Headline today from AP:

Climate research cut to save fuel
Catch-22: Federal researchers scale back climate-change studies to save fuel costs.

Holy Crap, Brian! I also thought you were kidding!

The IQ level in our so-called "government" is getting lower and lower. Is this the only planet I can live on?

Ugh, Brian ... I was hoping you were joking. No such luck: here's the AP article.

Seriously, the only solution is the entire population of the Earth working together as fast as possible towards a singular goal - in a world where us humans can't even agree on which corner a new stop sign should be placed.

Face it, peeps - the size of the action needed x the speed with which said action must be taken = no f**king way it'll ever happen.

Instead, the smart money is on those who are planning to live through the coming catastrophes, not the ones wasting their time trying to stop the obviously inevitable.

The czars of empire are not about to let go of their grasp on planetary tyranny. While any rational person would understand that life on earth is threatened in a very, very real way by global warming, those "winning" today's game of empire have no intention of letting little old you change the rules of the game.

And that, of course, is exactly what's needed. Without a radical re-engineering of industrial society and the way we live our lives, most of us will likely see a collapse of civilization as we know it. The watch word is change or be changed.

The American dynamic, or lack thereof, around this issue defies any sensibility whatsoever. The Republicans are singing their free market nonsense. When gasoline prices soar over the $2 a gallon mark, believe me, the market will react. Yeah, right. It reacted. Many people can no longer afford to get to work. And Democrats? They are truly the saddest of all. They play their little compromise games with the Republicans. Rather than talk solutions, they talk about reasonable compromise. This point needs to be emphasized. Democrats constantly argue they just don't have the votes. They badly miss the point. To argue that pushing CAFE standards to 40 or 50 miles per gallon would not get passed a certain Republican filibuster is moronic. The point is that we need to re-engineer how we use our cars. We need to re-engineer how and when and where we work. You don't bring about radical change by failing to make a case for it. That's the ultimate flaw with Democrats. Sometimes radical is the right way.

As global warming's noose tightens around us, we will be handed a justification for radical change on a silver platter. Progressives, lefties, liberals have been almost powerless against the corporate industrial regimes. Global warming will change that. As our unsustainable lifestyles begin to fail, the complacency of the citizenry that has empowered and emboldened the czars of tyranny will end. Nothing like a little pain and suffering to spark a little motivation for revolution.

To those who say catastrophe from global warming is inevitable, I don't disagree. Ensure, though, that you don't endorse a passive response to it. The two are not the same. As many are unable to heat their homes or cool them, as many are unable to procure food or procure potable water, as many are unable to get to work, we must redefine who holds power and how decisions are made. We must redefine that which will be left to the market and that which will be controlled by we, the people. The libertarian ethic that the government has no right to tell anyone what they can and cannot do makes no sense in an engineered future. It is time to begin imposing authoritarian solutions to the planet-threatening problems we face. When we do, of course, it is critical that those we elect are fully committed to do what is best for us and not for the greedy corporations the government serves today.

Global warming will "take down" the great industrial societies as well as so called third world nations. The vision of how we rebuild and what we rebuild is what must be decided on today. It is not at all clear we, even among progressives, share a common vision. Too much of our energy has been spent highlighting the crimes of the czars of empire and not enough time has been spent writing the charter for the future. We would be wise to have such a plan in place and to have spent time broadcasting it before the whole thing comes down. Absent that, we will be consigned to a frontier, survivalist future. Let's not let that happen.

Hey, you're right welshterrier. We do disagree. I, for one, don't think we have a future in individual survival or oppressive government.

We need to dissolve all corporations, and reform the vital work they do in cooperative worker controlled ways. We need to localize most food growing and energy production and rezone so that people live and work in the same area, surrounded by farms and wild space. We need to have energy efficient forms of transportation for the stuffs that we fairly trade with other communities.

Fuel efficient cars are not enough. We need mass transportation so that not many people need cars. We need houses built to need less energy to cool and heat them, and to use geothermal, solar and wind for the energy that we do use.

We will never get to a better future without abolishing corporations, starting with the right to personhood, and ending with the right of existence. If people want to start a business, let them be responsible for that business and its product. The point of a corporation is to make profits at the expense of the environment, the workers and the consumers or the future, with no accountability for its shareholders. In other words, legal sociopathy. Add to that the right to buy elections and to buy congresspeople, and you have the mess we're in today.

greenerthanthou ... i want you to know that I am 100% in agreement with every policy you outlined. I almost never get to say that. I'm right there with you on abolishing corporations. I'm right there with you on re-empowering workers. I'm right there with you on locally grown food and mass transit and all the rest of it. Right there with you.

You referred to what I called for as "oppressive" government. I would ban most auto use. Would you? I would mandate more mass transit and more use of mass transit in lieu of auto use. Would you? I would mandate that employers become more flexible with workers' schedules, working from home etc. Would you? In fact, I would re-examine the relationship of where employers are located and where people live. Better urban planning and better land use is critically needed. We cannot afford to let an employer setup shop in the big city and then hire people from far away. If they want to do that, they should be forced to pay some kind of commuter tax or maybe they shouldn't be allowed to do that at all. Is this "oppressive" or is it common sense? I'm sure some are squirming reading this. "Who appointed you emperor?" Well, I would ask only how you would bring about the very needed changes you and I both agree on.

There's an old anti-libertarian saying that says your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. It seems to me when people commute long distances and waste fuel in gas guzzling cars, especially those who argue that "it's their right" and that "they can afford it", they are punching me and the rest of society in the nose. We have an obligation to do whatever is necessary to fight back against global warming. Those who choose to ignore it at our peril must be dealt with. It's not nice; it's not libertarian; it's just necessary. Is that oppressive? I would argue that those who ignore our "commonwealth" are the oppressors. Comments?

Funny that James Lovelock's "The Revenge of Gaia" isnt mentioned - probably because Lovelock thinks we have already passed the point of no return.

If you add in Peak Water, Peak Topsoil and Peak Arable Land I would say we are past the point of no return in terms of any kind of transition to a new way of life that doesnt include global catastrophe and a horrific die-back of the human population that has way overshot its habitat - earth.

I tried to explain this to the great David Korten but he blew me off and wouldnt deal with this stuff.

So i will say to you the same thing I said to Korten: we all know what needs to be done about things like corporate power and the tremendous amount of wealth being pissed away by the military-industrial complex that could be used to fund a green transition, but...exactly how are we, the people going to stop the insane, regressive power elite when we, the people have no political power because the regressive power elites are not afraid of us, because they know they have Nancy Pelosi's watching their backs?

Welshterrier, "the right to swing your fist ends at my nose" is a LIBERTARIAN saying not anti-libertarian. It implies freedom of constraints on individual actions that do not impact others. That's at the heart of a libertarian position.

Brian Brademeyer said: "Headline today from AP: Climate research cut to save fuel. Catch-22: Federal researchers scale back climate-change studies to save fuel costs."

All those trips to the Arctic to measure the shrinking ice-pack add up. Clearly, liberal scientists are once again the cause of the phenomena they are reporting on.

A very interesting discussion, with lots of good suggestions. This is certainly hitting me where I live-with gas over $4.00 a gallon, and me living in a rural area where I have to drive 10 miles to the nearest town and 20 to the nearest big town, is getting an $8.00 an hour job in the big town even worth my time? It amounts to a significant pay cut, doesn't it? I am currently unemployed and have been for seven months. I stay home for days at a time now to conserve gas. My husband is talking seriously about getting a motorcycle for his longer commute so that he can use that when the weather is good and save me our other car, which gets 30+MPG, since my pickup's mileage is nowhere near so good. We're seeing more motorcycles and scooters on the road here, and I'm not happy about my 60+ husband doing the interstate on one, but he still has his motorcycle license and is sort of enthused at the prospect. Certainly at these gas prices it would pay for itself relatively quickly!

I live in Kentucky, and the auto plant my husband works for is a source of some of the few good-paying manufacturing jobs in the state. There are folks from Eastern Kentucky who commute 2 hours each way to these jobs because they have homes and farms there and don't want to give them up. There's nothing else much up there in Eastern Kentucky, except for mining and working for the school systems, or the prisons, or Wal-Mart. So now those folks will be taking a serious hit as well and a lot of them were already carpooling and such, so there's not much more they can do.

Those folks would really have to make some hard choices, if some of what people discussed above came true. Whether to keep their land and leave their jobs, or move away from their families and keep the jobs. Of course, if we just legalized hemp, that would be another choice. Its more notorious cousin grows perfectly well up in them thar hills...

Climate, Smimite.......having a lovely climate is nice, but you can't being doing stuff that is going to hurt the economy...and THAT IS THE GOSPEL!

www.StudentsForTheEarth.org

Well, what is the trend?

From 1970 to 2000, CO2 was rising at 1.5 ppm per year. And since 2000, CO2 has been going up at 2 ppm.

Maybe we should double up on the subsidy for Hummers and large trucks (or have they rescinded that bit insanity.)

Moonshadow: I apologize for my post showing up underneath yours. You help us all remember that there are real folks who are really put in extremis by these decisions that must be made if there is to be a future for our children.....And that absolutely the pain must be shared, and sadly "shared" is just not part of the recent American Experience.

No worries, joneden. I just feel for those folks. The coal companies are pulling all the mountains down there and they get nothing for it.

moonshadow ... your posts made me think of the following song (click to listen): http://www.andrewmcknight.net/stream/company.m3u

here are the lyrics:

Company Town by Andrew McKnight

Coal trains run through our veins,
moving monuments to better days
that mountain stands over our darkened lungs,
we've time to ponder what we've become

Chorus
In this company town, it's what we know,
change comes hard, change comes slow
until the bottom falls out, that's how it goes down,
til the money's all drained, from a company town

Well-dressed Yankee bosses worked us so hard,
for their well-dressed children and well-kept yards
while coal camps echoed with mournful sounds,
of impoverished voices from deep in the ground,

Chorus

Our parents' memories of World War II
the mines worked round the clock, was the American thing to do
families gathered round their radios,
to hear FDR say, we'd make it somehow, in our town

Bright shafts of morning light,
on jobless faces and their grim plight,
while four men and a dragline blow the mountaintop off,
to take its heart out, now it knows what we've lost

Chorus

til the life's all drained out, of a company town

Solution is simple; Cull the herd!!

Living in the petro age has always seemed somewhat strange to me. I remember the early muscle car mania of the late 60's early '70s with all those over amped Camaro's and Mustang Mach I's. It now seems more of an anachronism than ever. The era of the "Great American Freedom Machine" is suffering from incipient heart failure.

I too am wondering just what is going to play out as $8/hr jobs converge with $8/gal gas. At some point below $8, the wheels of the economy will come off- so to speak.

That is too say nothing about the environmental cost of this continued obscene consumption of petroleum. I live out in the Denver area and moved here b/c of the spectacular hiking opportunities in our backyard. Getting out there pretty much demands the use of a personal vehicle. I am looking forward to an outing up there some time in the next couple of weeks.

I'm trying to "reduce my carbon footprint" while demanding change in Washington DC. The first order of business is getting rid of the current regime and that includes General McShame! Best advice I've heard in a while? ----- When you find yourself in a hole- Stop Digging!

Sorry, welshterrier, that I didn't get back to this post. Working interferes with my computer time!

I don't think that government should pass laws to regulate people. I don't think they should have that power.

I think that government should quit subsidizing roads and cars and planes. I think that government should change zoning laws, so that multi-use dense cities surrounded by green space should be built. I don't think that government should subsidize urban sprawl, by paying for the roads, electricity, sewers, water, etc., to make it cheaper for developers to build over fields and forests.

I think that there should be a tax on gas guzzlers, instead of the tax credit that Hummer buyers receive. I think that there should be higher taxes on gas, so that only car drivers pay for roads, not the entire population, many of whom don't drive.

I think that government should pay for trains and trolleys, instead of roads and airports.

People will change their behavior when it's cheaper to live close to work than far away.

I'm sorry for the Kentucky woman. I remember talking with my uncle's aged mother many years ago. She told me how she used to ride her horse in the mountains of Utah, when there were still Indians living there.

My Dad told me the reason why she was riding so far. Her father, a farmer, worked in the winter at a coal mining camp called Winter Camp. In the spring, when it was time to plant, she rode to get him, leading another horse for him to ride back.

Disruptive of family life? you bet. And yet, millions of people today are going through this. Mexicans who leave their children to make money in the US. And many others throughout the world.

Capitalism is destructive of family life.

Capitalism is destructive of all life, not just family. All life on Earth.

http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html