| The term red pill and its opposite, blue pill, are pop culture terms that have become a common symbol for the choice between the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue) and embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red). |
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- Superior Biotechnology Leads to Superior Drugs
- The Delusion of Regulating Risk
- Talk of a Greek Exit Gets Louder
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom, Part II
- Is Facebook the Rusty Hinge of the Stock Market?
- Fitch Downgrades Japan
- Doug Casey on Taxes and Freedom
- Greeks Run on Banks as Euro-Confidence Wanes
- To the Class of 2012
Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges Paul Ehrlich
Nuclear disaster or plague likely unless population shrinks and natural resources are reassigned to poor, says Prof Paul Ehrlich.
The world’s most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.
Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.
The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.
“How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to 2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage.”
“The question is: can you go over the top without a disaster, like a worldwide plague or a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? If we go on at the pace we are there’s going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people getting more and more hungry, or catastrophic disasters because the more people you have the greater the chance of some weird virus transferring from animal to human populations, there could be a vast die-off.”
The End of Poverty?
The aphorism “The poor are always with us” dates back to the New Testament, but while the phrase is still sadly apt in the 21st century, few seem to be able to explain why poverty is so widespread. Activist filmmaker Philippe Diaz examines the history and impact of economic inequality in the third world in the documentary The End of Poverty?, and makes the compelling argument that it’s not an accident or simple bad luck that has created a growing underclass around the world.
Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded
John Perkins has seen the signs of today’s economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease. In his former life as an economic hit man, he was on the front lines both as an observer and a perpetrator of events, once confined only to the third world, that have now sent the United States—and in fact the entire planet—spiraling toward disaster.
Here, Perkins pulls back the curtain on the real cause of the current global financial meltdown. He shows how we’ve been hoodwinked by the CEOs who run the corporatocracy—those few corporations that control the vast amounts of capital, land, and resources around the globe—and the politicians they manipulate. These corporate fat cats, Perkins explains, have sold us all on what he calls predatory capitalism, a misguided form of geopolitics and capitalism that encourages a widespread exploitation of the many to benefit a small number of the already very wealthy. Their arrogance, gluttony, and mismanagement have brought us to this perilous edge. The solution is not a “return to normal.”
But there is a way out. As Perkins makes clear, we can create a healthy economy that will encourage businesses to act responsibly, not only in the interests of their shareholders and corporate partners (and the lobbyists they have in their pockets), but in the interests of their employees, their customers, the environment, and society at large.
We can create a society that fosters a just, sustainable, and safe world for us and our children. Each one of us makes these choices every day, in ways that are clearly spelled out in this book.
“We hold the power,” he says, “if only we recognize it.” Hoodwinked is a powerful polemic that shows not only how we arrived at this precarious point in our history but also what we must do to stop the global tailspin.
What is a Debt for Nature Swap?
What is a Debt for Nature Swap?
A debt for nature swap is an agreement between a developing nation in debt and one or more of its creditors. Many developing nations are severely limited by huge debts they have accrued. In a debt for nature swap, creditors agree to forgive debts in return for the promise of environmental protection.
Debt for nature swaps were first established in the 1980s in the attempt of solving two problems with one agreement: 1) minimize the negative effect debt has on developing nations 2) minimize the environmental destruction that developing nations frequently cause.
The environmental promises made in such debt for nature swaps have centered around the promised protection of large areas of land such as tropical rainforests. The first case of this sort of agreement came in 1987 between a conservation group and Bolivia. The conservation group paid some of Bolivia’s debt in return for the creation of a large rainforest preserve.
Oil Smoke and Mirrors
“Oil Smoke & Mirrors” offers a sobering critique of our perceived recent history, of our present global circumstances, and of our shared future in light of imminent, under-reported and mis-represented energy production constraints.
Through a series of impressively candid, informed and articulate interviews, this film argues that the bizzare events surrounding the 9/11 attacks, and the equally bizzare prosecution of the so-called “war on terror”, can be more credibly understood in the wider context of an imminent and critical divergence between available global oil aupply and and global oil demand.
The picture “Oil, Smoke & Mirrors” paints is one of a tragically hyper-mediated global-political culture, which, for whatever reason, demonstrably disassociates itself from the values it claims to represent.
While the ideas presented in this film can at first seem daunting, it’s ultimate assertion is that these challenges can indeed be met and surpassed, if, but only if, we can find the courage to perceive them.
“Oil, Smoke & Mirrors” is an independent production. The producer has neither association with, nor membership of, any political organisation.
100 Year Old Light Bulb? True or False
TRUE
Today you’ll find a remarkable light bulb burning bright at a fire station in Livermore, California. It hasn’t been turned off since 1901, shining around the clock (save for a few brief interruptions) for nearly one million hours now.
The Guinness Book of World Records, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and General Electric agree the four-watt, carbon filament bulb is the longest-living in history, despite two moves and a few power outages during its lifetime.
The bulb was donated to the department in 1901 by Dennis Bernal, a pioneer in the area who owned the Livermore Power and Light Co. It was hung as a night light (so firefighters wouldn’t have to fumble around with lighting kerosene lamps) in a downtown garage that served as both a police and fire department five years before the great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. A few years later, the bulb found its way to the “new” City Hall that also housed the two departments, and in 1976 it was moved two miles from the old Fire Department headquarters to Station No. 6. (The 1976 move, during which the bulb was out for a total of22 minutes,was the last interruption to the long-lived light’s otherwise constant shining. It now enjoys the security of a surge protectors well as battery and diesel backup power supplies.)
