Summary: 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
