Cookienomics for dummies...sample exam questions...

...You are the prime minister of a medium sized European country and you have just been told that global warming is happening a little bit (well a big bit actually) faster than expected. In fact so fast that you have decided to cancel your skiing holiday as there won't be any snow anywhere. Do you:
1) spend 5 billion pounds on an ID card scheme that nobody wants?
2) lock up everybody that you don't like for 56, 58 or 90 days?
3) knock 300 million pounds off the climate change budget?
4) invade Iran?
Please write on both sides of the recycled paper. Or use the multiple choice option, be totally silly and go with all four possibilities to qualify as a competent and decisive modern leader.

Fair Trade - The Movie. An eq.tv original.

...Please watch this great video and pass it on. Oxfam

Scary movie...

...when you think about the odds we only have one choice.

The human condition...

...after a very good few bottles of Taylor's port in Cardiff is not a pretty sight. Still Tim (as in Tim Brett, photographer-plug, well he deserves it) made some coffee, so it's all good...yes, well before we lose the plot we must ask ourselves where are we going. After the family outing of the past week that is not an easy question to answer. After all I'm now an uncle to a load of good looking kids. What will their world look like when they are my age? Warmer? Chateau Cardiff vin rouge? A very nice year. But what of the wider consequences of our little experiment with mother nature known as market capitalism, or globilaztion? Who gives a fuck? Scary movie? I will probably die in the next fifty years. My kids will probably live on to face the consequences of the global and liberal market party. I do not envy them, nor do I wish to be in their position fifty years further down the road. I have had a wonderful night with my family drinking port and falling over like a good trooper. The internet kept me awake all night pondering my kid's future. It was not a pretty sight at least in my imagination. Spinoza would say we have a moral duty to be good and not to harm. As Deus sive natura I take it that we, as well as the rest of creation, are included in this most divine of integrated plans. Darwin's "dangerous idea" put an end to all the speculations of the philosophers and the world's religions, no matter how sweet and enticing they may be. We are left to clean up the mess. Postmodernism tried and failed. So now, like Kant, we awake from our dogmatic slumbers and look around at a planet that is in ecological meltdown. This is not a Roman fin de siecle. This is the real deal. The hitchiker's guide to the end of life, the universe and everything. 42. Anyone got the question? Since the Pax Americana invented the end of season sale of the assets of planet earth we are all living in a pre apocalyptic state of fear. The war on terror engulfs the agenda of the chattering classes. Then they define our reality. Hitler and Goebbels would be proud of the legacy of ignorance that is the modern world. Sadly we have neither the time or the freedom to escape the karma of our modernistic largesse. We must act. Now. Il faut cultiver notre jardin, Thus I petition the Prime Minister of England to take up the baton of Winston Churchill, who talked us through our darkest hour, and engage in a policy that will encourage the people to see that is in their own interest to work for the preservation and sustainability of life on earth.

Interview with David Holmgren...

...co-founder of the permaculture movement. David tells how , by finding small scale, slow solutions, we can achieve the transition to a lower energy society based on cooperation rather than consumption. Local small scale food production will be crucial to this process. We will all be gardners in the future.

Bill Mollison on permaculture...

...with, once again, thanks to United Diversity for this link. Bill is the founding father of the permaculture movement and shows how sustainable ways of working with nature can safeguard the future of our food supply. There is a garden of Eden. We are living in it if we only realise it and use these methods to develop the land of the earth in an integrated way, rather than the sociopathic path of destruction we have been following so far. The number of permaculture projects on the planet is growing every day and anyone with even the smallest piece of land can use these techniques to create a living and productive environment.

Clean up your act, Tesco!...

...and stop being arseholes. Two of my very best friends come from Bulgaria and they are both kind and idealistic young people. Which is why when I read in this morning's Guardian that Bulgarian workers in Cornwall had been "forced to 'live like pigs on scraps', scavenging vegetables from the fields when their Latvian gangmaster withheld their pay for 34 days" I nearly puked. This is Cornwall, for pity's sake, where I used to go on summer holidays and eat Cornish pasties and drink scrumpy.
"They were sent to work through a subcontracting chain at Southern England Farms, a leading vegetable farming and packing company that appears on Tesco's website as one of its flagship local producers of courgettes, cauliflowers and cabbage. They were housed in dirty caravans, with seven trying to sleep in a six-berth van in one example. They were initially charged £50 a week each for this overcrowded accommodation."
What the fuck? Is Tesco's now owned by the descendants of Heinrich Himmler? Are the British to be able to eat cheap food because subcontractors of Tesco's run forced labour camps in the 21st century? Have we become a nation that turns a blind eye to blatant abuses of minimal human rights? In 2006 Tesco's made 2.21 billion pounds profit partly on the back of forced labour. This is a company that shames the reputation of Britain. What about the many British farmers who are also screwed by Tesco's greed and indifference to whether or not they can make a living? Get your act together, Tesco and stop acting like a corporate parasite. Sir Terry Leahy, if you have any honour, do something about this latest Tesco scandal or resign. I remember when Tesco closed down their store in the centre of Cardiff and made a killing. They have not changed a bit.
Action Network
Tescopoly
Friends of the Earth

Peak oil...

...with thanx to Josef and United Diversity for this link. I agree that we have to start to value our resources to achieve a sustainable future. Here's another cool link from Josef: The Great Turning

"We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.

-The Earth Charter (2000)"

Seeds of suicide...

...Monsanto's Indian dream of happiness turns into a nightmare of ruin and despair for the Indian farmers. Vandana Shiva explains how Monsanto causes destruction and misery in India while still making a profit and being indifferent to the problems of their customers.

Aad's Santa with Nepali dancer's mask...

...The weather in Amsterdan is so hot at the moment that Santa's feet are beginning to melt. He is a candle that Aad found in the Jordaan area of the city one evening. As our new mascot he will need looking after if he is not to be a victim of global warming!

Wanna celebrate your 1000th birthday?...

...Well according to Aubrey de Grey it's just an engineering problem! TED blog has all the details and Aubrey has the beard. If you think that's bananas well I got the link from greenLAgirl while reading her piece on Chiquita's gun running antics. The irony is that many of the women who work on conventional banana plantations don't live very long because of all the pesticides they inhale. But there is an alternative: EU support for St Lucia's eco bananas, that are being marketed by supermarkets such as Sainsbury's.

More silliness...

...from Britain's mainstream media ("The great global warming swindle"
from Channel 4, where else?) who are trying to tell us that the sun dunnit and good old Homo sapiens had nothing to do with climate change. Svensmark, a Danish space scientist, has a pet theory for cosmic ray influence on climate change. What is it about the Danes? Old Forkbeard's been doing too much Amanita
again! Get a life, television. The old scientific
mechanistic model, took so long to wake up to climate change because it
was far too busy trying to make cosmic ray guns. Now we are moving to a
more dynamic Weltanschauung and slowly becoming
aware that our ancestors were not so stupid after all. Thanks to Gentleman
Hobbes for this piece of silliness.

One planet=$10,000...going, going, gone!...

...as scientists are offered cash to discredit the IPCC report on global warming by Exxon/Bush think tank, this video shows how they do it. Would you buy a second hand iPod from George W. Bush?

"Kyrill"...the big picture...

...as the hurricane in Holland kills three.

Laplace's demon...

...an environmental ethic for a dyslexic demon et tout le monde...

Paradox by Amsteractive...burning trees...

...After a few technical hitches our first Amsteractive short film is up on the net. It is about the tradition of burning the Christmas trees on the Museumplein on January 7 and asks a simple question. At a time of climate change and worries over carbon emissions does this send out the right message? Would it not make more sense to plant the trees somewhere or at least to use them as biofuel?

Joe at audiophobia did a great editing job. Richard as usual was the superglue that held the thread of the project together when the technology let us down. It is amazing how many hours work go into a three minute film. Thanks to everyone who helped.

Decentralised energy...

...Greenpeace

Santa's melting runway...