RADIO ECOSHOCK

SUMMARY Author Richard Heinberg on geopolitics, finance, and environment of the slow crash. Global Crossing and Green Festivals President Kevin Danaher on transition to green economy. Unicyclist for climate Joseph Boutelier. Radio Ecoshock 140507 1 hour. Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex and in this program we'll visit with Kevin Danaher, a founder of Global Crossing and President of the Green Festival, plus a visit to the studio by young Joseph Boutelier, riding his unicycle across the Rocky Mountains to draw attention to climate change. But first, I need to ask one of the old hands about what to do while waiting for the crash. Richard Heinberg is next. Listen to/Download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB). RICHARD HEINBERG: WAITING FOR THE CRASH There's a movie "What to Do in Denver When You are Dead". Now we know this carbon-based civilization is dead-ending in bankruptcy and climate chaos. What are we supposed to do while we wait for collapse? It's time to call in a life-line. Richard Heinberg has written about this future for decades, in books like "The Party's Over", "The End of Growth" and his recent fracking book "Snake Oil". He is the Senior Fellow-in-Residence at the Post Carbon Institute in California. My food stash from 2009 is still in my basement unused. Everyone is predicting the crash that never seems to come. What if this crazy, deadly system just keeps eating up the earth and the atmosphere for another ten or twenty years? MICHAEL C. RUPPERT - WAS IT LEADER BURN-OUT? There's also the problem of leader burn out. The most glaring recent example is Michael C. Ruppert, the 911 activist, founder of Collapsenet, and host of the Lifeboat Hour radio show who killed himself. Richard has known Mike Ruppert for years, and spent more time with him when Mike was living in Sebastapol. Is Mike's death a reflection on a whole movement? Heinberg says "no". Mike had his own personal problems, and had talked about suicide on many occasions. Ruppert's former lawyer says the same thing. If you are interested, the best explanation I've found is here on the Cherispeak blog. The best radio show, consisting of a half dozen interviews with those who knew Mike, was just done by Global Research. Info on the program is here or download that one hour show as a free mp3 here (from the famous radio4all.net). There are times when I feel tired, when I feel beat. I interview scientists warning about climate change, and really bright people trying to bring the world's attention to absolutely critical threats. But my show never gets the million viewers of a single cat video. People talk about celebrity scandals, or errant billionaires, but a dying future just doesn't make the news or even dinner table conversation. I've had scientists like Dr. Tim Garrett on Radio Ecoshock, explaining why this fossil economy has to crash, to prevent an all-out climate catastrophe. We've had economists explain the whole banking system is based on fraud and corruption. How does this planet-killing machine keep on going? ENERGY AND GEO-POLITICS: THE UKRAINE We hear the drum beats for a divided world again, with US and Europe versus Russia and China. Is it a sign of desperation, the need to distract the population from dead-end jobs and a dead-end civilization? Is it a kind of military bail-out? Richard says an expected bonanza of fracked gas is likely not behind this geopolitical tussle. After all, Poland was supposed to be a fracking Mecca, but most companies have pulled out of there. It's a very expensive way to develop gas or oil. Another big piece of news hardly anyone will hear: western energy companies are in bed with Vladimir Putin. BP owns part of one of the world's biggest energy companies, the Russian firm Rosneft. Exxon/Mobil has a giant play with Rosneft to do exploratory drilling in the Arctic Sea north of Siberia. The first drilling will cost more than a half billion dollars, for a reserve estimated at over 9 billion dol

SUMMARY: We use the magic of radio to fly around to garden roof tops in Brooklyn USA, a permaculture fruit farm in Quebec, and small acres restored in Nottingham UK. Buckle up. On the rooftops of Brooklyn New York, the Brooklyn Grange raises local food and hopes in America's largest city. Anastasia Cole Plakias is the Vice President and a Founding Partner of Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm. Olivier Asselin is a film-maker and free-lance photographer, recently back from years in Africa. Now in the Canadian province of Quebec, he set out to make a film about permaculture. That sounds simple enough, but along the way, Olivier discovered it's a big task with many fertile directions. Courtesy of film-maker Olivier Asselin we'll hear the audio from his first short film on the permaculture orchard founded by Stefan Sobkowiak in southern Quebec, Canada. It's turned the whole idea of monoculture orchards on into a natural fountain of many fruits. In the UK, Rob Carlyle built a low-energy house. With partner Jill, they are refashioning an overgrown woodland into gardens suitable not just for humans, but for all the creatures. His blog at sustainablegarden.blogspot was named one of the ten best garden blogs by Ecologist magazine. Radio Ecoshock investigates. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) GROWING HIGH IN THE SKY: BROOKLYN GRANGE As global oil becomes more expensive, and then runs out, major urban centers need to figure out their local food supplies. We find a solution in Brooklyn, New York. Anastasia Cole Plakias is the Vice President and a Founding Partner of Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm. I expected to find container gardening on these roofs, but a video on your web site seems to show a virtual dirt field right on top of one building. One of my first questions: What are the advantages of avoiding container gardens? The buildings used by the Brooklyn Grange are old cement monsters with plenty of capability to hold the load. Of course they got that checked out by engineers first. Anastasia tells me containers actually waste space that could be planted, plus there is the weight of the containers themselves. As you can see in this picture, they just planted everything between the parapets. One rooftop is about an acre, the second an acre and a half. The group gets at least 50,000 pounds of produce out of that. Their growing season in Brookly was longer, with some greens and root crops coming out of the farm as late as November. This may be partly due to the urban heat island effect: New York City throws off a lot of heat. This year may be different, as the very cold winter turned into a later and colder spring. Everything grown is organic. These farms not only feed customers in Farmers' Markets and restaurants, but also the families of the farm crew. They don't want pesticides in their own food, and don't want to add more to NYC. CITY BEES Speaking of that, the bees in their sub-project, the Brooklyn Grange Bees Apiary, do better than some in the country. This may be due to fewer agrichemicals and pesticides in the city! They do lose bees over each winter, but then overcome that and gain bees during each summer season. Anastasia tells us the NYC spring honey is excellent, with almost a menthol taste coming from the flowers of the city's many Linden trees. People may wonder if the honey contains pollution from the city. I can tell you my friend at the University of Exeter, Toxicologist Paul Johnston, tested honey from hives on a rooftop in down-town London. He found the honey was completely free of harmful chemicals. The bees purify their honey, no matter what the pollution. Isn't that amazing? The Grange helps organize the annual New York City Honey Festival every year. The next one is September 7th, 2014. Also: the air is far less polluted up on the rooftops, than it is down in the street. Our guest has here own radio show on the internet Heritage Radio Network. It's called "Anastasia’s Frid

QUICK SUMMARY: Witnessing plot of climate denial in Bush Whitehouse; how the 1% control us; climate fiction "cli fi" new and old; why predictions of the cost of stopping climate change are ridiculous. Radio Ecoshock 140423 Welcome back. This week we're going to stretch our minds into a developing future beyond any human experience. We'll talk to authors in the new genre of climate fiction - cli fi - the classics and new writers. Right off the bat, we run into climate denial and the way the 1 percent control the rest of us. The show closes with a new study revealing estimates of the cost to fix climate change are misleading, wrong, and a waste of time. That's just as the IPCC reports on the cost of reducing climate damage or letting it run rampant over the planet. The value of a living planet: priceless. I'm Alex, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) JAMES PERRY KELLY: CLIMATE DENIAL AND THE MECHANISM OF SOCIAL CONTROL America has two political parties. Maybe it's really just one party by and for big corporations and big money. That's the experience of our next guest. I'll introduce him with a quote from his own blog: "Twice a surrogate ‘stem cells’ spokesperson for the George W Bush White House, J. Perry Kelly ended his association with the political right over its distortion of global warming. Having witness[ed] the psychology of worldview exploitation firsthand, he spent four years crafting “The Sibyl Reborn,” a psychological thriller." He wrote pieces for Conservative journals like "Human Events" and "The National Review". Whatever listeners think about stem cell research, pro or con, you raise the critical point: our views, and that debate, just become part of a larger plan for corporate and political control. J Perry Kelly saw this machinery of divide and conquer on issues in the medical field, and then, to his horror, found his Conservative allies lining up to deny climate change. James became disabled due to a spinal cord injury following a car accident. He looked good being wheeled into Conservative functions, questioning what was being promised by big-pharma for stem cell research. On the platform, he was sometimes accompanied by Tony Perkins, President Family Research Council - the same Tony Perkins listed in my blog last week as part of the "Green Dragon" anti-science group. Some of those people and groups received funding from fossil fuel companies, as they attacked environmentalism and the need for controls on carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Listen to/download this J. Perry Kelly interview in CD Quality or Lo-Fi HOW THEY CONTROL US The Bush Whitehouse, and no doubt Obama too, were well aware of studies about a universal human weakness done by psychology expert Drew Westen of Emory University in Atlanta. His 2006 study used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to show human brains react to criticism of their deeply held world views by changing or denying their perception of reality to fit those views. Here is a key quote from the Wikipedia entry on Drew Westen: "None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged... Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want... Everyone... may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts.'[5] The study was published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18:11, pp. 1947–58, a peer-reviewed scientific journal." Doesn't this explain why Texans in one of the worst droughts in memory, sweating it out in unbelievable streaks of days over 100 degrees F, still deny climate change, and even elect representative sworn to fight any climate legislation? We humans spin obvious facts until we get the (foregone) conclusions we want. Here is the full citation, for those of you who want to follow up on this key research. Westen, Drew; Blagov, Pavel S.; Harenski, Keith;

Are Christian fundamentalists derailing climate action? Rev Michael Dowd. Then new report from UNEP shows alternative energy strong but slightly down in 2013. Radio Ecoshock 140416 Welcome to Radio Ecoshock, a voice for science and truth, no matter where they lead. Later in this program we'll reveal the good and bad news about the growth of alternative energy around the world. We go to Stockholm to get the latest from a new United Nations report. But first we need to tackle a gnarly problem: the marriage of big oil and coal money to large fundamentalist churches in the United States. It appears climate denying preachers are a roadblock to climate action in America. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) RELIGION VERSUS CLIMATE SCIENCE In America, a powerful group religious leaders have declared war against environmentalism and climate science. Allying themselves with Republicans and backed by oil company money, they tell millions of followers that more carbon dioxide is good for the planet. There is a counter-movement of Christians who embrace reality and science. Chief among them is the Reverend Michael Dowd. He's the author of "Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World". Michael speaks to congregations across the U.S., as a preacher travelling with his wife, author Connie Barlow. Rev. Michael Dowd is currently part of the Great March for Climate Change. He's an author, speaker, and often writes in the Huffington Post. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Michael Dowd in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Connie Barlow wrote 4 books on biology. She says she was blind-sided by the immediacy of climate change, thinking of the long time changes in past mass extinctions. She founded the group Torreya Guardians to help save this endangered Florida conifer. Michael has just written an article accusing big-time fundamentalist preachers as barriers to American climate change action. E. Calvin Beisner from the Cornwall Alliance says more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is good for us and good for creation. Media figures like Glenn Beck agree. It seems like madness to me. Michael Dowd writes "According to recent polls, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary 46% of Americans still cling to the idea that we live on a ‘young earth’ and 41% believe that we are in the ‘end times’, creating a critical mass of voters whose representatives are blocking urgent legislation on climate change." Those are tough numbers to overcome, aren't they? THE GREAT MARCH FOR CLIMATE ACTION The big project now is "The Great March for Climate Action". This is not a religious movement, but has the support of many churches as well. Check out the Great March web site to see when it gets near you. Can you be part of the March? I hope so. Michael describes it this way: "The group is The Great March for Climate Action. From March through early November 2014, two hundred or more intrepid activists will march from Santa Monica California through the desert southwest, then up the Colorado Rockies and across the Great Plains, skirting the south side of the Great Lakes, aiming to arrive in Washington D.C. just before the elections." "Connie and I will rarely be walking with the marchers. Rather, we will be speaking in churches, colleges, and other venues along their route. Our role is to rally citizen support to press for changes that will reorient the incentives of American industries and consumers toward a sustainable, green-energy future. In the months before the action begins, another volunteer climate group is helping me schedule church venues. This organization is Interfaith Power & Light -- whose tagline is "A Religious Response to Global Warming". Truly, a groundswell of Americans -- religious and secular -- are rising up to demand action for intergenerational justice and to ensure ecosystem viability for centuries to come." Michael is author of Tha

Coming up in this program: a new report from the World Meteorological Organization tallies the big weather hits in 2013. Is it rampant climate change? Norway decides how to spend almost a trillion petrodollars, and Indian solar loses out. Plus direct from Yokohama Japan, the IPCC press conference promising we can somehow "manage" climate change, a food crisis, and maybe the sixth great mass extinction. Science and hopium on Radio Ecoshock 140409 "Politicians discussing global warming" by Isaac Cordal of Berlin. Great stuff. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi JESSICA BLUNDEN AND NEW WMO REPORT ON CLIMATE 2014 - IS THE WORLD WARMING OR NOT? If you live in eastern north America, it felt like the ice age is returning. Meanwhile millions of people in Europe got a winter of mild rain. So what is it, global cooling or global warming? We don't have to guess. Scientists measure temperatures all over the world, on the ground and by satellite. That information pours into the U.S. National Climatic Data Center. Jessica Blunden is a climate scientist and lead editor writing reports there. Here is a blurb from NOAA: "Have you ever wondered who writes the monthly global climate reports? Her name is Jessica Blunden, and she is a climate scientist with ERT, Inc., working here, at NCDC. In addition to writing those reports, which analyze global temperature and precipitation, Jessica is a lead editor for the annual State of the Climate series that is a supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Jessica’s academic training is in atmospheric chemistry and air quality. She did her fieldwork and research in this area for both her Master’s and Doctorate degrees, but she wasn’t always an atmospheric scientist. Before she became a scientist, Jessica spent several years working in the hospitality and tourism industry. During that time, she always felt something was missing. 'I eventually came to the realization that atmospheric science was my true calling,' Jessica said. Her love of weather and climate first blossomed in Mrs. Heath’s eighth grade science class. Jessica found her teacher fascinating and loved studying clouds and weather phenomena." The State of the Climate series doesn't attribute causes for changes in weather, doesn't suggest policy, and doesn't make predictions about the future. It's an accurate, triple-checked reliable assessment of Earth's climate, month by month, and year by year. Although it was still pretty cold by our standards, the Arctic was way above average this past winter. The non-scientist, the average person, wonders whether that forced some wicked cold weather further south. What is behind the infamous Polar Vortex that kept pounding Eastern North America? The World Meteorological Association just released their new report titled "WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 2013". Find a good meaty press release summarizing the report here. Read the full WMO 2013 report online for free here. You can also access a fascinating interactive map showing the extreme weather events here. Be patient. It takes a bit to load, but it's worth it. Get the latest climate reporting about the past winter from NOAA here. Despite what you may have experienced, it was the 8th hottest winter Earth has seen since we began measurements. Find all the global and national reports on climate from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center here. Jessica edits the monthly and annual State of the Climate Report. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock 18 minute interview with Jessica Blunden in CD Quality or Lo-Fi OF NORWEGIAN PETRO-WEALTH AND INDIA'S SOLAR NEED - JUSTIN GUAY Norway, right up to the Prime Minister, made important promises this spring. With a state investment fund of almost a trillion dollars, Norway suggested they would divest from coal, and invest heavily in renewable energy. Pundits estimated Norway could put 5 to 10% of it's oil and gas fund into solar and wind energy. Tha

Are we headed for collapse? A study partly funded by NASA says a combination of crisis could bring down the global system we count on. It's not guaranteed to happen, and we can't know when. But the world supply chains, just-in-time, makes the possibility of a sudden unravelling more possible. Would you believe everything from food to power to gasoline could disappear in just a matter of weeks? From Ireland, David Korowicz explains how. Radio Ecoshock 140402. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi DAVID KOROWICZ There is a small industry of pundits warning something is about to collapse. A large and growing public who suspect they are right. It's hard to pin down what sets analyst David Korowicz apart from the pack. Maybe it's his detailed big picture outlines that just make sense. Is that why he's in demand across the world, advising governments, business, and non-profits alike? Strangely, most of those organizations could become dis-functional very quickly, if David Korowicz is right. It doesn't hurt that David is based in Dublin. Ireland just went through an economic beating ahead of us all. He's part of an organization named Feasta, advises government there, and runs his own business called "Human Systems Consulting". We're going to talk about two of his papers that explain why fragile systems, from the economy to the environment, could fall apart much faster than we think. Here are the two papers we discuss: 1. "Trade-Off: Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion: a study in global systemic collapse" This paper is available free from feasta.org here. 2. The second is: "Catastrophic Shocks Through Complex Socio-Economic Systems: A Pandemic Perspective" Download that paper as a free .pdf file here. First, we note Ireland didn't go into the Dark Ages when it hit a financial brick wall a couple of years ago. Public services still work, the roads are open, the supermarkets well-stocked. Why did Irish society surive its flirtation with utter bankruptcy? David explains. On You tube, I watched one of David's lectures. It was titled "The Modern Economy, Civilization, Complexity, and Collapse". He began with a picture of life in Kyrgyzstan, and how that local and resilient economy will be sucked into our globalized scheme, like everybody else. Won't they be better off? Yes probably, but they will be dependent on a super-system which is in itself very fragile, and open to rapid collapse. History shows that once a country decides to join the global economy, its difficult if not impossible to go back to self-sufficiency. We all like to blame the bankers or Wall Street manipulators for the current economic woes, David disappoints many a conspiracy theorist by saying there is no real organizing power behind the global economy. It works the way a forest does, he says. Things work together, but there is no one in charge. That's difficult for us to accept, so this was a good talk. We also look into how a shut-down of relatively small commodities could ripple into really big events. We discovered that when just one or two factories in Japan shut down after the Tsunami of 2011, much larger car plants in the US and Europe had to close temporarily. Some system losses are more critical than others. A failure in the perfume supply chain is survivable. A failure in our electrical, food, or sewage systems may not be. Even a small or publicly unknown component, such a rare earths, could trigger a much larger event. One of the cases we examine in detail is the fuel truck protest on the United Kingdom in September 2000. Refineries were blockaded, and local gas/petrol stations ran out. All sorts of business and government offices had to close or go to a skeleton staff. Supermarket shelves were about to become empty, when leaders in the food industry warned the government to take action. It was a valuable lesson. So what could happen. Korowicz looked at the case of a failure in the European banking system. We all know Sp

This week it's all about new science that matters. A study funded by a founder of fracking finds the natural gas industry is still bleeding tons of methane into our atmosphere. The top body for American Scientists warns we must act now to prevent climate catastrophe. And an international team confirms the world food supply will be hit hard in a changing climate. Radio Ecoshock 140326 Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) METHANE LEAKING FROM NATURAL GAS SYSTEMS - DR. ADAM BRANDT Suprise, suprise. A new study finds methane emissions from natural gas systems have been greatly Underestimated. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Is gas worth the risk? Is it better than coal? Let's find out from the lead author of a new study looking at methane escaping from the gas system. Dr. Adam R. Brandt is with the Department of Energy Resources and Engineering at Stanford University. The latest report on this problem is found in the paper "Methane Leaks from North American Natural Gas Systems". It was published in the February 14th edition of the journal "Science". Find the paper summary here. Brandt was part of a big team, with many names I recognize from universities, NOAA, the Lawrence Livermore Lab, even the U.S. Department of State. So we know this isn't going to be an attack piece on fracking or the gas industry. In fact, Adam tells me right off the bat, this study was funded by the foundation established by one of the wealthy pioneers of fracking, the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation. This is part of my continuing coverage of methane emissions from natural gas. What could be more timely after a deadly blast in New York City, and a barrage of ads from the industry saying how green they are. Please notice I take care in the first story to let you know who funded this assessment of the industry, and some of the energy-friendly government labs who took part in it. Even so, they found a lot of leaking methane, and super-emitters in some states. The study found that previous Environmental Protection Agency figures on methane emissions from gas production and distribution were low by about 50%. But that excess gas, Brandt tell us, isn't necessarily from fracking, but from the gas industry as a whole. For example, natural gas processing and compression plants have been underestimating their emissions. In past weeks on Radio Ecoshock, we heard how studies of Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. found between 3 and 7% of all gas entering the city leaks out on a daily basis. Some of those leaks are large enough to be explosive, but authorities and industry have been slow to act. No wonder we see some tragedies. Brandt's study found that a tiny percentage of equipment in the gas industry is leaking most of the methane. If those broken pipes, connections, and valves could be located inexpensively, it wouldn't be too hard to greatly reduce the methane loss. Scientists and industry are working on cheaper locating devices. It's not easy, because there are over 200 million miles of natural gas pipes under the United States alone! Download/listen to my interview with Dr. Adam Brandt here. Here are a few links to follow up. A decent summary of this study is here. Stanford's press release is helpful here. I also liked this article in Technology Review, and check out the further links it contains, to track the problem further. THE AAAS SCIENTISTS WARN ON CLIMATE CHANGE - DR. JAMES MCCARTHY Scientists know we are heading over a climate cliff, something not seen in human times on Earth. Why are they not speaking out? They are. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is launching a new report called "What We Know". To talk about it, I reached Dr. James McCarthy - Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, at Harvard University. Find some good articles articles covering the release of this report here, here, and here. And check out this short and realistic video, and get the re

SUMMARY: Dr. Michael Jennings says Earth's climate is already beyond the worst scenarios. Could a new Dark Age save us? Dr. Sing C. Chew says we are due. It's edutainment for troubled times. Radio Ecoshock 140319 WELCOME The bad news is planet Earth is already committed to very dangerous climate change. Dr. Michael Jennings published a paper in 2012 showing we are already in the worst case scenario. My interview with Dr. Jennings is frank and moving. We may be saved from utter disaster if an economic collapse comes sooner rather than later. Dr. Sing C. Chew will give us the good news about Dark Ages, and the signs we are entering one now. In March 2014, the Earth's atmosphere went above 401 parts per billion of carbon dioxide. The Arctic ice is at an absolute record low this winter, even as eastern north america freezes. New science is reporting bad news like artillery fire from a climate war zone. Increased malaria zones, dying birds, faster Greenland ice melt, climate disruption is moving faster than anyone can comprehend. I'm Alex Smith, welcome to Radio Ecoshock, the cheerful program for pessimists and realists alike. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) MICHAEL JENNINGS: HEADING TOWARD THE WORST CASE SCENARIO Well it's official. With no international agreements and ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions, scientists are asking if we are heading off the cliff of climate disruption, into the worst of all worlds. Our guest is Dr. Michael Jennings from the Department of Geography at the University of Idaho. Last year he published a paper in the journal "Global Policy". It's title is: "Climate Disruption: Are We Beyond the Worst Case Scenario?" Here are the details on that paper: Climate Disruption: Are We Beyond the Worst Case Scenario? Published in Global Policy, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article first published online: 3 SEP 2012 and in print: Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 1 . February 2013 "Climate disruption: Are we beyond the worst case scenario?" was published by the London School of Economics journal "Global Policy", free online here. Michael wrote me in an email: "If we are to maintain the climate of the Holocene—which is the climate that agriculture, economies, and societies evolved with over the past 10,000 years—we can emit no more than a total of 500 billion total tons of carbon without a large scale perturbation of the biosphere as we have known it since the dawn of agriculture. So far we have emitted a total 370 billion tons since the beginning of the industrial revolution. That leaves us with 130 billion tons of carbon emissions until we reach the safe limit of 500 billion tons. Right now we are emitting more than 9 billion tons per year; it’s actually closer to 10. So, 130 billion tons at 10 tons per year leaves us with how many years, assuming no annual increases? At the same time, burning all of the fossil fuel that is currently owned, accounted for and held in known reserves would emit 2,795 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That is more than 20 times the 130 billion tons that is safe. But, our global economy is predicated on not only the value of the existing reserves of coal, oil, and gas as they are traded around the world, but the economic yield of the goods and energy that would be derived from those 2,795 billion tons of emissions. What would you do if you were invested in those carbon stocks?" More about investments in carbon stocks further, in a segment with Mark Campanale of carbontracker.org. See below. Dr Jennings pointed us toward a pivotal paper led by Dr. James Hansen, formerly of NASA. It's titled "Assessing ‘‘Dangerous Climate Change’’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature" It may be the most important paper of the year. Read it in full text here. There are two items in the paper by Hansen et al. that seldom get attention. The first is our obligation to coming generations. The second point raised by

On 3rd anniversary of Fukushima, two authors report American reactors are unsafe at any speed. Shocking risk. Plus audio from March 2 XL Pipeline dissent protest in D.C. & letter from youth, via Bobby Wengronowitz. Radio Ecoshock 140312 http://tinyurl.com/lerpc6j Yes, despite a punishing cold winter, thousands of Americans showed up at the White House to fight off the Keystone XL pipeline. They were mostly young, protecting their future against climate change driven by the Tar Sands, the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Over 350 people were arrested. I'll take you there. But first, on the third anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in the world, I'll talk with the authors of Fukushima, The Story of a Nuclear Disaster". But America is just waiting for it's own nuclear mega-disaster. Despite promises after March 2011, the U.S. industry is still stalling on safety critical fixes to aging reactors. It's just a matter of time. I'm Alex Smith. Welcome back to Radio Ecoshock. Listen to/download this program in CD Quality or Lo-Fi THE FUKUSHIMA STORY BLOWS THE COVER ON AMERICAN REACTOR SAFETY Interview with David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists After the triple melt down of reactors in Fukushima Japan in March 2011, the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission did two things: they assured the public "it can't happen here" - and they promised a flurry of action to make reactors safer in the United States. Now we have the first new book from nuclear experts explaining what happened at Fukushima. And we have a report that American reactors are still unsafe, still waiting for the next major melt-down. Both come from David Lochbaum. He worked in U.S. reactors for 17 years. He was an instructor for the NRC. David is now Director of the Nuclear Safety Project, for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read David's latest article "Nuclear Disaster American Style" here. Half of reactors in U.S. don't meet fire regulations. This is as dangerous as a risk factor as the tsunami that broke Fukushima. David writes: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission examined fire hazards during a briefing on July 17, 2008. An NRC senior manager informed the Chairman and Commissioners that “Approximately one-half of the core damage risk at operating reactors results from accident sequences that initiate with fire events.” In other words, the fire hazard roughly equals all other hazards combined. And that analysis assumed the NRC’s fire protection regulations were being met—the risk goes up when the fire regulations are not met. Fire is a large risk for the same reason that flooding caused so much trouble at Fukushima. Fires and floods can disable primary safety systems and their backups. If workers are unable to recover disabled equipment or connect temporary replacements, reactor cores overheat and melt down. The nuclear plant fire hazard is not speculative. In March 1975, a fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama disabled all the emergency systems for cooling the Unit 1 reactor and most of those systems for Unit 2. Only heroic worker efforts prevented both cores from melting that day. The NRC did not want another nuclear plant to experience another fire as bad as, or worse than, the one at Browns Ferry. It adopted fire protection regulations in 1980 intended to manage the fire risk to an acceptably low level. In the late 1990s, the NRC’s inspectors discovered that dozens of reactors, including the two at Diablo Canyon, did not satisfy the 1980 fire protection regulations. In 2004, the NRC adopted an alternative set of fire protection regulations. Owners had the choice of satisfying either set of regulations. On December 29, 2005, Diablo Canyon’s owner notified the NRC that it opted to someday implement the measures necessary to achieve compliance with the 2004 regulations. As of today, Diablo Canyon meets neither set of fire protection regulations." Fully one third of American reactors are not protected against flooding from upstream dam breaking. Another

RADIO ECOSHOCK SPECIAL ON CALIFORNIA DROUGHT Despite recent rains, California's reservoirs are near empty, snow-pack light, and groundwater depleted. Four experts on a drought that really started in 2006, impacts on economy, food, farming, and nature. Guests: Dr. Peter Gleick, Dr. Jay Famiglietti, David Schroeder, Dr. Reagan Waskom http://tinyurl.com/lrqaxqe THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT IS NOT OVER! Rainstorms finally arrived in California, after a 14 month drought with no significant rain. But the big reservoirs are still pitifully low, and snow pack is less than a quarter of normal. Hundreds of thousands of acres will not be planted, and food bills will likely go up in North America, and possibly around the world. This is the Radio Ecoshock special on the California drought, as a case study of what we can expect in many parts of the Earth. I've lined up 4 experts all with something new for you. Dr. Peter Gleick is a climate and water specialist who has been warning this could happen for years. Dr. Reagan Waskom is another water and agriculture expert from Colorado. We connect with boots-on-the ground water conservation specialist David Schroeder in Montclair, right on the edge of thirsty Los Angeles. Finally, we get back to the big picture, as Professor Jay Famiglietti at University of California Irvine warns of depletion of the ground water under one of the world's biggest food producing areas. That's a trend all over the world, as we race toward peak water. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi PETER GLEICK: Is the drought climate change? Our first guest is Dr. Peter Gleick. He's president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, one of the world's leading independent think tanks on water issues. Peter is also a scientist known around the world. Peter introduced the term "Bellwether Drought" for this event. We know climate change threatens the water cycle. Scientists believe the wet areas (like the UK!) will get wetter, and the dry areas like California, will get dryer. So the dice are loaded for more droughts to occur in this major food producing area. Dr. Gleick points out we could say this drought started in at least 2006. There have been several drier-than-normal years since then. Scientists have found records showing California has experienced droughts lasting more than a hundred years in the past, in the 1100's for example. So we may be asking if human-induced climate change has triggered this drought cycle. The causes of regional weather events are complex. We have ocean currents, natural cycles like El Nino and El Nina, and changes to the Jet Stream. All of those, especially the Jet Stream (as shown by the work of Jennifer Francis et al at Rutgers) can be influenced by climate change. It's a Bellwether event because whether or not we can nail down direct causation by climate disruption - it's a sure test of what is likely during the coming decades. As in Australia, it is possible Euro-humans arrived in California during a cyclical wet spell that was bound to end. But have we hastened that process? I also talk with Peter about desalination, it's promises and obstacles. A new desalination plant has been build to feed the San Diego water system. But really, it's so energy intensive and expensive that desalination cannot save the whole California agricultural system. Peter Gleick is an influential scientist in many places. He talks about the global work his institute is involved in, and it's heavy-duty stuff. It's cool he Tweeted this program link out to his 11,000 plus followers. You can download or listen to this 18 minute interview with Dr. Peter Gleick in CD Quality or Lo-Fi. DR. JAY FAMIGLIETTI: Looking at the drought from space. When the rains don't fall in California, every one checks their wallet for rising food prices. But rain or not, cities and farmers are pumping out California groundwater at an alarming rate. Thanks to new satellite science, now we know how much of that unsee

QUICK SHOW SUMMARY: Author of "American Exodus" Giles Slade sees humans joining plants & animals in migration toward Poles. Paul Beckwith on alarming new Arctic melt science from NASA. Dr. Nathan Phillips on gas leaks in Boston and Washington D.C. Grab it now. READY TO SCRAMBLE TO THE POLES? It's hard to imagine. Will you decide to move, to leave your home, because of climate change? Maybe relentless heat becomes too much. Fires could burn you out, of floods come so often there's no money to rebuild. It might be just one too many awful storms. Crops could fail, goosing food price ridiculously high, busting the local economy. Animals, plants and fish are already moving either toward the Poles, or to higher ground. Humans, for all our technology, may not be exempt. Some of you are already wondering if that's in your future too. Our first guest says it will happen. That's Giles Slade, author of American Exodus. He's talking about millions of Americans, and Latin Americans, seeking greener pastures, or at least cooler ones, in Canada and Alaska. The Canadians may simply move even further north. The same future has been predicted by British scientists Sir James Lovelock. He sees the ocean-wrapped British Isles become a destination point for North Africans, and people from Southern Europe, as great deserts form there. Look out Scandinavia and Siberia, for the same reasons. This may not happen this year, or even this decade, but we'll talk about it. Then climate scientist Paul Beckwith returns with a startling new NASA study about the Arctic Ice melt. That change is producing about one quarter of all warming. How will that change science and climate activism? Worried about methane leaks in the Arctic? We wrap up with another new survey of natural gas leaks in major American cities, this time in Boston and Washington D.C. Measurement show our big cities are big methane sources. That's something the "natural" gas salespeople don't tell you, when they promise to be better than coal. Ready? I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) AMERICAN EXODUS - GILES SLADE Maybe after a cold winter, some gritty, sweaty summers sound pretty good. As long as the power stays on, with air-conditioners running. But then food gets too expensive or runs out. Or you can't get insurance after yet another flood, storm or fire. With no money to rebuild, It's time. It's time to move the family somewhere cooler, with regular rain. It's time to move to New Zealand, to Scandinanvia, or to Canada, if you can. What if a few million others go the same route? Our next guest Giles Slade thinks it will happen: a massive migration, driven by climate change and a fallen economy. Millions of Americans, and maybe Latin Americans, will move north. Giles Slade is an award winning author with his works about consumption and planned obsolecence. From his home on the West Coast of Canada, he joins us now, to talk about his book "American Exodus: Climate Change and the Coming Flight for Survival" Giles is pretty well known for two previous books: "The Big Disconnect – How our long affair with ever-new technologies has undermined interpersonal relationships" and "Made to Break, Technology and Obsolescence in America." That last one captured the International Publisher's Gold Medal (IPPY award) for best Environment/Ecology/Nature book of 2007. We talk about previous migrations, starting with the "OKies" who fled Oklahoma and surrounding states during the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. Giles' message: don't expect to be welcomed as a climate refugee. The OKies were treated as second class citizens, harassed by local police, and got the worst jobs, if any. It was a little better for what may be America's first climate refugees, the thousands who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But there was still a tendency to blame the victims. Plus, there was a reasonably functioning society around them. You

Extreme weather from the great climate disruption will rule our lives. I cover current heat waves in Australia, California, Brazil/Argentina, Alaska and Siberia, plus the UK floods. Then author/activist Deborah Frieze on book & movement to "Walk Out, Walk On", and Dr. Jochen Hinkel on the huge cost of rising seas. Normally on Radio Ecoshock, my expert guests do the talking, while I listen and learn along with you. But this week there are major developments here on Earth that are not coming through to you clearly, or not reported at all. See the detailed note below, and by all means, listen to this program, to get the big picture. Listen to/download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi WALK OUT WALK ON - AUTHOR DEBORAH FRIEZE Maybe you see our way of living is in big trouble, starting to self destruct it's economy, and even the whole world ecosystem. You don't want to be part of that, but what can you do? Maybe you should Walk Out and Walk On. That's the title of a book, and a movement, co-authored by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze. The web site linked above is more than a book promo. It's also central to a world-wide movement, with lots of inspiring examples and resources. Part of the reason I called Deborah is the future of climate change and extreme weather events. It looks like millions, maybe billions of people will find themselves in an environment that is no longer liveable. Climate refugees may be in coastal cities that flood over, in valleys where hill-sides collapse or burn.. Others will be hit by persistent long-term drought that kills off agriculture. Many of us will have to judge when it is time to just walk out. In the meantime, Deborah's book is really helpful at the personal level. It offers guidance and examples of people who have left the untenable to find lives that really matter. That works for those of us in the developed world who have choices. But the idea actually came from India, where the example of high school dropouts was found to be people who went on to form whole new lives. I ask Deborah how this movement differs from the counter-culture of the late 1960's, when Timothy Leary advised us to "Turn on, tune in, and drop out"? She says the days of protest are not what she's talking about. Almost like David Holmgren on Radio Ecoshock a couple of weeks ago, our guest suggest withdrawal from a deadly system, to create a living and sustainable one instead. Perhaps "play" is a better answer than protest, she suggests. I'm not so sure. Deb herself dropped out of the high tech industry in 2001, to become an alternative lifestyle teacher, then head of the Berkana Institute for some years. Now living in Boston, Deborah is deeply involved in forming local community there, and supporting other resilient community efforts around the world. Find her web site here. Walk Out Walk On was written with Margaret (Meg) Wheatley. I wrote to Meg, but found she is on a two month retreat of silence, completely withdrawn from the world. Listen to/download this interview with Deborah Frieze (25 min) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi And please pass those links on to anyone you think would be interested. All links posted in this blog are permanent. People download these interviews for years. THE COMING SUPER COST OF RISING SEAS - DR. JOCHEN HINKEL As great storms pound the British coast, after other massive storms washed over the Philippines and New York City, we can only wonder what the costs and damage from sea-born flooding will be, as this century goes on. A new paper published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal tries to calculate just that. The paper is titled "Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under 21st century sea-level rise". This global projection was created by a team of scientists from Germany, several from British Universities and the Tyndall Center, with more from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria. The Press Release for this report is here in English and he

SHOW SUMMARY: Thomas Peterson from World Meteorological Assoc. and NOAA on science of extreme weather events hitting us. Jonathan Bates, co-author of "Paradise Lot" on permaculture on a small lot in New England. Whether you are freezing in North America, drowning in Britain, or roasting in Australia, extreme weather is hard to miss. Thomas Peterson leads a team of scientists studying the role of climate change in messing with our weather. We talk about the drought of 2012 in the States, Hurricane Sandy, wild rainfall in Britain and N. Australia, and more. Then to solutions. Jonathan Bates and his co-conspirator Eric Toensmeier turned an unpromising small lot in Holyoke Massachusetts in "Paradise Lot". It's famous small-scale homestead of permaculture. You could do it too. Plus new music from Neil Young, "Mother Earth" recorded live on his recent Honour the Treaties" tour, against the Tar Sands and damage to First Nations people. You'll also hear a short remix by Alex of "Into the Blue", sung by Lokka. Troubles and solutions: it's Radio Ecoshock. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) THOMAS PETERSON - EXPERT ON EXTREME WEATHER Can scientists finally say "this extreme weather event, that flood, this storm, was caused by climate change"? Not so fast. Nothing is simple about the way this Earth works. The planet's top weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, set up a special branch looking into this. Dr. Thomas C. Peterson is President of the WMO Commission for Climatology. He's also the Principal Scientist for the National Climactic Data Center at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Ashville, North Carolina. For the past two years, Dr. Peterson helped gather up scientists to examine the links between human influences on the climate, and the extreme weather events that dominate the news and millions of lives. Here is a helpful article about this: "Global Warming, or just the weather?" by Revecca Lindsey, published at climate.gov September 3, 2013 The new report we discuss in this program is here: "Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, No. 9, September 2013." The 2011 version of this paper was among the most read articles in the American Meteorological Society Bulletin. Download/listen to this interview with scientist Thomas Peterson in CD Quality or Lo-Fi. We talk about Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. drought of 2012, floods in Northern Australia and England, extreme weather in China, and their connection to climate change. In some cases scientists concluded warming made the event worse or more likely. In other cases, they were unable to find a link, chalking it up to "natural variability". I want to add a footnote to my conversation with Dr. Peterson. He explained it's early days trying to narrow down the climate influence on crazy weather events. It's also hard to find scientists who can devote more time to short-term projects like the WMO annual survey of extreme weather. Still, I came away from that report with some doubts. Too many times, the authors decide climate change was not an important factor. For example, the paper on the record wet summer of 2012 in Britain concluded there was no link to the concurrent record melt back of Arctic Sea Ice. The paper was titled: "Are recent wet northwest European summers a response to sea ice retreat?" ed by F.B. Simon. Their conclusions that melting sea ice was not a factor directly contradicts other published science. I'm hoping to interview a British expert with a different opinion. The case of extreme rainfall in Northern Australia in 2012 was even more bizarre. First that paper says climate change models show only a 10 to 15% influence on rainfall in that region. Since the 2012 rains far exceeded that, the authors say it must be natural variation, and not climate change. If it doesn't fit the models, or is more extreme than we expected, that's not climate chan

Do we need to break the system to save the climate? Permaculture co-founder David Holmgren says "yes", in rare radio interview. Then Nicole Foss replies. Plus Alex's climate music. Last week on Radio Ecoshock we looked at a growing group of activists, authors and scientists who say only a serious economic crash could save us from climate doom. Now we'll talk with the man who started this flurry, the co-founder of the permaculture movement, Australian David Holmgren. I'll follow that up with reaction from Canadian finance and alternatives expert Nicole Foss. If you care about the future, this is radio you won't want to miss. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (54 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) DAVID HOLMGREN - DESPERATE MEASURES FOR DESPERATE TIMES Despite the hopes and warnings of the last generation, humanity is heading for the darker path of more fossil fuel development. Today's politicians are all about new pipelines, fracking, tankers, super coal mines and super coal ports, and of course endless oil. It didn't have to be that way. We had other choices, but now the co-founder of the Permaculture movement says "Welcome to the Brown Tech Future". That train to climate disaster must be derailed for us to survive, he says, in a provocative essay called "Crash on Demand". When it comes to David Holmgren you've either heard of him in an almost reverent way, or you haven't a clue. Along with Bill Mollison, David started the permaculture movement back in the 1970's. He's experimented with it ever since, from ecovillages and food forests to retrofitting suburbia. David is not a huge self-promoter. Outside of Australia, he's known mainly by people seeking alternatives to the system of endless growth, and pitiless pillage of the land. Find his web site here. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with David Holmgren (25 minutes) in CD Quality or Lo-Fi So what are we talking about? The co-founder of Permaculture is saying we can't prevent a horrible collapse of the climate unless the current industrial-economic engine crashes. The only previous example of massive greenhouse gas reductions was when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990's. That's what it takes, Homlgren says. This essay is part of a longer train of writings by Holmgren. He began with the book "Permaculture One" published in 1978, when David was 23, at the College of Advanced Education in Hobart, Tasmania. After experimenting with permaculture, from his own consulting firm, Holmgren updated the vision with the 2002 book "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability". That's still the best book on the subject, and fundamental to the permaculture movement world-wide. In 2007, David published a long essay, which became a book, "Future Scenarios". Based mainly on the expectation of peak oil, that work has the four descent senariois: Brown Tech, Green Tech, Earth Steward, and Lifeboats. Future Scenarios, combining Peak Oil and Climate Change, was developed into a web site which fully explains his views. It's a good place for anyone to start. Future Scenarios is also available as a book from Chelsea Green. You can buy the book "Future Scenarios" here. Or read it free online at this web site. The next link in Holmgren's deep work came in 2009, with an analysis of the fatal marriage of the financial system to the fossil fuel energy industry. Download David's 2009 essay, which is part of this train of thought, and this Radio Ecoshock interview, "Money vs Fossil Energy: The battle for control of the world" from this web page. Now we have "Crash on Demand, Welcome to the Brown Tech Future". Find "Crash on Demand" at this web site, or download it as a .pdf here. In our interview, David says he suggested the four scenarios as short-term futures, possibly covering decades. Now he finds humanity has chosen one of the paths, the most deadly for the climate and ourselves, the "Brown Tech Future". In it we find desperate measures like the Tar Sands, O

SUMMARY: From The Farm in Tennessee, alternative guru Albert Bates rates responses to predictions of doom. Film-maker Anne Macksoud on new movie "The Wisdom to Survive" Plus musical activist Rachelle Van Zanten. List your alternative speakers and writers - Albert Bates probably knows them all. As a travelling speaker and permaculture teacher at The Farm in Tennessee, Bates brought out a new chart showing responses from "we will find a way with local community" to "why prolong the agony, we are all doomed". We talk about the players in the end game. Anne Macksoud and film-maker partner John Ankele interviewed many of the same people - plus a lot of young women activists, aboriginal and third world people about the developing climate crisis. The result is their new film "The Wisdom to Survive, Climate Change, Capitalism & Community". We talk through our options. From Canada's West Coast, Rachelle Van Zanten went from a world tour (with "Painted Daisies") to her 400 square foot off-grid cabin. Her songs have become anthems for those opposing pipelines, tankers, fracking, and tar sands. It's also damn fine music. We chat, and then spin two tunes. Listen to/Download this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) (CD Quality recommended for the music!) ALBERT BATES The economy seems to teeter on the edge of break-down, week to week. Fukushima rolls on. Climate scientists are pretty sure we're on our way to catastrophe. That, and a whole lot more, is always lurking in the back our our minds. So...in the great scheme of things, what kind of doomer are you? Albert Bates has a chart to sort out some of the leading alternative thinkers. Albert is the former lawyer, long-time resident of The Farm in Tennessee, and a well-known speaker and writer about everything from alternative energy to permaculture. We begin with a ground-breaking article by Permaculture founder David Holmgren in Australia. It's called "Crash on Demand". (I'll be talking with David next week). Homlgren describes four possible futures, or perhaps responses to the future. One is "Brown Tech" - the path we are on now, substituting high energy sources like Tar Sands and fracking to keep our growth-oriented economy going. If the Brown Tech succeeds in supplanting the another possibility, namely "'Green Tech" - then our world is doomed to climate disaster. We can't let that happen says Holmgren. Perhaps if enough people withdraw from the system, taking out their money and their efforts, we could stimulate an economic crash that was bound to happen. The only example we have of any society drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions was the Soviet Union in the 1990's. Their crash of industry reduced their emissions greatly. That's the kind of cut we need to survive, Holmgren reasons. If none of that works, then we have the "Lifeboat" society, where each of us tries to survive even in an unstable system, perhaps with permaculture, localized food and local currencies. Or in a worst case, the survivor-prepper idea of isolated fortresses ("beans and bullets"). Albert Bates evaluates these scenarios, and the best known alternative thinkers, into four camps on a chart. Here is the article you need to look at. Albert doesn't claim he is photographing reality. It's a map pointing to something happening in our culture, with some of our spokespeople. Dmitri Orlov tried to calculate how many people like him, bloggers with hi influence, would it take to bring about the required change to crash the system. He found it would be about 100,000 activists with the same reach, even if a sky-high figure of half his readers actually took action. Rob Hopkins doesn't want the Crash on Demand. he wants to work with existing structures, including local governments. In Albert's blog, at peaksurfer.blogspot.ca, he reproduces a super chart by David Pollard. I love some of the slogans that typify each position. We have everything from "preparation in community might save us" to "smash o