Energy

Editor’s note: Colonialism has not ended. It is in full force. It is what civilization does. For this to end, governments must give the Land Back. All BLM, Forests and Park land should be returned to the sovereign Nations it was stolen from. Turtle Island is Treaty Land, ceded or unceded. Treaties are the Supreme Law of the Land and must be honored. Australia just returned more than 395,000 acres of land to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people. It included the Daintree National Park which is believed to be the oldest living rainforest in the world. Protections for the Bears Ear National Monument are being reinstated and management of the 1.3 million acres will be placed back into indigenous management. Rightful Lands, Rightful Hands! ...

Editor’s note: The industrial civilization always prioritizes access to “resources” over rights of indigenous people. DGR believes that those in power break laws when it suits their interest. We stand in solidarity with indigenous struggles to protect their landbase. This article originally appeared in Survival International. Hundreds of tribal villagers from India’s Hasdeo Forest begin a rally and march tomorrow in protest at the government’s plans for a massive expansion of coal mining on their lands. ...

Opponents in Pennsylvania and New Jersey cheer “cancellation of this unneeded, dangerous fracked gas pipeline.” This article originally appeared in Common Dreams By Jessica Corbett Environmental and public health advocates on Monday celebrated the demise of a proposed fracked gas pipeline across Pennsylvania and New Jersey after PennEast decided to cease development because of difficulties acquiring certain state permits. “Today, water, the environment, and people spoke louder than fossil fuels.” —Jim Waltman, The Watershed Institute ...

Facing The Truth by Elisabeth Robson “In order to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves.” — Derrick Jensen On November 6, 2020, I allowed myself one breath out, a breath of relief that a despicable administration and its despicable leader have been voted out of office. With my next breath in, I reminded myself that the administration that will replace it will be just as despicable, only in different ways. Its leaders may be more humane—perhaps they will no longer separate children from their parents at the border, and perhaps they will offer sincere sympathies to the families of those who have died of COVID-19—but they will not usher in a voluntary transition to a more sane and sustainable way of living. They may not lie about their tax returns or the size of their inauguration crowd, but they will certainly lie about many other things. More dangerously, they will lie about those things while believing they are righteous, and in so doing will convince many others to believe they are righteous, too. ...

This is the second in a series of articles reflecting on a recent study which predicts collapse of industrial society within a few decades. In the first essay, Max Wilbert discusses how in the long-run, collapse will benefit both humans and nature alike. This second essay in the series explores a “solution” proposed by the original authors of the study—a “Dyson sphere”—and why it will not save us from a collapse. By Salonika / DGR Asia-Pacific ...

This article by Saul Elbein was originally published on 29 July 2020 in Mongabay. Saul describes the outdated ideas linked to creating ‘biomass’ and illuminates the harm caused by creating even more CO2. By Saul Elben/ Mongabay.com An outdated Kyoto Climate Agreement policy, grandfathered into the 2015 Paris Agreement, counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass — wood pellets — as carbon neutral. However, new science demonstrates that burning forests for energy is dirtier than coal and not carbon neutral in the short-term. But with the carbon accounting loophole still on the books, European Union nations and other countries are rushing to convert coal plants to burn wood pellets, and to count giant biomass energy facilities as carbon neutral — valid on paper even as they add new carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The forest industry argues otherwise. It too is capitalizing on the loophole, building large new wood pellet factories and logging operations in places like the U.S. Southeast — cutting down forests, pelletizing trees, and exporting biomass. A case in point are the two giant plants now being built by the Enviva Corporation in Lucedale, Mississippi and Epes, Alabama. Enviva and other firms can only make biomass profitable by relying on government subsidies. In the end, forests are lost, carbon neutrality takes decades to achieve, and while communities may see a short-term boost in jobs, they suffer air pollution and the risk of sudden economic collapse if and when the carbon loophole is closed. When biomass manufacturer Enviva completes its two newest U.S. Gulf Coast plants on opposite sides of the Alabama-Mississippi state line, likely by 2021, they will be the largest “biomass for energy” manufacturing plants on the planet. ...

By Max Wilbert In medicine, shock refers to an extremely serious condition of inadequate blood perfusion. Shock is most often caused by heart problems, severe infections, allergic reaction, massive blood loss, overdose, or spinal cord injury. Of the 1.2 million people who show up to U.S. emergency rooms with signs and symptoms of shock each year, between 20% and 50% of them die. Shock can be understood to progress through two broad phases: compensatory (phase 1) and de-compensatory (phase 2). In compensatory shock, the body can “compensate” for the emergency by adjusting blood pressure, diverting resources from the extremities, and using other internal mechanisms. ...

Editor’s note: we do not agree with every point in this essay, but it’s a worthwhile read and basic introduction to degrowth. For more on this topic, we recommend Derrick Jensen’s essay, Forget Shorter Showers. by Steven Gorelick Originally published on Local Futures’ Economics of Happiness Blog. Thirty years ago, a friend of mine published a book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth. It described the huge environmental benefits that would result if everyone made some simple adjustments to their way of life. Six hundred thousand gallons of gas could be saved every day, for example, if every commuter car carried just one more passenger; over 500,000 trees could be saved weekly if we all recycled our Sunday newspaper; and so on. The book was immensely popular at the time, at least partly because it was comforting to know we could “save the Earth” so easily. ...

Editors note: i n her book Solar Storms , the Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan describes the changes that come with electrification of a rural indigenous community: " In a split second, the world changed. Even the migratory animals, who flew or swam by light, grew confused… once seen, it could easily have become a need or desire. With the coming of this light, dark windowless corners inside human dwellings now showed a need for cleaning or paint. Floors fell open to scrutiny. Men and women scrubbed places that had always before been in shadow. Standing before mirrors, people looked at themselves as if for the first time, and were disappointed at the lines of age, the marks and scars they’d never noticed or seen clearly before. I, too, saw myself in the light, my scars speaking again their language of wounds. But it seemed the most impressive to those who had not long ago used caribou fat or fish oil to fuel their lamps… ...

Featured image: Richard Walker. A techno-green future of limitless abundance sounds great, writes Aaron Vansintjan, but it’s totally unsustainable. by Aaron Vansintjan / Red Pepper If you hadn’t heard, despair is old hat. Rather than retreat into the woods, now is the time to think big, to propose visionary policies and platforms. So enter grand proposals like basic income, universal healthcare, and the end of work. Slap big polluters with carbon tax, eradicate tax havens for the rich, and switch to a 100% renewable energy system. ...