Air-Conditioning Will Be the End of Us

Earlier this week, as the temperature in New York City hit the upper 90s and the heat index topped 100, my utility provider issued a heat alert and advised customers to use air-conditioning “wisely.” It was a nice, polite gesture but also an utterly ineffectual one. After all, despite our other green tendencies, most Americans […]

Bioeconomics: The Hidden Megascience

In this section I want to explore on a more specific level why we living beings have mostly forgotten or marginalized the notion of life. To do this, I wish to draw attention to the astonishing interconnections and mutual support between the two guiding metaphysics of our culture. These are (Neo-)Darwinism, with its big idea […]

Fukushima nuclear plant: Steam seen at reactor building

Steam has been seen rising from a reactor building at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator says. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said there was no emergency situation and there were no signs of increased radiation in the area. It says it is investigating what is causing the steam at the damaged No 3 reactor […]

2 years after nuclear disaster, Japan spawns freaky fruits and veggies

It might be wise to steer clear of vegetables from Japan’s Fukushima area for, oh, say a few hundred years. A Korean website assembled this image collection of produce from towns and villages surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. And they are NOT pretty pictures. From Siamese-twinned corn cobs to what can only be […]

Contaminated Water has been Leaking into Ocean for Two Years at Fukushima

Shunichi Tanaka, the head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, and the country’s chief nuclear regulator announced on Wednesday, that the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, has been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for the two years since the accident that saw three of the plants six reactors suffer a meltdown. The problem […]

3 Years Of Gulf Oil Spill Photos Show Ongoing Impact

July 15, 2013 marks the third anniversary of BP stopping an uncontrolled flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly three months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and killed 11 men, BP capped the undersea well that had leaked millions of barrels of crude and fouled thousands of miles of shoreline. Shrimp […]

Former head of Fukushima nuclear plant dies of cancer

In an ironic twist of fate, the former head of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in eastern Japan has died, according to new reports. After battling a bout of throat cancer that emerged just months after the stricken plant was overrun by a historic tsunami and subsequent earthquake, 58-year-old Masao Yoshida died at a […]

Oil and Gas Industry Violating Air Pollution Rules in Colorado

According to a recent report in the Fort Collins Coloradoan, oil and gas companies violated Colorado air quality rules 73 times in the first three months of this year alone–nearly 75 percent of all Colorado air pollution enforcement cases during that period. I don’t think anyone needs me to tell them that that is 73 times […]

Nature: Energy production causes big US earthquakes

Fluids injected into wells lubricate faults and increase slippage. Natural-gas extraction, geothermal-energy production and other activities that inject fluid underground have caused numerous earthquakes in the United States, scientists report today in a trio of papers in Science1–3. Most of these quakes have been small, but some have exceeded magnitude 5.0. They include a magnitude-5.6 […]

Study raises new concern about earthquakes and fracking

Powerful earthquakes thousands of miles away can trigger swarms of minor quakes near wastewater-injection wells like those used in oil and gas recovery, scientists reported on Thursday, sometimes followed months later by quakes big enough to destroy buildings. The discovery, published in the journal Science by one of the world’s leading seismology labs, threatens to […]

Sustainability and the World Population: What Is Our Global Limit?

Today is World Population Day. As of today, there are over 7 billion of us sharing this planet. How did we get here? After rising very slowly for millennia, population figures were just starting to take off in the 1700s, reaching a billion around 1800. It took less than a century and a half, in […]

World Population Day: Women take sterilisation burden

As the World Population Day this year focused on awareness on adolescent pregnancy, a Pune Municipal Corporation family welfare bureau survey found at least 4,237 girls 15 to 19 years of age who are married (the legal age for marriage in India is 18) and 2,071 of them not using any contraceptive or opting for […]

Kunstler: The Trophic Conundrum. Chatting with Brian Czech about the paradox of economic growth

JHK talks with Brian Czech, founder of The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and author of the new book Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads and the Steady State Economy, published by the New Society Press. The new KunstlerCast music is called “Adam and Ali’s Waltz” from the new recording […]

Coast Guard: Crew Loses Control of Natural Gas Well, Sheen in the Gulf

Natural gas is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from an oil and natural gas production platform off the coast of Plaquemines Parish, where the U.S. Coast Guard says a crew lost control of a well on Tuesday. Crew was safely evacuated after the well was unable to be brought back under control, according to the […]

The impact of changing demographics

The latest United Nations projection for world population reflects the significant demographic changes likely to occur in different parts of the world over the next few decades. The changes have strong economic implications, and many of them have already begun taking place. One of the major projections is India’s emergence as the world’s most populous […]

Should We Stop Worrying and Love the Population Bomb?

New World Population Day video uses hard facts and humor to demonstrate the dangers of overpopulation COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., July 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The world needs frank talk about overpopulation, according to a non-profit whose mission is to inspire the world to “end its outdated love affair with economic and population growth.” To increase […]

Japan atomic watchdog suspects Fukushima ocean leak

Japan’s nuclear watchdog said Wednesday the crippled Fukushima reactors are very likely leaking highly radioactive substances into the Pacific Ocean. Members of the Nuclear Regulation Authority voiced frustration at Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), which has failed to identify the source and the cause of spiking readings of radioactive materials in groundwater. “It is strongly suspected […]

A well in the Gulf of Mexico is leaking oil due to a “loss of control.” Here’s what that means

The US coast guard confirmed today that a well in the Gulf of Mexico is leaking light oil and natural gas. The oil has reportedly formed a sheen about four miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide on the surface of the Gulf. Five workers on the well platform, Ship Shoal Block 225 Platform […]

Charter of the Deep Future: Enough, For Everyone, Forever

Below is a short excerpt from Samuel Alexander’s new book, Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation. This book is a creative work of fiction – a ‘utopia of sufficiency’ – which envisions a simple living community that became isolated on a small island after the collapse of industrial civilisation. Looking back from the future, the book […]

Shale Truth Interviews Arthur Berman segment #3 price uncertainty

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is presenting a series of interviews with experts on the impacts of the shale gas industry. In this segment energy industry analyst Arthur Berman discusses the difficulty in predicting future prices of natural gas.

China smog cuts 5.5 years from average life expectancy

China’s air pollution has cut life expectancy by an average of 5.5 years in the north of the country and caused higher rates of lung cancer, heart attacks and strokes, according to a groundbreaking study. The worsening toxic smog in northern China became an issue of national concern after air pollution spiked to record levels […]

Collapse Awareness and the Tragic Consciousness

by Jamey Hecht, Ph.D. Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide. Industrialization is destroying the world. Resource depletion, pollution, and climate change will make industrial civilization impossible much sooner than is generally admitted. It is traumatic to realize this, and the process involves an intense need to discuss the issue. But the predicament of […]

Balls on the Line For Planet Earth – World Vasectomy Day

Australia hosts the world’s-first vasectomy-athon asking men to take a very personal action to save the planet, protect their families and do right by themselves. On October 18, 2013, men all over the world who are ready to exit the gene pool will dedicate their vasectomy to Planet Earth. 1,000 men in 25 countries will […]

Population Growth: Malthus Rolls Over

Last week, Oxford Computer Science Professor Steven Emmott published an excerpt of his book, Ten Billion, in The Guardian. The tone of his excerpt breaks all of the rules about communication on environmental issues. It uniformly grim and offers no solutions—verboten on two counts if you actually want people to listen, hear the message, and […]

Eye-popping predictions on world population

The news on the population front sounds bad: Birth rates are not dropping as fast as expected, and we are likely to end up with an even bigger world population by the end of the century. The last revision of the U.N. World Population Prospects, two years ago, predicted just over 10 billion people by […]

‘The real threat to our future is peak water’

As population rises, overpumping means some nations have reached peak water, which threatens food supply, says Lester Brown Peak oil has generated headlines in recent years, but the real threat to our future is peak water. There are substitutes for oil, but not for water. We can produce food without oil, but not without water. […]

EPA Pressured to Weaken Oil, Gas Science and Environmental Protection

On the eve of Independence Day, when I’d like to celebrate everything I love about America, I got a powerful reminder of something I don’t like: efforts by a polluting industry–and its friends in government–to squash scientific investigation intending to determine whether people are being harmed by toxic contamination of their drinking water. ProPublica published an important article […]

The Probe Into BP Oil-Spill Payouts Could Be Bigger Than You Think

Louis Freeh’s investigation of the BP-claims mess could reveal major legal funny business in the Big Easy. In a recent Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, I explained how the private-claims process following BP’s (BP) 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill devolved into a plaintiffs’-lawyer feeding frenzy. On July 2, I reported that the New Orleans federal […]

Population Growth and Pollution: the Facts Continue to be Ignored

Humans are the real threat to the planet, Stephen Emmott informs us in this week’s Observer. This may be so, but unfortunately Emmott writes like a 19th century thinker who has just got his hands on an early print of Thomas Malthus. His views on population growth are not only highly inaccurate, but dangerously so. […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: China at a Turning Point

This spring, I spend three weeks traveling around China and needless to say I, along with every other visitor, was impressed by the economic progress the Chinese have made in the years since the Cultural Revolution. Tens of millions have been moved from rural villages into megacities of gleaming skyscrapers, apartments, modern subways, and traffic […]

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