We have a moral obligation to ensure for a clean and safe planet for future generations. It is that simple, and it is why the Hip Hop Caucus rejects the proposed plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline project.

The Hip Hop Caucus has joined with 350.org, one of the most dynamic and efficacious climate movement organizations in existence today, and the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the country, to co-convene the largest climate rally in U.S. history –Forward On Climate on Sunday, February 17, 2013. Over 80 organizations have partnered on this effort, and as a result of so many different groups and people coming together, the climate movement has never been so energized and mobilized.

The stakes are so very high. With so many people in the streets marching, with so many people on social media discussing and sharing information, and with so many diverse leaders and celebrities speaking out and standing up, President Obama truly has a serious decision in front of him. He can either reject the pipeline and stand with the people for a sustainable future for our planet, or he can approve the pipeline to please big oil companies who have spent over $150 million to promote this pipeline project.

I know there are those within President Obama’s fine Administration who are wondering why there are so many people making such a big deal about ‘this one pipeline project.’ The status-quo folks inside Washington, DC do not agree with the line in the sand that the movement has drawn. The line in the sand being that either President Obama is really about a sustainable future for this planet and the health of our people (if he rejects this pipeline project), or instead, he cannot overcome the incredible power of corporate oil interests on our political process (if he approves this pipeline project). This Keystone XL decision is a true litmus test.

The status-quo folks inside Washington, on the left and the right, would rather just give the oil lobby the decision they want on this pipeline, and have the movement look the other way.

I could not be prouder of the leadership of our fellow Forward On Climate Rally co-conveners 350.org and the Sierra Club, and all the partners listed here, for rising above the powerful culture in Washington, DC, where all are encouraged and incentivized not to demand what is right for the people, but to demand what is convenient for the politicians.

The thousands, upon thousands of people who are coming on buses from across the country this Sunday, February 17, sacrificing time, money and energy to march in the streets, are coming to demand what is right. It is surely not convenient for them to travel hours and hours so that they can march in the cold of February and then turn back around and ride home, facing a full workweek ahead. The climate movement is so energized right now because we are standing up for what is right, not what is easy, not what is politically expedient.

This is a courageous moment for our movement, which in turn demands courage from for our President. I believe President Obama is a courageous leader who will make the right decision by rejecting the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project, and when he does, the people who elected him for a second term - the young, the old, the working class, the middle class, the beautiful Black, Brown, Asian, White, and American Indian people of this country - will have his back.

Join us this Sunday, February 17! #ForwardOnClimate.

Sierra Club reports that the group included actress Daryl Hannah; Julian Bond, former president of the NAACP; 350.org's Bill McKibben; Sungevity co-founder Danny Kennedy; and the Sierra Club's executive director Michael Brune.

The Sierra Club released a statement saying:

After blocking a main thoroughfare in front of the White House, and refusing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrested and transported to Anacostia for processing by the US Park Police Department.

"The threat to our planet's climate is both grave and urgent," said civil rights activist Julian Bond. "Although President Obama has declared his own determination to act, much that is within his power to accomplish remains undone, and the decision to allow the construction of a pipeline to carry millions of barrels of the most-polluting oil on Earth from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fellow citizens and declare, 'I am willing to go to jail to stop this wrong.' The environmental crisis we face today demands nothing less."

"We really shouldn't have to be put on handcuffs to stop KXL--our nation's leading climate scientists have told us it's dangerous folly, and all the recent Nobel Peace laureates have urged us to set a different kind of example for the world, so the choice should be obvious," said 350.org founder Bill McKibben. "But given the amount of money on the other side, we've had to spend our bodies, and we'll probably have to spend them again."

"For the first time in the Sierra Club's 120-year history, we have joined the ranks of visionaries of the past and present to engage in civil disobedience, knowing that the issue at hand is so critical, it compels the strongest defensible action," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "We cannot afford to allow the production, transport, export and burning of the dirtiest oil on Earth via the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama must deny the pipeline and take decisive steps to address climate disruption, the most significant issue of our time."

If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would boost carbon pollution tomorrow by triggering a boom of growth in the tar sands industry in Canada, and greatly increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that this tar sands pipeline will boost annual U.S. carbon pollution emissions by up to 27.6 million metric tons - the impact of adding nearly 6 million cars on the road.

However, new research by Oil Change International (OCI) shows that the government's estimates of the carbon emissions associated with Keystone XL underestimates the full impact of tar sands because a barrel of tar sands produces significantly more petroleum coke than conventional crude, which is more carbon-intensive than coal. 

OCI's research shows that Keystone XL will produce enough petcoke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emissions from this petcoke have not yet been included in climate-impact analysis of the pipeline or the tar sands industry and OCI shows that it will raise total emissions by at least 13 percent. 

Climate change is causing extreme weather.  The giant reinsurance company Munich Re, which has gathered the world’s most comprehensive database of natural disasters, concludes that worldwide, “Floods have more than tripled since 1980, and windstorm natural catastrophes more than doubled, with particularly heavy losses from Atlantic hurricanes.  This rise can only be explained by global warming.”

Floods, fires, droughts, and storms related to climate change are devastating not only health and the environment, but also the US economy.  Superstorm Sandy alone caused an estimated $80 billion in damage.  The drought that affected 80% of US farmland last summer destroyed a quarter of the US corn crop, stalled transportation on the Mississippi River, raised food and energy prices nationwide, and did at least $20 billion damage to the economy.

What does all this have to do with jobs?  Consider Sandy.  According to Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics: “Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the job market in November, slicing an estimated 86,000 jobs from payrolls.”  What kind of jobs?  “The manufacturing, retailing, leisure and hospitality, and temporary help industries were hit particularly hard by the storm.”

But isn’t that kind of job loss just temporary?  Consider hurricane Katrina.  In 2004 the New Orleans region had 671,000 jobs. Katrina wiped out 129,000 of them — about twenty percent.  In 2011, the region had 90,000 fewer jobs than on the eve of Katrina.

The economic threat of climate change isn’t limited to hurricanes.  Heat waves increase energy costs and cause droughts, which kill crops and increase food prices.  Floods destroy houses, businesses, and infrastructure.  Closed businesses and lost earnings represent an economic loss that can never be recovered.  The devastating health effects of extreme weather like heat waves and floods not only harm individuals but represent a cost for the whole economy.

EPA regulation promotes jobs

Many studies have documented the beneficial effects of EPA regulations.  Research by the EPA indicates that as of 2008, environmental protection created a net positive increase of 1.7 million jobs. A study by the Office of Management and Budget found that EPA air and water regulations from 1999 to 2009 cost $26-29 billion annually but produced benefits from $82-533 billion.  EPA regulation has led to the development of the rapidly growing environmental control industry.  It has encouraged technical innovation, such as the development of catalytic converters, which has made the US one of the world’s leading exporters of environmental control technologies.

When the EPA issued new fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and pollution standards for new power plants, they won wide support among unions that represent the workers affected by them.  Ten major unions joined environmental groups to issue a statement supporting “the actions by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act” and urging Congress to “reject efforts to weaken this authority.” Their release on the statement was headed, “BlueGreen Alliance brings Together Unions and Environmentalists in Support of EPA Efforts to Protect Public Health and Safety.”  It noted that, complemented by clean energy policies, regulations will create jobs and increase America’s economic competitiveness.  Unions supporting the statement included the Steelworkers, Communications Workers, Service Workers, Laborers, Utility Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Transit Workers, Sheet Metal Workers, Auto Workers, and United Food and Commercial Workers.

The evidence supports the jobs benefits of EPA regulation of greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act.  For example, a study by Ceres and the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts titled New Jobs — Cleaner Air:  Employment Effects of Planned Changes in the EPA’s Air Pollution Rules, examines the jobs effects of some of the new regulations — ones that have been harshly attacked by EPA critics.  This well-documented study finds that far from being “job killers,” the new regulations will create nearly 300,000 new jobs, especially skilled, high-pay jobs for engineers, project managers, electricians, boilermakers, pipefitters, millwrights, and iron workers.  The regulations would lead to net job increases of more than 120,000 job years in Illinois, 123,000 in Virginia, 113,000 in Tennessee, 76,000 in North Carolina, and 76,000 in Ohio.  The study points out that regulation will have many other benefits in addition to increased employment.  It will ensure cleaner air, improve public health, promote more efficient, more competitive technologies, reduce greenhouse gasses, and increase state tax revenues.  And it will stimulate “induced jobs” that result when workers have money in their pockets to buy things made or sold by other workers.

A Just Transition

All industrial modernization — whether for protecting the environment, increasing productivity, improving the product or any other reason — threatens to eliminate some jobs in obsolete and less efficient facilities.  So while the transition to a new energy economy will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, it will also eliminate some existing jobs. The fact that many states and many workers will get new green jobs provides little solace for the people and communities who have lost theirs through no fault of their own.

It is a basic principle of fairness that the burden of policies that are necessary for society — like protecting the environment — shouldn’t be borne by a small minority who happen to be victimized by their side effects. Unless workers and communities are protected against the unintended effects of the transition to a new energy economy, there is likely to be a backlash that threatens the whole effort to protect the environment — and to save the planet.  Not only that, the beneficial job creation that comes from appropriate environmental regulation will be lost.  How can public policy forestall such undesirable side effects?

A good model here could be the highly successful process that helped local communities adjust to the disruption and job shifting that resulted from the closing of military bases under the Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC). Those communities were provided a wide range of federal assistance, including, planning and economic adjustment assistance, environmental cleanup, Community Development Block Grants and Community Service Grants.

Workers dislocated by base closings also received extensive support. The Department of Defense itself provided advance notification of a reduction in force; pre-separation counseling; a hiring preference system with federal agencies to re-employ qualified displaced DOD employees; financial incentives to encourage early retirement of those eligible. Workers affected by base closings were also eligible for help under National Emergency Grants, “Rapid Response” programs, comprehensive assessments and development of individual employment plans and job training.

Communities and individuals affected by energy transition in general and EPA regulations in particular could be similarly targeted for assistance from such existing programs as the Department of Labor’s Rapid Response Services and the National Emergency Grants of the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration, as well as funding for economic development and industrial efficiency and modernization from the Departments of Energy and Commerce.

Because the needed resources are scattered among many different government agencies, the first step might well be for President Barack Obama to establish an interagency task force composed of U.S. agency officials overseeing issues of employment, energy and the environment.  Their first task could be to create a transition package for coal miners, utility workers and other affected workers that would provide robust financial and training support and preferential access to the new jobs created by environmental policies. That could be combined with vigorous support for economic planning and investment in the affected communities, focusing on the development of new clean energy industries. Think of it as a GI Bill for displaced workers and their communities.

Climate protection: A new jobs program?

The next item on the EPA climate-protection agenda is regulation of emissions from existing power plants.  Predictably, opponents are claiming that such regulation will be “bad for jobs.”  The opposite is the case: EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will be positive both for jobs and for the broader economy.

How many and what kind of jobs EPA regulation will create of course depends on the specific rules it establishes.  Let’s consider one example.  A study by Synapse Energy Economics developed a Transition Scenario for the electric power industry based on reducing energy consumption, phasing out high-emission power plants, and building new, lower-emission energy facilities.  The study estimated the number of “job years” — one new worker employed for one year — that would be created by the Transition Scenario over a decade.

•  444,000 job-years for construction workers, equivalent to 44,400 construction workers working full time for the entire decade.

•  90,000 job-years for operations and maintenance workers, equivalent to about 9,000 full time workers employed over the decade.

•  3.1 million indirect jobs for people designing, manufacturing, and delivering materials and jobs in local economies around the country induced by spending by workers hired in the Transition Scenario.

Of course, this is only one piece of the climate-protection puzzle.  A comprehensive program to convert to a climate safe economy will produce tens of millions of jobs.

When the US went from the Great Depression to World War II, it created millions of new jobs making the products needed for the war.  Faced with the devastating threat of global warming, the best protection for the future of our jobs and our communities is to create millions of jobs making what we need to protect us against climate change.

Huge US east coast cities generate extra heat that affects habitats thousands of miles away. This adds additional warming not explained by existing climate models. In parts of Asia, this pattern was also found.

Scientists Guang J. Zhang, Ming Cai & Aixue Hu found [1]:

The worldwide energy consumption in 2006 was close to 498 exajoules. Although energy consumption is sparsely distributed over the vast Earth surface and is only about 0.3% of the total energy transport to the extratropics by atmospheric and oceanic circulations, this anthropogenic heating could disrupt the normal atmospheric circulation pattern and produce a far-reaching effect on surface air temperature.

They identified the plausible climate impacts of energy consumption using a global climate model.

They concluded that energy consumption is probably a missing forcing for the additional winter warming trends in observations.

Suzanne Goldenberg, the Guardian’s US environment correspondent [2] reported:

Those who wonder why large parts of North America seems to be skipping winter have a new answer in addition to climate change: big city life.

A study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that the heat thrown off by major metropolitan areas on America's east coast caused winter warming across large areas of North America, thousands of miles away from those cities.

Winter warming was detected as far away as the Canadian prairies. In some remote areas, temperature rose by as much as 1 degree C under the influence of big cities, which produced changes in the jet stream and other atmospheric systems, the study found.

Researchers found a similar pattern in Asia, where major population centers resulted in strong warming in Russia, northern Asia, and eastern China.

On the flip side, however, changes in atmospheric conditions had an opposite effect in Europe – lowering autumn temperatures by as much as 1 degree C.

The extra heat generated by big cities was just a fraction of the warming caused by climate change or urbanisation, the researchers said. But the study did help scientists account for additional warming that was not explained by existing climate models.

"What really surprised us was that this energy use was a tiny amount, and yet it can create such a wide impact far away from the heat source," said Guang Zhang, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who led the study.
"We didn't expect it to be this much."

Global temperature averages were barely affected by the big city heat, barely .01C on average. But big cities had a noticeable impact on regional temperatures almost on a continental scale.

Researchers said the extra heat should be taken into account in future climate projections.

Scientists have for years been trying to untangle how big cities – with the sprawl of buildings and cars – affect climate.

The study suggests cities themselves have far-reaching effects on climate, in addition to the climate pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

In another report [3] Steve Connor said:

The waste heat generated by large cities can affect temperatures in areas hundreds of miles away by changing wind patterns in the upper atmosphere, a study has found.

Scientists have estimated that the heat released into the atmosphere from buildings, cars and factories could play a significant role in the warming – and the cooling – of locations in other countries.

Using computer models of how heat is transported around the globe, the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change says that waste heat from 86 urban centers in the northern hemisphere could in theory raise temperatures of parts of North America and northern Asia by as much as 1C.

The same models suggest that other parts of the northern hemisphere, notably Europe, could actually become cooler at certain times of the year by up to 1C as a result of the heat affecting the direction of high-altitude winds such as the jet stream.

Source:

[1] Nature Climate Change, (2013), doi: 10.1038/nclimate1803, Jan 27, 2013,
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1803.html

[2] guardian.co.uk, Jan 27, 2013, “Heat from North American cities causing warmer winters, study finds”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/27/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change

[3] The Independent, Jan 27, 2013, “Wasted heat from large cities affects temperatures in distant regions”, http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/wasted-heat-from-large-cities-affects-temperatures-in-distant-regions-8468955.html

First paper by Climate activist Pablo Solon kick starting "Climate Space", a discussion forum, in time for the World Social Forum in Tunisia, March 2013 initiating a discussion on climate change, looking for possible solutions

In the last 20 years, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world have, instead of declining, increased, by more than a third. In 1990, GHG emissions were 37 Gigatons (Gt) of CO2e[1]. In 2010, they surpassed 50 GtCO2e[2]. At this rate, if business-as-usual continues, global emissions can reach 58 GtCO2e by 2020, which would be a catastrophe for humanity and nature.

How much will they decrease with the agreements of Cancun, Durban and Doha?

Following the current scenario, the agreements will only succeed to decrease GHG emissions to 57 GtCO2e by 2020. This means that with the UNFCCC outcomes, projected emissions will only be 1 GtCO2e lower than the business-as-usual level. In other words, globalemissions will, instead of decreasing, increase by 7Gt CO2e annually until 2020.[3]

Where do we need to be in 2020 to be on the path of staying below 2ºC?

If we want to stay below 2ºC, we would need to be at 44 GtCO2e per year in 2020[4]. This means that the gap between a below 2ºC scenario and where emissions will be in 2020 is 13 GtCO2e.

Why are humanity and nature in such a very bad situation?

During the past few years, climate justice activists from all over the world have developed several initiatives to try to avoid exactly this disaster. Now is the time to rethink and assess what went wrong in order to find ways to overcome this situation. This is the purpose of the Climate Space at the World Social Forum in Tunisia this March 2013 and the purpose of this paper is just to kick off the debate on this issue.

The idea is to begin the discussion in order to hear the opinions of many that will not be able to come to Tunisia in March. The purpose is to invite you to comment on this paper in http://climatespace2013.wordpress.com or http://www.facebook.com/ClimateSpace2013 or email to climatespace.tunis@gmail.com

We have classified some proposed explanations in three big groups: a) campaign, b) governments and negotiations and c) systemic.

Campaign

>> Our messages were abstract. There was not a clear link between the percentage of emission reductions and the daily lives of people (for example: the link between climate change, food crisis and financial speculation).

>> It was mainly a campaign of climate activists around the climate negotiations in the UNFCCC. We were not able to link the climate struggle with the social movements struggles in relation to hunger, employment, the debt crisis, democracy, water, privatization, etc.

>> The campaign was focused mainly on the responsibility of developed countries and not on the polluting projects of corporations and governments all over the world.

>> Too much attention was given to the negotiations in the United Nations. Most of the actions happened around COP negotiations. Not enough support was given to promote and coordinate at global and regional levels, the national and local actions against polluting activities (coal, fossil fuels, fracking, mega dams, mining, nuclear, etc.)

>> Our campaign against false solutions and market mechanisms was not strong enough. In some cases indigenous peoples and other movements were divided on issues such as REDD, Clean Development Mechanisms, carbon markets, and the green economy.

>> Not enough energy was given to the different countries to analyze, unmask and propose different alternatives to National Plans on Climate Change and National Energy Plans.

>> Too few initiatives to reclaim the rights of people to decide on climate related issues were developed (consultations, citizen initiatives, etc).

>> In the majority of countries there are still no strong national platforms on climate change that bring together all initiatives on climate change.

>> Some sectarian attitudes undermine common actions.

Governments/negotiations

>> The United States, historically, the biggest emitter, is mainly responsible for the failure of the negotiations. If they are allowed a 3% emission reduction until 2020 based on 1990 levels, others will do the same.

>> Unites States and China behind closed doors worked together to have a weak outcome in order to keep business as usual.

>> The division between developed and developing countries masks the common interest of the elites and corporations in developed and developing countries.

>> The negotiations were reduced to only a number: the percentage of greenhouse gas emission reductions. Other factors were left aside like how the fossil fuel reserves have to be left under the ground.

>> The negotiations were too complicated to be followed by the people and there were too many technicalities, loopholes and market mechanisms that made it even worse and more difficult to understand.

>> The negotiations were focused on reductions of emissions produced in a country and not in emissions consumed in a country.[5]

>> The emissions of warfare and maritime and air transport until now are not included.

>> Issues like compliance or the creation of an International Court of Environmental and Climate Justice are far from even being considered.

>> The framework of the climate negotiations is the problem and has to change. (How should it change and is this possible in the UNFCCC?)

System

>> The economic crisis reduced attention to the climate crisis.

>> There was a country approach and not a class approach.

>> The issue of endless growth was not challenged because we were attached to the paradigm of development for developing countries. (What is development? What are the limits? Development for whom and how? In other words the link between development, prosperity and redistribution.)

>> Corporations have captured the climate negotiations.

>> It was naïve to think that an issue like climate change that will severely impact on the capitalist system would be genuinely addressed in an intergovernmental negotiation in the United Nations.

>> Climate Change implies a transformation of the capitalist system and a new redefinition of prosperity or wellbeing. The current negotiations can’t deliver a solution at this level.

>> Systemic alternatives like food sovereignty, rights of nature, defense of the commons, happiness index and others are still not fully socialized.

>> The mistake was to think of it as a campaign and not as a long-standing global battle to change the system.

We have to look into the past to fight for the future

Many of these bullet points are meant simply to push the debate forward. For sure several aspects are missing and the interconnection between them have to be developed. An evaluation of what has happened is key to rethink our strategies and build a common action plan.

(Next living paper: how to overcome this situation?)

[1] CO2e: “Carbon dioxide equivalents” is a unit of measurement that allows the effect of different greenhouse gases and other factors to be compared using carbon dioxide as a standard unit for reference.

[2] “Current global greenhouse gas emissions, based on 2010 data from bottom-up emission inventory studies, are estimated at 50.1 GtCO2e…” UNEP, 2012 Emissions Gap Report. http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgap2012/
portals/50143/Emissions2012_Exec%20Summary_EN.pdf

[3] “If countries implement their lower-ambition pledges and are subject to “lenient” accounting rules, then the median estimate of annual GHG emissions in 2020 is 57 GtCO2e…” UNEP, 2012 Emissions Gap Report

[4] “Emission scenarios analyzed in this report and consistent with a “likely” chance of meeting the 2°C target have a peak before 2020, and have emission levels in 2020 of about 44 GtCO2e…” UNEP, 2012 Emissions Gap Report

[5] One-third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with the goods and services consumed in developed countries are actually being emitted outside the borders of those nations, mostly in the developing world.

Pablo Solón Romero served as Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the United Nations from February 2009 to July 2011. As Ambassador to the UN, Solón spearheaded successful resolutions on the Human Right to Water, International Mother Earth Day, Harmony with Nature, and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He was very active in climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC, and helped organize the World People's Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2010. Before becoming Ambassador to the United Nations, Pablo Solón Romero worked as an activist for many years with different social organizations, indigenous movements, workers’ unions, student associations, human rights and cultural organizations in Bolivia. He blogs at http://pablosolon.wordpress.com

Misery for the many, benefits for the few

Upon a foundation of deep spirituality and philosophical treasures, proclaiming unity, justice and service, New India, horns honking in violation of the good; is racing, no time to spare towards the Alter of Materiality and Market Fundamentalism.

Under the careful guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) The Indian government has for the last twenty years or so, (during which time the BBC 7/12/11i found “inequality has doubled”), embraced market liberalization and the global market; garlanded corporations with all manner of subsidies and damned the poor to greater poverty, destitution, suffering and, suicide in the case of farmers: Who by inaccurate government figures, that exclude women, Adivasi and Dalit people among others, are, in deep despair, committing suicide at a rate of two an hour.

In a country of 1.2 billion and counting, all the numbers are mega. Seen through corporate tinted spectacles India is a marketplace unlike any other, and providing business doors stay open 24/7, the international community – meaning America and her bedmates, will allow India to occupy Kashmir, murder, rape and displace the needy, and marginalize the marginal: Growth and profit the mantra of the times chanted hourly to the market God, headless, heartless, all consuming.

Have-nots and billionaires

There are, according to Arundhati Roy, around 450 million Indians living in dire poverty, a total equivalent to all the poor in all the countries of Africa combined. ‘Dire’ poverty, meaning just existing, 12 Rupees or 30 (US) cents a day or less does not allow for anything other than bare survival. Is it possible to be healthy on such a sum: To eat nutritiously - to eat at all, to drink clean water, sleep in clean clothes, on a clean bed, brush your teeth with toothpaste, wear shoes whilst working, rummaging through waste mountains, or digging drought-ridden land, is it possible to be happy and retain ones dignity as one begs for the 12 rupees. All ‘normal’, recognizable requirements of living are regarded as luxuries, the Divine seen as a fresh loaf of bread and men women and children, shrouded in anxiety and despair, condemned to a life of drudgery and exploitation.

In amongst the agony and ugliness of such widespread poverty however, there is good news and billions of it: The fabulous Forbes listii of money-men (what a brilliant world that such a list even exists), places India fourth in the world league table of the greatest number of billionaires – 61 at the last count. With a combined wealth of $250 billion: Billionaires incidentally who are rich billionaires, unlike the German or Japanese ones, who are poor by comparison. In addition to billionaires there are around 200,000 dollar millionaires; between them these billion million mega men, they are of course all men (worldwide women make up only 2% of billionaires), run the massive Indian corporations that in turn run India.

Middlemen and women

At the same time as half a billion men women and children crawl through life on their 30 cents a day, a river of rupees flows ceaselessly into the judiciary, the body politic and corporate lakes, swelling stockholders assets. ‘Gush up’ as Arandhati Roy calls it in ‘Capitalism a ghost story’iii, concentrating she says: “wealth onto the tip of a shinning pin on which our billionaires pirouette”. That’s why in a nation of 1.2 billion, “India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the GDP” (ibid). Power and rupees moving unceasingly into the pockets of the wealthy and mega rich, who are boosted by what Global Research (GR) 3/9/12iv state is an “economic system that ensures the flow of wealth goes upwards via what academic David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession“. The overflow from ‘Gush Up’ feeding a new and marvelous middle class, of credit card carriers and foreign holiday makers, estimated to be 160 million individuals, which “represents only 13.1 per cent of India's population”, according to India’s Economic Times (ET)v 6/2/2011.

The population of a medium to large size country then; management, IT nerds, professional and semi professionals who have adapted very well thank you, to hallowed capitalist values. They shun the needy, shop and surf, happy to revel on their Harley’s, drink overpriced coffee and i-live on their i-phones and tablets. Is it fear one wonders or greed that consumes the aspiring revellers, content to watch as their countrymen burn on the Party Pyre.

To the utter delight of western corporations there is “a huge market being created for the white goods and automobile makers, [and] huge demand for the products.” Director Rajesh Shukla of the Centre for Macro Consumer Research (CMCR) excitedly proclaims, as reported by ET. Mention of such ‘demand’ sends tremors of excitement and anticipation through business small and large looking east from west; statements sufficient to silence western corporate politicians, happy to bury their heads in India’s eight to nine per cent GDP figures, and snuggle down; whilst the people of Orissa and Kashmir, Jharkhand and West Bengal, starve and are displaced, raped, and persecuted.

In an economic world that see’s all through the simplistic prism of markets and profits, Nation States are recognised as vast department stores, markets to be exploited until exhausted and returns maximised, the natural environment stripped of all that is of value, And what of the people; the rural poor who make up 70% of the population and those who crowd into the glowing, overcrowded filthy cities: Survive, swim if your fit, sink, drown and fade away if not, and quietly please, we’re shopping….
Growing inequality deepening poverty

Hailed as the economic miracle nation of out deficit times, blessing the very few however, India is ranked by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)vi 129th of 146 countries on the adjusted Human development Index, that accommodates gender imbalance. The number of poor people in the country has barely fallen over a 30-year period, India Today (22/10/11)vii state “The Human Development Report released by the Planning Commission shockingly revealed that the poor in rural India were better fed about 30 years ago.” By the government’s own figures 50% of the rural population (836 million) live in poverty, surviving somehow on less than 20 rupees (50 cents) a day, 20 cents more than those in ‘dire poverty’, but still not what one would call comfortable. As I said the numbers are mega, even those supplied by the Government – which of course err on the side of flattery and must be taken with a generous helping of salt, however they still put child malnutrition at 46%, the highest in the world. GR state that tragically, criminally we could say, “Every second child is underweight and stunted”. A quarter of the population is, according to GR, “hungry. India was [listed] 73rd out of 88 countries in the annual Global Hunger Index” – six spots lower than the previous year. “The 2010 Multidimensional Poverty Index indicated that…. Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have 421 million poor people.” The miracle is that the people catching the crumbs from the 61 Club as they fall to earth survive at all.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) India has the BBCviii report, “the highest number of poor in the world,” with the top 10% earning 12 times that of the bottom 10%, “compared to six times twenty years ago, i.e. inequality under the economic miracle, a nightmare for the 99.9%, is growing and apace. A demographic democratic fact that is of course fundamentally unjust. There are sub divisions within the divisions as inequality stalks the land, the urban wealthy e.g. spending 221% more the BBC report than their rural rich cousins, the chasm between city comfortable and rural desperate is approaching cosmic proportions.

Such are the contradictions (and we have barely scratched the divisive surface), in a country where a mere 1 – 3% according to Palagummi Sainathix have enjoyed ‘unprecedented success due to economic reforms’. The big growth story he maintains, is inequality: ‘It has grown faster than any time in the last 50 years’, promising to cause what Sainath describes as the ‘ death of democracy’. For inequality is fundamentally (socially) unjust and democracy professes, at least in principle if not in practice that justice is a founding father, held close to it’s battered heart. Diluted of meaning hijacked and perverted, social democracy once idealized now married off to become corporate democracy, has failed the 99.9%, in India as in the rest of the world, her roots torn out of the social ground in which she was sewn. “Democracy… who’s she when she’s at home”? asks Arundhati Roy ironically in Listening to Grasshoppersx. Attempts to build local democratic movements, to resist, to protest, to articulate grievances, formulate alternatives are crushed unmercifully by what Sainath terms “the most undemocratic global frameworks”, that bulldoze over demands for the observation of human rights, the manifestation of social justice and expressions of moral decency.

Still its not all bad news: the richest billionaires in the world are Indian and the world’s most expensive ‘house’ – Antilla, a twenty-seven story residential abomination, is in Mumbai, built for India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, whose personal wealth is said to be $20 billion. He holds a controlling share in Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), that has interests in businesses from oil to stem cell storage, supermarkets to schools and of course the media; utilized to create uninformed citizens conditioned into making irrational choices.

Everything everyone everywhere

Throughout India there is a systematic movement towards; the commercialization of the countryside, the raping of the land for its bounty and the commodification of each and every part of human existence, what Arundhati Roy calls “the era of privatization of Everything”, the hunt for profit the clarion call to action. And all impelled by government stimuli, the state happy to channel corporate propaganda, increase quarterly growth figures and expand the business model, the corporate democratic ideal into every corner of every mind in every village in India.

The inevitable albeit unfortunate consequences to market fundamentalism, say Mr.Tata, Mr. Vedanta and of course Mr.Ambani, being the displacement, death and destitution of obstacles: namely and mainly the Adivasi and Dalit people – conveniently demonized as Maoist terrorists, by a government waging war not on terror, that it is content to cause, but its own citizens, marginalized and disadvantaged, who constitute the poorest people in the world.

For nothing must stand in the way of the sacred cow of progress and gigantic growth, certainly not the uneducated troublesome poor; and to wish to obstruct such a noble quest with talk of human rights, social justice or environmental concerns is to talk humbug in the face of a capitalist crusade that has ‘right’ on its side, justifying expressions of might to enforce it.

An unchallengeable model, beyond alternatives and utopian ideas of sharing and justice, that is bathed in a misty glow of polished yet polluted uniformity, where the individual is absorbed into the consumer collective and told: Where to shop and what to buy, how to love and in which colour, what to think and when to think it, and, if in doubt tune into your local multinational media outlet for an update on corporate global acceptability.

Graham Peebles is Director of The Create Trust, www.thecreatetrust.org A UK registered charity (1115157). Running education and social development programmes, supporting fundamental Social change and the human rights of individuals in acute need. Contact , E: graham@thecreatetrust.org

Human industrial growth is systematically liquidating the natural ecosystems that are the habitat for humans and for all life. Earth is dying, one logged old-growth tree and tank of gasoline at a time, yet most environmental groups are shilling solutions that are inadequate and ill-conceived - such as logging old-growth forests to protect them. Nothing shows this better than Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network - in an age of mass extinction, abrupt climate change, and ecosystem collapse - wanting us to wipe our asses with toilet paper from "certified" old-growth forest pulp.

A profound lack of understanding exists, even amid the supposedly radical environmental movement, of the seriousness of merging ecological crises. If Gaia - the Earth System or biosphere - is alive, as science has come to understand, then clearly she can die as key ecosystems are destroyed and biogeochemical processes fail. To survive, much less thrive, humanity must stop scraping Earth's land of life, spewing waste into our air and water, and claiming it can all be certified as sustainably done, while calling it "development."

Industrial growth's destruction of ecosystems is undermining the habitability of the planet, threatening the maintenance of conditions necessary for life, by destroying the ecosystems required for a living planet. As key ecosystems are lost, indications are humanity will soon be going extinct, quite possibly taking the biosphere and all life with us.

Life begets life. It is a miracle of nature that life, together in ecosystems, creates conditions necessary for life. Yet multidimensional ecological crises - climate, forests, water, food, overpopulation and inequitable consumption, and others - are undermining life. A time of great dying looms as humans are destroying their habitat, all life, and the Earth System.

Together either we end fracking, tar sands, coal, old-growth logging, overpopulation, and inequitable overconsumption all at once or our one shared biosphere collapses. Not only do we need to protest, but we need the right solutions. These must be derived from the best ecological minds in broad consultation, not by hipster, non-ecologists who have tapped into celebrity and foundation money.

Protection of old-growth forests is a vital climate solution being given short thrift by the self-appointed, often underqualified environmental movement elite. Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace USA's obstinate support for Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) massive old-growth logging - across an area twice the size of Texas - for throwaway consumer products is a major obstacle to going forward on climate. I have written at length, including at http://bit.ly/rainforest_heist, how virtually every major NGO greenwashes old-growth forest logging in what I have termed the "Great Rainforest Heist."

In 2009 Lindsey Allen (now Rainforest Action Network's new acting director, then with Greenpeace Canada) claimed victory and ended a campaign against Kleenex because they agreed to have their old-growth boreal forest clearcuts for toilet paper certified by FSC as being sustainable. Ms. Allen has gone on to greenwash old-growth Gucci shopping bags and Disney books with RAN. Before her, Michael Brune, now chief accountant for Sierra Club, did similarly.

Greenpeace and RAN want us to wipe our asses with old-growth forests. Old-growth forest logging and its terrible impacts upon species, climate, and the biosphere will never end as long they - as members of FSC - falsely certify it as sustainable.

I recently presented a scientific paper in Kerala, India, now being prepared for publication, which seeks to quantify how many terrestrial ecosystems - including old-growth forests - can be lost without biosphere collapse. This is an attempt to set an easily understood threshold for old-growth forest loss, like the 350ppm limit on carbon to avoid abrupt climate change.

Based upon an amazing landscape metric called "percolation," I hypothesize that a loss of more than 40 percent of terrestrial ecosystems long-term - including old-growth forests - collapses the biosphere. This is the point where critical deterioration in ecosystem connectivity occurs across scale, from landscapes to bioregions and continents, and on to the biosphere. Instead of humanity existing within a context of nature, ecosystems become fragmented, disconnected, and surrounded by humanity.

We are now at 50 percent natural ecosystem loss globally. I conclude that Earth needs to maintain some two-thirds of its land area as natural and seminatural ecosystems to meet local needs and to maintain local and global ecological sustainability. Along with a number of other planetary boundaries, including climate change and biodiversity loss, Earth is already in ecological overshoot and will collapse unless we pull back from the brink.

It is clear that global ecological sustainability and universal well-being depend critically upon protecting old-growth forests and ending fossil fuel emissions. Large, intact, and connected standing old-growth forests are required for local prosperity and ecosystem service continuity - and for an enduring, naturally evolving, global biosphere.

It is still possible to avoid abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse - but only if we both dramatically cut fossil fuel emissions AND protect and restore natural ecosystems immediately. Based upon ecological science, an end to their industrial destruction is vital to limiting climate change.

It is time for the climate movement, led by 350.org, to call for protection of all old-growth forests. And for Greenpeace, RAN and other NGOs supporting their logging to re-examine their position and resign from FSC.

Ending poverty doesn't justify endless ecocidal growth for all, at the ever-advancing cost of liquidating old-growth ecosystems and fouling our atmosphere, an impossible path on a finite planet. Rather the focus for ecologically and socially sustainable development should be meeting basic needs with some of life's luxuries for all, with a reasonable bit more for those who work hard and are gifted.

Earth's people want universal democracy, freedom, economic justice, and sustained ecology for everyone, for the whole world, and they want it now. And governments and corrupt NGOs had better get out of the way.

Your biosphere, old-growth forests, human family, and kindred species need you. Go to them now.

Dr. Glen Barry is an internationally recognized political ecologist, environmental advocate, writer, and technology expert. He is well-known within the environmental community as a leading global ecological visionary, public intellectual, and environmental policy critic. Dr. Barry's work as the President and Founder of Ecological Internet - the Earth's largest biocentric ecological advocacy web portals - was recently recognized as one of "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" by the Utne Reader. More: http://forests.org/staff/glen.asp

Please support Ecological Internet's campaigns to protect and restore old
forests at http://www.rainforestportal.org/shared/donate/

On Sunday, February 17, I marched in the largest climate change protest in U.S. history. About 35,000 people gathered on the Washington Monument grounds for a rally and then marched past the White House, calling on President Obama to deny permission for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s tar sands through the heart of the U.S. to the Gulf Coast.

Two of the victims of tar sands development in Alberta, Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation and Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree First Nation, spoke of the contamination of their lands and people. Even without the pipeline, the gigantic oil extraction operation is already causing plenty of harm.

If carried to completion during the next several decades, over the objections of the indigenous people who have been stewards of this land, tar sands mining will have transformed an area the size of Florida or Wisconsin. A land teeming with fish and wildlife will have been turned into a grotesque zone of toxicity where the lakes will act as predators as they entice unsuspecting waterfowl to land in their polluted waters.

What kind of economy would find such an activity acceptable? At the very least, the economy must be making some perverse calculations to justify such devastation.

As if the direct devastation of the land and water were not enough, the utilization of tar sands oil by the U.S. and other countries means “game over” for the global climate, according to NASA scientist James Hansen. In other words, the energy-intensive extraction followed by the burning of tar sands oil will put so much carbon pollution into the atmosphere that we will enter an era of radical climate destabilization.

The exploitation is proceeding on Cree lands against their consent and in violation of the Canadian Constitution. It represents a blatant refusal to abide by Article 32 of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that says: “States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples… in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.”

President Obama appears poised to give permission to build the pipeline and contribute to this industrial nightmare. So what can we do in the aftermath of the big protest?

The time has come to reject the premises of today’s economy, because it is not a true-cost economy, and it undermines good governance. It is an economy set up for cheaters and gamblers. It is also an economy that exploits those lacking political clout and that disrespects international law, except when it comes to trade agreements that enable polluters to enter special secret courts (see the Chevron trade case against Ecuador for one recent example).

A true-cost, sustainable economy would not countenance commercial activities like tar sands mining that are tantamount to an all-out war against the natural environment and a form of industrial genocide. The genocide is underway not because of racial hatred, but because tribal people have stood in the way of a major money-making venture. Furthermore, the indigenous people lacked political power to stop the transnational corporations from ruining their lands.

A true-cost economy would exemplify resilience. It would be less susceptible to disruptions from speculation, violent weather events, and terrorism. Such an economy would not pursue activities that generate or are likely to generate irreversible pollution. No one has to worry about a “solar spill” or a “wind spill” ruining their drinking water.

Today’s economy, on the other hand, is permitting all sorts of damaging activities that violate the criterion of reversibility and bequeath a legacy of poison. Consider the contrast between renewable energy projects and coal mining.

If a wind farm or solar rooftop array is causing problems, it can easily be removed without leaving centuries of pollution behind. The roof or the land can be returned to other uses. In fact, wind farms are fully compatible with agricultural production around the wind turbines. One wind farm I visited near Dodge City, Kansas, consisted of 150 turbines in a 20-square-mile area, and the land requirements were just seven acres.

In contrast, coal mining in West Virginia through mountain-top removal is converting biologically diverse, forested mountains into a Martian landscape. In the words of former Congressman Ken Heckler, reclamation amounts to “putting lipstick on a corpse.” Such mining projects violate the principle of reversibility, just like tar sands oil extraction. What will be available to people in the future who want to live in and explore places like West Virginia’s formerly bountiful mountains and valleys?

Whenever concerns are raised over the destructive impacts of big extractive projects, the predicament of joblessness always comes up. But joblessness cannot be solved with the current economic strategy that allows temporary construction jobs to destroy permanent jobs and livelihoods. Big extraction projects cannot create the volume of jobs that can be had by pursuing renewable energy. In fact, the oil industry generates the fewest jobs of almost any industry in the federal government’s database.

It is time to start demanding a true-cost economy that will create diverse jobs without creating no-go zones of carcinogenic and mutagenic wastes.

Brent Blackwelder recently retired as the president of Friends of the Earth where he was renowned for speaking truth to power. He testified in front of the U.S. Congress on pressing environmental issues more than 100 times. He also was a founder of American Rivers, a top river-saving organization. On the economics front, he initiated campaigns to reform the World Bank and succeeded in getting Congress to enact a series of significant reforms directing the Bank to pay more attention to the environment

People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other - Wendell Berry

As I travel throughout the United States, as I engage in life coaching with clients, and as I read emails and blog comments sent to me by readers, the bedrock issue that continues to emerge is the longing for community. I often hear remarkable success stories of how a community of individuals has come together to accomplish a milestone project or support each other in disaster. And while my heart is warmed by these stories, my heart is more often broken by the litany of complaints I hear about failed attempts to create community.

I need not remind the reader of our history as inhabitants of Western civilization, founded as it was on the mythology of rugged individualism, Horatio Alger, and the American Dream. Nor is it necessary to list examples of indigenous communities where people have harmoniously lived together for thousands of years.

What may be necessary, however, is to clarify the definition of community in order to modify our expectations and strive more realistically to achieve it.

It may be useful to first notice what community is not.

>> Community should not be narrowly defined as a group of people living together sharing space and resources. “Community” is not synonymous with “eco-village” although it can be.

>> Community is not a context in which everyone must agree. A healthy community consists of diverse people and divergent opinions.

One’s community may be defined as a circle of close friends who over time have consistently given and received support. Likewise, a community may be a group of neighbors who care deeply about each others’ well being and who may or may not engage in community projects together. One may or may not have personal contact with the rest of the community on a regular basis but may be confident that if one is in need, the community will be there to provide support. The structure of some communities consists of an annual or semi-annual gathering in which members have face-to-face contact at those times with much more email or phone contact between gatherings.

For those readers seeking to inhabit or establish an eco-village, Diana Leafe Christian has written extensively about creating healthy living communities in her two remarkable books, Finding Community and Creating A Life Together. Her work offers magnificent tools for creating intentional communities and dealing effectively with conflict.

What I’m exploring here is not so much the exact structure of a community, but rather, the deeper sense of community that humans crave and create as a foundation for the literal manifestations of community they may ultimately devise. In other words, what does community mean to the soul, the psyche, the deeper self within us? If we do not attend to this aspect of community, for all of the ostensible successes the community may have achieved, its members may feel vaguely unsatisfied or in some cases, may divest their energy from the community and move on.

It is possible to be in agreement intellectually and philosophically on any number of issues but still not be connected. In fact, this may be one reason why many experiments in community fail. People are connected in a horizontal manner with one another, but they are not connected to the depths of something more profound and expansive than the individual ego. The issue that any community must address, consciously or unconsciously, is whether or not they desire to be connected on a soul level. In many communities such as a group of neighbors who are working together to eliminate litter and beautify their streets, the desire for soul-level connection may not be a priority. Their intention is highly focused and possibly time-limited.

In other contexts a community may consciously seek a connection with the depths. Invariably, this opens the way for intimacy through opening the heart not only to each other but to something greater than any individual or the group itself. However, a longing for connection with the depths is both enchanting and edgy because when people are interacting with one another, not to mention swimming in the depths together, they will invariably be triggered by their interactions and by whatever a connection with the deeper self evokes for them. This is another way of saying that when our hearts open, so does another part of us, the shadow.

The shadow is a word first used by psychologist Carl Jung to describe an unconscious part of the psyche that we disown or insist is “not me.” It consists of aspects of ourselves of which we are unaware—some of which may range from unequivocally repugnant to virtually angelic. A majority of communities fail because they do not grasp the necessity of doing shadow work or lack the skills for doing it. The shadow eventually emerges, or perhaps erupts, in all meaningful human relationships, and shadow work must be done both internally and externally whenever people are interacting or living in community.

When someone says or does something with which we feel some discomfort, we must check in with ourselves and first of all notice the feelings we experience—disappointment, anger, hurt, fear, or any other emotion. Before blaming the other person or becoming offended, it is useful to ask oneself what one’s own part in the interaction might be. For example: How might I have participated in creating this interaction? This requires an honest effort to look within and ponder the situation, and the answer may not come through the intellect. However, if we are willing to stay with the feelings and the question of “what is my part?” we may discover a significant piece of the shadow that is asking for our attention.

Usually, our first reaction when we experience a mis-communication or an uncomfortable exchange is to attempt to “fix” it by dialoging with the person(s) involved. While communicating directly with the other about the exchange may be necessary at some point, we rarely engage ourselves in the process first. That is to say, it is generally more useful to explore what is happening inside of ourselves first before dialoging further with the other person. We can do this by simply staying with the question: What is my part in this? To facilitate our exploration, we can journal about the interaction, we can utilize some form of art such as drawing or painting, or we can go more deeply within through meditation or some type of inner listening.

Whenever conflict arises, something is trying to be created within us and within the other person, or both. As our indigenous ancestors have always known, as painful as it may be, conflict should be welcomed as a wise teacher in our lives and our communities. Soul often generates conflict in order to create something more expansive and to empower us to become larger persons. Relationships without conflict are usually boring and lifeless whereas conflict in relationships breathes vitality and wisdom into the individuals involved, and if allowed, revered, and listened to, can transform a single life as well as an entire community.

The Earth Community

In our discourse on community we often omit the earth community as the principal ally, mentor, and role model for establishing and maintaining a community of human beings. David Korten, author of The Great Turning and Agenda For A New Economy contrasts the models of empire and earth community in his Yes Magazine article, “From Empire To Earth Community”:

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

In this reference to the earth community, Korten’s focus is on the model that the earth community provides humans who move away from hierarchical models toward partnership. Yet perhaps there is even more to glean from the earth community than the partnership model applied to human community.

Mathematical cosmologist, Brian Swimme prolifically writes and teaches the necessity of being in relationship with the earth community. What does this mean? According to Swimme:

What’s necessary is for us to understand that, really, at the root of things is community. At the deepest level, that’s the center of things. We come out of community. So how then can we organize our economics so that it’s based on community, not accumulation? And how can we organize our religion to teach us about community? And when I say “community,” I mean the whole earth community. That’s the ultimate sacred domain—the earth community.

How do you organize your technology so that as you use the technology, the actual use of it enhances the community? That’s a tough one. So long as we have this worldview in which the earth itself is just stuff, empty material, and the individual is most important, then we’re set up to just use it in any way we like. So the idea is to move from thinking of the earth as a storehouse to seeing the earth as our matrix, our fundamental community. That’s one of the great things about Darwin. Darwin shows us that everything is kin. Talk about spiritual insight! Everything is kin at the level of genetic relatedness. Another simple way of saying this is: Let’s build a civilization that is based upon the reality of our relationships. If we think of the human as being the top of this huge pyramid, then everything beneath us is of no value, and we can use it however we want. In the past, it wasn’t noticed so much because our influence was smaller. But now, we’ve become a planetary power. And suddenly the defects of that attitude are made present to us through the consequences of our actions.

A student of Thomas Berry, Swimme came to understand that the story of every human being parallels in some fashion, the story of the universe. For example Swimme notes:

Walt Whitman had an intuition about this when he said, ‘A leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.’ And you think, how did he come up with that? Well, that’s called self-knowledge. In other words, a star gave birth to the elements that then assembled themselves in the form of Walt Whitman. So you could say that Walt Whitman had a deep memory of where he came from.

Likewise, when Einstein discovered the general theory of relativity, he discovered it from within. There was no data on the expansion of the universe or anything else. He said he just went into his own visceral movements—a strange way of thinking about creativity—and he paid attention to what was going on within, and he gave birth to the gravitational equations we use now. This is what I think Whitman did. He penetrated the depth of his own bodily reality and had this intuition about stars. And we’ve now discovered the empirical details about this. I just love that—everybody comes out of the stars.

What then is the soul of community?

It is a desire to be connected with something greater than the egos of other people and the projects in which we might engage with them. Fundamentally, a successful human community is the unfolding of a spiritual dynamic. It cannot be contrived or made to happen. Rather, it erupts from our desire for the depths, and that desire is certain to constellate the shadow in ourselves and the other. If we follow our longing for community, we must be prepared to do our own shadow work and support others as they do theirs. Ultimately, we touch the soul of community when we savor our own personal story as the story of the universe and the earth community. The journey of authentic community is also a journey of healing which is guaranteed to take us deep into the inner world of our own demons and angels as well as those in the psyches of our community companions. For as Wendell Berry notes, “To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.”

While all of this may sound tedious and laborious, and in fact it often is, the potential rewards are too momentous to ignore—being genuinely seen and lovingly held by the human and more than human community. Argue as we may that that would be too good to be true, fundamentally, this is the soul of community, and something in us refuses to stop longing for it.

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D., was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. (She is not, and never has been, a licensed psychologist.) Her latest book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, is unique in its offering of emotional and spiritual tools for preparing for living in a post-industrial world. Carolyn’s forthcoming book is Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Handbook For Inner Transition. Her other books include: Coming Out From Christian Fundamentalism: Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred (2007) , U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You (2006) and The Journey of Forgiveness, (2000) All may be purchased at this site. She is available for speaking engagements and author events and can be contacted at carolyn@carolynbaker.net. Her blog is http://carolynbaker.net

The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new US federal figures show.

Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world's economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the GHG measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

More coal-burning power plants are the main reason emissions keep going up – even as they have declined in the US and other places, in part through conservation and cleaner energy.

At the same time, plants and the world's oceans which normally absorb some carbon dioxide, last year took in less than they do on average, says John Reilly, co-director of Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Plant and ocean absorption of carbon varies naturally year to year.

But, Tans tells The Associated Press the major factor is ever-rising fossil fuel burning: "It's just a testament to human influence being dominant."

Only 1998 had a bigger annual increase in carbon dioxide, the primary GHG from human activity. That year, 2.93 parts per million of CO2 was added. From 2000 to 2010, the world averaged a yearly rise of just under 2 parts per million. Levels rose by less than 1 part per million in the 1960s.

In 2009, the world's nations agreed on a voluntary goal of limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over pre-industrial temperature levels. Since the mid-1800s temperatures haven risen about 1.5 degrees. Current pollution trends translate to another 2.5 to 4.5 degrees of warming within the next several decades, Reilly says.

"The prospects of keeping climate change below 2-degree goal are fading away," Tans says.

Scientists track carbon pollution both by monitoring what comes out of factories and what winds up in the atmosphere. Both are rising at rates faster than worst-case scenarios that climate scientists used in their most recent international projections, according to Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

That means harmful effects of climate change will happen sooner, Mann says.

More Sandy storms

Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice -- attributed to greenhouse warming -- appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area [2].

The article, "Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?" was authored by Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and director of Cornell's Ocean Resources and Ecosystems program; Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences; and Bruce C. Monger, Cornell senior research associate, earth and atmospheric sciences.

The researchers assert that the record-breaking sea ice loss from summer 2012, combined with the unusual atmospheric phenomena observed in late October, appear to be linked to global warming.

A strong atmospheric, high-pressure blocking pattern over Greenland and the northwest Atlantic prevented Hurricane Sandy from steering northeast and out to sea like most October hurricanes and tropical storms from the Caribbean. In fact, Sandy traveled up the Atlantic coast and turned left "toward the most populated area along the eastern seaboard" and converged with an extratropical cyclone; this, in turn, fed the weakening Hurricane Sandy and transformed it into a monster tempest.

Superstorm Sandy's extremely low atmospheric pressure and the strong high-pressure block to the north created violent east winds that pushed storm surge against the eastern seaboard. "To literally top it off, the storm surge combined with full-moon high tides and huge ocean waves to produce record high water levels that exceeded the worst-case predictions for parts of New York City," write the researchers.

Greene, Francis and Monger add: "If one accepts this evidence and . . . takes into account the record loss of Arctic sea ice this past September, then perhaps the likelihood of greenhouse warming playing a significant role in Sandy's evolution as an extratropical superstorm is at least as plausible as the idea that this storm was simply a freak of nature."

Source:

[1] 03/05/13, “2012 Rise In CO2 Levels Second-Highest In 54 Years”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/2012-rise-in-co2-levels_n_2812708.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change

[2] Story Source:

The story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University. The original article was written by Blaine Friedlander.
Cornell University (2013, March 5). More storms like Sandy? Arctic ice loss amplified Superstorm Sandy violence. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 6, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2013/03/130305145133.htm

The following is an excerpt from the first chapter of Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources, published by Berrett-Koehler in the United States and Routledge in the United Kingdom. All rights reserved.

A game of checkers offers very little insight into how to solve the world’s intertwined environmental and social problems, or so I thought. In one particular game, my opponent opened with a series of reckless moves, placing checker after checker in harm’s way. When I jumped the first one and swiped it off the board, I briefly wondered if I was being lured into a trap. But it was just a fleeting thought. After all, my opponent was only five years old.

I was playing against my daughter. She had just gotten home from her kindergarten class, and I was giving her a few strategy pointers from my limited bag of tricks. Her moves showed some modest improvement, but after a while, we both lost interest in the game. Besides, there are other fun things you can do with checkers, like seeing how high a tower you can build.

At first, we were fast and free with our stacking — we even plopped down two or three checkers at a time. But as the tower grew, we changed our approach. With the light touch and steady hands of a surgical team, we took turns adding checkers one by one to the top of the stack. By this point, our formerly straight tower had taken on a disconcerting lean. On our final attempt to increase its height, the mighty checker tower reached the inevitable tipping point and came crashing down to earth. Like a reporter interpreting the scene, my daughter remarked, “Sometimes when things get too big, they fall.”

I sat back amid the pile of checkers scattered on the floor and smiled. With a simple observation and eight words, she had managed to sum up the root cause of humanity’s most pressing environmental and social problems. Even a partial list of these problems sounds grim:

>> Greenhouse gas emissions are destabilizing the global climate.

>> Billions of people are living in poverty, engaged in a daily struggle to meet their basic needs.

>> The health of forests, grasslands, marshes, oceans, and other wild places is declining, to the point that the planet is experiencing a species extinction crisis.

>> National governments are drowning in debt, while the global financial system teeters on the verge of ruin.

People desperately want to solve these problems, but most of us are overlooking the underlying cause: our economy has grown too large. Our economic tower is threatening to collapse under its own weight, and beyond that, it’s threatening the integrity of the checkerboard and the well-being of the players. The economy is simply too big for the broader social and ecological systems that contain it.

That’s a strong indictment against economic growth, but this indictment is backed up by scientific studies of environmental and social systems. The evidence shows that the pursuit of a bigger economy is undermining the life-support systems of the planet and failing to make us better off — a grave situation, to be sure. But what makes the situation even more serious is the lack of a viable response. The plan being transmitted from classrooms, boardrooms, and pressrooms is to keep adding more checkers to the stack.

The model of more is failing both environmentally and socially, and practically everyone is still cheering it on… it almost makes you want to climb to the top of the highest building and shout, “ENOUGH!”

Crying out in such a way expresses intense frustration at the seemingly intractable environmental and social problems we face, but it also carries the basic solution to these problems. By stopping at enough when it comes to production and consumption in the economy, instead of constantly chasing more, we can restore environmental health and achieve widespread well-being. That’s an incredibly hopeful message, but it opens up all sorts of questions. What would this economy look like? What new institutions would we need? How would we secure jobs? This book attempts to answer these and related questions by providing a blueprint for an economy of enough, with detailed policies and strategies for making the transition away from more.

You probably have some of the same concerns as we do about the environment and the economy. We’re not pessimists, but with all the disturbing facts that confront us, it’s hard to avoid feeling worried about the future we face. Yet there is still hope in the midst of such worries. Once we put aside our obsession with growth, we can focus on the task of building a better economy. Tim Jackson (the author of a brilliant book entitled Prosperity without Growth) has provided this much-needed rallying call:

Here is a point in time where our institutions are wrong. Our economics is not fit for purpose. The outcomes of this economic system are perverse. But this is not an anthem of despair. It’s not a place where we should give up hope. It’s not an impossibility theorem. The impossibility lives in believing we have a set of principles that works for us. Once we let go of that assumption anything is possible.

Enough Is Enough tries to provide a new set of principles that can work for us. We don’t want to mislead you into thinking we have a precise set of directions for fixing everything that’s wrong with the world — after all, the economy and the ecological systems that contain it are highly complex. We do, however, have an economic plan that can help move humanity toward a better future where sustainable and equitable human well-being is the goal, not economic growth. Successful implementation of this plan rests on three requirements:

1. Widespread recognition that our planet is finite. Humanity (along with all the other species here) draws life and comfort from a limited pool of resources. Recognition of this fact requires us to change the way we regard our relationship with nature, especially within our economic institutions.

2. Practical policies for achieving a steady-state economy. A set of well-conceived steady-state policies can replace and outperform the obsolete growth-oriented policies in use today. But people need a strong sense of these new policies before they’ll be willing to embrace them.

3. The will to act. The economic changes that are required won’t materialize on their own. We must dismantle the prevailing institutions and policies that have produced a destructive and unfair economy. At the same time, we must initiate and nurture the required changes.

This book is organized around these three requirements. If you’re already on board with the first one, you may recognize some familiar ideas in the next two chapters. Even so, it’s worth spending some time considering the problem of “too much” before jumping to the solution of “enough.” But the purpose of this book (in fact, the feature that sets it apart from others) is to describe how to establish a prosperous yet nongrowing economy. This is not a book that focuses on problems while relegating solutions to the last few pages.

That said, Part I, Questions of Enough, is more about why than how. It’s where we summarize some of the scientific evidence that condemns the pursuit of continuous economic growth. Part I also considers what constitutes desirable levels of population and consumption, and then makes the turn toward how by describing the defining features of a steady-state economy.

Part II, Strategies of Enough, provides solutions — an escape route from the perpetual growth trap described in Part I. It’s the part of the book that explains how, in a steady-state economy, we can:

Limit the use of materials and energy to sustainable levels.
Stabilize population through compassionate and noncoercive means.
Achieve a fair distribution of income and wealth.
Reform monetary and financial systems for stability.
Change the way we measure progress.
Secure meaningful jobs and full employment.
Reconfigure the way businesses create value.

Taken together, the policies described in Part II form an agenda for transforming the economic goal from more to enough. But these policies will sit on the shelf unless we can gain extensive support for, and concerted action toward, achieving an economy of enough.

Part III, Advancing the Economy of Enough, provides the call for action. This part of the book contains ideas for moving past the culture of consumerism, starting a public dialogue about the downsides of growth and the upsides of a steady-state economy, and expanding cooperation among nations. All this discussion leads up to the presentation of an economic blueprint that summarizes the components and steps needed to build a steady-state economy.

This blueprint offers hope at a time when we need it most. It provides a viable way of responding to the profound environmental and social problems of our era. The ever-present drone of what we can’t do has become both tiresome and unproductive. The time has come to figure out what we can do. We can build a better economy. We can meet our needs and care for the planet at the same time. We can live balanced lives, including time for the occasional game of checkers. This is our checkerboard, after all, and we don’t have to play by the old rules anymore. Let’s get to it. Enough is enough.

The first $5,000 in royalties from sales of the book go directly to CASSE. Please click here to order a copy.

Rob Dietz is the executive director of Center for Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). Rob is a devoted advocate for revamping the economy to fit within biophysical limits. He lives with his wife and daughter in a cohousing community striving for development rather than growth.

It is clear that the 21st century will be a period of crisis for civilization. With the world's human population growing at the rate of 200,000 people each day, or 80,000,000 people each year, our environment is under great stress.

Global warming is proceeding at a much faster rate than was predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change. For example, polar ice is disappearing at a rate which is far faster than was predicted by IPCC models. There is a threat that increasing temperatures will release vast quantities of the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and from enormous deposits of methane clatherates on the ocean floors. Other feedback loops may be introduced as drying of the Amazon basin and Australia's interior makes these and other regions vulnerable to forest fires ignited by lightning flashes.

Before many decades have passed, climate change will produce aridity in many regions that today are the breadbaskets of the world. The drought experienced in the US Southwest last summer is likely to be followed by other droughts of increasing severity. Meanwhile, aquifers in many parts of the world are being overdrawn, and water tables are falling. Furthermore, melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Andes threatens to deprive China, India and parts of South America of river water during the summer months. In addition, rising sea levels produced by melting polar ice will drown many fertile rice-producing regions of Southeast Asia.

Besides being hit by water shortages, global agriculture will suffer a heavy blow as petroleum and natural gas become prohibitively expensive. Modern high-yield agriculture is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. In fact, Giampietro and Pimental have shown that the US food system presently uses 10 fossil fuel calories for each food calorie produced. Thus, there is a danger that just as the global population reaches an the unprecedented level of 9 billion people, the agricultural base for supporting it will collapse.

We can expect the present economic crisis to deepen. Further industrial growth will soon become impossible, both because of the exhaustion of the world's natural resources, and because the carrying capacity of the environment has been exceeded. Meanwhile, our financial system is organized in such a way that it depends on growth for its health. This can be seen especially in our fractional reserve banking system, which works reasonably well when the economy is growing, but fails dramatically when the economy stops growing or contracts.

Finally, a dark cloud hangs over the future of life on earth because of the threat of nuclear war, which would be the ultimate ecological catastrophe.

No one living today asked to be born at a time of crisis. But here we are together, living against our will at a time when the world is hanging by a thread, looking at a future that is frighteningly uncertain. What are we to do? Public action is needed, but the establishment-controlled mass media seem to do everything within their power to prevent us from acting (not to mention advertising agencies, which urge us to forget about the larger world and to concentrate on our own appetites). Anesthetized by sports events, soap operas, programs on cooking and heavily censored news, we slump in our TV chairs, passive, isolated, disempowered and stupefied. The future of the world hangs in the balance, the fates of children and grandchildren hang in the balance, but the television viewer feels no impulse to change the world or to save it.

Also, as economic problems deepen, people tend to concentrate on their own concerns. They excuse their neglect of the larger world's fate by saying, “I use all my energy just staying alive”. But what if the individual fate is lost in the general fate? What will happen to our own small private utopias if society as a whole collapses?

Although the mass media have failed entirely in their responsibility to educate us and to mobilize us to action, we have a duty to do all that we can to prevent the multiple but interlinked catastrophes that are threatening our beautiful world. We owe it to future generations to give an all-out effort to saving the planet. Even failure must not discourage us. The stakes are so high that we must keep trying to do whatever we can, in spite of one failure or a dozen, in spite of repeated failures that make us feel as though we are swimming in sand.

Of course we have our ordinary work, that we need to do to stay alive. But staying alive in the long run, and giving our children and grandchildren a world in which they will have a reasonable chance of staying alive, means that we have two jobs: our ordinary work, and the job of actively confronting the multiple challenges that we face in the 21st century. No single person can achieve the needed reforms, but together we can do it. In the last analysis, who has power if not the people?

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm

Today, the Obama administration was quick to blame Hamad Karzai- the puppet president of Afghanistan for his remarks of “ America colluding with the Talaban.” Talabans are not intruders but native people and political organization of Afghanistan. America and its allies are aggressors and are called occupation forces. The crucial challenge Obama faces is how to exit from Afghanistan and to cope with change and adaptability to a New Beginning that he envisaged but betrayed by conscientious compromise to ensure his own political survival. Paul Craig Roberts called him “The World’s Least Powerful Man – the Obama Puppet.” Obama did not pave the way to hell for the unwanted wars but found it already in place by George Bush to keep on solo walking to entrapment - the Madness of Unthinking. Obama needs people of new ideas to deal with the future. Surely, Obama administration without help from Pakistan and Iran cannot effectively disembark from Afghanistan. What a tragedy that American strategic planners are so ignorant of the facts on the ground. They always THINK BIG and get hurt and lost. American politicians failed to learn anything from the present and past. For all its wrong thinking, American politicians continue to use the false pretext of 9/11 to encroach other nations.

“The World According to Dick Cheney” documentary soon to be aired at ShowTime, Cheney admits to have lied to the American people about the 9/11 events and its threats to the US security. He narrates that "I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out." Mr. Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in the air on 9/11 while he and Lynn left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location.” G. Washington (“Cheney admits that he lied about 9/11” OpenEdnews: 3/11/2013), explains how Cheney acted on his own and made conflicting statements: “When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Mr. Cheney kept up a pretense that in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order if needed. But the commission found "no documentary evidence for this call….In other words, Cheney pretended that Bush had authorized a shoot-down order, but Cheney now admits that he never did. In fact, Cheney acted as if he was the president on 9/11.” Cheney convinced Bush that Iraq was linked to the 9/11. Undeniably, Cheney pushed the Justice Department to claim that torture was legal and established its effective administration to victimize innocent people at Guantanmo Bay.

Politics is a game of new and creative ideas not a fixed entity or an end to itself. Those who perceive “points of no return” and scramble “red lines” indulge in self-geared acts of absurdity and can hardly relate to the contemporary informed global intellect and changing priorities of the mankind, open and flexible to change and futuristic developments. George Bush and his neo-conservatives warmongers invested heavily to make America morally, politically and financially bankrupt by waging the bogus wars on terrorism. There was a strategy in No Strategy after the 9/11 events to demonstrate to the fearful American masses that some forceful measures and foreign war engagements will be on the active Bush’s agenda to protect the US security interests. The ultimate aims of the wars on terrorism were to create more terrorism and to destabilize those nations having reservoirs of untapped oil and gas resources and to crop up new markets for the American corporations to sell more arms and weapons to the oil-pumping single-minded Arab rulers.

To spotlight the cruelty of the on-going wars of terrorism for fun and enjoyment, Gordon Duff (“The Baggage of America Extremism: No Enemy, No Negotiation, Only the Dead are Real”, ICH, December 16, 2009), outlines the dilemma: “We had become addicted to the "black and white" version of Bushitism to the extent that we, as a nation, have given up thought entirely. We know we can't win. Do we expect an army of angels to come down from heaven, the ones Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld dreamed of, or are we going to start acting like a world leader again.”

Obama’s politics does not generate any creative enthusiasm to observers expecting rational thinking. In times of crises and adversity, he appears confused to face the facts of life and global affairs. It is not the Audacity of Hope but consequential dictate of history when nations and leaders violate the Laws of God, and challenge the limits of reason; they end-up in self defeat and destruction. If diplomacy was the foremost choice to search for feasible political accommodation, President Obama did not use it; instead he continued the Bush dictum of insanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms,” in reality, there is no al-Qaeda organization operation anywhere. Even General MCrystal admitted that there are hardly less than 100 al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. In his Oslo Nobel Peace Prize speech, President Obama claimed: “to say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is recognition of history.” History offers a learning role that Obama could not comprehend it.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the American thought process on the War on Terrorism and the emerging conflict with Iran. David Perez (“Imagine”, Information Clearing House, 02/2009), attempts to set out the humanistic concerns:

“Imagine being in a room of maimed, deformed and tortured Iraqis, Afghans and Palestinians, accompanied by widows and orphans mourning because their entire family has been exterminated. I imagine this roomful of walking dead sitting around while my friends and I discuss how “realistic” we in the U.S. must be with our electoral politics, how our expectations need to “practical,” how peace is just so damn “complicated.” …. imagine these victims looking at us with blank, scarred faces as we congratulate ourselves for selecting a new President who talks about “our God-given right to lead,” about our duty to spread U.S.-style democracy throughout the globe, and how we are now just so “proud to be American.”

America failed to learn from the despotic Europeans who fought and killed millions during the Two World Wars before settling in at the EU tables to define their religious unity and common economic and political interests. Those who conspired animosity and conducted the warmongering against the mankind of which they were a part, are long buried in graveyards and not available for accountability. Surely, they knew how to escape the dictate of history and now the futuristic European generations are pretending to be civilized after having been in the dark ages for centuries. Recently, one 111 years old British soldier - the last remaining WW1 British veteran made it clear before dying (BBC, 10/2009), “we don’t know why we fought and killed other fellow human beings. Wars do not seem to solve any problem.” One wonders, why human beings fight with their fellow human beings. Edward Glover (War, Sadism and Pacifism) noted: “human beings fight because they are afraid, afraid that worse will happen to them if they do not… to pugnacity and hatred, we must add fear.”

Could we – the rational human beings, take notice of the continued insanity and help to stop its overwhelming convergence to safeguard the future generations from the scourge of wars? This was the role and responsibility of the creations of the UNO, the Security Council and other institutionalized systems to make the humanity safe and secure. Perhaps the human nature is at least part wicked and in part foolish, not realizing the consequences of actions of the few war lords of the world, C.E.M Joad wonders, “the pacifist’s question becomes, how can human beings be prevented from suffering from the results of their wickedness and folly?” C.E.M Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness), makes the obvious facts abundantly clear that war diminishes happiness and lowers morality….and that men simply do not see that war is foolish and useless and wicked. Now as President Obama claimed that it is necessary and wise and honorable. The bigger question may be asked: how can we induce other leaders to perceive their error of perception and judgment and to make them realize the truth that wars are wrong, and those waging the wars are not peacemakers but wicked enemies of the humanity and certainly not suitable to be prized for wars but to be held accountable for the death and destruction of millions of the fellow human beings.

David Perez (“Imagine”, Information Clearing House, 02/2009), attempts to recall the forgotten consequences – the untold sufferings and agony of the civilian victim population of the War on Terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how do they reason the unreason in a language of silence:

“Imagine these charred visitors with missing limbs bowing their heads and wondering if they should somehow envy us for always finding a way to celebrate and party and bask in our entertainment-soaked culture – even when it comes to our “handsome” President being sworn in at the same time their homes were being incinerated, courtesy of our state-of-the-art weaponry. Perhaps these “unfortunate” sufferers will understand that we can’t prosecute our own war criminals, because, you see, we simply “have to move on.” And maybe they’ll understand that not one U.S. leader has ever – ever – called our bombings and invasions a terrorist act………May be they’ll understand us when we shake our heads and say, “Well, this is just how politics work here. Sure it’s corrupt but, hell, what can we do?”

"I face the world as it is," President Obama explained at the Oslo Nobel Peace Award ceremony (December 10, 2009), but refusing to renounce the war for his nation or under his leadership, saying that he is obliged to protect and defend the United States. But Obama misled the informed and conscientious global intellect as no nation is threatening the American people or their security. “No matter how justified, war promises human tragedy”, he said. Norman Soloman “Mr President War is not Peace”, Commondreams: 12/10/2009), questions the intent and eloquence of Obama’s speech and strikes a warning note:

“War is not peace. It never has been. It never will be…….in the name of pragmatism, Obama spoke of “the world as it is” and threw a cloak of justification over the grisly escalation in Afghanistan by insisting that “war is sometimes necessary” -- but generalities do nothing to mitigate the horrors of war being endured by others.”

America’s political elite so often remembers Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to fill the moral and intellectual blanks but neglects his advice: “The chain reaction of evil... wars producing more wars... must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” In a war propelled economy of the few, and given the US history of wars for more than 220 battlefield engagements in its two centuries of evolutionary history and the perpetuated insanity of the warlords to make more wars, Mike Prysner (“Amazing speech by an Iraq war veteran”: 12/25/2009), an Iraqi War veteran has these daring observations to share with the informed and concerned humanity:

“Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don't understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us.”

To reconstruct a different and more sustainable future for the besieged humanity, it is incumbent upon the intellectuals, academics, visionaries, poets, philosophers and the thinking people of the Universe to perceive and articulate new and creative ideas, new political imagination for the 21st century organizations to be functional for the people, by the people and accountable to the supremacy of the people’s will.

The 21st century’s new age and opportunities for peace and global unity of the mankind warrant New Thinking, New Leaders and New Visions for change and the future-making. But change and creativity and new visions will not emerge out of the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of the few insane leaders. A reflection on the on-going wars and resulting destructions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, To challenge the deafening silence of the global warlords for sustainable global peace and security, the mankind must find ways and means to look beyond the obvious and dreadful horizons dominated by the few warlords and continued to be plagued with massacres, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, destruction of the habitats and natural environment as if there were no rational being and people of Reason populating the God-given splendid and evolving Universe. The informed and politically conscientious global community looks toward those thinkers, educated politicians and honest proactive leaders enriched with coherent unity of moral, spiritual and intellectual visions and abilities to be instrumental to rescue it from the planned encroachment of the few Western warlords actively supporting politics of War Economy against the mankind.

(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Publishing Germany-May,2012)

More than half of Britons believe Tony Blair was wrong to invade Iraq, while 22% tell he should be tried as a war criminal. A poll conducted to mark the 10th anniversary of the war finds[1].

Richard Norton-Taylor reported:

A majority (56%) of the public believe the war has increased the risk of a terrorist attack on Britain. More than half, (53%), of those questioned think the invasion was wrong, while just over a quarter (27%) think it was right, according to the YouGov survey.

The poll registered a marked gender difference, with almost a third (32%) of men approving the invasion compared with less than a quarter (23%) of women.

Half of those questioned said they believed Blair deliberately set out to mislead the British public about the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Less than a third (31%) say he genuinely believed Saddam Hussein possessed a stockpile of WMD.

More than a fifth (22%) believes Blair knowingly misled parliament and the public and should be tried as a war criminal over the conflict, according to the poll. The figure compares with almost three in 10 (29%) who say he was right to warn of dangers of the Hussein regime, 18% who think he misled people but we should move on and 15% who believe he did not intend to give false information about the threat.

The poll records that a decade after the invasion 41% thinks Iraqis are better off than they would have been under Hussein, and just over a fifth (21%) believe the Iraqis would have been better off under the dictator. However, more than seven in 10n (71%) say Iraq is likely to be a permanently unstable country over the next few years.

In 2010, as the Chilcot inquiry was under way, hearing highly critical evidence about how Britain went to war, 37% thought Blair should be tried for war crimes, according to a ComRes poll at the time.

At the time of the invasion, 53% of those polled said they believed military action against Iraq was right.

The cost of Iraq War could be higher

A report [2] said:

The US war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion (£1.1tn) with an extra $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6tn (£4tn) over the next four decades with interest, a new study has found.

The war killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have led to the deaths of four times that number, said the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion on March 19.

Cost of the war

An AFP report carried by Khaleej Times said [3]:

At least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died in Iraq between the outbreak of war in 2003 and the US withdrawal in 2011, researchers estimated on March 15, 2013.

Its involvement in Iraq has so far cost the US $810 billion (625 billion euros) and could eventually reach $3 trillion, they added.

The estimates come from two US professors of public health, reporting in the British peer-reviewed journal The Lancet.

They base the figures on published studies in journals and on reports by government agencies, international organizations and news media.

The paper is authored by Barry Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and Victor Sidel of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

It appears in a package of investigations into the health consequences of the Iraq War, published by The Lancet to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

‘We conclude that at least 116,903 Iraqi non-combatants and more than 4,800 coalition military personnel died over the eight-year course’ of the war from 2003 to 2011, they said. ‘Many Iraqi civilians were injured or became ill because of damage to the health-supporting infrastructure of the country, and about five million were displaced.

‘More than 31,000 US military personnel were injured and a substantial percentage of those deployed suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and other neuropsychological disorders and their concomitant psychosocial problems.’

Citing figures from the website costofwar.com, which looks at funding allocated by Congress, the study said that as of January 15 this year, the Iraq War had cost the United States about $810 billion, ‘not including interest on debt.’ ‘The ultimate cost of the war to the USA could be $3 trillion,’ it said.

‘Clearly, this money could have been spent instead on domestic and global programs to improve health. The diversion of human resources was also substantial, in Iraq, the USA, and other coalition countries.’

In 2006, estimates by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, also published in The Lancet, said 655,000 people had died in the first 40 months of the war. That figure was widely contested.

In 2008, a study by the Iraqi government and World Health Organisation (WHO), published in The New England Journal of Medicine, said between 104,000 and 223,000 Iraqis had died violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006.

Those figures were based on home visits to around 1,000 neighborhoods across the country.

Source:

[1] guardian.co.uk, March 14, 2013, “53% of Britons think Iraq invasion was wrong, poll shows”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/14/britons-iraq-invasion-wrong-poll

[2] scotsman.com, March 15, 2013, “Iraq war could cost US $6tn”,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/international/iraq-war-could-cost-us-6tn-1-2838892

[3] March 15, 2013, “Iraq war killed 120,000, cost $800 billion”,
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=
data/middleeast/2013/March/middleeast_March181.xml&section=middleeast&col

By examining the frequency of extreme storm surges in the past, previous research has shown that there was an increasing tendency for storm hurricane surges when the climate was warmer. But how much worse will it get as temperatures rise in the future? How many extreme storm surges like that from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the US coast in 2005, will there be as a result of global warming? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute shows that there will be a tenfold increase in frequency if the climate becomes two degrees Celcius warmer.

The results are published in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, PNAS.

Tropical cyclones arise over warm ocean surfaces with strong evaporation and warming of the air. These typically form in the Atlantic Ocean and move towards the US East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. If you want to try to calculate the frequency of tropical cyclones in a future with a warmer global climate, researchers have developed various models. One is based on the regional sea temperatures, while another is based on differences between the regional sea temperatures and the average temperatures in the tropical oceans. There is considerable disagreement among researchers about which is best.

"Instead of choosing between the two methods, I have chosen to use temperatures from all around the world and combine them into a single model," explains climate scientist Aslak Grinsted, Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
He takes into account the individual statistical models and weights them according to how good they are at explaining past storm surges. In this way, he sees that the model reflects the known physical relationships, for example, how the El Niño phenomenon affects the formation of cyclones. The research was performed in collaboration with colleagues from China and England.

The statistical models are used to predict the number of hurricane surges 100 years into the future. How much worse will it be per degree of global warming? How many 'Katrinas' will there be per decade?

Since 1923, there has been a 'Katrina' magnitude storm surge every 20 years.

"We find that 0.4 degrees Celcius warming of the climate corresponds to a doubling of the frequency of extreme storm surges like the one following Hurricane Katrina. With the global warming we have had during the 20th century, we have already crossed the threshold where more than half of all 'Katrinas' are due to global warming," explains Aslak Grinsted.

"If the temperature rises an additional degree, the frequency will increase by 3-4 times and if the global climate becomes two degrees warmer, there will be about 10 times as many extreme storm surges. This means that there will be a 'Katrina' magnitude storm surge every other year," says Aslak Grinsted and he points out that in addition to there being more extreme storm surges, the sea will also rise due to global warming. As a result, the storm surges will become worse and potentially more destructive.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Journal Reference:
Aslak Grinsted, John C. Moore, and Svetlana Jevrejeva. Projected Atlantic hurricane surge threat from rising temperatures. PNAS, March 18, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1209980110