I would like to add something, to support to your argument. Here’s a 5-minute video I’ve put together with others that promotes this active movement of individuals trying to bring about positive world change. If this video inspires you toward bringing about positive change, then please forward it to your friends. The state of the world is intensifying, and all we want is for people to spread the message that we need to wake up. Good luck in your efforts! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g94iWT2SIwI

Karl Denninger has a very good summation of our economic plight, and solutions involving the fair tax, energy transition and health-care reform:

To Obama’s Transition Team
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/676-To-Obamas-Transition-Team.html

Very good points here. He discusses the economic system, the fair tax, energy, healthcare, poverty, and he understands that we cannot have real economic growth without our own energy coming from this country, and without a tax system that encourages productive use of that energy (conservation in energy use for recreation and excess comforts, directing energy use to productive activities, ie saving and investment in making the things we really need). It is interesting to think of how a consumption tax would accomplish this. The part on health care is very interesting.

On the other hand, spending some of today’s dollars on infrastructure to avoid some of the future’s crisis spending due to peak oil and/or global warming makes good sense. I am super insulating my house and planning for a vegetable garden and chicken coop…spending today’s dollars to avoid a economic future of higher costs and unavailable food and energy.

Thought you might like to know that I’m just back from a meeting of the energy rationing (AKA ‘personal carbon trading’) research community here in the UK. The Government are showing interest without fully biting yet, but we’re working hard to wake them up. Needless to say on the Monbiot-Astyk scale they’re currently way out past Monbiot..

Our All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas have just agreed to do a joint report with us on David Fleming’s Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs), but I think it might only be in the wake of something widely perceived as a ‘crunch event’ that we actually see implementation. As you have written before, cultural stories can shift mighty fast at such times. Given what’s become ‘regular news’ though, I dread to think what would qualify.

Shaun

Thanks for note, Sharon. Understand you don’t want to use email. This way is fine. — DANNY

here is the Reuters news story about the lawsuit. Bear in mind it is not a real lawsuit, it is a wake up call lawsuit. See here

http://northwardho.blogspot.com

getting lots of hate mail already for this. oi. (from rightwing nutters of course and denialists)

I’ve been seeing the faulty reasoning in the lag time calculations for some time. It’s important to consider the things that solutions MUST accomplish and unfortunately the proposals mostly don’t take that approach. It’s not sufficient to do something just because we must try. What we must try is something feasible and lots of things are clearly not.

One thing that MUST occur is to alter the goals of the economic system that result in the escalating pressures on diminishing resources. It’s the endless churning of money and the fact that wealth is a physical commodity. If we do that it will still be dangerous and difficult to reduce life styles to 1950′s or 60’s levels, even if there seemed to be realistic ways to solve it financially. Still, both of those things are clearly within the realm of the physically possible though.

It would not be within the remotest possibility to continue multiplying wealth without multiplying carbon and other impacts on non-renewable resources. The economic assumptions that the OECD provided are completely kookie… to have wealth generation soon become immaterial as if running on perpetual motion machines and have no impacts. It’s in ALL their curves for the future and ALL the IPCC models too. The real curves tell an entirely different story. The economies have been quite creatively adopting efficiencies to maximize profits all along, in fact, and steadily falling ever further behind. Wealth is still and will remain a physical commodity, and their dodge of inventing a fictional “decoupling” of the economies from having any future physical effect was just a ‘device’ to avoid asking the real questions.

We need to ask the real questions about money. There are marvelously fascinating answers, but we have to ask the questions.
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If you’re curious my site has lots of things on my physics technique for observing how natural systems do it better… and my site blog has a lot of my better issue letters for a sampling of other things.