News from June 2009

Kurt Cobb: Is the United States drifting toward "war socialism"?

Jay Hanson is a well-known voice on issues of peak oil and sustainability. A systems analyst by trade, he established one of the first web sites (dieoff.org) to discuss these issues in depth in the mid-1990s. His latest web venture is a site called War Socialism on which he describes a form of governance which [...]

Big Alaska Looks to Small Nuclear

In a quest to lower energy prices, some municipalities in the oil-rich state of Alaska are looking to small-scale nuclear power. Galena, a village of 580 people on the Yukon River, has been working for years with energy giant Toshiba to bring a small nuclear power plant to their village. …Toshiba

Robots and cars for the future

…Electric vehicle research has gone into overdrive recently and MIT’s Smart Cities Lab is developing a whole new transportation system for urban environments one element of which could be the stackable City Car. They are like luggage carts at the airport. You pick one up, use it briefly and drop it off at another location. [...]

Why nuclear works in France

I traveled to Normandy this week to see something not to be seen in the United States (or Canda): a nuclear reactor under construction. I visited the Flamanville reactor as a guest of NEI, the Nuclear Energy Institute. An executive at the Institute had seen me on television lecturing Bill Maher that nuclear energy was [...]

Super-size deposits of frozen carbon threat to climate change

The vast amount of carbon stored in the arctic and boreal regions of the world is more than double that previously estimated, according to a study published this week. The amount of carbon in frozen soils, sediments and river deltas (permafrost) raises new concerns over the role of the northern regions as future sources of [...]

The Dirty War Against Clean Coal

WHILE President Obama The big project, a public-private partnership called FutureGen, was first announced by George W. Bush in 2003. Dreading facing up to the problem of greenhouse gases from electricity generation, the Bush White House suggested that decisions should wait while FutureGen developed a coal-fired power with no emissions. FutureGen

Investing in durability

Industrial society is fully committed to tossing the planet in the waste bin. The throw-away products of the Industrial Age became particular obvious after World War II, when the quaint idea of durable goods gave way to all the trappings of planned obsolescence. We invested heavily in items fabricated from non-renewable materials and specifically designed [...]

Serious Action Needed Against Overpopulation and Wastefulness

(LWN-Commentary) The ongoing discussion of alternative energy and nuclear power remains unrealistic as overpopulation and genuine energy efficiency go largely overlooked. Regardless of worsening resource depletion and environmental harm, the mainstream media and other corporations continue to promote energy-wasting frivolous new “consumer” products while the government almost encourages parents to have more children. Regardless of [...]

Climate war could kill nearly all of us, leaving survivors in the Stone Age

by James Lovelock …We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone [...]

China thirsty for foreign oil

Country’s percentage dependency on imported oil surpassed that of the U.S. in May China’s dependence on foreign oil has surpassed that of the United States, as consumers race to the pumps to fill their new cars with gas and the country feverishly stockpiles supplies to take advantage of weak markets. The country’s increasing appetite has [...]