If these men were typical of the wider populations they are supposed to represent there would be absolutely no doubt that our civilisation is doomed to imminently collapse. However, the political elite is actually veering off on extreme tangents that in no way, comes even close to the pretence of serving the needs of the people any more.

Perhaps they sense the game is up? They are in the midst of a mad scramble to line their pockets before we execute the imminent flip to more equitable, sane and satisfying ways of living and organising ourselves on planet earth. They are the last stand of the old guard – totems of the final days of the industrial era when corrupted governments fought wars for oil rather than preserve our precious planet.

A large and growing proportion of global citizens realise that things have got to change radically and rapidly. The disparity between the mega-rich elite and the poor majority is cavernous; global ecosystems from fisheries to rain forests are stressed and failing; key resources like oil are running out and the denialists look increasingly insane – it is quite clear to everyone that the climate is changing with potentially catastrophic implications for vast swathes of humanity.

What is happening is our global civilisation is pushing up against planetary boundaries. We are learning what happens when 7.125 billion humans eat fish, drive cars, use phones and shop in supermarkets. This unprecedented flow of energy and natural resources is now greater than the natural ecosystems servicing us can sustain.

GDP Machine

Almost every historic human civilisation has hit resource constraints and collapsed as described vividly in Jared Diamond’s book of the same name. The Romans, Aztecs, Easter Islanders and Norse all peaked in population and expanse before dying off in a variety of unpleasant ways. That book, better technology and a planetary perspective should enable us to avoid the same fate. We know how to keep this civilisation going; we have to stop it growing.

Every threat our civilisation faces is driven by conventional growth and every solution is based on the flip from constantly increasing quantity to improving quality. We must learn how to improve our lives without cutting down more of the Amazon, removing more fish from the sea or burning what is left of fossil fuels. On one level this is a seismic transformation, on another it is natural, instinctive and easy; but what we need is a new type of leader to guide the transition.

If your civilisation is expanding outwards you may want gung-ho males in charge, tough pioneering types who are not hesitant to rupture the earth or steal their neighbours resources. If your civilisation is intending to put down roots and sustain itself for millennia you need more wisdom, less muscle. Managing the global commons like the oceans, atmosphere and Amazon cannot happen whilst nation states are locked in competition for resources. We must establish widespread peace, distribute resources fairly and empower healthy local communities to look after their own affairs. That is, we need a shift from centralised power and control to distributed, autonomous networks.

Locally, there are changes we can make to our daily lives. The amount we move around and per-capita resource use must reduce. We all have to work less – switching to a four and then a three day work week. We our compelled to spend more time in our local communities building resilience, this means making suburbs, gardens, roofs and patios ecologically productive. All of us can spend more time growing food, composting and caring for the people we live near – helping with child rearing and the elderly. This can improve our lives. Doing things collaboratively again, with the people we live near, is the resurgence of community we need to overcome contemporary epidemics of apathy and depression.

The industrial age pulled vast swathes of humanity out of poverty and built the infrastructure of the civilisation that now sustains us but it never could be an era that would last for long; it is too extractive, polluting and expansive. Also, the economic processes that co-evolved with industrialisation have led to corporate monoliths that have grown more powerful than nation states and the democratic processes that should govern them. These concentrations of wealth and power have a corrupting influence that has drawn a certain type of man to power.

Mindful of what has happened we can respond. Overall, we need to limit the global economy and manage our global commons. To do this we must break up multinational corporations and bring politicians back under the control of the people and we must live differently. To achieve these ends we need a new kind of leader that is wiser, thinks longer-term and is capable of seeing past the hubris of continuous growth and expansion.

We need Scandinavian-style leadership, female leadership and spiritual leadership. We need a revolution in kindness and compassion to pull poorer nations and other species into our concerns. We don’t want distant leaders with too much power we want local leaders with mud under their finger nails. Lets bypass the bastards who are currently leading us to a fiery armageddon. Peace, abundance, quality of life and an infinite potential for thriving awaits us in the Ecological Age. It is our generation’s challenge and privilege to get there. We are the leaders to make it happen.

The post The Last Leaders of the Expansion appeared first on EcoHustler.

Sign the petition here

Naomi Klein: “I am no dash for gas!”

No Dash for Gas Solidarity Action – Oxford EDF Recruitment Event

Last October ‘No Dash for Gas’ shut-down and occupied EDF’s West Burton gas-fired power station ‘ for a week. EDF is now suing the activists for £5million for costs it claims to have incurred.

The new ‘dash for gas’ will leave us dependent on a highly polluting and increasingly expensive fossil fuel for decades to come. While energy companies profit, our chances of a secure and sustainable future are slipping away.

Groups across the UK are now standing in solidarity with “No Dash For Gas” and fighting to protect the right to protest.

Support No Dash for Gas - #iamnodashforgas

The post No Dash for Gas appeared first on EcoHustler.

A version of this article first featured on Trillion Fund.

Contemporary capitalism has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power at the top of multi-national corporations and in the hands of a few ultra-influential individuals.

The involvement in the US elections of, amongst others, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson gives some indication of how democracy can be distorted by vested interests.

Decisions about the fundamentals of how we live, eat and power our homes are often made in boardrooms many miles from where we live – quite possibly in another country.

Combined to this, market uncertainties presented by both the spluttering global economy and politicians’ diverse attitudes to resource constraints contribute to a feeling of being increasingly buffeted by mysterious forces beyond our control.

If we are concerned with price rises, to whom do we voice our concerns? Only a sadomasochist would give it a go via an energy company’s ‘customer service helpline.’

Do we have to accept whatever price the market throws at us? Are we just cogs in a giant economic machine?

New approaches to ownership suggest that there are ways people can consolidate their position, get a better deal and build up resilience to future shocks.

The key may lie in actually buying a stake and co-owning infrastructure assets that previously have been considered the domain of governments and large companies.

By using new, online, collaborative platforms and pooling resources consumers are getting a better deal on everything from energy bills, access to cars and loans.

More than this, communities that come together to buy key assets and access a better price for services find that not only do they pay less, they get some control back and become more empowered to make important decisions locally. Evidence suggests this both rejuvenates a sense of real democracy and enhances lives (for example 1, 2, 3)

When a village is presented with plans for a wind turbine to be built in the fields behind the school, people can react angrily. They may express fears that it will be ugly, kill birds or hypnotize drivers into thinking they are in a plane. Part of this reaction may simply be a gut reaction to their turf being messed. It is another case of decisions being made remotely, without their consent and affecting their lives.

Source: http://ow.ly/f4M59

There are an increasing number of accounts of enthusiasm replacing anger when local renewable energy assets are owned by and benefit the local community (for example  1, 2  3). Imagine a situation where villagers collaboratively finance the construction of a wind turbine. Not only do they get cheaper electricity, they also get a quarterly dividend from surplus electricity sold back to the grid.

Energy ceases to be abstract and mysterious. It is real, linked to the rotating blade over yonder and households are better motivated to understand it and use it wisely.

Other benefits are less easy to quantify but perhaps even more important. The community is more resilient. This means that should there be, for example, a war in the Middle East and market energy rates soar, this village can stay powered.

The organizational process of community ownership is itself of value. It feels good to come together and find solutions to shared challenges.

What’s next? Neighborhoods might investigate crowdfunding a community space or opt to save the local post office. Perhaps shared funds could turn part of the village recreation ground into an allotment space? Or could a locally run car club reduce the total numbers of cars in the neighborhood, freeing space for a weekly farmers’ market?

When we rebel against the notion that we are powerless individuals, we can see an opportunity: by linking together, we can do better.

The post Come Together, Right Now, Over Energy appeared first on EcoHustler.

Fossil fuels are the most concentrated form of energy readily available on the earth and therefore the easiest to control and charge for. So perhaps it is not a surprise that the states that discovered they sat atop gargantuan, subterranean oceans of black gold have seen corrupt regimes grow fat, ruled by brutal dictators. As their own people rise up after years of oppression they cling to power with a mindless and vicious desperation. They lost their humanity along with their minds long ago to the spell of far too much money.

Corporations have for hundreds of years been perfecting the art of concentrating money and so they resonate perfectly with fossil fuels. Of the biggest five corporations in the world four sell fossil energy; with this has come immense power.

Today, corporations that, by definition, solely function to create profit for shareholders are the primary controllers of the supply and flow of information and energy around the world. The heads of corporations wield their power more subtly then dictators but they too have lost their minds. Even as the people revolt and the atmosphere threatens to run-away they are determined to keep concentrating the flows of energy and information to increase their own personal wealth.

Corporations have known for many years that the great oil wells will dry up so their eyes naturally turn to nuclear. Nuclear depends on an even more highly concentrated natural resource (Uranium) the movement of which is carefully monitored and controlled. It requires a high degree of technical knowledge to manage available only to an elite minority. The centralized facilities are also ideal for metering, furthering their concentration of wealth.

By controlling the information flows, corporations and their allies in government can maintain the widespread belief that we ‘need’ fossil fuels and nuclear to fill the ‘energy gap’. This is, in fact, bullshit.

Corporations are forcing fossil fuels and nuclear down our throats because this is how they can continue to most effectively concentrate their wealth. Unfortunately, because it threatens the future of human civilization this time it goes beyond the realm of standard, selfish greed and into the realm of Really Evil Bullshit. However, it is in fact the same bullshit that has been going on since prehistory; the elite minority concentrating and hogging resources and then misleading the masses. 

The safe, free and renewable energy we need to use is easily available if we have the right technology. To capture it we need to develop local, dispersed energy infrastructure and sustain major investment in the modal shift away from centralization. This revolution from central to local control represents the democratization of energy supply. Power literally changes hands from the corporations to us. We are talking, of course, about small local facilities for solar, wind, secondary biomass or combination of the three (and other appropriate small-scale local renewable energy technologies).

Renewable energy cannot immediately provide the same amount of energy as fossil fuels and nuclear. This is why we all have to use much less energy. However, so long as we share the energy fairly and ensure we have enough to be safe and comfortable this is not going to reduce our well being. Crucially though, the benefits of democratizing energy production totally offset the short-term reduction of energy available to us. It empowers the people and disempowers the corporations who have frogged marched us to global catastrophe.

When BP (rebranded as ‘Beyond Petroleum’) recently announced a 4.5 billion investment in further extraction of North Sea oil they were applauded by Prime Minister Cameron. This clearly shows the extent to which politicians turn their backs on the needs of the people and the planet and work instead on behalf on corporations.  This is another 4.5 billion of capital spent going in the wrong direction: concentrating wealth and polluting the atmosphere.

When this 4.5 billion is added to the trillions that continue to be invested in fossil fuels and nuclear elsewhere we get a sense of the scale of the problem and it is clear that we can no longer allow corporations and corrupt politicians to keep making bad decisions. Their modus operandi (to concentrate wealth) is the opposite of what the people and the planet needs. Corporations must, once again, be brought under control of the people and only be entitled to operate if they can prove they do so without causing harm.

The current economic crash is nothing new. The world economy famously crashed in 1929 and there was a run on the banks in 1933. Just like today the powerful elite had taken too much, gone to far and let their sick money madness run away with them. President Roosevelt responded with the New Deal. The banking system was investigated, found to be corrupt and cleaned out. There was huge government spending creating jobs and infrastructure. In short, Roosevelt spread the wealth around.

Today we need a new-New Deal only this time it must also rise to unprecedented, global, environmental challenges. It must spread the money around, make safe our energy supply and empower a majority of citizens to become actors in the shift to sustainability. Wrestling the control of energy, money and information away from corporations is the way to do all these things.

Democratizing energy supply is a key part of democratizing everything and moving to a sustainable, fairer and better world. It is a key element of sharing out Spaceship Earth’s natural resources in such a way that the crew is not oppressed, disenfranchised and apathetic. Instead we can become empowered to better ourselves, live better and together build civilization’s secure future.

The branched structure of trees allows them to most efficiently collect sunlight, which they transform, into hydrocarbons. So their roots branch to maximize the absorption of water. The neurons in our brain assume the same spread out structure to maximize their connectedness. The Internet, which works well, has also assumed naturally this dispersed structure. This stands in stark contrast to the way dictators, banks and corporations centralize flows of resources, energy information and money. This concentration is vile and despicable because it leads to gross inequality and suffering for the 99% who foot the bill but it is also in violation of our planets biology, so it not surprising that it is killing the biosphere.

The branched structure of the brain (left) and universe. The Internet also looks like this.

When information is centralized the bullshit really hits the fan. Vast tones of steaming, unmitigated bullshit is pumped daily through mainstream media channels into citizens minds. Historically significant levels of bullshit like: ‘Beyond Petroleum”;  ‘to big to fail’ and ‘Iraq has WMD.’ It is all bullshit and if you watch TV or buy a Murdoch newspaper you are likely to believe it.

Just in time, the Internet has inverted the information infrastructure in favor of independence of thought and liberation. Now, we all urgently have to take personal responsibility for the information entering our sensitive brains. We must choose carefully and question everything. In principle, it is better to be like a neuron and be connected to many independent information sources then to get all your information from one place.

If it feels wrong to ‘bailout’ bankers with trillions of dollars, trust that. If you intuit that corporate money should be taken out of the fossil age and spread around the world in next generation renewables, trust that. Your instincts are right and worth far more the bullshit coming out of the mouths of those working solely to endlessly concentrate their own personal wealth.  Link up with others and lets take the power back.

Just as the brave actors of the Arab spring had the realization that they could no longer live in poverty under the tyranny of leaders who sat upon vast concentrations of wealth so we, the citizens of the ‘developed word’ must rise up against the tyranny of the corporate control of energy, information and money. Failure to do so is an abdication of our responsibility and would stand in sad contrast to our brothers and sisters braving torture and death in the Arab spring.

Success on the other hand puts us on track (just in time) to turn the situation around allowing us to move beyond the tired and devastating endless competition for money and into an era of cooperation; a shift from perpetual scarcity, war and insecurity to abundance, peace and good times.

• For more on energy democracy check here
• For more on money democracy check here and here
• For more on information democracy check here & here

The post Money, information, energy and bullshit appeared first on EcoHustler.