U.S. Climate Goals: A Reckoning
The current US lifestyle needs to go if the world is to succeed in limiting climate change.
Read more...Category Archives: Environment
Gaius Publius: More Evidence We’ve Reached a “Peak Water” Tipping Point in California
How the California water crisis, and small temperature changes, can cross tipping points, that can be drivers of action-provoking awareness.
Read more...With Shell’s Failure, U.S. Arctic Drilling Is Dead
Shell has decided to abandon Arctic drilling based on poor exploration results and high costs.
Read more...A Progressive Pope or Greenwashing the Vatican?
Chris Hedges discusses whether the rhetoric coming from Pope Francis helps progressive forces in the world.
Read more...Gaius Publius: Will Senator Whitehouse Renew His Call for RICO Prosecution of Climate-Denying Companies like Exxon?
Did climate change denialists like Exxon coordinate their activities, as Big Tobacco did to foster doubt about smoking’s role in lung cancer? If so, what would it take for RICO prosecutions to occur?
Read more...VW Scandal Bad News For Diesel
The ramifications for the diesel industry as its reputation as cleaner fuel comes under scrutiny.
Read more...Gaius Publius: They Knew – Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago
Exxon knew as early as 1977 that earth’s climate was being seriously disrupted, and would continue to be disrupted, by carbon dioxide emissions. Yet in the 1980s they pivoted to financing an aggressive climate denial effort .
Read more...Cereals, Appropriability, and Hierarchy
Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers.
Read more...Why Did Oil Prices Just Jump By 27 Percent in 3 Days?
Oil prices have posted their strongest rally in years, jumping an astounding 27 percent in the last three trading days of August.
While much of the recent price movement defies reason and is enormously magnified by speculative movements by traders to take and cover their bets on oil, still, there were a series of rumors, events, and fresh data that helped contribute to the spike.
Read more...Don Quijones: Mexican Gourmet Chefs Sharpen Knives in Monsanto GMO War
GMOs have had a hard time in Mexico.
Read more...Governance Matters
This post illustrates how dominant the neoliberal paradigm has become all over the world, and how it fails to acknowledge, much the less address, the well-known failings of markets, such as externalities.
Read more...Conflict Over Water In Central Asia
Expect water wars to become more common and deadly.
Read more...King Coal, Dethroned, and Its Aftermath
The history the coal industry is tragic and its collapse is its grim final act.
Read more...Wine and Water Watch (WWW) Challenges Northern California’s Invasive Wine Empire
Northern California activists opposed to the land and water use practices of the wine industry are stepping up their efforts.
Read more...The GM Labeling Law to End All Labeling Laws
Campaigners for the Orwellianly-named “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015” falsely demonize those who want GM labeling as anti-science.
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