"We have all the time in the world and not a moment to waste." Mushin
The last political party I was involved in was the "Citizens Party" in 1980 when a biologist Barry Commoner, tagged the Paul Revere of Ecology was raising awareness to an "Ecological Emerging Science of Survival." The Citizen's Party received .27% (233,000) of the National vote. The planks in the platform was a new American energy policy based in renewable energies and full employment of citizenry. I wonder all the time where America would be today in technological leadership globally if a biologist had been elected President in 1980? What is even more concerning is America has never re-visited politically the notion of a future energy policy and the mantra of "Drill Baby Drill" is justified in the false positive of employment and National Security. I consider this an insane argument based in scientific realities where the poor and climate refugees are now about to become first responders in a global crises for decades into the future.
Our political situation today is exemplified in the decision of the "XL (Extra Large) Pipe Line" current debate where President Obama has signaled a veto. This is a courageous decision on the right side of constructive conservatism distinguishing neo liberal capitalism regulatory capture of the energy debate. The "Emergent Frailties of Capitalism" constructed on an elite patronization of "Too Big Too Fail" in American political business as usual is ending, and a global predicament. The economic cliff hanger is nothing in comparison to the Climate Change Tsunami.
Environmental summits are characterized by a divide: on the one side those who caused the problem but insist that everyone participate in the solution; and on the other, those who did not cause the problem and thus refuse to tolerate any limits placed on their development choices. The inability to bridge this divide has meant that environmental problems keep worsening. As environmental impacts play out disproportionately, this serves to escalate the sense of injustice and further entrench divisions over time.
Environmental crises may serve to do nothing more than accentuate the existing inequities of globalization, adding environmental degradation to the litany of sufferings already inflicted on the poor. Alternatively, if we meet environmental challenges with a fundamental reassessment of our assumptions about ourselves, and our place in the world, then we may find that there is a link between the way we treat the non-human environment and the way we treat each other. If so, in seeking a solution to environmental crises we may also find our humanity.
Human Rights Help or Hinderance to Combating Climate Change? Usha Natarajan is Assistant Professor, Department of Law, at the American University in Cairo.
In 1979 I was building solar homes in Douglas and Elbert counties in Denver Colorado as a General Contractor. The 1973 oil embargo had ignited a shock in politics where renewable energy policies entered our public political discourse. Photovoltaic cells were expensive and the argument was mass production brings down the cost per watt and eventually competes with coal, oil, gas and nuclear processes. Today we have evidence of that beginning to play out in wind and solar subsidies by government programs that need to be renewed in this Congress as a first act of formulating a future C21 Energy Policy. Yet, we are facing stronger winds of resistance with entrenched lobbies demanding business as usual refusing to accept the science of climate change. Climate science is not perfect and it more reliable than any global scientific project ever undertaken by humanity. The cherry on top of this predicament is the exponential growth factor of unintended consequences. The Copenhagen global agreement of 2 degrees Celsius is a now a foregone reality for future generations. In the next 36 months we decide to either deal with this global crises by reinventing interactively fire in new biological understanding in the web of life or experience 6 degree Celsius and the collapse of civilization in cascading positive ecological waterfall of failure in the biosphere on earth. We are in a fight for our lives and the future of our humanity.
The physicist Fritof Capra had just written the "Tao of Physics" in 1975 opening up an understanding of quantum dynamics to the general public in a spirit-sense of the pathways of faith in mystics in world religions. Fritof Capra forty-years later in 2014 released the first undergraduate university biological textbook "The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision." (Earth Talk 41 min intro) The political resistances we face today as humanity in our globalization process is historic representational assumption of man's superiority in a swept along 2,500+ years drift called a Cartesian observer error. The claim that man is separated from his surrounding environment possessing a transcendental identity or soul in the evolutionary cosmogenesis of planet earth is a mistake. Man in the scheme of living systems on planet earth is no more than a fly on an elephant and is about to be humbled by hell and high waters. Man is a thread within the web of life born out of mud in relationship with Gaia ~ Mother Earth and the Father Cosmos universe.
Either we wake up or we will die as a specie. Who wants to die? I want to hear from those characters.
Wolakota ~ P2P covenant of peace and friendship as human beings
Our Canadian neighbor Neil Young called for stopping the "XL Black Snake" at the CIA (Cowboys Indian Alliance) Washington D.C. rally on April 24, 2014. This Xl Pipe Line is a small stake in the bigger energy policy debate for America's future. We have 100 year low sulfur coal strip mining project in Powder River Basin, Montana. We have fracturing for natural gas with toxic chemicals considered proprietary intellectual assets protected in regulatory capture by the energy industry. We have the March 11, 2011 9.0 earthquake Tsunami in Japan igniting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that is still leaking radioactivity today. The list is endless. In 2005 the reinsurance industry was dealing with 150 large losses and in 2013 there was 388 large losses. The financial capitalization in 2005 was $10 billion and today it is $400 billion preparing for crises where mitigating one event requires 40% of the capitalization. In 2014 we experienced the breaking point of humanitarian aid worldwide opening a whole near era in global war machine that is draining human resources in a moment of truth requiring unity as humanity designing a future together.
"Cyber Citizens" globally want to learn the reality of a new biology based in human presence not ontological arguments in Cartesian mistaken observer errors. American Indians are not museum relics to be preserved as artifacts by colonial conquers. The Lakota Nation is victorious in this linear deductive historic subjugation of American Indians (and persistent Native peoples worldwide) held captive in American prisoner of war camps called reservations. Since 2004 I have recurrently lived for long periods at the American prisoner of war camp #334 Pine Ridge Reservation. I have started to understand the meaning of wolakota in oral languaging beyond Cartesian scripts edification of unlawfulness in common law regulatory capture. Complicity as westerners is an easy slope to attend thinking temporary pleasures, enlightened entertainment and politics built of bullsh$t is sustainable and constitutes future human survival. I propose it is now constituting the death of our humanity and the entire web of life on earth. I am just one of the disgusted American's humiliated by the current activities in Washington D. C. and no longer complicit in living in obedience denying my inherent common sense of the meaning of community good in my own humanity.
The Cartesian Split is a psychological problem in post-modern culture. The notion of subjective relativism in an individuating self has now leveled the playing field of free speech where Larry Flynt is equal to the Dalai Lama is modern secularism. A comic has the right to insult a billion Moslem's fueling radical's and we end up in ideological battlefields adding jet fuel to the fires claiming free speech is what we are conserving. The fact is our oral and written utterances do not describe an objectivity in reality; rather invent the realities we experience everyday in the notion of family, society and community of Nations. Our words are now the "teeth and claws" of own destruction.
The most phenomenal treatise in modern psychology to uncover the derogatory implications of the world "Primitive" is "C.G. Jung And The Sioux Traditions: Dreams, Visions, Nature And The Primitive" by Vine Deloria Jr., Philip J. Deloria, Jerome S Berns (2009). Where does this meanness, hatred, Christian prosperity doctrine come from where the greatest sin today is compassion, and the poor are considered evil, lazy and ignorant? The psychological splitting is now a global cultural phenomena on the verge of collective psychosis....it has no power in reality, yet appears to be very entertaining in the asylum of discourses in our humanity. Maybe it is time to step back and reflect on what we do, when we do, the things we are doing? Maybe this creative collapsing opportunity will serve us in designing a new unity bundle as human beings?
The Lakota oral notion wolakota is simple. In the presence of another including animals, air, earth, fire and water, the other living system is a legitimate niche living in coexistence, equality in generational we(i)sdom continuum, and an opportunity to form a covenant of peace and friendship without greed or power of any regulatory controlled capture in common unlawlessness in public/private governance. One may reflexively be frightened by such panarchy in the midst of lost stable institutional states today? You may wonder if this can actually operate as a viable system today as an interactive design in building a third renaissance together? Yes, it can easily, if we are willing to suspend current genocidal attitudes, behaviors and activities while thriving on the 25 watts of creative generative beauty that constitutes our humanity as human beings.
"Thoughts About the Lakota" Part I and Part IIpresented by Don Javier Livas explain our predicament in governance from a Lakota prison camp. The notion of regulatory capture may strike you after understanding obedience conversing with your boss today or tomorrow. Or reflecting on the political chaos and human concerns for children of tomorrow. Or Paris, Climate Change or social justice in your own neighborhood.
Cheer Up! "The Lakota Paradigm" is 10,000 years old and an understanding of the noble ancestries in our shared humanity. We have much more in common as human beings then anything dividing us today. We are on the move as a human family and gathering trust and enactive embodied human commitments happen in joyful concern not fear. We are Homo sapiens amans amans; wise sing up social loving animals not gods.
Support an appreciative inquiry and dialog into an C21 American Energy Policy and caring for future generations today.
Fossil fuels provide 80% of US energy, renewables provide 8%, and nuclear power provides 8%. About half the electricity is made from coal. Almost three-quarters of the oil fuels transportation; three-quarters of the electricity powers buildings; and the rest of both runs factories.
The production from fossil fuels is very inefficient. Two thirds of the energy is wasted, mostly in the form of waste heat. Renewables by contrast generally produce no waste and require no cooling water.
(Energy use in USA p.423 Capra Systems View of Life, adapted from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Report October 2012)
(The inefficiency of current 60Hertz 120Volts has been calculated at 189% inefficiency by Dr. David Martin, M-CAMM, American Political Economist. Dr. Martin's claim is nothing is free and to hear this breakthrough presentation costs $20 and well worth the learning investment. "Live Stream Breakthrough Energy Movement Conference" 11.10.2012
We can reinvent fire conserving our humanness and insure full employment of man's creative generative beauty in the
"New Earth Oracle" where humankind stops asking permission. The future requires us to stop living in regulatory capture and love the realization~in~living by becoming autopoietic P2P, C2C and G2G.
"Eyes can see, hearts can feel, spirit can fly, ears can hear, centered human can thrive." Dr. Stephen Palmer
Thank you for your attention in this regard,
Mushin