of 'Peak Oil'

Published on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by Al Jazeera English

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201172081613634207.html

When demand for oil consistently surpasses supply, experts warn that our lives will look "very differently".

by Dahr Jamail

Energy derived from oil reaches, quite literally, every aspect of our lives.

From the clothes we wear, to the food we eat, to how we move ourselves around, without oil, our lives would look very differently.

Yet oil is a finite resource. While there is no argument that it won't last forever, there is debate about how much oil is left and how long it might last.

Tom Whipple, an energy scholar, was a CIA analyst for 30 years - and believes we are likely at, or very near, a point in history when the maximum production capacity for oil is reached, a phenomenon often referred to as "peak oil".

"Peak oil is the time when the world's production reaches the highest point, then starts back down again," Whipple told Al Jazeera. "Oil is a finite resource, and [it] someday will go down, and that is what the peak oil discussion is all about."

There are signs that peak oil may have already arrived.

Click to read more ...

"Anita Creamer" - Unemployed baby boomers are struggling to get by

Anita Creamer | The Sacramento Bee

last updated: July 26, 2011 06:43:04 AM

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/07/26/118213/unemployed-baby-boomers-are-struggling.html

Brian Blaschke thought he had positioned himself well to survive the economic downturn. A construction industry veteran, he switched careers in 2007 into construction defect investigation for an insurance company. Fourteen months later, he was laid off anyway.

He hasn't brought home a full-time salary or benefits since November 2008.

Click to read more ...

Chris Hedges: Fundamentalism Kills

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fundamentalism_kills_20110726/

Posted on Jul 26, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harrisand Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway. I worry more about the Anders Breiviks than the Mohammed Attas.

Click to read more ...

"Mike Ludwig" - Emails Show White House Promotes Genetically Engineered Crops in Wildlife Refuges

Monday 25 July 2011

by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

http://www.truth-out.org/emails-show-white-house-promotes-ge-crops-wildlife-refuges/1311621066

The Obama administration is supporting genetically engineered (GE) agriculture in more than 50 national wildlife refuges across the country and watchdog groups say internal emails among top administration officials reveal that the GE plots are a priority in the White House.

Earlier this year, a settlement in a lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and its allies halted the planting of GE crops in US Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife refuges in northeastern states. Now PEER claims the Obama administration is working with the biotech lobby to shield GE plots in refuges from future legal challenges.

A January 10, 2011 email obtained by PEER reveals that biotech lobbyist Adrianne Massey contacted Peter Schmeissner, the senior policy analyst for the White House Office of Science and Technology, about the legal challenge to GE crop plantings in northeastern refuges.

Click to read more ...

Holly Sklar: CEOs to Workers -- More for Me, Less for You

Published on Monday, July 25, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/25-0

by Holly Sklar

Big company CEOs got a 23 percent raise last year and corporate profits are at record highs. But the minimum wage has less buying power now than in 1956 – the year Elvis Presley first topped the charts, videotape was breakthrough technology and the Dow closed above 500 for the very first time.

It’s no accident wages are down while corporate profits are up. As JPMorgan’s July 11 “Eye on the Market” newsletter put it, “Reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in [profit] margins… US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP.”

Click to read more ...

"Richard Clark" - The Kucinich Plan for National Economic Reform and Recovery

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Kucinich-Plan-for-Nati-by-Richard-Clark-110725-480.html

July 25, 2011

By Richard Clark

 Dennis Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt.   He says the US must also gradually increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby gradually ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest.   Prize-winning documentary film maker Bill Still agrees and has produced several very persuasive films, web sites, books and articles that explain and support this idea of nationalizing the Fed, ending fractional reserve banking, and distributing a new, non-debt-based currency.

Congressman Kucinich's proposal is laid out here in its entirety.

Click to read more ...

Robert Reich: Why Washington is About to Make the Jobs Crisis Worse

Published on Monday, July 25, 2011 by RobertReich.org

http://robertreich.org/post/8042268683 

by Robert Reich

We now live in parallel universes.

One universe is the one in which most Americans live. In it, almost 15 million people are unemployed, wages are declining (adjusted for inflation), and home values are still falling. The unsurprising result is consumers aren’t buying — which is causing employers to slow down their hiring and in many cases lay off more of their workers. In this universe, we’re locked in a vicious economic cycle that’s getting worse. 

The other universe is the one in which Washington politicians live. They are now engaged in a bitter partisan battle over how, and by how much, to reduce the federal budget deficit in order to buy enough votes to lift the debt ceiling. 

Click to read more ...

Mariel Nanasi: A Future Without Coal

Published on Monday, July 25, 2011 by ClimateStoryTellers.org

http://www.climatestorytellers.org/stories/mariel-nanasi-a-future-without-coal-in-new-mexico/

Advocates for a Renewable Energy Future In New Mexico Supreme Court, Again

by Mariel Nanasi

It’s time we secure a future without coal in New Mexico, across America, and around the world. It won’t be easy. Along the way, we will need a lot of help, creativity and inspiration.

While we draw strength from each other, our movement to end coal and save our planet from climate change also honors the millions of people viciously poisoned and ruthlessly exploited by the relentless, destructive impact of coal. From infants and children to adults and our beloved elders, the litany of coal’s negative effects is brutal and it’s growing.

Coal mining, coal transportation and coal-fired electricity generation are widely recognized to increase rates of asthma, emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, neurological damage in children and infant mortality. The more we learn, the worse it gets. Everyday, tons upon tons of CO₂, ozone, nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxides, particulate matter and mercury—all from coal, exact a staggering price in blood and sorrow.

Click to read more ...

Andrew Levine: Is There Life After Obamamania? Disillusion Now

By ANDREW LEVINE

http://counterpunch.org/levine07252011.html

The Obama presidency has been outstanding at one thing: ridding liberals of illusions about itself.  It has also been good at undoing illusions about America’s duopoly party system and other undemocratic facets of our electoral politics.  But the deepest reasons for the sorry state of the current political scene have yet to reach widespread awareness.  In this respect, we are not much better off than we were back in the day when the Great Capitulator was still perceived as an agent of change – not for the worse, as he has surely been, but for the better.

In liberal quarters, where it had once been rampant, Obamamania is now a distant memory, having given way to profound disappointment.  Recovering Obamaniacs understand that Obama is a spineless leader who talks out of both sides of his mouth, and that wherever his sympathies lie, in practice he is not on the peoples’ side.  The fecklessness of the Democratic Party is also, by now, well understood: how could it be otherwise when Democrats and Republicans feed from the same trough and when, unlike Republicans, Democrats, when pushed, always cave and never fight?

Click to read more ...

Benjamin Barber: We're Number 34!

Huffington Post,  7/25/11 12:58 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-r-barber/debt-ceiling-budget_b_908752.html

 

American exceptionalism glides complacently into the 21st century on a lie and a prayer. The lie comprises all the flag-waving hyperbole, the exceptionalist claim that "We're Number One," when as measured by far too many key indicators we are actually closer to being #10 (social mobility) or maybe #34 (infant mortality) or dead last -- pun intended -- in the percentage of our population we incarcerate. The prayer is the exceptionalists' hope that no one will notice their swaggering hypocrisy as they set about gutting and privatizing all the magnificent programs on which American greatness depends and downplay default on the national debt like a cynical old bankrupt.

The latest proof of hypocrisy comes from two closely related American flameouts. We just launched the 135th and last manned flight under the Space Shuttle program -- having declared we can no longer afford as a nation to explore the universe in person. And we are about to kill the James Webb telescope, the successor to the famous Hubble Space telescope that opened up the universe to our curiosity and scrutiny and helped animate the manned space program. The last frontier is today a bridge too far and America's journey to space joins the moribund TV series Star Trek.

Click to read more ...