Remember those cartoons where Wile E. Coyote is chasing the Road Runner and he runs off of a cliff? For a frozen moment he just hangs there in the air looking progressively more surprised and alarmed? Then gravity takes over and it’s down, down, down to a hard landing! I believe that this is a nearly perfect metaphor for the status of our civilization at this exact moment.<< MORE >>

This is a VERY insightful book. Though not always an easy read, the effort will be well worth it. Much of the book consists of a sequential assessment of six existential global crises facing humanity in this century. These crises are placed in a systematic, global context in which each crisis variable affects all of the others. These crisis variables are: 1) climate change; 2) energy scarcity; 3) food insecurity; 4) economic instability; 5) international terrorism; 6) militarization of domestic and foreign policy in the US and other powerful nations. Variables 5 and 6 above are responses to items 1-4. Crises of climate, energy, food and the economy, lead to resistance (variable #5 above) on the part of exploited populations. This resistance leads, in turn, to repression (variable # 6). These crises, and their analysis from a systemic context, taken sequentially, comprise the initial six chapters of the book. << MORE >>

Why has Obama’s Presidency proven to be such an utter disappointment to progressives? Given all of the vitriol hurled his way from regressives, such as Beck, Palin, Bachman, Faux News in general, why has Obama time and again chosen to lash out at progressives? He excoriated us for being “purists”, for example, during his December 7th press conference. Why the anger? Indeed why the anger on both sides? << MORE >>

Conventional wisdom holds that the election of Barak Obama over John McCain two years ago has made no significant difference with respect to the trajectory of human civilization towards self-generated apocalyptic crisis. While this assessment may very well turn out to be correct, I believe that due to Obama’s election a final opportunity for a transcendent human future has emerged. I do not believe that Obama himself has any real understanding of this; however, this opportunity is quite real. << MORE >>

Conventional wisdom holds that the existential challenges of the new century will be met almost effortlessly, if only we simply stand back and the “magic” of the market operate. << MORE >>

Occasionally I come across ideas so profoundly shocking, that I would simply reject them as being batshit craziness, except that due to their rigorously scientific, falsifiable nature, and due to the academic reputation of the researchers involved, I can’t. Perhaps the most intuitively ‘obvious” notion that most people possess is that time flows from past to future. The arrow of causality inexorably flows in one direction only: From past to future. << MORE >>

One of the most interesting aspects of writing and posting an article is reading and responding to the commentary about it submitted by readers. This was certainly true for my recent essay “In Defense of Civilization” posted on OpEdNews.com. One reader, Daniel Geary, made the very good point that to effectively discuss “civilization” it needs to be defined. What, precisely, does the author mean by “civilization?” Mr. Geary noted that this term is about as loosely defined as is, say, “God.”<< MORE >>

In recent times I have found there to be a profound sense of disillusionment with civilization among a small but growing cohort of the educated population. I do not mean that this group is disaffected with WESTERN civilization, or any other specific form of civilization. Rather, I mean that they are disaffected with the very idea of human civilization at all.

The single most prominent advocate of this view is writer ...

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June 4^th, 2010 may someday be remembered as being the day that the future changed. On this date, the privately built and financed Falcon-9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral. Why is event of such great significance?

To understand this we first need to consider where we—human civilization—are at as of mid-2010. Our global political economy is based upon hydrocarbon energy:  coal, natural gas, and most especially, oil. Yet oil planetary production has likely peaked. Oil discoveries peaked in the mid-1960’s, ...

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By Mike Byron

It is now mid-2010. Global oil production has been essentially flat since mid-2004:

 

Year after year the U.S. Energy Information Agency has had to downwardly adjust its oil production projections which always initially depict increasing production, and then are “retrodicted” to correspond with reality. It seems that it is vitally important to maintain the belief that ever increasing supplies of oil ...

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