Charles Darwin: Building Better Worlds.

Terraforming, a concept familiar in sci-fi for decades now is rapidly coming into the mainstream. In fiction it has generally been shorthand for the alteration of planets for colonisation, forming planets to be more like Terra, Earth. In reality while it is brought up from time to time in relation to Mars the reason it is starting to move into public knowledge is that it is (and will increasingly prominently continue to be) Industry's favoured solution to climate change. Instead of cutting emissions or adapting to less polluting ways they instead want to continue as usual and hope that future science will magically fix things. The fact that the impact of climate change and dwindling resources will almost certainly lead to larger and larger wars and thus less chance for innovation in peaceful areas is irrelevant in their world. After all the quarterly financial report is all that really matters anyway.

However it seems terraforming has been around a lot longer than most people had assumed, back in the middle of the C19th Darwin, the Royal Navy and Kew Gardens botched together their own forest eco-system that turned a barren volcanic island into a lush expanse of greenery. But hey, creationists could've achieved something even better if they cared to pray hard enough.

Heroes only do profitable things.

To display conspicuous bravery while ending the life of others will get you medals, acclaim and perhaps even a promotion and higher pay. However to risk your life for the good of others or the environment is to open yourself to condemnation. Sure in a few decades you might get retrospective praise, editorials that devote a paragraph to praise and the rest of it how the author "got it".

So we come to an event even the considerably left leaning guardian can't really bring itself to praise. Greenland is probably sitting on a lot of oil and gas albeit it a long way under the ocean, so to get at it oil companies will need to use deep drilling. Greenland's water is much colder (so the oil will take much longer to disperse) and the area of proposed drilling is far more remote thus making recovery operations much slower.

So Greenpeace stepped up to the plate. Sure most of us don't want the precious eco-systems of the Arctic region destroyed but... ya know freecell isn't going to play itself. Facing off against Greenland police boats and the Danish navy four activists somehow managed to evade these patrols and then somehow mountaineer themselves onto a drilling platform scouting out this alleged oil. I mean thats some James Bond shit, zipping about on rubber dingies and then through mad physical exertion boarding the bad guy's floating base. No one killed, no one harmed and all for an admiral ideological goal that doesn't benefit the activists in any material way.

So how does the Guardian decide to headline it?

Greenland's prime minister lambasts Greenpeace for raiding Arctic oil rig

fair enough

The Japanese really hate the ocean.

A documentary about Japanese Dolphin hunting filmed secretly by activists has not had a warm reception in glorious Nippon:

The cost in blood of precious metals.

Something thats quite well known in environmental circles and indeed among the media classes (albeit seldom reported) is that in order to maximise profit most tech companies use precious metals acquired from the DR Congo which were mined by child slaves. This is not the only source of precious metals of course but they aren't as cheap (note the stalwart Australian media reporting on African suffering when it affects national profits).

Huffpo reports a fairly cheap looking video is trying to alter people's perceptions, still its something easy to forward and related to pop culture that it might get some notice:

Huffington Post suggests Gulf Oil catastrophe could become a Methane Catastrophe too!

Methane is definitely leaking from the Deep Water Horizon spill in large enough quantities to create dead zones where oxygen breathing creatures can't live. This ya know would be very in itself but thanks to pollution other dead zones off the US south coast already exist so ya know its bad but our corporate rulers would likely to be able to get away with it.

Nah what the Methane could do is cause a huge poisonous tsunami that would strike most of the south coast. Oh yeah then it could cause a large amount of the sea to turn into steam which then might cause a large section of sea floor to rise and lower which would then create further Tsunamis from the massive amount of energy such a raising and lowering would cause. Happy fun times.

The article says this is still an unlikely scenario but as time goes on it becomes more worthy of consideration. If you've got relatives who live on or near the south coast it might be wise to advise them to get their affairs in order.

George Monbiot owns.

George Monbiot is the very stereotype of the woolly upper class British do-gooder. He is also an intelligent and passionate man who I live in constant fear will kill himself because he seems so damn aware of the environmental mess we are in. He has a high public profile for taking on various climate deniers and other unpleasant people. He also attempted a citizen's arrest on Michael Bolton which alone should earn him the respect of decent people everywhere.

I'm working through a backlog of his articles, being mostly accurate they can be really depressing but still they're worth reading, here are a few highlights of recent times:

Universal Cure An examination of how much privilege contributes to success in life in the UK (a lot) and then he references a novel solution first suggested by Peter Wilby a decade ago. I don't know if it would work but its certainly interesting.


Its likely this idea is worth applying to America too, you're just a teasy bit more socially mobile than us

Carbon Graveyard In which he points out that the UK has outsourced rather than reduced its' greenhouse gas output and how much of a problem consumption and tying economic stability to consumption is for the environment.

Northern Rock the Planet A short description of just how hypocritical and deceitful bankers can be.

I'll try to keep more on top of Monbiot editorials in future thus link them in a more timely manner but even if I just keep linking blocs of articles from time to time they're well worth reading.

US Govt joins US Military in asserting Peak Oil is here.

Back in April the Joint Chiefs issued a report stating that by 2015 there could be a shortfall of 10 million barrels of oil a day and stated its' intentions to deal with the issues facing their military needs for oil and also how it might affect global security. Back at the beginning of June (I just found out) the EIA, "the statistics arm of the US Department of Energy" put out a forecast for the next ten years which shows essentially no growth in global oil production.

This has two very scary implications: 1) If America thinks oil supply has peaked, it probably has (well technically it did in the 70s but w/e). 2) Back when America at least allegedly didn't think peak oil was likely to occur soon it invaded Iraq to secure oil there. To function the US Military needs a lot of oil so theres a strong risk / likelihood invading oil rich countries like Iran and Venezuela may shift from a rhetorically desirable position to an outright necessity to keep the Imperialism Machine going. Lamentably China also wants secure oil supplies.

Uh-oh.