Global ecological sustainability is imminently threatened by a massive ecological bubble. Global terrestrial, atmospheric, aquatic and marine ecosystems are no longer adequately intact to maintain conditions for life. The mark of progress and an equitable, sustainable economy is not how fast the economy grows at the expense of destroying these ecosystems. It is whether the basic needs and more of all Gaia's people and creatures are being met, while maintaining forever the ecological sustainability of their shared ecosystem habitats. [continue]
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Even through the rain, people continued to arrive. They crowded into the garage carrying saws and hammers, with tool belts strapped on. They were here to fight climate change. Everyone quickly introduced themselves and shook hands. With the pouring rain outside, the puddles outside growing, the crowd seemed expectant and excited. As in old-fashioned “barn-raisings” where neighbors pooled tools and skills to perform tasks bigger than any one of them could manage, the group of volunteers would weatherize this four-apartment building, helping out the residents while helping the planet. This was an idea whose time had come.
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Faced with today’s economic crisis, many pundits are acting like fundamentalist preachers. Their rants accept certain centering truths as pure and eternal. They view the ‘free market’, for example, as a manifestation of nature, not a socially constructed model—not a crafted, even legislated, rationalization designed to yield general ‘economic’ predictability and control. Accordingly, they regard alternative interpretations and environmental accounting as unnatural market interferences. [continue]
According to the Conservation of Energy Principle, we can neither create nor destroy energy. This means we will always have as much energy as we ever had. So, how can we experience an energy crisis? Our crisis develops from another law of energy: The Entropy Law. It states that energy use always results in some overall loss of availability, quality, or order. Physics characterizes such loss as an increase of entropy. This is where informed energy discussions begin. [continue]