Category Archives: Globalism

“Garbage wars” to threaten stability in developing nations, futurists say

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Some states make so much garbage, they’re shipping it to other states.

But now Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Louisiana are limiting how much they will accept from places like New York.

And that trend is about to go global, according to the World Future Society, which predicts protests in the developing countries at risk of becoming garbage heaps for the “rich.”

Trash producers in the developed world will ship much more of their debris to repositories in developing countries. This will inspire protests in the receiving lands. Beyond 2025 or so, the developing countries will close their repositories to foreign waste, forcing producers to develop more waste-to-energy and recycling technologies. Ultimately, it may even be necessary to exhume buried trash for recycling to make more room in closed dump sites for material that cannot be reused. Waste-to-energy programs will make only a small contribution.

via 2011 Top Ten: 4. Will there be garbage wars in the future? | World Future Society.

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

Interior Secretary: US needs more trees, fewer people

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Carbon footprint. Photo: Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr CC

Carbon footprint. Photo: Samantha Jade Royds/Flickr CC

In Copenhagen, where world leaders are slapping the “pollutant” label on any carbon-based life-form with a nervous system, the US signals its cooperation:

“Carbon pollution is putting our world—and our way of life—in peril,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar in a keynote speech at the global conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark. “By restoring ecosystems and protecting certain areas from development, the U.S. can store more carbon in ways that enhance our stewardship of land and natural resources while reducing our contribution to global warming.”

via New science estimates carbon storage potential of US lands.

Truth is, the federal government is no good steward of the environment. (In fact, it is the nation’s #1 polluter.)

And the mineral exploitation of federally-managed lands, particularly split estates, threaten to spoil water supplies for cattle ranchers, farmers and homeowners who depend on well water for their very survival.

Join the "climategate" debate at MIT today

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Image: Rainmaker. Flickr/CC

One day only: MIT profs this afternoon will try to put the climate change “hoax” genie back in the bottle (click the link, below, for time and location):

Three weeks ago, thousands of emails were hacked from servers at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. A small fraction of them address controversial issues; how to present climate data in the most favorable light and how to combat climate skeptics, among others. The responses reported in the press have ranged from these emails being a confirmation of climate change deniers' assertions that global warming is a conspiracy and a hoax, to the whole affair being a tempest in a teapot with no relevance to the reality of global warming and the need to combat it.

via MIT Global Change Program | Events.

Living "off the grid": will state utilities allow it?

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One of you guys wrote in recently to ask about the whole “smart grid” thing, asking me to investigate just what state-licensed utilities will demand to know about what we’re doing on our property with their juice. (Opening the question, too, whether the state at any point considers our electricity to be our own.) I’m working on that one… stand by for an update within the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, some of my grandfather’s countrymen are conducting a large scale experiment in self-reliance, at the community level, that is.

more about “Islands of self-sufficiency < Banking…“, posted with vodpod

Greenwashing the rich: Larry Page edition

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Perhaps Page's greenwashed home will offset the damage from his new fighter jet. (Or does the jet run on biodiesel?)The boys who founded Google are forever bullshitting the credulous mainstream media with tales of their “down-to-earth” lifestyle. Of course, their squabbling over an extravagant party jetliner, and acquisition of dirty-filthy-wasteful toys, such as this fighter plane (left), haven’t helped that image.

Still, Google co-founder Larry Page hopes we’ll eat-up this greenwashing story, about his $7+ million California home (excerpt and link, below).

Page lives in a historic home, with an assessed value of $7.2 million as of July 2008, on a cul-de-sac in one of the city’s nicest areas, just a block from fellow billionaire and Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It’s an old Palo Alto neighborhood that appreciates its privacy, but Page’s plans for an eco-friendly property have shone a spotlight on it.

via Google’s Larry Page building eco-friendly compound in Palo Alto – San Jose Mercury News.

Iraqi militias target gays in new pogrom

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I fear this is only the beginning for gays, not only in Baghdad, but globally, as desperately poor slobs everywhere start looking hard for scapegoats. (It’s not going too well for Jews either, if some of what I hear over the patriot radio airwaves are any indication.

And again, as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, we see that the U.S. government’s purported post 9/11 goal of creating freedom around the world was mere propaganda.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two gay men were killed in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, a local official said on Saturday, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality.

Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago.

via Gays killed in Baghdad as clerics urge clampdown | International | Reuters.

David Mayer de Rothschild's goofy plan to sail–and save–the Pacific

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Only a Rothschild could have time for a project like this: an ocean voyage, from San Francisco to Sydney, aboard a ship made of used plastic bottles.

David Mayer de Rothschild, a scion of the powerful banking family, has dabbled in naturopathy and organic farming since he was in college.

Now de Rothschild plans to sail the “Plastiki,” which looks like something the Professor dreamed-up to escape Gilligan’s Island, across the Pacific.

Through press coverage of the stunt, he hopes to encourage people to consume less, and recycle more.

De Rothschild is most often portrayed in the media as an adventurer: someone who has forgone a life of comfort for one filled with risk and danger. His mission: to rescue the planet from its human inhabitants.

De Rothschild said he got the Plastiki idea after watching a TV show showing trash floating about in the world’s oceans. (See the Plastiki video, from the New Yorker magazine, below).

Continue reading →

Pace quickens toward a global currency

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Image: Single Global Currency Association

Image: Single Global Currency Association

The idea’s been kicking around for many years: A currency, to replace the dollar, the pound, and the rest, to unite the world.

But world leaders have repeatedly warned that a single currency will effectively (and not just symbolically) eradicate the sovereignty of all nations.

Here’s a bit from a 2004 Christian Science Monitor report:

Goodbye, dollar. So long, euro and yen. Hello, dey!

Dey? It’s a proposed combination of the three currencies, which could eventually form the basis of a global currency.

A worldwide money won’t emerge any day soon. Still, it’s a longtime dream of some economists, who point out several advantages to simplifying the jumble of nearly 190 currencies.

via Are you ready for a global currency? – MSN Money.

The Dutch government in 2003 backed another effort, by disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, to institute a global currency, called the Raam.

Globalists: Skip Amero, bring on Acmetal

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Who will be looking out at us, from our "one world" notes? And which banks will issue the currency? Image: Includes a photo (CC) from Adil Nurmakov

Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell, the man behind the euro, is backing a proposal by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to create a one world currency.

That’s quite an endorsement for Nazarbayev, who is indisputably one of the world’s most corrupt dictators (he’s been running Kazakhstan since the Soviet era).

Supporters of the currency, to be called the acmetal (or akmetal), say the proposal “holds great promise.”

But I wonder, as Alan Watt did in his March 12 radio show, “Holds great promise for whom?”

Nazarbayev, speaking at an economic forum in the glitzy new capital he has built on the Kazakh steppe, defended his proposal for the “acmetal” world currency saying it might “look kind of funny” but was not.

Nobel-prize winner backs world currency