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by Jan Lundberg
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 We all want to really make it right in the Gulf. Will BP and the government handle it well enough? That's in doubt. It's actually up to us all. We need urgent environmental action especially involving energy consumption: let us cut oil use.
The grassroots coalition World Oil Reduction for the Gulf (WORG) has as its initial objective the promulgation and propagation of a powerful Resolution for immediate global remediation of the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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They don't have to answer
If they do not you're shut out in the cold
They have almost all the food inside
They open slots to feed those outside
You have some information, some truth, to share
The people outside need it more than the corporados
But the corporados control the loudspeaker
And they don't answer the door for truth.
So where do you go? Undermine the walls?
One by one, speak to those waiting for the feed slots to open?
Something's rotten inside
When it's bad enough the corporados will come out looking for food
They will find truth to eat |
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by Jan Lundberg
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Carson Tak has made history as the first known modern-era sail-powered passenger service captain/entrepreneur. In his home waters of British Columbia's Georgia Strait in the Salish Sea, Carson provides travelers an alternative to the subsidized ferry that some call The Noise Boat. Besides noiselessy harnessing the wind as much as possible, his sloop Windswept beats the ferry service in some cases by offering direct voyages, so that a passenger does not have to take three ferries to make a destination. |
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by Robert Jensen
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"I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said many times over the centuries."
That may have been the most insightful response to my essay asking people to report on how they cope with the anguish of living in a world in collapse.
That simple statement is a reminder that (1) the social and ecological crises we face have been building for a long time and (2) the best of our traditions have, for a long time, offered wisdom useful in facing those crises. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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Our lives are precious, and all life is sacred. But pathological individuals, including many sitting atop modern society’s pyramid, seem to disagree. As modern society did not fundamentally address or solve the 20th century’s crises and atrocities, the 21st century may have as its hallmark the accelerated or even final extinguishing of life. Yet, extinguishing life as a personal and elitist tactic goes back millennia to the dawn of civilization. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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The unsustainable U.S. economy and coast-to-coast consumer society that
uses more oil than any other nation will keep up its energy gluttony until
supplies finally give out.
Because oil is the most critical part of our energy mix, and it supplies
critical materials and chemicals besides fuels, a sudden, crippling oil shortage can
paralyze most of the work, commerce and law enforcement going on in this
country. |
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by Jan Lundberg
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The dominant culture reaches deep inside us like a hidden, secret implant,
limiting our behavior and even our ability to think. Fortunately, it can
be excised. I have experienced days on end without it, but some people
are more prepared than others to appreciate its existence. Leaving the
United Paved Precincts of America (a.k.a. the USA) helps a lot. But the
ingrained myths of modern society -- especially technology's infallibility
in uplifting and amazing us onward to an artificial paradise -- help to
close minds. |
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by Robert Jensen
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Editor's note: this is a chance for reader feedback for an important work in progress.
We live amidst multiple crises -- economic and political, cultural and
ecological -- that pose a significant threat to human life as we understand
it.
There is no way to be awake to the depth of these crises without an
emotional reaction. |
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by Brent Blackwelder
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 President Obama triumphantly entered office with the popular promise of moving the United States to a cleaner energy basis, but his actions to date, along with those of the Congress, have promoted two types of dangerous energy developments: off-shore oil drilling and nuclear reactors.
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by Sarah (Steve) Mosko
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There’s no shortage of finger pointing as the now worst oil spill in U.S. history continues its assault on the Gulf Coast’s ecology and economy.
A USA TODAY/Gallop Poll taken in late May, for example, found that 73 percent of Americans feel that BP (British Petroleum) is doing a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ job of handling the crisis, and 60 percent evaluated the federal government’s response in the same unfavorable terms. |
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by moth
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[Updated June 19 with related stories] Ken Salazar, Interior Secretary, has exposed his sullied hands in this scandal, brought to our attention by Culture Change correspondent moth. He knows intimately the sagebrush ecosystem and has been monitoring pipeline proposals and water issues in Nevada.
Why is the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) forcibly removing Nevada's wild horses?
Is the reason the Ruby Pipeline connections?
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by Peter Crabb
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One of the brilliant insights in Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael is that modern industrialized people do not know how to live. Humans have long been cut off from the contingencies of nature, first as a consequence of discovering the wholly unnatural skill of growing reliable food supplies in one place, and later as a side effect of learning how to manufacture wholly unnatural objects and environments. The resulting alienation from nature and from our ancestors’ nature-adapted ways of life left us clueless and susceptible to being sold ideas about how people should live, usually by the most audacious psychopath in the group. |
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