My own starting point for this is the belief that in the years just ahead any sociopolitical entity organized at the giant scale will flounder -- this includes everything from the federal government to global corporations to factory farms to centralized high schools to national retail chains. So even expecting Mr. Obama's government to act effectively may be asking too much in a situation that will require mostly local action.

      The meta-situation will be the overall decline of energy resources and the necessary downscaling of our activities. We are obviously in a transitional period between the old profligate energy economy and the new economy of relative scarcity. We have no idea how disorderly this transition will be, but there is certainly potential for tremendous instability in daily life.

      For a while, perhaps, the federal government may retain some ability to affect the way things go, or give the appearance of doing so. This raises the issue of what Mr. Obama and his team really know about our energy predicament. The president-elect has made some noises -- recently on the 60 Minutes show -- that he understands something about the current price dislocations in the oil markets resulting from the larger financial turmoil. He alluded to the public's erroneous notion that current low-ish oil prices mean the oil problem is over. But does the incoming president know some of the following details?

     For instance, does Mr. O know that global oil production appears to have peaked at around 85 million barrels a day, with poor prospects of ever getting beyond that? This single naked fact has broad ramifications, above all whether we can continue to think in terms of industrial "growth" as the benchmark for economic health. There are many interpretations of the current financial fiasco. Some of them are based on long-term technical wave theories. A more down-to-earth view suggests the shock of peak oil -- though it doesn't exclude wave theories.

     Does Mr. O know that world oil discovery has fallen to insignificant levels after peaking long ago in the 1960s. Does he know we are finding no more super-giant oil fields on the scale of Arabia's Ghawar or Mexico's Cantarell, which have supplied most of the world's oil for the past forty years and are now running down? Does he know that you can't produce oil that hasn't been discovered?  Does Mr. O know that virtually all the oil-producing nations have entered production decline. Surely someone has whispered in his ear about the IEA's projection that global oil production would fall 9.1 percent in the coming year.

      Does Mr. O know that oil exports have been trending to decline at a steeper rate than oil depletion? That is, the exporting nations are losing their ability to send oil to the importers (like us) at a rate mathematically greater than the run-down in their production.They are using more of their own oil even while their production is going down. For example, Mexico is depleting overall at more than 9 percent a year (with the Cantarell field alone running down at more than 15 percent annually). Does he know Mexico's net exports are crashing? Mexico has been our number three leading source of imports. In a very few years they will not be able to send us any oil. A deluded American public has no idea that this is happening. Will Mr. O explain it to them?

     Does Mr. O know that the "old major" oil companies (Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Shell, et al) produce less than 10 percent of the world's oil now -- the other 90 percent coming from the foreign nationals -- and that blaming them for the situation is a waste of time. The foreign national companies are changing the landscape of the oil markets. They're making special contracts with "favored customers" rather than just putting their oil up for auction on the futures markets. One thing you can infer from this is that we're entering a period of national oil hoarding based on coming scarcity. The futures markets were based on relative abundance, and they will not operate very well in a climate of scarcity. Consider that the USA will probably not be among the "favored customers" for several oil producing nations. Figure that in with the coming loss of imports from Mexico (and Venezuela and Nigeria).

     Does Mr. O know that the current drop in oil prices (due to massive financial deleveraging) has resulted in the cancellation or postponment of the very oil production projects that were hoped to offset the coming depletions? It's not worth it for an oil enterprise (private or foreign) to drill in deepwater or venture into arctic regions when oil is priced at $50-a-barrel -- if it costs $80 to get the stuff out of the ground. It's not worth digging up tar sands in Canada at that price. This halt in activity is going to boomerang back on the US in a year or so, with depletions ongoing everywhere and no new oil to take its place. Does Mr. O know that we're just as likely to see shortages as a resuming rise in oil prices here in the US during his coming term?

     Does Mr. O know that the current re-inflation program being run by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve is so egregious that it may lead to loss of the dollar's legitimacy, to the renunciation of dollar holdings by other nations, to the down-rating of US Treasury debt instruments, and finally to an inability of the US to purchase foreign oil -- which comprises two-thirds of all the oil we use every day?

     Does Mr. O know that we are not going to run the US automobile and truck fleet on any combination of alt.fuels? Continuing it by other means is a fantasy that will only disappoint us. The motoring era is coming to an end. Heroic investments in highway infrastructure to create jobs will be a tragic waste of our dwindling capital. The pressure for Mr. O to make these misinvestments will be enormous, perhaps insurmountable. There are probably not a thousand people in the US who agree with what I am saying -- meaning the consensus to keep the cars running at all costs overwhelms reality at the moment. Does Mr. O's concept of "change" include the possibility that we may have to live very differently in this society?

     Chances are, if Mr. O knows any of these things he might be crucified in the polls and the media by acknowledging them. The only "change" that America really wants to hear about is evicting George Bush from the White House. They're sick of him and all the disturbance he has caused in their financial affairs. But beyond that, the American public is deathly afraid of the kind of changes we actually face -- such as, the end of consumer culture, the gross loss of value in suburban real estate (which forms the bulk of the middle class's private wealth), the prospect of food and fuel scarcities, the need to re-localize our lives, the need to physically shape up to stop the costly and unnecessary drain on our medical resources, to grow more of our own food, to work harder at things that actually matter, and to save whatever we can for a difficult future.

     If Mr. O introduces any of these themes into the national discourse, the public and the media and the bloggers will all dump on him for failing to prop up the wild party that American life became in recent decades.  . . read more

Everything now hinges on stopping coal. Whether we prevent runaway climate change largely depends on whether we keep using the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. Unless we either leave it - or the carbon dioxide it produces - in the ground, human development will start spiralling backwards. The more coal is burnt, the smaller are our chances of future comfort and prosperity. The industrial revolution has gone into reverse.

It is not because of polar bears that I will be joining the climate camp outside the coal plant at Kingsnorth. It is not because of butterflies or frogs or penguins or rainforests, much as I love them all. It is because everything I have fought for and that all campaigners for social justice have ever fought for - food, clean water, shelter, security - is jeopardised by climate change. Those who claim to identify a conflict between environmentalism and humanitarianism have either failed to read the science or have refused to understand it. [More]

Obama did not say that religion's effect on our society, and on the black community especially, has been destructive - and where it has seemed constructive it has generally taken the place of better things. Religion unites, motivates, and consoles beleaguered people not with knowledge, but with superstition and false promises. Surely there is a better way to bring people together in the 21st century. The truth is, despite the toothsomeness of his campaign slogan, we are not yet the people we have been waiting for. And if we don't start talking sense to our children, they won't be the ones we are waiting for either...

Despite all that he does not and cannot say, Obama's candidacy is genuinely thrilling: his heart is clearly in the right place; he is an order of magnitude more intelligent than the current occupant of the Oval Office; and he still stands a decent chance of becoming the next President of the U.S. His election in November really would be a triumph of hope. But Obama's candidacy is also depressing, for it demonstrates that even a person of the greatest candor and eloquence must still claim to believe the unbelievable in order to have a political career in this country. We may be ready for the audacity of hope. Will we ever be ready for the audacity of reason? [More] . . read more

A sober website is doing the rounds, listing "100 items to disappear first", starting with generators, water purifiers, portable toilets, 'seasoned firewood', thermal underwear & garbage bags . The futurist paperback of the moment is Cormac McCarthy's, The Road, an eco tear jerker of tremendous power, which some of my friends are too scared to read, although it is a plausible and, yes! - empowering scenario. Meanwhile, politicians look to corporates for solutions, which is like begging Satan to design the Garden of Eden.

The future may not be easy or pretty. It cannot be outsourced. It can only be insourced. It will need poets & gardeners & scientists with soul. It will need camaraderie. It is too late to whistle in the dark.  . . read more

How can she possibly know what the critical number is? How can she say ‘no’? And commit us as a country to frame the problem in a different way. The dystopic climate scenario we reported yesterday from Dave Shearman is a plausible future. Let’s not quibble about percentages. We are being asked by the mounting evidence to make dramatic generative changes in the way we live; not to fiddle while Rome burns. And to do so now.  . . read more

In Australia (& Britain) we think we’re smarter than that but both our progressive governments ask what have we got this coal for if we don’t use it. Coal made Britain great and it’s making Australia very rich and inside both countries there is a powerful web of union, political, financial & industrial groups that have grown rich and are committed to keeping the coal power economy going. Power as a metaphor for power. In both countries this web is at the centre of the “Union Industrial Complex” (UIC) that runs the countries. Anglo-Australian companies like BHP are in there with their $15 billion profit. UIC leaders like Michael Costa want to prove Climate Change is false by making a new 40 year commitment to coal.

But there are also nice, reasonable people, like Penny Wong (Minster for Climate Change), who say we must find a carbon capture solution because the world is going to burn more coal (5th Aug 08). Read that again. False logic. A safe cheap method of massive carbon capture may be scientifically impossible (especially in the short term) but, like the MIC, the Union Industrial Complex doesn’t care about results - it just wants huge profits and it’s in control.  . . read more

To have persuaded enough Democrats that a black man can be their champion in November and have a passable chance of winning the Oval Office is a tremendous achievement, even if Obama’s campaign has flagged badly in recent weeks... The battle was won in the first two months, when Obama ambushed Mrs Clinton’s slow-moving phalanx. He crushed Mrs Clinton in grassroots organizing and in fundraising which eventually left her campaign, top-heavy with consultants extorting huge salaries, deeply in debt. Meanwhile Obama banked millions both from big Wall Street institutions and small contributors.

Obama right now has an edge in electoral college votes, though this somewhat depends which faction of number crunchers you believe. By almost every yardstick, except the wild card of his skin color, he’ll win. It should be inconceivable for a Republican to capture the White House for the third time in a row when the price of gasoline is headed towards $5 a gallon, food prices are soaring and most Americans reckon things are going to get a lot worse. [More] . . read more

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK, described the U.S. role as an "extraordinary attempt by the Bush administration to kill off the fight against climate change". Others dismissed Connaughton & Co as "wreckers". After sleepless nights of frustration it was a Kevin Conrad, a delegate from Papua New Guinea who told the Bush-ites: "If you are not willing to lead, then get out of the way." It did the trick.

America backed down ­ though probably not for long. Sadly, it wasn't it our government who spoke the truth to power. . . read more