We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
Al Gore, NY Times
China, now the world’s largest and fastest-growing source of global-warming pollution, had privately signaled early last year that if the United States passed meaningful legislation, it would join in serious efforts to produce an effective treaty. When the Senate failed to follow the lead of the House of Representatives, forcing the president to go to Copenhagen without a new law in hand, the Chinese balked. With the two largest polluters refusing to act, the world community was paralyzed.

Republican Party Taken Over By The Lunatic Fringe?
Vicki Impoco, Florida Today
Politico has revealed an RNC manipulative fundraising document which preys on people's baser instincts in a PowerPoint presentation. The document was left at a Florida hotel where Republicans gathered Feb.18th and discussed strategies for potential campaign donors. The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on "fear" as a motivation to give.... again. This time fear of President Obama. DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse stated "If you had any doubt, any doubt whatsoever, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the fear-mongering lunatic fringe, those doubts were erased today."

A theory that works (part 2)
Gordon Ringoen, Prudent Bear
As we learned in elementary physics, it takes energy to create work.  It takes energy to run any machine, to grow plants and it even takes about 20 watts of energy for us to think for an hour. From this perspective, it would be easy to assume that the economy that consumes the most energy would be the one that had the largest work product or as we call it in economics, GDP..Energy is the most important factor of production and not capital, labor, and technology.  And, oil is the most important source of that energy.

The last days of economic growth
Daniel Pargman, Energy Bulletin
In the preface to "The last days of economic growth: Green clash over worldviews" (2007), Björn Forsberg describes how the book emerged from thoughts and ideas that did not fit his Ph.d. thesis in political science. The whole book, but especially the first few chapters, are written without any trace of mercy as Forsberg pummels his pro-growth ideological opponents. Even if the environmental and climate challenges are central to the book, Forsberg's furious accusations are primarily addressed at the "root of evil" - a society based on the idea of endless economic growth.

Life After Growth
Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
In late 2009 and early 2010, the economy showed some signs of renewed vigor. Understandably, everyone wants it to get "back to normal." But here's a disturbing thought: What if that is not possible? What if the goalposts have been moved, the rules rewritten, the game changed? What if the decades-long era of economic growth based on ever-increasing rates of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption is over, finished, and done? What if the economic conditions that all of us grew up expecting to continue practically forever were merely a blip on history's timeline? It's an uncomfortable idea, but one that cannot be ignored: The "normal" late-20th century economy of seemingly endless growth actually emerged from an aberrant set of conditions that cannot be perpetuated.

An Exergy Crisis
John Michael Greer, Archdruid Report
..what we're facing isn't global warming but "global weirding:" not a simple increase in temperature, but an increase in unexpected and disruptive weather events. As the atmosphere heats up, the most important effect of that shift isn't the raw increase in temperature; rather, it's the increase in the difference in energy concentration between the atmosphere and the oceans..Thus the most visible result of a relatively rapid rise in the heat concentration of the atmosphere isn't a generalized warming. Rather, it's an increase in extreme weather conditions on both ends of the temperature scale.