Thursday, April 20th, 2017
Rachel Nuwer, - BBC (U.K.)
Stephan: This is a really good essay explaining what I am concerned about: the collapse of democratic civilization. Based on the social outcome data it is not far-fetched. This essay spells it out.
There is only one solution: We must create a society that has wellbeing from the individual, to the family, community, nation and the planet itself, as the first priority. We must create a wellbeing based culture or collapse as the Romans and other have before us. That is why I wrote the 8 Laws. To show how a wellbeing based society can be created without armies, great wealth, or official position.
Credit: Future
The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse.
Such collapses have occurred many times in human history, and no civilisation, no matter how seemingly great, is immune to the vulnerabilities that may lead a society to its end. Regardless of how well things are going in the present moment, the situation can always change. Putting aside species-ending events like an asteroid strike, nuclear winter or deadly pandemic, history tells us that it’s usually a plethora of factors that contribute to collapse. What are they, and […]
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Thursday, April 20th, 2017
Mike Ludwig, Investigative Reporter - truthout
Stephan: Greed is destroying the planet. As the percentage of the energy used that is based on carbon declines, while noncarbon increases, only greed is driving petroleum exploration in the Arctic. They still haven't completely cleaned up the Exxon-Valdez spill. Here's the latest.
Oil and gas drillers in Alaska struggle to contain spills even as Trump looks to expand drilling in the pristine Arctic.
Credit: Bureau of Safety and Environment / Flickr
On Friday, as divers working for the oil and gas company Hilcorp finally plugged a leak in an underwater fuel line that has been releasing large amounts of methane gas into Alaska’s Cook Inlet for the past four months, workers reported another accident in a different part of the state. A blowout had occurred at an onshore oil well operated by BP near Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, and untold volumes of oil and gas were spewing out.
Both accidents, along with an unrelated crude oil spill from a pipeline near a Hilcorp drilling platform in the Upper Cook Inlet on April 1, come as the Trump administration and the oil and gas industry prepare to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, including in the Arctic Ocean. The expansion raises concerns about oil spills in pristine, hard-to-reach areas off the Alaskan coast. Republicans in […]
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Thursday, April 20th, 2017
Steve Holland and Valerie Volcovici, - Scientific American
Stephan: It hardly seems possible giving what is going on with sea rise and climate change that withdrawal from the Paris climate meetings would even be discussed. That the Trump administration is debating it, should alarm everyone. This and the people he has put in office are going to leave America utterly unprepared.
The Eiffel tower is illuminated in green with the words “Paris Agreement is Done,” to celebrate the Paris U.N. COP21 Climate Change agreement in Paris, France, November 4, 2016.
Credit: Chesnot Getty Images
Advisers to President Donald Trump will meet on Tuesday to discuss whether to recommend that he withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a White House official said on Monday.
The accord, agreed on by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, aims to limit planetary warming in part by slashing carbon dioxide and other emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Under the pact, the United States committed to reducing its emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.
Trump has said the United States should “cancel” the deal, but he has been mostly quiet on the issue since he was elected last November.
Environmental groups want Washington to remain in the Paris agreement, even if the new administration weakens U.S. pledges.
A White House official said Trump’s aides would “discuss the options, with the goal of providing […]
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Thursday, April 20th, 2017
AJ Dellinger, - The Raw Story/International Business Times
Stephan: The quality and integrity of the men and women put forward by the Republican Party is breathtaking poor. Yet Americans vote for them. This is what we get.
Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner
Credit: YouTube
As Republican lawmakers continue to defend their decision to vote to roll back a set of broadband privacy rules that would have required internet service providers to ask for permission before collecting user data, the Federal Communications Commission is readying more drastic changes to the regulatory oversight of the internet.
In a town hall appearance held on Thursday, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. defended his decision to vote to repeal the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules passed by the FCC last October by arguing that “nobody’s got to use the internet.”
Read: Congress Decides To Kill Rules Preventing ISPs From Collecting, Selling Data
When a constituent attending the event in Wisconsin’s fifth district raised the issue that she has only one ISP available in her neighborhood and now has little recourse to protect her personal information from her internet provider, Sensenbrenner responded:
“You know, nobody’s got to use the internet….I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising through your […]
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Wednesday, April 19th, 2017
BROOKE JARVIS, - The New York Times Magazine
Stephan: My predictions are really being validated one after another. Here's yet another sea rise story, this one centering on my prediction that the first place to look at the impact of climate change and sea rise is the insurance industry. We are going to see a multi-trillion dollar real estate collapse as high value coastal real estate becomes worthless, or nearly worthless. The impact on the American economy is going to be massive and far-ranging.
Meanwhile the Republican Party, led by Trump and Pence is doing everything it can to assure we are both unprepared for the coming crisis, and encouraging it through deregulation of carbon industries.
Larchmont-Edgewater, a Norfolk, Va., neighborhood frequently plagued by floods. The house in the center has been raised above flood levels; the one at left has not.
Credit: Benjamin Lowy /The New York Times
In 1909, a group of Virginia developers placed an ad in The Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch announcing the creation of a subdivision that — because it was built on a pair of peninsulas where the Lafayette and Elizabeth Rivers poured into Chesapeake Bay — came to be known as Larchmont-Edgewater. The developers set up private jitney service to downtown and advertised the area as “Norfolk’s only high-class suburb.” People flocked to live by the water’s edge.
Today the neighborhood is known for the venerable crepe myrtles that line its streets, for its fine houses and schools and water views and for the frequency with which it is not just edged by, but inundated with, water. Melting ice and warming water are raising sea levels everywhere. But because the land in the […]
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