A great story on local agriculture from NBC nightly news. "The government began a subsidy program for small-scale farmers, providing them with fertilizers and high-tech seeds at roughly 15 percent of the market cost – the fertilizers and seeds were required for a more productive and resilient crop. The scheme cost the Malawian government $60 million, a huge amount for one of the poorest countries in the world where the average annual income is only $250." "Malawi’s major donors, including the World Bank, European Union and the United States balked and warned Malawi to reconsider. They claimed that such large-scale subsidies would cripple the economy. But the government went ahead."   more »

Another NBC nightly news ag story. It seems that with modern agribizz equipment, fertilizer, and seed, abandoned Russian collective farms are yielding bumper crops.   more »

How to reduce oil demand incrementally year after year in order to stabilize the global economy? What is needed is an OPEC for consumer nations. The oil importing countries getting together to "drill, baby, drill" efficiency and renewable energy for oil demand reduction. OPEC puts a billion into a new oil field, we put 10 billion into mass production of solar, wind, plugin hybrids, ground source heating systems, and smart grid technology.   more »

This sounds serious: "Big American utilities are slashing their investments in alternative energy. Florida Power & Light has cut its planned investment in wind power next year by 400 megawatts. Duke Energy of North Carolina has lopped $50m off its budget for solar power. And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America’s biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the European Union the price of carbon permits has fallen from a high of almost €30 in July to around €20, making clean-tech investments less attractive." But as the failure of VeraSun shows, the drop in oil prices is killing agribizz ethanol. Which is a good thing. Will this also delay the roll out of plugin hybrids? Will it give the auto makers an excuse to put off mass production of oil substituting electric vehicles?   more »

Check this out! Larry Summers, the proposed director of Obama's National Economic Council? David Corn really sounds a warning on Mother Jones blog. This creep, along with Gramm, Greenspan, and Rubin was in on the crucial moment that regulation was prevented. Now we know where the blame really should be placed for "derivatives" and "credit default swaps", whatever they really are, these creeps obviously never understood them, and don't to this day.   more »

A very good presentation, direct to Obama, the latest from climate action pioneer Dr. James Hansen. But he makes a rash statement. That 4th generation, waste eating nuclear reactors can be ready for mass deployment in the 2015 to 2020 time window. Hansen is picking technology, and doing something he says he is against, asking government to pick technology. He uses the old false dilemna fallacy, in a soft way. Stating that we, america and europe, maybe able to rely on renewable/conservation energy technology to replace fossil fuel, but China and India won't. Leaving the reader to conclude that nuclear and CCS will be necessary.   more »

World trade problems have the global economy in a tailspin again. Could we maybe look back into ancient history for a key to local farming versus global commodity agri-business conflict? Maybe Adult Swim could bring back Sherman and Peabody? I think Jay Ward did an episode on the Incan corn based empire? The Incan system worked like a federal reserve, with store houses of corn, rather than storehouses of electronic/imaginary currency.   more »

The GHG climate change tipping point is a well worn scientific theory. The recessionary tipping point is looming just beyond the collective conceptual horizon. To understand when and how a recssion takes on its own momentum and becomes a global depression, a comparison with climate change is most helpfull. The tipping point for climate change will occur when positive feedback mechanisms kick in and take over the climate.   more »

Main stream media, Brian Williams on NBC nightly news, called clean coal an "oxymoron" just last evening. Then proceeded to show a clean coal pure oxygen CCS plant in Germany where the liquid CO2 is trucked to a cap rock sequestration well. "It could raise the cost of coal electricity 50%", was the tagline. Better that government chooses technology to support with subsidies and mass production orders than let industry pursue full scale boondoggles like this. Separating oxygen for combustion, extracting pollutants, then compressing CO2 into a liquid state, trucking it in a tanker truck and pumping it underground, only increasing the cost by 50%?   more »

Peaksters! Give up the "Mad Max" screaming about the end of cheap oil. Admit that if demand drops in conjunction with supply, our oily GHG economic war on terror problems would evaporate into thin air. Climb on the GHG tipping point scream wagon and talk up demand reduction as the only way out. Electric transportation can drop oil demand steadily year after year, and GHG along with it. Look out for the resultant economic boom.   more »

This is excellent, Ashton Kutcher on "Real Time" with Bill Maher: Make the very successful, profitable oil companies bail out the auto industry. Since they killed their business model trying to sell gas guzzlers...to benefit their oil company board room mates and fellow investors. Is this just to simple a plan for politicians to understand? No stolen bailout cash. No cap n' trade, no auctioned GHG permits, no carbon taxes even. Yow, what's a lobbyist to do? Fight it like their very mcmansion and mistress and kids' harvard education depends upon it? Yep. hehey.   more »

Live streaming Puppycam!   more »

This is more than getting to 60 in the senate, although that is vital as well, this is about discipline. Turning the US from a blue/red state mess into a coalition is not just campaign propaganda. Obama's principle is to become the change you want to see in the world, in this case, the world of politics. It's easy to mend fences with green republicans who opposed the war. If we can work with Lieberman, the man who repeated nearly every slur against Obama promulgated during the sleazy McCain campaign, we can work with nearly anyone? Cancel the bickering until the economy is fixed, oil wars are obsolete, and GHG is under control. It's all about oil...again. About replacing it as an energy source over the next 10 to 20 years.    more »

Pretty amazing news! It looks like some of the people running the world economy are considering re-evolutionary notions only discussed on blogs?   more »

Romm is right, think tanks need flushing. Most political/environmental prescriptions still have that underlying "free" market Reagan revolution flaw at their heart. Cap and trade, offsets, auctioned GHG permits, they all have that illusionary market efficiency, let-big-business-do-it attitude. The false premise behind these schemes is obvious, that unregulated markets are onmiscient saviours of the human species. Kind of like Jesus, but with money? Government directed WW 2 war production, competition survived and capitalism thrived, so what is the problem with a million car per year government contract with the automakers?   more »

Auto companies want a bailout? They better accept new people along with the taxpayer cash. Consider the lack of judgement of the failures now in charge. For instance, what about the current GM answer to our oil problems? The Volt a long promised, but never mass produced plugin hybrid. A redesigned, higher hp EV-1, with less battery range and a backup generator.   more »

Long term, safe returns do not lie in oil exploration and development. Or in nuclear power investment. Or in "clean" coal. The new energy economy is a better, safer investment. As renewable/conservation smart grid technology lowers oil demand and electricity demand itself, and plentiful renewable supply takes over energy markets, money is safe in the leading suppliers of these new energy devices. Money in the old energy economy companies will evaporate and condense in the hands of investors in the new paradigm. And so it goes.   more »

This is great news! One would think we could hit the ground running, finally having a chance to push a green job wave that will revive the economy and stop climate change. That doesn't seem to be happening. It's hard to tell why. Is it collective shock?   more »