Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines

After a series of headline-grabbing statements about the possibility of “switching” European consumers over to American gas, the US media hastened to announce the launch of Obama’s oil and gas offensive against Russia. In reality the EU is not currently prepared, neither technically nor in terms of price, to buy its energy resources from the US. It would take at least ten years to adapt even the technically advanced German energy system to work with American gas supply. In a crisis, when it is particularly urgent to see a quick return on an investment, such projects are unrealistic.

How many people wait with bated breath for Earth Day to arrive in April of each year? Who knows, but taking a wild guess, probably nobody. Earth Day kinda died out along with the fade-out of the counter-culture of the sixties and seventies. Today, they’re all grandparents and Earth Day has dissipated.
Earth Day was started to provide “support for environmental protection,” and as shall be described, Earth Day came onto the scene like the Big Bang, but ever since, it has been a fizzler, failing to impact, even slightly, the biggest environmental problem facing America, ever.

According to leaks about the widely anticipated upcoming report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which is due the first week of April, the scientific community is finally taking off the gloves and hitting the public smack dab between the eyes with the brutal truth.
Whereas in the past, IPCC reports were conservatively constructed and couched in scientific lingo that people found difficult to fully understand, this time it is different.

The burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels, causing more destructive hurricanes, floods, and droughts, and increasing ocean acidity. Leading climate experts hold that a third of existing petroleum reserves will add enough carbon dioxide to push the planet past the tipping point of irreversible climate change.

Earlier this month nearly 400 students were arrested in front of the White House protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. The next group of people to head to Washington, D.C.

The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.
— Derrick Jensen, Endgame Volume One: The Problem of Civilization

Elements are found everywhere, all across the solar system, beyond the stars to the very tip of infinity. Elements make up the universe, and because they are compatible at large, the universe works in harmony.
But, if the elements do not harmonize, then, there are problems. As such, this article explores the elements of neoliberalism clashing with the elements of the earth.

The subject of Craig Rosebraugh’s new documentary Greedy Lying Bastards is the billion dollar climate denial industry, which he blames for the failure of the global community to agree a new international climate treaty.

In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned the nation he had served as its first president against a “passionate attachment” or “inveterate hatred” toward any nation. Some Americans were impassioned about revolutionary France. Within a few years, agents of foreign minister Talleyrand would boast to American diplomats of French power within the United States, and demand large bribes and loans to advance relations.

The two countries I know best are India and the US. I spent the first 22 years of my life in the former, and the following 24 in the latter, where I continue to live. Recently I returned home, after spending three months in India. The combination of what I saw there in plain view, and what I see here in America, may shed some light on why we have arrived at the climate impasse.
Soon I’ll get to what is climate impasse, but first, here is what got me motivated to write this piece, before even I could recover from the jet lag.