The Radio Ecoshock Show

BURNED OUT: Crops and Climate Change

2009-07-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

Food and climate change with two speakers: Dr. Geoffrey Heal, an eco-economist from the Columbia School of Business, NY, speaking at the London School of Economics; and author/food activist Wayne Roberts at McMaster University, Canada. Wayne Roberts courtesty of Maggie Hughes "News from the Other Side" at CFMU FM McMaster U Radio.

No copyright music.

IMPORTANT NOTES FOR RADIO STATIONS AND PODCAST SUBSCRIBERS:

This is the last show of our 2009 Spring season. Rebroadcasting stations, podcast listeners and regular downloaders: please note - I've laid out 8 key re-runs of Radio Ecoshock for the Summer. The download list will show up on Wednesday July 8th, as well as on our archive page. Radio stations can find a list of any music used, or other production notes, in the expanded listing at http://www.ecoshock.net That's starting July 8th.

These are the most important, and most downloaded programs we've ever done - as chosen by the listeners downloading from our site. The e-votes are in.

I'll be out of email contact from July 11th to August 11th. I'll check out all email then, please don't expect a reply. There is no electricity or phones where I'm going.

I'll be back with a whole new season, 48 news Radio Ecoshock Shows, starting in Late August. Don't change anything on your podcast - the new shows will show up as soon as they are ready in August.

Here are the links to full speeches by our feature speakers:

Geoffrey Heal to London School of Economics (about 57 min)
CD quality 52 MB
speech Lo-Fi 12 MB
Geoffrey Heal Q and A (about 30 min) Lo-Fi only 7 MB

Wayne Roberts "Food and Climate Change" about 1 hour. Maggie Hughes "The Other Side of the News"

Here is the basic script for this week's show:

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock - home of the awful truth.

We could talk about a half million more people kicked out of their jobs. The record number of regular mortgages 2 or 3 months behind. Collapsing states, budget slashing towns, bankrupt banks.

But hey, why bother with all that bad news, when the biggest story ever told is unfolding before our eyes. I know disappearing coral, birds and plants nobody has heard of doesn't sell. How about this: the food we all eat is under pressure even in these early days of the climate shift.

[Geoffrey Heal Quick Clip: No One is Working on Hotter Crops]

That is economist Dr. Geoffrey Heal speaking to the London School of Economics. He's going to tell us about agricultural loss already underway, and projected in the coming decades. Why fertile California will take a hit. Dr. Heal wonders why America is so slow to react. Could it be the fossil fuel lobby? Did the oil and coal boys twist the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill?

Then food activist and author Wayne Roberts works through the challenge of feeding a world where nature is disrupted. Food and global warming, in a speech recorded by Maggie Hughes.

Personally, I'm heading out tomorrow to buy a couple more sacks of hard red wheat for our emergency supply cupboard. Each bag is 44 kilograms, or about 50 pounds, of the best organic. I'll pour the wheat into Mylar bags, toss in two or three oxygen depleters, and seal it all in a 5 gallon bucket. That should keep at least 10 years, maybe 20.

The wheat news is good and bad. In the Summer of 2009, wheat prices are going down, because so many new acres have been planted. That doesn't mean it will all survive until harvest. Canada is a big wheat producer, and the Canadian Wheat Board predicts a 20 percent cross loss due to a drought in Western Canada. So dry, the seeds never sprouted, or tiny blades of wheat died. It's the Northern tip of a new Dust Bowl expected to fill the North American West as carbon levels rise in the atmosphere.

Two other big wheat producers, China and Australia, are also in big trouble as the rains stop reaching the fields. Increasing heat waves are also a threat to wheat.

Did I mention the new unstoppable wheat disease called ug99. It was first found in Uganda, but has now spread to the Middle East, including Iran. The only response is to burn the crop. So far, we have no resistant varieties, and experts in both Europe and North America say they expect ug99 to arrive sooner of later. That could devastate wheat production.

I like bread. I like some every day. Maybe this year, maybe three years from now, wheat and bread products could rocket up in price, or disappear for a while. That's when I'll crack open my buckets and make my own.

On to the show. First of all - American climate politics. The U.S. Supreme court recently gave the Environmental Protection Agency control over carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Why didn't the Obama Administration use their green appointees to get busy on greenhouse gases, through the EPA? Suddenly, a new piece of legislation appears in the House, where political contributions reign. Suddenly, a bunch of Republicans vote for the Waxman-Markey Bill, which is really a license for the coal and oil companies to carry on.

Let's get a different perspective from Dr. Geoffrey Heal, an economist from the Columbia Business School in New York. His speech on May 6th 2009 second guessed the Obama energy deal - and went on to explain why America has been hustled backward on climate change. Then Heal, who has been working the connections between economy and the environment since 1979, paints a dire picture of agricultural losses - as high as 40 percent world wide, as the climate shifts to it's new hot state.

Heal3 Waxman Markey end of speech.wav 5:31

Why is the American government the last to know we need action to save the climate? Geoffrey Heal gives us three bad reasons, in this speech as first visiting professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, the LSE.

Heal1 Anti Science Companies.wav 2:05
Heal4 Corporate AntiScience.wav 2:04
Heal5 US is a Petro State.wav 5:27

Is it true that the United States is the third largest oil producer, and second biggest natural gas producer, in the world? No wonder American climate policy seems to Saudi Arabian.

There you have it: fossil fuel corporations fought to cloud our minds, aided by a history of Conservatism and anti-scientific religious interests. I think he should have added all of us. We love our big cars and leaving all the lights on. We love to fly around on holidays while eating far too much. We're all in this climate tragedy together. Never forget the power of the people to empower a wrong-headed civilization - on our charge cards, no less.

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. I'm hungry to get on to our main topic this program: how climate change will affect our dinner plates. Here is more from Dr. Geoffrey Heal, from his speech "Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change"

Heal6 Farm Loss.wav 3:37
Heal 7 World Hydrology Calif Farms.wav 4:15

Finally, Dr. Heal wrestles with the economic cost of mass extinction. Sad but true, we need to enter this fact into the company books: up to 40 percent of all species on Earth could go extinct by 2100. How will that affect sales, you ask?

Geoffrey Heal is not your standard corporate accountant. He knows extinctions impact the environment in many strange ways. Take the Pacific Sea Otter for example. It was almost wiped out in California - and what happened? The fisheries also died out off that coast. It turns out the Sea Otter is a "corner-stone species". The otters were eating other creatures that kept things in balance for fish. When Sea Otters from Oregon were brought back to California, the local fishing improved.

Other connections between the species are harder to see. Let's hear Dr. Heal explain how the extinction of the Passenger Pigeons may have boosted Lyme disease in the United States.

Heal 8 Cost of Extinction.wav 11:14

That was Dr. Geoffrey Heal, from the Columbia School of Business, speaking on "Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change". This presentation was at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics in Britain, May 6th, 2009. Audio enhancement by Carl Hartung and Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock. Find the full 55 minute speech plus Q and A on our climate pages, at www.ecoshock.org. And in the links at the top of this blog entry.

[Radio Ecoshock Station ID]

I'm Alex - and we're talking climate disruption of the food supply.

OsofNews_Roberts 1 You can change 7 sec.wav 7 sec

That's author and food activist Wayne Roberts, currently employed as a sustainable food advisor for the city of Toronto, Canada. He spoke at McMaster University in Hamilton on May 5th, 2009 - on “Food and Climate Change”.

Here is the first part of that speech by Wayne Roberts.

OSofNews_090519_WayneRoberts_For Radio 18 min.wav 18 min

You have been listening to Wayne Roberts, a long time food activist, making the connections with the polluted environment and climate change. This talk at McMaster University in Canada was part of a college radio program called "The Other Side of the News" on CFMU FM. Producer Maggie Hughes just announced she had to give up her weekly radio program for health reasons. But she'll continue to get the facts others miss, in specials posted on the audio exchange web site radio4all.net That's radio the number 4 all dot net for Indy producer Maggie Hughes past work, and coming shows. Thanks Maggie.

Or check out her web site at www.oside.ca

That's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Find the full speeches by Dr. Geoffrey Heal and Wayne Roberts as free mp3 downloads on our web site. Choose "climate" from our Audio on Demand menu, lower down on the main page, ecoshock.org. Or get Wayne Roberts full speech as broadcast on "The Other Side of the News" here.

Load up your IPOD, mp3 player or computer with hot programs and speeches from Ecoshock. It takes a lot to really grasp this developing storm, in your heart.

I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for being on the journey with me.

Have a great Summer. Enjoy yourself - and put away the harvest as it comes.

ENJOY YOURSELF (It's Later Than You Think)

2009-06-25T16:18:00.000-07:00

It is already too late to stop rampant climate change? An emailed blog posting asks: "Do we just enjoy the time we have left?"

Scientist James Lovelock thinks so. He wanted the sub-title of his new book "Vanishing Gaia" changed from "Final Warning" to "Enjoy it while you can."

Is it really that serious? We'll hear top American and British administrators say it is.

But I want to contrast the response by two scientists: James Lovelock, who at age 90 plans to blast out into space, and NASA's James Hansen, the first world-class climate scientist to put himself up for arrest, to stop mountain top mining in West Virginia, this week. (Hansen was arrested, along with 31 others, including actress Daryl Hannah, on a West Virginia road, outside a humoungous toxic coal ash dump.)

Doubting coal barons, the black secret of George Soros, U.S. climate dodgers in Canada - from outer space to the deepest pit - enjoy yourself. This is Radio Ecoshock.

The program is also loaded with music clips – from Guy Lombardo’s opening 1950 hit “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)”, another version by The Specials UK concert, samples from country music star (and anti-mountain top removal activist) Kathy Mattea, talk and music from Tom Petty, an oldie by Lee Dorsey – and a lot of fun clips, including stuff from the trailer for “Skipjack” and even Winston Churchill.

But the question is deadly serious. Should we give up?

Find all the video and audio links used in this Radio Ecoshock program here. Click on through to the source material – on our climate crisis.

READ MORE

AMERICAN CLIMATE CHANGE

2009-06-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

The star of today's Radio Ecoshock Show is the American climate.

We'll start with the most important Press Conference of 2009: the release of the multi-agency report "Global Climate Change Impacts In the United States". It's the list of violent storm warming, heat wave predictions, cities and parts of whole states either going under-water, or roasting without water. Everyone will know the climate is badly out of balance.

Welcome to our special coverage of new report "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" from the White House briefing. After years of denial, terrible changes already happening in U.S.

This one hour version of Radio Ecoshock contains:

a) clip from Dr. Jane Lubchenco (see bio notes below)

(b) full presentation of Dr. Thomas Karl (outlining terrible impacts for the U.S.)

(c) analysis interview with Joe Romm, from climateprogress.org

(d) full presentation by Dr. Jerry Melillo (more terrible impacts)

Plus a special interview with Dr. Anthony Barnosky on his new book "Heatstroke, Nature in an Age of Global Warming"

This is the most important report on climate change ever released by the American government. The picture is bleak. Many Southern U.S. cities will become hot like Baghdad during the summer. Crops will burn out.

On the coasts, new flooding estimates show more than 3 feet of sea level rise before 2100 - enough to flood New York subways, rail-lines, and much more. That doesn't count surges from storms expected to be much worse.

Please listen to this compelling audio.

The book "Heatstroke" is also quite important. Antony Barnosky is a field researcher and curator at University California Berkeley. He realized climate change was coming in the early 1980's - and set out to document how Nature (especially small mammals) responded to previous climate shifts. He fears mass extinctions for many reasons, especially since there may never have been a warming starting in an already warm period, and likely never one so fast (one century) as we are inflicting on the Earth. Solid science from 30 years of research shows big problems for all the creatures of the Earth, as we continue to pollute the atmosphere.

Radio Ecoshock 090619 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes:
Presentation recorded from official release of the report at the White House, April 16th, 2009.

Here are quick bio notes of speakers:

Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans & Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator
Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center, lead for NOAA’s climate services, and a
lead author of the report
Dr. Jerry Melillo, Director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,
Mass., and a lead author of the report

There is no copyright music. It is OK to take clips out for your own use in non-profit radio, to blog or pass on to friends.

Those with a shorter public affair program can use this 24 minute version, if you remove the Green 960 Station ID at 14:03

U.S. government Press Conference Video and slides here.

Get report copy here.

Get the word out there!

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

Climate Catastrophe - Can the Economic Crash Save Us?

2009-06-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

News can be a poison sometimes. Newspaper owners learned years ago that people buy frightening headlines. The motto of TV news: if it bleeds, it leads. The most horrific stories get top billing.

We all need to turn away from time to time, to those we love, to amazing Nature, and the trivia that convinces us for another day.

Lately, the climate news is too shocking even for Radio Ecoshock. In the last two weeks, I've been rebuilding myself, and listeners, with back-stop nourishment. We had programs on your food security, and how to be the change you desire.

Meanwhile, I've looked for a way to communicate the probability of catastrophe, without knocking out our will to live, and our activism.

HERE ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL WANT FOR THIS RADIO ECOSHOCK SHOW:

Thomas Homer-Dixon
Presentation to the UK Parliament's Peak Oil & Gas Subgroup May 6 2009
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698157/e5a0c9c/thomas_homerdixon.html

Q and A session at UK Parliament presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698159/e9e2219b/thomas_homerdixon_q_and_a.html

PowerPoint Presentation
http://www.4shared.com/file/103698158/9ee5110d/thomas_homerdixon_ppt.html

All from this site: http://appgopo.org.uk
(and thanks to Ecoshock listener Chris from Riseup.net for tipping me off to this speech!)

Phil England and Climate Radio
www.climateradio.org

Hope shows up in the most improbably places. In the last half of this program, after an overview of our predicament, we'll explore how the economic crash may delay the worst of climate disruption. Isn't that twist? We may get time to save the ecosphere, due to our incompetence and criminality.

Hang in, as Phil England of Climate Radio arrives with experts calling for a planned economic contraction to save the remains of the natural world. He'll interview Tim Helweg-Larsen, Director of the Public Interest Research Centre at www.pirc.info.

Phil has a regular program on Radiance FM in London, UK. That's in our second half hour, along with a little black depression humor, called the "Global Meltdown Darby".

Before that, you'll hear an overview of climate and Peak Oil, from Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon. I've prepared a digest of his new presentation to a Committee in the British Parliament. It's crammed with science and analysis from his new book "Carbon Shift", including a re-think of how we can respond, given the near bankruptcy of governments and financial institutions.

But first....

The Horrible Climate News

READ MORE....

PHIL ENGLAND CREDITS:

"To listen to this programme and for a list of references visit the Climate Radio archive at www.climateradio.org. The 300-350 Show is made for ResonanceFM in London and syndicated free to not-for-profit community radio stations and independent media outlets around the globe. The programme is named after what is now believed to the safe level in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This finding is based on the work of James Hansen and his team in a paper titled "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim." [http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126]

The Global Meltdown Darby performed by the Irish poet known as "Grassy Knoll".

The Thomas-Homer Dixon piece contained a clip from the new movie trailer "Steam Bath" with action man Val Kilmer. Find the trailer here:
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/03/13/val-kilmers-global-warming-steam-bath-flick-gets-a-trailer/

We also played a clip from "The End of the Age of Oil" by David Rovics http://www.davidrovics.com.

Find all our past Radio Ecoshock programs at our web site.

Alex Smith
your host.
Radio Ecoshock

BE THE CHANGE Climate Conversion

2009-06-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

This program explores how green leaders are converting to climate activism. And how you can move from spectator to citizen action.

You'll hear Forest Ethics co-Founder Tzeporah Berman in a moving speech, going to a new climate group Power Up Canada. United Church Pastor Bruce Sanguin gives us a new vision of Gaia-friendly Christianity. And Maureen Jack-LeCroix explains her calling to "Be the Change" - as host of the recent Be The Change Circles event in Vancouver. There's more... Arran Stephens of Nature's Path, and two conference guests - but first, here are some links to help you dig further.

BE THE CHANGE EARTH ALLIANCE
http://www.bethechangeearthalliance.org

You Tube video of founder Maureen Jack-LeCroix - why she devoted 10 years to Gaia and founded Be The Change Circles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smLyRHo7aS0

ECOSHOCK PROGRAMS ON CLIMATE, DRYING FORESTS AND FIRES

BURNING DOWN THE WEST Wildfires stoke the carbon load. Ecoshock Show 071116 (1 hr) Interview: Dr. Tom Gower, saying fires in N. Canada make positive feedback; speech by Temperate Rainforest activist Pas Rasmussen - why she is now a climate activist as well. Echoes by Andrea Reimer of the Wilderness Committee. New research on the Rockies burning by Lara Kueppers; were California fires climate change?
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock/ES_071116_Show.mp3

CURRENT PLAGUES - FUTURE FORESTS Can forests keep up with global warming? Ecoshock Show 070706 1 hour
Dr. Clive Welham on ravages on pine bark beetle in Rockies; Dr. Del Meidinger speech "Future Forests" to 6th N.A. Forest Ecology Conference.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/2007/ES_070706_Show.mp3

RISING SEAS, DRYING WEST Ecoshock Show 080815 Top IPCC organizer & U of Arizona Professor Jonathan Overpeck speech at Washington U. After updating the world climate report, Overpeck predicts climate impacts on North America. 1 hour CD Quality Lo-Fi 14 MB http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080815_Show_LoFi.mp3

Drying of the West with National Geographic author Robert Kunzig; the first Carbon Tax in North America in B.C. (and what it means for the U.S.); censored Canadian scientists - speech clip from Dr. John Fyfe, IPCC author. Oh yeah, and some hope. 1 hour. Ecoshock show 080222 Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080222_Show_LoFi.mp3

TZEPORAH BERMAN SPEECHES

Climate Conversion - Tzeporah Berman speech Be The Change Un-Conference, Vancouver May 23, 2009. 16 minutes Lo-Fi
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Tzeporah_Berman_090523_LoFi.mp3

A CLIMATE OF CRASH AND CHOICE Finance & elections. Mike Whitney on Wall Street mess -Bush's plan to grab the money & run. Voting for climate action. Brianna Cayo Cotter U.S. PowerVote.org; Tzeporah Berman speech introducing PowerUpCanada.ca. Also Rep Ed Markey web cast on new Green Jobs initiative. Plus some fun (e.g. George Carlin) and music. Ecoshock Show 080926 1 hour
Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080926_Show_LoFi.mp3

Tzeporah Berman at Bioneers Conference October 2006. About 20 minutes.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/ES_Berman_Bioneers_061021.mp3

POWER UP CANADA
http://www.powerupcanada.ca/

THIS WEEK'S ECOSHOCK PROGRAM BEGINS....

Dear extra-terrestrial visitor,

Things are past serious here on Planet Earth. Our top scientists, the people who study and measure, warn the web of life is headed toward utter catastrophe, possibly in just ninety years. The ocean, source of our oxygen and mother of most life, is turning acid due to our carbon pollution. Our once stable climate, the basis of our agriculture and civilization, is undergoing violent change.

As I record this, smoke from forest fires - hundreds of miles away in the mountains, is filling our great city. I can smell the distress, and it's only June, not even fire season yet. Last night, as we watched TV news, a reporter showed the tinder dry conditions on Vancouver Island. "My God" said my companion, "that is the rain forest. The rain forest, untouched by fire for a thousand years or more, could burn."

It's only a matter of short time. The great pine forests of the Rocky Mountains have been killed by global warming. They stand dead, valley after valley, each long trough visible from space, waiting to burn. Each great tree is a tower of carbon taken from the atmosphere. Now it will go back, in great bursts of fire that nothing can stop. A burp of carbon worse than the Indonesian rain forest fires of '97-'98. Greenpeace predicted this in 1994, in a report called "The Carbon Bomb". Now, it's happening. Here in the Rockies, all from California right up to the Yukon. Even the boreal forest, clothing the North, is burning out more carbon than new trees can gather. Vast forests will convert into grasslands or scrub deserts.

We don't know how far all this new carbon, coming in the next decade, will push the climate.

The carbon whirlwind is still of our own making. Will you be a witness? Or will you be the change we need?

This is Radio Ecoshock. I am your host, Alex Smith.

READ MORE

YOUR FOOD SECURITY

2009-05-28T09:47:00.000-07:00

This Radio Ecoshock - with something you can't live without: food. No, we haven't invented edible radio - but we'll introduce you to a homesteading woman who's brought out her second book on surviving the worst of times.

Are you worried about the way the world is going? Our top financial institutions turned out to be hollow Ponzi schemes. Nobody is too sure of their job. The Earth's climate is unstable. Even the bees are dying. Meanwhile, grasping men at multinational food corporations want to own every seed and everything you eat. Did I mention the end of cheap oil?

That is when I want to know how to ensure enough food for my family. How will I get enough to eat, despite violent storms, an earthquake, social disruption or an epidemic? How can you eat cheaply, even if food prices soar as predicted?

[Robin Wheeler interview]

We've done a series of radio how-to's here at Radio Ecoshock. Ways to stockpile grains and beans for ten years or more. How to get going in canning. Find that on the "Ecoshock Features" page, right in our Audio on Demand menu, at ecoshock.org. There's nothing to sell or buy there, just helpful free mp3 downloads.

As you know our guest is Robin Wheeler. She runs a homestead, now turned into a home business, in Roberts Creek, along the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. Find her on the Net at ediblelandscapes.ca. Her new book is "Food Security for the Faint of Heart, Keeping Your Larder Full in Lean Times."

Robin was speaking at a small library her in Vancouver, listed in a community newspaper. Improbably, outside there was a New Orleans style jazz band, and rows of tables loaded with organic foods, community support kiosks, and alternative knowledge. On a rare happy say of sunshine, would anyone turn up for a talk on Food Security?

Waiting at the back, a 50 something woman began a conversation about climate change. "You know what I think," she said, "the climate has already shifted." I felt a slight chill, knowing that the public really does know. We are in for a wild ride.

Despite the sun and fun outside, all the seats filled up. I recorded Robin's Wheeler's Food Security talk for you.

This speech is like a series of topics you need to know. You could almost make a box of index cards for each resource in the speech - as a jumping off point for your own research on the Net, and locally.

We've all heard about scrap booking as a hobby for stay-at-home Moms. Now I'm thinking a survival scrap book or binder is a really good idea. It would have print outs of the key useful information you discover. Maybe you can print out Google maps of your area, and your fall-back retreat spot, with your notes added on where the wild mushrooms are, the will-trade-for-food local farms, that stream with cleaner water.

Imagine the power has gone out, and the food system is breaking down. What do you need to know, without access to the Net? Or what if inflation and job loss combine to threaten your supermarket dependence? What can you do for food security, from a condo, house or camper van - homesteading where you are?

Here is a short shopping list of topics I heard in Robin Wheeler's speech. Most of it comes straight from her book "Food Security for the Faint of Heart". Robin touches on:

Earthquakes
Supermarkets closing down
Power out - what freezer food to eat first, and
How to prolong meat with cooking oil, or salt brining.
Emergency cooking
Stockpiling
The importance of community
Organic or not?
Start a food Co-op
Cook for yourself
Work at a grocery store or food warehouse
Community supported agriculture
Gleaning - like nut trees or fallen fruit
Gardening as though your life depended on it
Eating weeds
Using food waste
Storing the abundance
Leave root crops in the ground
Curing foods for longer storage
Dehydrating food
Canning
Packing in sugar
Teas for pleasure and medicine
Flowers you can eat.
Gardens for renters
Super-fast growing vegetables
Container gardens
Wild foraging
Food from the beach and sea.
Emergency herbs
Emergency water
Power out lights and heat
Working co-operatively
Food activism: fighting off multinationals like Monsanto & Codex Alimentarius
Local food subversion.

Here is Robin Wheeler, recorded in the Britannia Library May 13th, 2009.

[speech]

This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith. You are listening to a speech by Robin Wheeler, developed from her new book "Food Security for the Faint of Heart." It's from New Society publishers, and a real value for just $17 bucks in paperback. She has an easy reading style peppered with humor.

You may want to start up a scrap book or index cards to research the food security ideas that will work best for you. As the economic crisis meets peak oil and climate disruption, we all need to get a lot more active in local food sources. Learn how to work with Nature's timetable, and store away for leaner times.

As Robin shows, the coming times don't need to be all that scary. In fact, they can be empowering and more righteous. Why are we treading toward obesity on factory foods laden with chemicals? Can we really keep colonizing land from the world's poorest people to grow our soy and hamburgers? How many carbon miles are in your cupboards?

When we stabilize our society to our own place, sustainably for generations, a whole load of stress and lies will fall away. Food is one good place to start, the roots of a civilization we could be proud of. For a change.

Speaking of change, next week we'll visit a unique un-conference. It was called "The Great Turning" - hosted by Be the Change Earth Alliance. Hundreds of people turned out for an all-day gathering around circular tables. They talked and plotted the big changes needed to save the Earth and ourselves. That and more, next week on Radio Ecoshock.

DEAD MALLS, GLOBESITY & SIMPLICITY

2009-05-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

[Opening clip: I just want to get a megaphone, and yell to people entering the Mall "It isn't in there."]

That is Cecile Andrews - and she's right. Happiness is not in the shopping mall, never was.

I'm Alex Smith, this is Radio Ecoshock.

This program is loaded. You'll hear retail expert Howard Davidowitz. He's the shopping expert who says 200,000 American stores will close - and the great days of consumerism are dead. May they rest in peace.

Following that interview from New York, we go to France. Michelle Holdsworth is co-author of the new book "Globesity, A Planet Out of Control?" We explore the relationship between obesity and climate change. Can fat warm the world?

In the second half hour, 15 minutes from a new speech by Cecile Andrews. She brought us "Slow Is Beautiful". Her new book, perfect for tough times, is "Less Is More". It's all about the simplicity movement, and how simple human community saves lives.

I'll wrap up the program with a survival project: one day canning, how to eat better for half the cost.

READ MORE....

OFF THE CLIMATE CLIFF? OR GREENER CITIES?

2009-05-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

Every day tankers and pipelines carry black gold to power industrial society. The coal trains and ships deliver more carbon for the great bonfire of humanity. We know for a certainty, if we keep on burning it all, our planet will become hot, stormy, ice-free with dying oceans and extinction for most big species. Including ourselves.

Now the question: how much can we use, before we tip the climate too far?

This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith.

HERE ARE THE LINKS YOU'LL NEED FOR TODAY'S PROGRAM

Interview with scientist Bill Hare:

How much time left to burn fossil fuels? PRIMAP.ORG

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

George Monbiot column in UK's Guardian newspaper
"How Much Should We Leave in the Ground?"

Green Cities:

Grist article on 15 Green Mayors

Radio Ecoshock series on Green Cities

Resilient Cities (Australia's Dr. Peter Newman)

Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil
Richard Register and Anthony Perl

Building Madness (various speakers)

Urban Meltdown (Clive Doucet)
Speech (53 min)

Clive Doucet interview

READ MORE

Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

2009-05-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. Today you'll hear two green broadcasters meet on air. Matt and Alex ask how cities can work in the climate energy crunch. Should you get out - and what can we learn from the back-to-the-land movement of the late '70's. I'll toss in the mental survival tips I use to survive the awful knowledge of climate change.

Matt and I also talk about Derrick Jensen and so-called "Eco-Terrorism". Non-violence hasn't worked (our life support system is going into the crapper) - do we need to go further?

We'll top that off with 15 minutes from the master. Al Gore's latest testimony to the House Energy Subcommittee April 24th. The last minute American hope to save the climate.

I'm Alex Smith, wading through the deep green with green broadcaster Matt. His long-running show "Healing the Earth" runs out of the University of Guelph in Canada - but his guests - some of them controversial - come from all over the world.

I hope you enjoyed that exchange with Matt. It's not easy doing radio about a gorgeous ecosphere under attack, in decline. My hope is lame, but it's still there. Maybe hope is built into us, the ultimate survival trait.

Here's someone who never gave up: Al Gore. We go now to his testimony to the House Energy Subcommittee, chaired by the remarkable Ed Markey of Massachusetts. As the Obama Administration rounds up the evidence for the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, Chairman Markey gets the best, keeps it moving. You can find the whole 2 hour video on C-Span.

Here's Al. (The key 15 minutes of testimony, 4 MB)

Next week we'll interview climate scientist and activist Bill Hare. His new report says the world may have to stop using fossil fuels completely in just 20 years - or face a drastic climate shift. The latest science, the most alarming.

I'm Alex Smith. Thank you for caring about your world.

ASTEROID STRIKES & INVISIBLE WOMEN

2009-04-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

This is Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith.

The bad news just keeps on coming. Just as America began to recognize torture, swine flu wipes away the slate. Everybody just wants to talk about pandemic.

We know pandemics will come. More than half the world's population live in crowded slums without sanitation or clean water. The true population of Mexico City, for example, is unknown. Best guesses run between twenty five and thirty million people. Most of them have no medical care or knowledge about disease. All of them are just a few connections and an airline trip away from you and your neighbors.

The only mystery is how the richest countries thought they could ignore the masses of the miserable, and get away with it. The United Nations and population experts announce that Earth's human population will stabilize around nine billion people, from the current six and a half. That's not going to happen.

We are already way past Earth's carrying capacity. Only our treasure chest of oil has allowed the arrival of billions more humans. In Mexico, for example, oil wealth has fueled the economy - and now that's running out. The Mexican population has doubled since 1950, in a country that is mostly dry and unproductive. Oil-based fertilizers and oil drive pumps have turned some dry lands into large-scale hydroponic production. The land just holds the roots, while we poor oil fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides into the soy, rice, and vegetables. Most of that goes North to North American tables in the winter time.

Now Mexico's largest oil field has peaked. Production already dropped by 10 percent, and will decline rapidly. Meanwhile, the climate heads toward even higher heat and drought. In the coming decade, tens of millions of Mexicans must either starve or migrate North as climate refugees. They will do both.

Swine flu, economic crash, homelessness, peak oil, it all sweeps over us. I think we are, as a species, becoming even more crazy. We'll see it in headlines, You tube, and all around us.

In my opinion, the underlying driver, the really big fear unbalancing it all - is this horrible truth: our atmosphere is polluted and our climate has tipped. Slowly, deeply, humans know this. They see strange weather, birds and flowers coming at the wrong times, power storms, fires, and floods welling up. We begin to know, and we can hardly stand to know.

We are going straight to one of the top scientists in Australia, where climate change is not just a topic of conversation. It's already happening - an outbreak of climate fever that burns and floods its way across a whole continent. As it will every continent. You are about to hear one of the few scientists determined to tell us the awful truth.

[Interview with Andrew Glikson]

Here are the links for more:

FROM ANDREW GLIKSON:

40 scientists write: Climate disaster, an urgent challenge

The war against science while Rome is burning
16 April 2009
Guest post by Andrew Glikson (Andrew is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University who has contributed regularly to Brave New Climate).

AUDIO: A WARNING FROM THE PAST Past greenhouse worlds, quick climate shifts, and mass extinctions caused by changes to the atmosphere. Dr. Andrew Glikson studies space impacts, volcanoes, and past climates. This speech from Australia National University explains current shift toward a hot-state planet - much faster than ever before. Ecoshock Show 080704 1 hour

Slides for that speech here.

Our guest host in the second half hour - on invisible homeless women - is Allart. She produces another weekly program on CFRO FM in Vancouver called "Dynamic Health."
Find it here.

THE BOGUS ECONOMY

In the back pages, the biggest banks, which just recently declared phony profits, are told they need hundreds of billions more, to back up their shaky loans, to have any hope of paying back ordinary depositors. These same banks are being sued in many states and countries for malfeasance. The giant State of California pension fund says it was misled by the big names of Wall Street.

In Italy, prosecutors have seized around $300 million dollars in assets from JPMorgan Chase, the Swiss-American giant UBS, Deutsche Bank and others. Those companies have been charged with fraud, after the city of Milan was persuaded risky swaps on 2.2 billion in municipal bonds were safe. Then, like municipalities all over the United States, and in many parts of the world, they lost big time in the crash.

Don't miss this story. Libraries and hospitals will close because of Wall Street crime. Municipalities have been hit badly, and saddled with a new generation of debt, as the banksters made off with their multi-billion dollar fees and bonuses on bogus financial paper. As journalist and blogger Danny Schechter said on our program, it's time for Jail Outs, not Bail Outs.

There is no doubt that capitalism is crashing. Unbelievably, the car workers, through their pension funds, may take over General Motors and Chrysler. The retired will now get almost worthless stock instead of the billions those companies owed their pension funds. I don't think either company will survive as anything other than niche memory makers. Financial insiders are already doubting whether any of the big pensions funds - not just auto workers, but municipal, teachers, private company pension fund - all of it may go bust in the coming years. The government is supposed to step in and guarantee all those pensions - but governments too are already bankrupt.

Later in this program we are going to investigate the unreported plight of homeless women. Being without a home is tough, but it's double jeopardy for women, especially older women. You will hear that most women, even those in the Middle and Upper Class, even Oprah, fear deep down they may become homeless.

How do women handle it? Where are they, when TV cameras show us lines of unemployed men at the shelters? Investigative reporter Allart uncovers homeless women with front-line worker Judy Graves, in our second half hour.

Allart interviews Judy Graves. It turns out most women fear becoming homeless one day. They may lose a spouse to death or divorce, or need to leave in a hurry due to abuse or alcoholism. Millions of women are losing their jobs in the economic crisis, and those 45 and older are wondering whether they will get employment again. Many face a life of poverty, despite their University degree and Middle Class background.

How will they cope? It's tough for a man on the streets, but much harder for women. Most avoid it by living in their cars, moving back with family, or couch surfing (sometimes with a sexual price to pay). Listen to Judy Graves, Tenant Assistance worker for the City of Vancouver, who has worked with homeless and suddenly homeless women since the mid-1970's.

Even Oprah has admitted she fears becoming homeless. I've asked women around me, and they secretly harbor the same fear of becoming "a bag lady." Both men and women need to hear this moving interview, which followed the film "It Was A Wonderful Life" - dead on the topic of how homeless women struggle to stay invisible in the big city and small towns.

This week's music theme is "Where We Gonna Go" from Ellis Music Productions. Our web site ecoshock.org.

I'm Alex Smith. Adios muchachos.

URBAN MELTDOWN II

2009-04-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

American cities in decay. Refugees not from New Orleans after Katrina. This is a different kind of Hurricane. A trifecta of climate change, high oil prices and the real estate bubble leaves abandoned holes from Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix and beyond.

I'm Alex Smith, this is Radio Ecoshock. We'll track the causes and the victims.

In our opening cuts, you heard video Blogger George4title in his You tube special called "Detroit Ground Zero for Economic Collapse". An amazing drive-by of abandoned and burned out homes looking like Baghdad in America. It's a 5 part series you won't want to miss.

Our other voice was Clive Doucet, author and Councilman for Canada's capital city, Ottawa. When I recorded his "Urban Meltdown" speech a year ago - I didn't believe it. Now the evidence is in. Cities all over North America are under stress, as they go into record deficits and collapsing tax collections. Municipal bonds may be the next big default line in the economy.

We'll interview Clive Doucet to get the update.

We are talking millions of foreclosures already, and millions more to go in the next two years. In fact, all the mortgage holding agencies, both government owned and private banks, have started a new wave of record foreclosures, after a brief Obama rest. Where are all these people ending up? Sure people some rent, but the latest stats show rentals are actually down. Some new Americans go back to their home country. Folks move back with their families, or share tiny spaces.

Too many become homeless - and our social system is in no way prepared for the homeless emergency now developing in almost every city. A friend just told me their neighbors in a relatively upscale neighborhood in Phoenix both lost their jobs. Professional people. Suddenly the bailiffs show up and grab both cars plus the house. A family with 5 kids now living in two tents on the desert outside of town, with no water or toilets. Just like that.

Could it happen to you? Are the homeless annoying you? In this program we'll get a clue. Our guest host Allart interviews Harold G. Joe. Harold experienced a fatal homeless tragedy in his community. He decided to try just three days and nights on the street. As a documentary film maker, Harold took his camera along. The result is the movie "Broken Down", and an interview that could move hearts of stone.

Let's get back to Clive Doucet, the person who opened my eyes, while I was day-dreaming in a still-functioning place, a city of refuge, so far, in the developing storm.

[Clive Doucet interview]

I also cover some important world news.

READ MORE....and find all the links to news stories, interviews and sources for this show.

Alex

ROTTING FROM THE TOP

2009-04-17T10:03:00.001-07:00

The banks are doing great. The stock market is up 25 percent. Happy Days Are Here Again!

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the White Star Titanic. We are not sinking, there are plenty of lifeboats, please go back to an evening of fine dancing.

If you're happy with that, maybe you shouldn't listen to this edition of Radio Ecoshock. We're going to hear other voices, outside the mainstream box.

Famed ABC producer, author and blogger Danny Schechter will lead off the charge. He claims the financial system is riddled with fraud. We'll hear snippets from insider business Bears Ian Gordon and Meredeth Whitney, the one-woman force who broke out the truth about Bear Stearns. Whitney ends up advocating relocalization, and warning you - that credit card you've counted on may go bye-bye.

Our mystery guest is Ilargi, from the popular financial blog The Automatic Earth. And we have an earthquake from within the Obama Administration itself. Elizabeth Warren heads a Congressional Panel overseeing the TARP funds. She questions the whole program, wondering if Tim Geithner's Treasury has any real strategy. Based on the experience of other countries, the U.S. is going the wrong way down a one way street. Warren sounds like a mother to America, as she explains this whole crisis. You'll hear the best of that.

Here are all the links you'll need for this week's Radio Ecoshock Show:

Danny Schechter's blog: http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/

"Bear Attack" on BBN - 4 financial bears: Nouriel Roubini, Eric Sprott, Merideth Whitney and Iran Gordon. http://www.bnn.ca/8430.html

TARP: Elizabeth Warren Congressional Oversight Panel Chair - April Report shows very different approaches from that taken by Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner. Revolutionary talk from inside Washington in this 8 minute You tube video (easy to understand!)
http://cop.senate.gov/video/index.cfm#tab10

Elizabeth Warren's explanation of the foreclosure crisis - also easy to understand, if very sad.
http://cop.senate.gov/video/index.cfm#tab10 (8 minutes on You tube, and from this government site.

The Automatic Earth blog - headed up by "Ilargi" our final guest on Radio Ecoshock this week.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
.
READ MORE...

Music: "Happy Days Are Here Again" Ben Selvin and the Crooners 1930 (no copyright)

TROUBLE DOWN BELOW

2009-04-09T11:11:00.000-07:00

You have just heard rioting hit the central banks of London during the G20 conference, set to Dirty Town from Mother Mother. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith.

The world is quietly burning with discontent as corporate schemes go bad. Industry and trade are collapsing and no one seems immune. The world trade center has fallen again, and maybe the Pentagon will be next.

I've had some long hours into the night worrying - how about you?

We have two guest speakers this week to help you engage.

Even though I realize everyone is gob-smacked by crumbling banks and revelations of piracy at the top - we just can't take our eyes off our natural life support system. Ice is cracking loose at the poles. In desperation, President Obama's new science advisor, Dr. John Holdren, joins a chorus of experts toying with the idea of cooling off the atmosphere by artificial means.

We'll hear a top National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration scientist explain a huge risk to human geo-engineering. In fact, Dr. Richard Feely has a horror story of his own to tell: our carbon waste is turning the oceans acidic. So what? The whole marine food chain is threatened. I'll bet the G20 didn't discuss our dying oceans for even 20 seconds. Banks come first!

Could a supposedly intelligent species make the world's oceans more acidic? It sounds like science fiction, but now it is science. Our guest is Dr. Richard A. Feely, an Oceanographer at the NOAA Pacific Marine Laboratory in Seattle, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He specializes in the way carbon cycles in the sea - and ocean acidification.

UK scientists from Bristol University recently told the three day summit in Copenhagen, that we are creating ocean conditions not seen since the time of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. We've done it in less than 250 years of fossil fuel burning - and carbon emissions are still going up.

Then we'll go to a recent speech by Greenpeace founder, author and Peak Oil expert Rex Weyler. We've gathered up a powerful half hour segment connecting the dots between the economic collapse and dying natural systems. Rex even throws in a few suggestions on how we can cope. That's coming up in the second half hour of Radio Ecoshock.

Getting back to the riots in Europe, and likely soon enough in North America - is it worth trying to protest the rape of our jobs, savings, and pensions? It's time to turn to The Stimulator.

Get the full video of that and dozens of other pro-level reports from The Stimulator at submedia.tv. Warning to college students: the site contains adult language. You know, the way you actually talk to one another.

All this talk of social upheaval and transformation is exciting I know. Next week we'll devote a full hour to zombie banks feeding on the flesh of taxpayers and the newly homeless - all with a special guest.

[Feely interview 19 min 5 MB Lo-Fi]

Our next speaker, Rex Weyler, is one of the original Greenpeace gang, author of "Greenpeace the Inside Story" plus two more books, and a recurring journalist in all media. He's also a Peak Oil spokesman, recorded in the Radio Ecoshock Show "Peak Oil and the Media," broadcast August 29, 2008 and available free from our archive.

[Rex Weyler speech excerpt 31 minutes from the original 107 minutes found here]

Rex sees the links between degrading the Earth and our economic collapse. His insight is well worth our time. Here is 30 key minutes from Rex Weyler's speech to the Bio-Society Conference at McMaster University in Canada on March 20th, 2009.

That Rex Weyler speech comes from Maggie Hughes, Producer of "The Other Side" of the News on 93.3 fm, CFMU McMaster University Radio. Find her web site at www.oside.ca. Get all these links from my blog entry for April 9th, 2009.

Our music this week was "Dirty Town" by the Vancouver group Mother Mother, plus a clip from Live Earth with the Black Eyed Peas closing up the show.

You have been listening to Radio Ecoshock with Alex Smith. Find our web site at ecoshock.org - and thanks again for caring about our world.

THE GREEN SIDE OF DOWN

2009-04-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

Some big icons like General Motors go crash, but most of it just goes quietly, with little announcement. I'm talking about all the small shops going dark, the once-famous magazines gone and hardly remembered.

Just a couple of years ago, I wished I'd taken videos of some of our major streets. Little malls and corner garages disappeared overnight, replaced with a big hole and a sign advertising Fenway Gardens, another deluxe condo tower. The building boom was disorienting. It's easier now. Nothing new - and the old is slipping away.

I should be happy. Finally the fake consumer world is caving in. People are driving less, to fewer jobs. Did we pull back just at the edge of carbon disaster? Just before the oil ran out? The collapse surprised common people and the Left, who didn't care much about banking and stock talk. Maybe we should have paid closer attention.

You'll hear from Max Keiser, the lefty stock expert who did know, and tried to warn us.

In today's program you'll also hear Professor Lord Anthony Giddens from the London School of Economics. He explores the links, good and bad, between the financial crash and the climate crisis. Lord Anthony also offers up three reasons why humans just don't get the climate predicament. We hear about it, and do mostly nothing. Find out why.

We'll touch on disappearing media and adaptation fairs. A couple of songs but no dance.

But first let's get right to an interview with Stephan Faris, author of "Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley." He's traveled the world only to find that climate disruption is already with us. His new book is one of the must reads of the season.

Most important links for this show:
speech by Lord Anthony Giddens, London School of Economics, February 28th, 2009 on "The Economic Crisis, Climate Change and Energy."

Max Keiser Radiance FM Podcast: "The Truth About Markets" March 28th 2009

Christian Aid Climate Demo (You tube)

“Melting Ice Eco Rap” by Lil Peppi (You tube)

"Morbid Magazines" by Bill Dyszel

More....including a summary of Lord Anthony Giddens' 3 Engines of Climate Defeat, Monbiot, etc

VOICES FROM BELOW

2009-03-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

Radio Ecoshock moves from Washington and Wall Street all the way to tent city. We’ll hear from the homeless – and from the new breed of independent citizen reporters who will replace the dying newspapers and gutted TV newsrooms.

The financial news is so depressing, I couldn’t make the program without coming up with “Four Solid Tips for Surviving Bad Times”. That’s in this program and blog as well.

This week we're going to take a quick cruise through the battered economy. Like economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times says, the latest news and government moves almost left me in utter despair. I didn't want to make this program - until I realized, as I waded through, there was another stream developing in the back of my mind. Things to learn, personal solutions that I could share with you. An antidote to the poison economy.

So you'll get all the desperation a mind can stand, but I've also got four solid tips for you, tiny ways out that might make you better prepared for the hard times to come. Stay tuned for that.

We have an interview - a new take on the "Will Work for Food" sign, and two radio reports from Independent journalists. George from California takes us on a tour of people living in their cars, while CKUT radio brings out powerful voices from a tent city in Nashville Tennessee. It's an example of how we get news without newspapers, in the digital democracy.

READ MORE with all the links to original articles...

Production Notes: Song "Everything Has A Price" by Remo Cino, unemployed Hamilton steel worker (Canadian content). Plus "Hey Paul Krugman" by Jonathan Mann at rockcookiebottom.com, bits of "Gamma Ray" by Beck, report on unrest in France from the Wayne Madsen Report, quick clip from Fox News Sacramento & CHCH TV Hamilton. Others too numerous to mention.

Progress and Denial

2009-03-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

In last week's Radio Ecoshock Show, we talked with Professor Michael T. Klare, about the looming possibility of social instability or riots, even here in North America. Can't happen here? There was a riot in downtown Montreal, Canada on March 15th. The march to protest police brutality ended up with smashed store fronts, burned police cars, and over 200 arrests.

Meanwhile the European think tank called "LEAP/Europe 2020" says America is likely to have outbreaks and riots due to a lack of a social safety net, in these difficult times, plus the hundreds of millions of guns owned by citizens.

We could discount this as just another think-tank ploy, but LEAP also predicted the sub-prime real estate melt-down in the United States. This time, as Claire Gatinois reports on truthout.org, quote:

""If your country or region is an area where firearms are in mass circulation" (among big countries, only the United States is in that situation) LEAP indicates, "then the best way to deal with the dislocation is to leave your region, if that's possible."

In any event, some Americans will "leave their region" simply because of hurricanes, droughts and recurring floods caused by climate change. In fact, that's already happening in the super-dry West, as well as Florida and the Louisiana coast. The first American climate refugees.

In this program we'll catch the latest wave. We interview one of the few independent environmental journalist still standing, Stephen Leahy. You'll hear what author and activist Bill McKibben told a business audience in Indiana on March 11th. And a scorching hot speech by Oakland activist Van Jones at the recent Powershift09 conference in Washington D.C. Right-wing radio nut Michael Savage calls Jones a thug. President Obama calls him his "Special Advisor on Green Jobs".

I've got lots of other audio goodies - and baddies - another roundup of Horrible Climate News, a laugh and a song. Radio Ecoshock.

Read More (and get more links)

WILL THERE BE RIOTS?

2009-03-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

The economy, says billionaire Warren Buffet, has fallen off a cliff.

"The economy, ever since we talked in September, we talked about it being an economic Pearl Harbor, and how, what was happening in the financial world would move over to the real world very quickly. It's fallen off a cliff.

And, not only has the economy slowed down a lot, people have really changed their behavior, like nothing I've ever seen. Luxury goods, and that sort of thing, have just sort of stopped. And that's why Wal-Mart is doing well, and I won't name the ones that are doing poorly, but there's been a re-set in people's minds."

Well, finally. As the Earth is being poisoned and devoured by billions of humans, as people shopped the planet to death, there has been a re-set in people's minds. We all know that needed to happen. We just didn't know the banksters would loot the economy, like Baghdad after the invasion, at the multinational sunset.

The sudden crash has already cause riots in several European cities, including normally quiet Iceland. Are big riots inevitable in the United States? Will the kicked out and cheated suffer quietly without justice?

You are listening to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. We'll talk to Peace and Securities expert Professor Michael Klare. He says America should expect widespread unrest. I'll also interview Jason Bradford, the radio journalist and pioneer of relocalization. We'll talk about alternatives, including the possibility of a food-based currency. In beans we trust.

All that plus uppity women from Britain, a quick shot at the me generation, and yet another dose of horrible climate news.

Before we go further, here are some links from this week's show.

Our first guest, Michael T. Klare

Radio interviews by our second guest, Jason Bradford

Here you'll find the best guests Jason mentioned, including people like Bill McKibben, and Richard Heinberg. Jason also recommended the blog Casaubon's Book with Sharon Astyk

Gaming the Apocalypse from theonion.com

Our featured artist is Joel Plaskett at
http://www.joelplaskett.com/

This Canadian artist just released a 3 CD special called, what else, "3". We hear "Through and through and through."

Read More...are there riots in our future?

TROUBLE AND VISION

2009-03-05T15:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith. In this program we'll explore the big black hole where your dreams of prosperity used to be. Like rescue dogs, we'll sniff around the wreckage for the corpses - and the survivors, the dead-ends and the new paths of living.

In past shows, we've presented top experts and authors. This time around, I just need to thrash this through with some intelligent people. What really is happening with the economy? Does the crash doom us to irreversible climate shift?

We have alternative economic commentator Mike Whitney back on Ecoshock, for a go round on the latest news. I'll tell you about the Global New Deal - or is it the New World Order just dressed up by the same old boys?

Then we'll try something completely different. You and I will chat with a long-time Radio Ecoshock listener about some better alternatives. We'll cover the triple threat from militarism, the collapsed economy, and the fragile climate. I'll ask her: does the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference really means anything? Or should we go for re-localization, and transition towns? All the issues swirling around in my mind, and likely in yours too.

We'll wrap up with another listener question: is laughter really appropriate in these serious times? I'll let a Somalian musician tell us.

Radio stew for an upset bailed out world, this is Ecoshock.

Read more (and get the follow-up links for this show)

LIFE AFTER THE CRASH

2009-02-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

Holy Hanna - the wheels are coming off the gilded wagon of capitalism. Part of me is excited that the zombie system killing the planet has cracked open. My other side is fearful. I like peaceful streets and grocery stores with food in them. Damn it, I'm cheering and weeping for both sides!

Let's have a little chat.

In addition to surviving, we'll also talk about whether you should homestead where you are, or plan to eco-migrate. The show includes an interview with Eco-migration expert Dr. Norman Myers of Oxford. He practically founded the field with a paper written in 1993. Myers is author of 19 books and winner of many prestigious awards.

After last week's program, where I realized the climate has already tipped, I briefly considered ending Radio Ecoshock. Part of my mission was to save the climate, to stop the change. Now, with the latest science in, I don't think that is possible. We have inadvertently tripped a switch that will end up, as James Hansen says, with a different planet. Just with the greenhouse emissions already released, and committed by our dependence on coal and oil, the irreversible melting of the Polar ice has begun, along with the world's glaciers. It's just a matter of how fast, how bad, and can we adapt.

In this time together, I'll give you my best guesses, and my own puny plans, and chatter from the Net.

Is it co-incidence that the financial world has collapsed just as we learn our climate fate? I don't think so. The same people who looted our pension funds and banks were allied with the fossil fuel and automotive lobbies that quashed the early warnings on climate. Even deeper, three out of four Americans now know how serious climate is. They've seen it in the fires, floods, droughts, and storms. A poll done by Rasmussen Reports found 23 percent of Americans, one in four, say it is somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century.

You and I need to prepare for turbulent times - on two different but related paths. We hope to stay fed, in our homes, in the short term. Yet some of us may have to move, as climate migrants, in the coming decade or two. We'll call it the three month strategy, and the three year plan. That is coming up, along with another installment of my audio blog on long-term food storage, where Alex finds out not everything goes as expected.

READ MORE

MUSIC PLAYLIST AND CREDITS: song clips from reggae master Jimmy Cliff, "The Harder They Come", Mark Knopfler and Emmy Lou Harris "Beachcombing", and Canadian artist Shane Philip, "See You In the Sun" Leonard Cohen with "Closing Time". Check out You tube for The Monster Crash with lyrics by Martin Eiger, and the comedy bit Greensumption from nuganics.com. If you need more time for station ID, cut in at 29:55 and then take time from end song.

Forget the Economy - Is It Too Late for Our Climate?

2009-02-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

This is the Radio Ecoshock Show. I'm you're host and tormentor, Alex Smith.

Yes I know the economy is crashing around the world. Eastern Europe threatens to bring down the Austrian and Italian banking systems. Britain is in the tank, along with Spain, Greece and Ireland. Everybody is hoping the Germans have saved enough to bail out the European Union.

It's as bad or worse in Asia. Japan's exports have plummetted, the results so terrible the Japanese Finance Minister was dead drunk at his press conference. Singapore was stung badly by Wall Street scams. Dubai, the fabled playground of the Middle East rich, is tumbling. South Korea wants to jail bloggers who reveal how bad things are in that country.

Now the latest American scamster, Allan Stanford has ripped off billions from investors all over the world, especially in Latin America. ABC News is reporting the Texas big man, lately based in Antigua, is connected to money laundering for Mexico's most vicious drug gangs. And speaking of off-shore pirates, the giant Swiss bank UBS is paying up 780 million in taxes ripped off from the American government, as the Swiss advised the very rich how to avoid paying their share. Really, it's been a pirate economy all along - and the worst scams were run by the very best companies.

Against the backdrop of kicked out families, closed factories, and worried populations, our climate threatens changes worse than any all-our nuclear exchange. Scientists warn the coming changes are huge, irreversible, and likely fatal to most species we know. Including us.

In this program, I'll pass on some of the horrible climate news, hot off the scientific press. Then we'll ask: is it already too late? Major scientists, in the United States, Australia, and Germany say the world is loaded up for at least 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming - that's over 4 degrees Fahrenheit AVERAGE global change. Temperature increases over land, and especially over the Arctic, will be much higher. The only thing saving us so far is smog, which can dissolve in a matter of weeks.

These warnings come not from fringe scientists, but key advisers to governments in Western countries. I'll tell you who. This is major news: global warming has already taken place. Television and newspapers have not told the public, who are living in an illusion, a fairy tale, about their future. Things are not going back to normal. Not for thousands of years.

As we will hear, one of the co-Chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits their reports greatly underestimated our real situation. We'll cover the latest news, and then work with reports from V. Ramanathan, of the Scripps Institution, and Joaquim Schnellenhuber, a science top adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The music for this program is "Don't Let The World Swallow You" by Canadian artist Andre Ethier.

Read more from this Radio Ecoshock transcript for the 090220 Show. Available as a free mp3 download in either CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) 1 hour.

Much more free audio at our web site http://www.ecoshock.org

The Economy of Climate Burn

2009-02-11T23:50:00.000-08:00

The Australian wildfires - a warning to the world? I interview Dr. Barry Brook a climatologist from Adelaide. Brook was named one of the top 10 bright young scientists in Australia. His blog makes a strong case that the drying of Australia shows a radical shift in the climate. More: he argues the recent combination of drought and heat is without precendent in recorded history, and driven by climate change. Check out the particulars in his blog at bravenewclimate.com. I've bookmarked it.

Please don't push away the Australian deaths as just another bush fire. This is a big sign. Parts of the world are beginning to burn fiercely due to climate change. The same has already happened last year in California, with more than a thousand fires in a short period, as you might remember. More to come there, and throughout the West. American scientists like Jonathan Overpeck are certain this is the start of the long drying, that may last hundreds of years. It is possible that tens of millions of Americans will have to abandon the South West in this century, and perhaps in the next few decades.

All the climate-killed pine forests of British Columbia will also burn. Vast valleys of dead trees await the heat and the spark.

The Brook interview is followed by a music collage of world deserts expanding. Quotes of the expanding Sahara, Chinese deserts, Mongolia, and then the U.S. South West (per Dr. Jonathan Overpeck of Arizona U).

The fact is, folks, the tropics are expanding due to human induced climate change. That's bad news for all those hundreds of millions of humans currently in the expanding sub-tropics. Because where the tropics end, so does the moisture, leading to new bands of dying trees, drylands, and then deserts. The American South West is no exception.

Witness the incredible statements by Dr. Steven Chu, Obama's new Energy Secretary. He told the Los Angeles Times on Feb 4th that there may be no agriculture in California by the end of this century. He doesn't see how the great California cities can survive either. The water supply in the mountains is no longer coming. There will not be enough water to keep the California civilization going - and with it, the largest source of agricultural products (that means food!) in North America. Not small news.

The clips that help bring it all home are set to "Making Deserts In A Day" by The Henry Gorman Band.

In the second half of this Radio Ecoshock Show: guest host KMO (host of C-Realm Podcast) interviews Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of "The Upside of Down" & now "Carbon Shift".

I think this is a really important interview. Homer-Dixon explains how collapse is part of Nature, and how that might apply to our current economic collapse. It's something I hadn't thought of - although I'm not sure I agree with Homer-Dixon's apparent conclusions. What do you think?

Homer-Dixon is one of the few thinkers to really draw Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse together in a coherent way. I'm happy that Kay Emmo does such a good job with the interview, sitting back when it counts, to get answers to deep questions. That's one of the things I enjoy about "KMO's" podcasts. He gets great guests - and manages to get them enthused about their topic on air. Most of them thank HIM for the interview! Me too.

KMO's efforts also show what a group effort Radio Ecoshock has become. I've had so many great tips from listeners - and I'm pleasantly suprised at what a talented bunch of communicators listen to the show. We have enviro journalists, politicians, scientists, activists, bloggers, radio people, a whole gang of people. I recognize that many of my listeners have more expertise, or talent, than I do. Thanks for the tips people send by email. The address is in the show.

Also in the music mix this week: the background music is "Strategy" by Paul Dickow of Portland. The end music showcase is Canadian Andre Ethier with a clip from "Infant King". I have another of Andre's songs on tap for next week.

Ecoshock 090213 1 hour CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Alex

TIDAL POWER - Is It Real?

2009-02-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

Whenever politicians and greens talk about alternative energy, the list usually goes wind, solar, and tidal power. But how real is tidal power? Where will it happen and when?

This week on Radio Ecoshock you'll hear Martin Burger, CEO of a tidal power company called Blue Energy. He spoke to the New Energy Movement in Vancouver on January 26th, 2009. This is an original recording by Radio Ecoshock.

In fact, Martin went further. He explained four other neglected new energy sources, the best and most intriguing from a survey of 500 he's examined over the past two decades. I'll add those as time allows.

And, as promised in last week's show, we'll consider how new ways of living appear in a society. Burger says money cannot bring the next wave. It is a problem of consciousness, how we function as big groups, like the flocks and schools of other animals.

Along the way, I'll toss in a few facts about installations around the world, the current state of tidal power.

How about this one. Did you know that days used to be much shorter here on Earth? Like 21.9 hours, just 620 million years ago, instead of 24? Just pumping all that sea water into the bays and narrows of the world uses up mechanical energy that causes the world to spin. The tides are slowing down the planet. The 26 hour day is coming. But don't toss out your clocks just yet - that will be another 600 million years from now.

As we'll hear from Martin Burger, this immense power can be harnessed to create giant streams of electricity. The initial building cost is high, but the long-term maintenance costs are quite low. The impact on the local ecology varies with the design. Martin will be describing a "tidal fence" of spinning rotors, built into a bridge perhaps. It's a big dream, but there are signs tidal power is beginning to lift off in various parts of the world.

I'm going to pick out the tidal info from Martin's speech at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

More at http://www.ecoshock.net/transcripts/ES_090206 Script Tidal Power.htm

That transcript from the show includes a quick review of tidal power around the world, along with some of their ecological consequences.

Alex

BANKRUPTCY OF THE ATMOSPHERE

2009-01-29T12:50:00.000-08:00

[opening Quote from John Kerry on the looming catastrophe in climate change]

That is Senator John Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith, and you are about to get 20 minutes of the latest from Al Gore. In our second half hour, I'll interview Pieter Tans, one of the top scientists measuring greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. In fact, he is Chief Scientist at the Earth Research Lab, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known as NOAA. I'll ask him about the state of the atmosphere, and who's watching the store.

Surely this is the worst time to talk about climate change. According to the IMF, the international banking system is teetering on the brink of disaster. Really, we're just propping up the illusion. 65 thousand Americans laid off in one day. Now, predictions that 50 million humans will lose their jobs in 2009. Where I live, construction crews have walked away from unfinished buildings. The government is rushing in to operate a bankrupt pulp mill, with no visible owner, before the chlorine blows up. The Jack Nicholson golf course and condos will never open.

Britain is going bankrupt. Who can compete with a headline like that?

Top world scientists now tell us the natural world is dying. In just one example, trees in the Western United States are dying from climate change. In fact, the whole West is heading into a drought that may last hundreds of years. Cows are falling over dead in Texas, finding nothing in the dried up vegetation. Bush's home state is headed into climate disaster.

The Obama administration is rushing to undo the damage of eight years of denying science. Of muzzling, firing top scientists. Of wantonly lying to the public, about the bankruptcy of our atmosphere. In a flurry of appointments, the deniers have been cast out, and actual scientists and experts appointed to a wide range of posts all pointing to climate action. Even foreign affairs, as we'll now hear from John Kerry, depends upon saving the climate.

[Kerry explains military experts say that climate disruption will lead to disturbances, failed states, wars and terrorism.]

That is why the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited former Vice-President Al Gore to testify on January 28th, 2009. He spoke for 27 minutes, and then answered questions for another two hours. We'll just hit the highlights. You can download the testimony, and the Q and A, as free mp3 files, from our web site, ecoshock.org. I'll give you the links in just a moment.

After Kerry's introduction, Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana spoke. Now that the public knows climate change is real, Lugar can't trot out a denial. Instead, he promoted big bucks for biotech. Lugar said Africans will starve without biotechnology. He wants America to pressure Europe, forcing open their markets to lab-made food. Just a lobby announcement.

Let's clear our palates, with a taste of Al Gore.

[listen to a digest of Al Gore's key testimony, and answer to questions, in this week's Radio Ecoshock Show]

Remember, I'm just playing you selected clips from 2 and a half hour of testimony. Get the real thing from our web site. Here is the testimony link (6 MB, 27 min), the first hour and 24 minutes of Q and A with Gore and the Foreign Relations Committee (20 MB) and the last 37 minutes of Q and A. A lot of questions you would ask, along with political considerations, i.e. how can this transition to green energy happen in the real world.

Mr. Gore goes on to explain that the Arctic Ice remains at the lowest levels ever seen since the last great ice age. West Antarctica is also warming up. As it melts, along with Greenland, each 1 meter rise of sea level means another 100 million climate refugees. He showed new maps of huge horrible dead zones developing in our oceans.

But you know that. You know.

Naturally, the Committee wanted to know what we can do. Al Gore did offer a range of solutions. He said solar thermal energy alone could meet the electricity needs of America, with just a hundred square miles of desert.

But we're going to focus on the step he thinks need to happen first: the construction of a unified national smart grid to distribute the power of renewable energies. Here is John Kerry in dialog with Al Gore.

[in the Radio Ecoshock Show]

CAP AND TRADE OR CARBON TAX?

Although he has supported a revenue neutral carbon tax in the past, Mr. Gore testified he thought the cap and trade system was the most viable option now. Some European countries, and two Canadian provinces have already brought in a carbon tax. The revenue is not kept by the government, but returned to taxpayers. Some Americans are not ready for that, or don't trust the government.

We also need to realize that Al Gore, in addition to his famous role as climate educator, is now a multimillionaire successful businessman in the green energy field. The industry alliance he represents wants cap and trade - they think they can make money in a pollution market. Given the collapse of self-regulated capitalism, many environmentalists don't trust cap and trade either.

A DEAL WITH CHINA?

Part of the focus of this testimony is preparation for the climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. That will be the first international opportunity for the new Obama administration to work for a climate solution. However, Al Gore suggested that the U.S. should be negotiating an agreement with China, even before Copenhagen. If the two biggest polluters can really reduce carbon, the worst of climate disruption might be avoided. And Gore says China has seen the green light, and is willing to reign in their greenhouse gas emissions. We shall see.

WORKING WITH THE NATURAL WORLD

While Gore brought out a lot of technical solutions, he made surprising emphasis on the role of protecting the last great forests of Earth. Deforestation causes 20 percent of our emissions. Gore also wants to see a program where the world's farmers can get credit if they capture more carbon in the soil. There is four times more carbon in the soil, than in all the trees.

THE LAST CHANCE

Al Gore told the Senate that top scientists are screaming from the roof tops: this is our last chance for action to stop a massive heat shift on planet Earth.

Dr. James Hansen of NASA wrote to President Obama, saying the climate will be saved, or lost, in the first four years of this administration. Other scientists from Germany, Australia - many parts of the world, have the same angst, the same conclusion of deadline, the need for swift action.

The most dire comes from one of the oldest voices: Sir James Lovelock. The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, that living things regulate their own climate, told New Scientist magazine that we have, quote, "one last chance."

In fact, Lovelock worries it is already too late for emissions reductions. He doesn't trust carbon trading at all, and has even given up his love for nuclear power. The only hope he sees is a giant program to bury charcoal in the Earth, agrichar. But Lovelock doesn't think that will happen either. He expects a cull of human population, dropping down to perhaps a billion or less surviving.

Lovelock told Gaia Vince of the New Scientist, quote:

"We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK."

I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock. Did you want me to lie to you? To sugar coat the facts?

The climate situation is far more serious than any banking scandal. That is why Al Gore went to Washington.

WHY ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD CAN'T MAKE US RENEWABLE...

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, you heard Senator John Kerry ask Al Gore the perennial question: why hasn't safe renewable energy taken off? The obvious reason is opposition from an entrenched oil and coal oligarchy. But is that really all? Are we innocent?

Here is a quick quote from next week's Radio Ecoshock Show. The speaker is Martin Burger, CEO of Blue Energy, and a campaigner for tidal energy. We'll examine power from the tides, but Burger raises a deep and difficult point. Just how does a society transform itself? Can any amount of money from the Federal Government, or even mega-corporations, really change things? Or does it take a tidal wave of consciousness in humanity?

Let's listen to Martin Burger for two minutes.

"And this is a long talk, in of itself. And we are in the infancy of our consciousness evolution as individuals, but in this collective mind field.

Our Western perspective has not, or has failed to integrate the quantum perspective, and field effect. There is a fundamental truth, in physics and in reality, to what Chief Seattle said, when he talked about the web of life, that how all the animal kingdom - the birds, the forests, the beasts, and all of us - are all connected at some dimensional root level.

And out of that arises a signal that generates and manifests our shared experience called our future.

If we haven't contemplated the possibility of a low-cost clean sustainable energy future, that signal is presently weak. And that signal is displaced and dominated by those with an agenda that serves a narrow element and segment, rather than the broader segment of society.

So consciousness is really more important in creating this future, and in realizing the opportunities of significant efforts that have come long before this one [referring to tidal power]. But this one is still under the same limits of a feeble signal to the future.

Meetings like this, your book, your effort, the New Energy Movement, creates that monkey [the "hundredth monkey"] that has to ride that what-could-be train. And every one of the efforts needs that hundredth monkey.

So they [the public] will behave quantumly until that quantum mass is achieved in attention and consciousness. But then there's a tipping point where they can't be stopped.

Money won't do it. Money will take - and you can put something into a technology, and have a great flurry go on, but if it's going to change the world it has to occur with consciousness, before the money will make it stick.

So there are other technologies out there, raising more money. But when you look at it from a vision, versus a good idea, most of them are just good ideas. They're not going to change the future. They don't have a future."

What is he talking about? Einstein conceived the field theory of physics around 1905. You could say that each of us is less a distinct body, and more a collection of atoms held together by a field. These fields interact, forming larger fields.

Biologists such as Rupert Sheldrake opened the idea that animals really operate as large groups. You've seen large flocks of birds wheel in the sky as one, like schools of fish in the sea. Next week we'll hear about the hundredth monkey theory - that groups of animals reach a critical mass, where change occurs.

99 monkeys may not bring alternative energy to our lives, but the hundredth adopter might be the tipping point where suddenly everyone realizes the route to sustainable power.

Money can't do it. A change in mass consciousness needs to happen.

We'll explore all that next week on Radio Ecoshock, along with Burger's inside look at the state of tidal power around the world. Yes we could power everything using the gravity of the moon and stars, as they pull the ocean surface.

Oh yeah, we'll also take a trip into other engines and technologies waiting in the wings.

Don't miss the interview with top Earth Research Lab scientist Peter Tans in the audio of this week's Radio Ecoshock Show. We start with his ability to really speak the truth, without government interference. I ask how we know humans are altering the atmosphere, for sure. It turns out there are several ways to prove that, including a different form of carbon that humans emit when they burn fossil fuels.

Near the end of the interview, Tans worries that there is a chance, perhaps even a one in six chance, that the average temperature over land could increase by as much as 10 degrees Celsius (!!!!) due to feedback effects which we are only beginning to realize.

That is what we are trying to stop now, as each of us rises to consciousness about the danger, and the solutions just waiting for our eyes to see.

Listener tips make this almost a group project. This week "jon q public" tipped me to the Laurie Anderson live performance on You tube. The song "Only and Expert (Can Deal With a Problem)" contains a great verse about experts denying climate change. Sadly, due to time limitations, I had to cut another powerful verse about countries that bomb other countries. Listen and watch the whole song here.

Our background music at the half time break is "Clubbed to Death" by Rob Dougan.

A half hour cut-down version of Radio Ecoshock plays every Saturday morning at 11:30 on Green 960 Radio in San Francisco. In America only, you can hear it live on the Net.

I'm Alex Smith. Write me any time. The address is radio [youknowwhatgoeshere] ecoshock.org

THIS IS IT! The ship is going down.

2009-01-22T15:59:00.000-08:00

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm Alex Smith with eye-popping headlines on the triple crisis: Peak Oil, climate change, and economic collapse.

While America basks in Obama, Europe quietly fell further apart over the week-end. On Martin Luther King Day, the British government announced more hundreds of billions to prop up banks and bad bets. Stocks in Barclay Bank fell to 25 percent in less than an hour. The largest, Royal Bank of Scotland, is already 80 percent owned by the government.

The same in Ireland. Both countries look close to nationalization of their banking system. Even some government officials wonder whether Britian itself faces either bankruptcy or a complete collapse of the British pound. Unthinkable stuff.

Jim Rogers, the famous expatriate American billionaire, says the big American banks are bankrupt themselves. Hardly anyone argues that point any more. The U.S. government tossed another 20 billion dollars to the Bank of America, and guaranteed more than a hundred billion dollars in worthless paper generated by the former Merrill Lynch. The world's largest bank, Citi Group, has lost more billions, and is splitting up into two.

At least a dozen countries, national governments, are close to bankruptcy. Not just former success stories like Iceland and Ireland. The credit rating of Spain has been downgraded. Italy may be technically bankrupt. The Balkans are a mess, as is most of Eastern Europe, right up to Latvia and Lithuania.

We haven't even discussed economic chaos in the Middle East and Asia.

This is it friend. The great ship of modern production has hit the iceberg. The band may still be playing sweetly in the First Class Ballroom, but the cold sea water is filling the holds below.

It will settle by degrees, no doubt. A wave of closures this March. Quiet desperation over the Summer. A lot of dancing, new announcements, the most reckless spending moves. All stalling the inevitable revaluation. We have yet to live the leaden doldrums, the years of suffering, before the real reformation comes.

In today's program, the Head of the International Energy Agency admits oil production has peaked out, and time is running out for the planet's climate. While we were all enthralled with non-stop coverage of the U.S. elections, this speech by Fatih Birol got buried. Are you ready to cut your energy use by 9 percent every year? Get ready, because the oil is running out.

Here is the Youtube video (about an hour) of Fatih Birol speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations on December 1st, 2008. Our program runs his 15 minute speech, with notes and exclamation points added.

In our second half hour, I'll interview Christine MacDonald, author of the book Green Inc. She claims the biggest environmental groups have been covering for multinational corporations, in cosy relationships, for giant salaries. What will we see in the green mirror?

Then we'll wrap up with Van Jones. He has a vision for those left behind in America's poverty ghettos. It's a green vision, where those with the most need, produce what America needs most: carbon-free energy. Van Jones testifies to Congress.

Here's just a few of the headlines that got my attention recently.

The managing director of the world's biggest bond fund, Bill Gross of Pimco, admits the whole economy was really a Ponzi scheme. Gross said the U.S. had been running, quote "our Ponzi-style economy".

Another bright light, Meredith Whitney - the stock analyst who bravely said the Emperor of Wall Street had no clothes - now says all of the 300 billion dollars of U.S. government TARP money has simply disappeared, covering banking losses. No wonder there is no money to loan. Pretty predictable really. Coming generations will be harnessed to debt for absolutely nothing. At least until they refuse.

Meanwhile, on the climate front, Indonesia has announced over a billion dollars for new railroads. Does that sound like good news? It's not. The rails will move coal reserves from South Sumatra to the coal ships. Onward to Asia's multiplying coal stations, and runaway climate change.

Climate blogger Joseph Romm, recently a guest on Radio Ecoshock, points out a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists from South Korea's Pohany University found, quote, "Sudden, considerable reduction in recent uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the East/Japan Sea." If true, the ocean burial ground for our carbon binge may be full. Next week on Radio Ecoshock, we'll talk with a top American scientist who questions this research. He should know. Pieter Tans is Chief Scientist for NOAA's global carbon monitoring program.

At climateprogress.org, Joe Romm also says: "China announces plan to single-handedly destroy the climate. China to increase coal production 30 percent by 2015"
That big increase in coal power was just announced by the government of China. The increase, Romm writes, will be "an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States -- an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America."

Mommy, how do you spell "toasted planet?"

As the Titanic settles, there are more fancy balls to attend. Kate Sheppard wrote about two supposedly Green inauguration parties in Gristmill, the environmental blog, for January 19th. I quote her now:

"Tonight's dueling balls showcase an interesting dichotomy within the green movement. Gore's ball, which has more of an activist bent, is co-hosted by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, the Vote Solar Initiative, and Youth for Environmental Sanity, among many other groups and businesses. Wal-Mart, KPMG, and the American Gas Association are also on board, but these and other corporate sponsors have incorporated green practices into their businesses, say the Gore folk. The organizers are decorating with tree seedlings, using recycled-fiber carpet, recycling and composting waste, and offsetting their carbon emissions. The food is going to be organic, and cooked across the street, to lower the carbon footprint, natch. Will.i.am and Maroon 5 will serenade the crowd.

The International Conservation Caucus Foundation's ball is hosted by The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, and WWF, among others, and will be just a few blocks down the street. "Roses will be flown in from Ecuador. Marinated beef is being flown in from Texas to Virginia, where it will be grilled and then trucked to the auditorium," reports the Times. "We are not into symbolism," said caucus president David H. Barron. "We are focused on a much bigger impact." As the Times puts it, "the caucus gala sticks to its philosophy that the environment and wildlife are most effectively protected by governments and businesses." To that end, sponsors include ExxonMobil, Chevron, International Paper, and Wal-Mart (which appears to be hedging its bets). Famous anticipated guests include Robert Duvall, Bo Derek, and Ed Norton."

That's a report from Kate Sheppard at gristmill.grist.org.

And that leads us to our next report, with Christine MacDonald. She worked for Conservation International, and didn't like the company it keeps.

[Interview with Christine MacDonald, author of "Green Inc"]

I'd like to take you now to the Committee Rooms of Congress, to hear another great African American voice, Van Jones. This is the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, chaired by Ed Markey. They get the best.

In this brief testimony on January 15th, 2009, Van Jones explains how to beat America's energy poverty, while giving work to those who need it most.

[Van Jones]

Van Jones is both a civil rights activist and environmental advocate in Oakland, California. His Green Jobs program came out of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He's got a web site at vanjones.net.

I'm Alex Smith. You can find my kingdom of free green audio at ecoshock.org

Save yourself, your neighborhood, or just a lonely planet. Load up your Ipod or computer with free mp3 files on the triple threat: the environment, peak oil, and the new hard times.

Mother Earth will thank you.

Until next week.

Alex Smith

Radio Ecoshock

RESILIENT CITIES Peak Oil & Climate

2009-01-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

Can a city really work without oil? How will we ever make the transition?

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock - and you are in for a treat. Professor Peter Newman has designed public transport in Australia, and studied sustainable cities all over the world. Now we'll hear his first speech of the book tour for "Resilient Cities - Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change."

The one hour talk, on January 9th, 2009, was hosted by Anthony Perl of Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver Canada. Professor Perl is the co-author of "Transportation Revolution" and a driving force in new city design.

In this speech, Peter Newman acknowledges the possibility of city crash, the "Mad Max" movie scenario as oil and the climate decline. Perhaps the rich will retire behind armed eco-friendly barracks. One of the best aspects of this speech: Newman doesn't gloss over the recent economic crash, or human nature under capitalism, as though city planners acted in a vaccume. He admits, we may well go down in a messy way, and outlines what that might look like.

But Peter Newman also sees a better way out. I dared to hope, after hearing him - which is a dangerous emotion in these times.

The place was packed to standing room only, mostly young people. There was a definite buzz.

Peter is no mere theorist. He's headed up sustainable city design in Australia, and is now an adviser for a 20 billion dollar fund for a green rebuild of Australia's infrastructure. He is plugged in to city designers all over the world, and much in demand.

In this program you hear the complete kick-off speech for his book tour. The title is "Resilient Cities - Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change." just published by Island Press.

Just when you think freeway dead-zones have conquered the world, Newman tells us about Seoul, South Korea. The city built a multi-land freeway right over the central river, which was considered sacred for centuries. A consumer-based political party got elected - and demanded the freeway be torn down! Within 5 years the huge mass of concrete was carted away, the river exposed, and redeveloped into green spaces and cafes on either side. The result changed the city and society for the better by far.

You'll hear about another city in Europe that made itself famous by "re-discovering" a buried river.

Peter Newman is huge on trains. He's instigated a few in Australia - and they've been packed from day one. More than that, new planning calls for "Transit Oriented Destinations" - a kind of complete walking suburb our on the rail lines. Developments happen around rapid transit nodes.

Newman also gives examples comparing American cities with European and Asian ones. Among all major cities, Atlanta is the most unsustainable city in his charts, with Houston not far behind. But it doesn't have to be that way, as he explains how to get out of the deep oil hole. Again, there is an example of Tyson's Corner in the U.S.A.

The book is not an academic dead-weight - it's quite user-friendly and compact. You want to skim though it, but get caught up in fascinating examples of how we can save cities, despite giant challenges. It hits you where you live.

You can download this speech, and the previous Radio Ecoshock on "Transport Revolution" by Perl and Gilbert from our web site at ecoshock.org. Select Transporation from our audio on demand menu. The whole site is loaded with free mp3 downloads.

A realistic but hopeful speech, definitely the best so far in 2009.

The Radio Ecoshock Show 090116 1 hour CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

Recorded by Alex Smith.