EXPECTING COLLAPSE

Collapse is the new in thing. Columnists in collapsing newspapers write about it. Historians tell us it's coming. Prominent economists predict it. We all expect it.

What is collapse? Definitions vary from uncontrollable downturns, all the way to great culls in our population.

Lets start gently, with mild-mannered professor Dennis Meadows, one of the original authors to "The Limits to Growth". Here is a clip from a film prepared September 2009 for leaders and billionaires at Davos, Switzerland:

"The Danger of Collapse

Technically speaking "collapse" is a process where things go down, out of control. For example, if a building collapses, it falls down not under the control of anybody. Societal collapse is for the key indicators of our society--material standards of living, peace, trust in the government, and other things, to fall, without control.

Collapse is Near

The situation for us is kind of like living in a city which has earthquakes, let's say Tokyo or San Francisco. I can tell my friend in San Francisco that with 100% probability there is going to be another really big earthquake in San Francisco-absolutely, no uncertainty about it. But when, that is the question. And how big? These are really important questions. We don't have any idea when. It could be tomorrow; it could be thirty years from now. The same thing with collapse. I know that the current growth in population and in material use cannot continue--absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions."

[end of Meadows transcript]

Fine. It's like a building in Chile, if you expect it and prepare for collapse, or a concrete pancake in Haiti, if you don't. Next week we'll look at a more dangerous definition of collapse.

In this program, we'll hear two of the most prominent voices. Dumb media calls them "collapsniks". I have much more respect. Dmitry Orlov keeps piercing the veil with his insights, gained partly from his bridging the gap between the former Soviet Union, and the increasingly dysfunctional United States.

John Michael Greer has moved from the edge of mysticism, into a thought leader for alternative culture. You won't find either one on your father's radio stations. This is Radio Ecoshock.

[Dmitry Orlov interview, 25 minutes, available separately as an mp3 on our Peak Oil page]

Many people take their lead on collapse from the work of Joseph Tainter, the Head of the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. His book "The Collapse of Complex Societies" was published in 1988. Tainter looks at past civilizations, from the Maya to the Romans, to see they fell down. To quote from Wikipedia:

"Tainter argues that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society rapidly sheds a significant portion of its complexity."

Let's hear a short clip from Joseph Tainter, found at archeologychannel.org

[Tainter reading]

"Modern society, doom-sayers tell us, may be destroyed by pollution, over-population, global warming, energy shortages, or collision with an asteroid.

Economists argue the opposite: that as long as we remain entrepreneurial, we can overcome all challenges. Most of us hope the economists are right, but wish we could understand better why societies succeed or fail.

Societies regularly face wars, catastrophes, changes in climate, and economic distress. We respond to problems today much as people did before, and from these commonalities we can learn about collapse, resiliency and sustainability.

An illuminating collapse was that of the Western Roman Empire in the Fifth century A.D. The Romans found conquest highly profitable at first, as they seized the accumulated wealth of the Mediterranean lands. But for a one-time infusion of wealth, Rome took on responsibilities to administer and defend the empire. These responsibilities lasted centuries, and had to be paid from yearly agricultural production.

When there were extraordinary expenses, usually during wars, the government often found itself short of money. The usual strategy was to stretch the currency by adding copper. This was inflationary, and by the middle of the Third century A.D., the empire was bankrupt. The government would not even accept its own coins for payment of taxes.

In the half century from 235 to 284, the empire nearly came to an end. There were foreign and civil wars, almost without interruption. Cities were sacked and provinces devastated. In the late Third and early Fourth centuries A.D., the emperors Diocletian and Constantine responded by designing a government that was larger, more complex, more highly organized, and much more costly. They doubled the size of the army at great expense. To pay for this, peasants were taxed so heavily that they abandoned lands and could not replenish the population.

In the late Fourth century, the Barbarians forced their way into the Western empire. They overthrew the last Emperor in Italy in 476 A.D.

I call this 'the Roman model' of problem solving. The Romans responded to challenges by increasing the size and complexity of their government and army, at great expense. Fiscal weakness, and exploitation of the population undermined the effort, and made collapse inevitable.

The Eastern Roman Empire survived the Fifth century crisis. We know it today as the Byzantine Empire. It was constantly at war, and in the early Seventh century, a twenty six year war with Persia left both sides exhausted. Arab armies seized the wealthiest parts of the Byzantine realm, and destroyed the Persian Empire entirely.

Soon the Arabs were attacking Constantinople itself, the Byzantine capital. Yet the Byzantines made a remarkable recovery. They settled their professional army of farmlands across the Empire. Soldiers now provided most of their own sustenance, and the government paid them a much lower salary.

Byzantine government and society simplified also. Cities contracted to fortified hill-tops. The economy became organized around self-sufficient manors. Literacy declined.

The simplification rejuvenated Byzantium, which not only halted the Arab advance, but eventually doubled the size of the Empire. Unlike the Romans, who met challenges by increasing the complexity and costliness, the Byzantines show us what may be history's only example of a large complex society systematically simplifying. I label this 'the Byzantine model.'"

[end quote from Professor Joseph Tainter, University of Utah.]

Personally, I find Tainter's explanations a bit too business-oriented, a little too convenient for slashing employees and government help. And our understanding of collapse has come a long way from 1988, when his seminal book came out, I'm sure he would agree. Now that we're closer to it, some of the dirt has been wiped off the lens. But Joseph Tainter continues to be a great source for those interested in collapse.

When Radio Ecoshock continues, we'll go further, with the Arch druid, John Michael Greer. Stay tuned, while you can.

[interview with John Michael Greer, available as a separate interview on our Peak Oil page]

In 2005, John Michael Greer published a scholarly paper titled "How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse."

Greer finds Tainter's explanations lack some positive feed-back loops, the self-reinforcing drivers of decline emerging from things like limited resources, and failing biosphere. In the later stages of a civilization, most of the capital is converted into waste. Can anyone spell junk bonds or credit default swaps?

There has certainly been a downturn in media expectations. After the year of green shoots and drum beats of recovery, there are a slew of experts gently warning we're still in the crapper. You may feel a little pain.

From the OECD economists, to J.P. Morgan, capital experts see another slide coming. Investigations into Goldman Sachs' padding the books of entire nations, like Greece, Italy and more... are leaking out the awful truth. We fixed nothing in the banking system or our economy, and we've faked our way through another year.

Recalling the models from history, as presented by Joseph Tainter, we find that collapse isn't all bad for everyone. For those toiling under the yoke of impossible imperialism, it is a relief when the war economy ends. For those eating industrial agro-garbage, real grown food tastes sweet and good again. The cynicism of our present failures morphs into new beliefs, as the old is cleaned away.

The wild Germans and Celts longed for the Fall of Rome, though they kept using some of their technologies and symbols. In Byzantium, simplification and self-sufficiency led to centuries more civilization.

I'm also reminded of Roberto Vacca's 1973 book, "The Coming Dark Age". As a computer architect, Vacca predicted modern complexity would over-reach, and fall apart. The dreaded system break down.

A version of that book, updated by the author in the year 2000, is now free on the Net.

Back in the '70's, Vacca couldn't foresee how much computers would help humans organize beyond their individual capabilities. Once we survived the urge for atomic self-annihilation, we got another thirty years out of computer assisted living. Until Windows and the mega-servers hit the virus they can't swallow. Or the power goes out in a mega storm. Richard Heinberg warns most or our ready-to-click knowledge could disappear in a day, without the machines.

Meanwhile, you can feed your worries with the new article coming out this week in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson calls it, "Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos." See what I mean? Everybody's on to it.

Find an accessible, shorter version of Niall Ferguson's warning here in the L.A. Times, the article titled: "America, the Fragile Empire."

We don't know where collapse is taking us, or when. Only that it's coming. Get more in next week's Radio Ecoshock on-going coverage. As Niall Ferguson writes, we may not have time to figure out the theory, if collapse comes quickly, and without warning.

I'm Alex Smith. Find lots more free audio, at our web site, ecoshock.org Thank you for listening.

Program Notes:
Our background music is "Open Up You Eyes" by Awake. The band dedicated another song, "Industrial Cemeteries" to our guest, John Michael Greer. The album is "Dark Matter".

You also heard the bull-horn overlay from London, England found in this You tube montage titled "Everything Is OK"

Toward the Collapse

Is global warming unstoppable now? Could we be saved by total economic collapse? If so, should we help civilization fall?

It's another cheery edition of Radio Ecoshock, with your darkness at the end of the tunnel, Alex Smith. There are lots of links to our program content below.

Last night I recorded another glimpse of the climate apocalypse, with the author of "Climate Wars" Gwynne Dyer. He outlined the short distance from here to the cliff where long-known natural feed-backs leading to runaway global warming begin, and continue on for millennia. That limit is known as two degrees. Beyond that, great forests melt into fire, liberating their carbon. Beyond that, the Arctic permafrost melts, likely doubling atmospheric greenhouse gases. Five to seven degrees Centigrade of average global temperature rise. Utter disaster.

Dyer says world governments quickly agreed to the 2 degree limit at Copenhagen, without telling the public why. No need to panic the herd.

Dyer says we won't make it in time, before the big climate switch is pulled. You'll hear clips from that speech in an upcoming Ecoshock Show. I can't run the whole speech, because as usual, Gwynne is developing his new work toward another radio or TV program. I appreciate Gwynne sharing his "working notes" with our Radio Ecoshock audience. Kind of a sneak preview.

Find out more at www.gwynnedyer.com
Here is info on the "Climate Wars" radio series.

... and the book.

Up early this morning, I tune into a climate science web cast from the Center for American Progress. Two top American IPCC scientists, trying not to say too much. Late in this program, I'll have a few clips and comments from that update, hosted by Joe Romm, of the blog climateprogess.org.

But we'll start out with a different sort of scientist. Cloud specialist Tim Garrett stepped in a few people's faces, when he proposed a formula about carbon and the world's wealth. Simply put, unless our economy collapses, to levels you and I would hate, climate change is unstoppable. Garrett bases his jarring statements on a basic law of physics, of thermodynamics.

Read the "Is Global Warming Unstoppable?" article here.

You won't need a science degree to understand our Radio Ecoshock interview.

Following Garrett, we dive deeper into the culture of despair. Keith Farnish is the author of "Time's Up, an uncivilized solution to a global crisis." I've put lots of Keith Farnish links below, including one to his online book.

Are you ready to become uncivilized?

If collapse is the best solution, would you help kick the system over? Or would you just watch it fall? Farnish has been called a terrorist, and a green realist. Your brain exercise for troubling times.

Let's start with the science of collapse.

[Garrett interview]

This is Radio Ecoshock, with Alex Smith. We've just heard Tim Garrett from the University of Utah - and let's take a quick review.

His paper is titled "Are there basic physical constraints on future
anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?"

The basic thesis, tested against past industrial development, is that neither population nor standard of living have to be included in modeling prediction of climate change. Garrett concludes that civilization, as measured by gross domestic product, is directly related to the amount of carbon burned. More emissions, more wealth. Less emissions, less economic production.

Here is the exact description of the theory, from an abstract of Garrett's paper:

"Here, it is shown both theoretically and observationally how the evolution of the human system can be considered from a surprisingly simple thermodynamic perspective in which it is unnecessary to explicitly model two of the emissions drivers: population and standard of living. Specifically,
the human system grows through a self-perpetuating feedback loop in which the consumption rate of primary energy resources stays tied to the historical accumulation of global economic production—or p × g—through a time-independent factor of 9.7 ± 0.3 mW per inflation-adjusted 1990 US dollar."

By applying his formula, Garrett says it would take a new nuclear plant built every single day to keep up our current standard of living. As that isn't happening, and may be impossible, the only other solution is economic collapse. In our interview, Garrett suggests a horrible economic crash, which I imagine as diving perhaps to Medieval standards of life, is required just to reach 450 parts per million of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

In the conclusion of that paper we find, quote:

Viewed from this perspective, civilization evolves in a spontaneous feedback loop maintained only by energy consumption and incorporation of environmental matter.

Because the current state of the system, by nature, is tied to its unchangeable past, it looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in CO2 emission rates. For predictions over the longer term, however, what is required is thermodynamically based models for how rates of carbonization and energy efficiency evolve. To this end, these rates are almost certainly constrained by the size and availability of environmental resource
reservoirs."

end quote.

Several science journalists picked up on the paper's underlying prediction: global warming is unstoppable, unless the economic system crashes. And that leads to our next guest. He agrees, and suggests it is our duty, all of us, to help the inevitable hard landing come sooner, rather than later. Why wait until Nature is totally used up, on a nearly dead planet?

[Keith Farnish]

Here are a bunch of links for Keith Farnish:

His blog. earth-blog.bravejournal.com
Another blog ("unsuitablog")
Keith's book "Time's Up" (online version) www.timesupbook.com
========

Web casts are proliferating, as various publishers and institutes slash travel costs. That's good for emissions, and a way to let more people into the virtual room. I attended two this week.

One was a re-assessment of Copenhagen, and the way forward, from the British publisher Earthscan.

There I met David Satterthwaite, our radio guest next week. His recent work on the realities of human settlement, slums, and western consumerism - fits in perfectly with the new Worldwatch 2010 State of the World Report. I interview that report's project director, Erik Assadourian, as we ask "Is it them, or is it us?" Next week, on Radio Ecoshock.

My second web cast was provided by the Center for American Progress, and hosted by uber-blogger Joe Romm. His spot climateprogress.org really is the indispensable climate blog, as author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called it.

On the web cast, we got to hear from two top American scientists, who have helped organize IPCC reports: Dr. Michael MacCracken and Dr. Christopher Field. Dr. MacCracken has been a Radio Ecoshock guest.

I'm not going to lie to you. At time the web cast was timid to boring, as the two scientists were so careful about the limits of the IPCC process. You had to re-interpret wonk speak, to realize this Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is not really up to the task of warning the world about the real threat.

Why not? Let me count just a few reasons.

One: the whole pile of summaries, the things you, and I, and politicians actually read, must be agreed to, line-by-line, by each and every government in the world. That means, for example, Saudi Arabia, the giant oil producer who denies climate change, has to sign on. It's almost like having Dick Cheney approve everything the Obama administration does. Oh wait, it seems like that's happening in the Senate anyway.

Two: when incompetence, and possibly corruption in the case of grand-leader Pachauri show up, the IPCC has no agency to investigate, to correct the problem, or even to handle the press. Pachauri was involved with the unscientific and botched prediction about the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2030 - now shown to be contrary to the common knowledge of most glacier experts. A member of the team acknowledged they knew the information to be false.

Yet Pachauri helped get that wrong prediction into the report, and then personally profited from the panic by the Indian government. His company got fairly big money to find out more, about a problem with did not exist at the levels claimed.

It stinks of corruption, not a new idea at the United Nations. I've posted a list of Pachauri 's various businesses, and it's a long list, in my blog for this week. He should resign.

Here is an article which claims a direct conflict of interest for Dr. Pachauri , when it comes to carbon trading.

The same blog goes into detail about Pachauri 's business holdings and roles. It doesn't look good.

And let's not forget that Pachauri is essentially President George W. Bush's man. Bush objected to Robert Watson heading the IPCC, and pushed for Pachauri instead. Another very bad sign.

None of this was mentioned by the upright scientists at the American Progress web cast. They admit a major mistake was made, but don't criticize either the man, or the system that let him get away with it. Pitiful.

Three: there are a lot of things that science simply can't address, that matter a lot. For example, when the assembled scientists realized they didn't know how to predict Arctic ice melt, they just left that out of the calculations of sea level rise. So their prediction of a few millimeters rise by 2100 was laughable.

There's a lot more unknown unknowns, including public panic, climate wars, and climate trauma, and mass migration, just to name a few. Those demons are outside the realm of science, but definitely part of what we need to understand, or at least plan out with the best guesses.

Four: the IPCC is always 5 years behind current science. And why do we only report every five years, on a problem that suggests we only have ten years left to act, if that, before Nature takes over control of the greenhouse? We need a permanent climate war room, or rather a peace room.

Five: experience with past reports shows, the IPCC always underestimates both the urgency, and the severity of the impacts of climate disruption.

I run a couple of the best clips from the web cast, which you can see in full here.

In our first radio clip, Dr. Christopher Field echoes, almost exactly, the theory we heard in our first interview, with Tim Garrett. Carbon equals wealth.

Then Field adds to a list of climate change impacts, already begun by Michael MacCracken.

And finally, Dr. Michael MacCracken expands on everyone's nightmare, melting permafrost.

Still, it was a worthwhile web cast by the Center for American Progress, February 2nd, 2020. My thanks to Joe Romm, super-climate blogger at climateprogress.org, for at least trying to keep it lively.

Most of the talk about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was diplomatic - and disappointing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in fact the whole U.N. system for negotiations, isn't working. If anything, it's working against us.

Frankly, we need a new public body to measure and predict the climate threat in real time. Let scientists say what they can prove, without censorship from Saudi Arabia, George Bush, or whoever. Maybe it can all be built as a knowledge machine on the Internet. Heaven knows who will fund and control it. Maybe some billionaire will care enough about the future to fund it, and let it go, without strings. Maybe we can find a few honest women and men?

Something has to change, or we are toast.

Can the public stomach the awful truth? Or, will we go down in a sea of denial and business-as-usual?

It's almost to the point, where the danger to the world as we know it, might matter as much as the Toyota recall, or who won the Oscars. I know that's a big claim, but that's the way I see it.

I'm Alex Smith. Thanks for listening.

THE SIMPLICITY MOVEMENT

Are you trying harder and harder to get things done? Stop it. Stop right now, and enjoy your life. You might live longer, and help save the planet as well.

That's the message from Cecile Andrews, author of "Slow Is Beautiful". Her book tour speech of the same name has been heavily downloaded from our web site.

Now Cecile has a new book out this year, called "Less Is More, Embracing Simplicity for a Healthy Planet, A Caring Economy and a Lasting Happiness"
- co-authored with Wanda Urbanska.

Way back last Spring, in our May 22nd 2009 Radio Ecoshock Show, I teased listeners with the first 15 minutes of Cecile's book tour speech. Now you'll hear the rest.

If we want to seriously save the planet, we need to bail out of consumerism, measuring ourselves by the brand names we buy. It turns out, we shop because we're unhappy with ourselves. And we're unhappy, because we have so few connections with family and community. The answer: build community and the simplicity movement.

It's something you can do yourself. Cecile Andrews tells you how. But why be so serious about it? Cecile's speech made me laugh out loud, and she wants you to have fun too.

Here is Cecile Andrews, continuing her talk called "Simplicity".

We're examining our need to rush around and buy things. Maybe there's a better way. Cecile Andrews is a community educator, with a doctorate and a wicked sense of humor. She and her husband Paul are founders of the Phinney Ecovillage, a project to build Sustainability and Community in her North Seattle Neighborhood.

Andrews' previous books include "Slow Is Beautiful" and "Circle of Simplicity". The new book contains short essays from many helpful authors. For example, Sarah Susanka talks about the role of clutter in our lives, while David Korten works on connecting and caring.

Andrews is also involved in the Take Back Your Time campaign, which has asked Congress to make 3 weeks vacation a minimum for all Americans. Find that at www.timeday.org.

Find Cecile's blog at http://lessismoresimplicity.blogspot.com/ You can download her full talk from the Speeches section of our Audio on Demand menu, at ecoshock.org.

I'd like to thank Josh Reimer of VIP Video in Vancouver for his recording.

So what do you think? Can we give up our compulsion to go for the fast lane, no matter what it costs the planet - or our own sanity? Are you ready for slow talk activism, and community building?

I started living the simple life a couple of decades ago, and I'm so thankful I did. The seasons don't pass, the moon doesn't change it's phases, without me knowing about it.

Join us in reclaiming our lives from the machine!

I'm Alex Smith, your host on Radio Ecoshock. Write me any time. The address is radio [at] ecoshock.org.

Thanks for tuning in.

Our end song is from the debut album "Audio Visuals" by The Administrators singing "Stuck In Our Ways". Find it on You tube.

UNCIVILIZED

Coming up on Radio Ecoshock - hot from Copenhagen, American energy - and the destruction of Africa. Two continents adrift in hard choices. We know climate change is upon us. It's just a matter of how fast, and how bad. The struggle stretches from Washington to Denmark to Kenya, where the President's family live, among the growing millions of climate refugees.

Stick around, in our second half hour, we're off to Copenhagen, with voices you've never heard from the mainstream media. What Obama can do - no matter what watered down roadblocks Congress puts in the way. And why the fragile culture of Africa will boil away, with just 2 degrees of global temperature rise. Guess what! People there are not willing to die for our energy economy. From out of the darkness, Radio Ecoshock, with a digest of the best of independent radio coming from the Copenhagen convention center - courtesy of Phil England of climateradio.org.

Radio Ecoshock Show "Uncivilized" 1 hour CD quality (55 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)



But we open with the question: when does doubt become realism?

"...civilization as we have known it, is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system, and the ongoing mass destruction of the non-human world."

That's the starting point for our next guest, Paul Kingsnorth, a founder of The Dark Mountain Project. Paul is a well-educated, well-published environmentalist in England. He's been arrested at a protest, helped edit the Ecologist magazine, and Greenpeace publications. He appears regularly in British newspapers, radio, and television.

ALEX SMITH: Let's start with current events: was there ever any hope that climate change could be stopped, by our current political leaders, at Copenhagen?

PAUL KINGSNORTH: I don't think so, no, not at all. The conclusion was pretty foregone from the beginning. I think that the ways we look at climate change are probably the wrong ways.

If we look at climate change as a "problem" that we can solve within a certain amount of time, if we can just get the technology right, and if we can get the political will, and if we can build a big mass movement of people.

I don't think that's really what it is. I think climate change is almost an existential problem for us. It's a predicament we have to live with, rather than a problem we have to solve.

And I think the root of that is the fact that we treat climate change as if it's something that's external. It's a sort of problem we've created that we can solve with human genius. But climate change is our society, climate change is who we are.

Climate change is our computers, our televisions. It's our flights. And we're all complicit in it, those of us living in the rich world.

And the system that the political leaders who gathered in Copenhagen have to promote, because it's what their voters want them to promote, and it's what global corporations and the global economy wants them to promote, is the system that creates climate change.

So it's almost impossible to believe, I think, that they can turn around and suddenly flick a switch and turn it off again.

And I think we're having real trouble understanding that. I think that applies to environmentalists as well as the public as a whole. We still see climate change as a kind of challenge that we can tackle with the old fashioned methods of protesting, and marching, and letter writing, and campaigning. And I don't think it's responding to that at all.

ALEX: One thing brought home to me, by the alleged "leak" of the Danish text, - we in the West are committed to the expediency of atmospheric imperialism. We'll keep polluting, even if we lose whole countries and continents in the less developed world. Am I being pessimistic, or realistic?

PAUL KINGSNORTH: This is one of the things the Dark Mountain Project was set up: to try to distinguish between pessimism and realism.

I think that the whole of the environmental movement, in which I've been involved for a long time, is built on this edifice of hope. And hope can be a very good thing. But if it's false hope, it's a very dangerous thing.

And we've almost come to believe that anything's possible if we just hope for it enough. And I think we need to take a cold, and a hard, and a realistic look at the way the world is, and the way that human society is. And the way that human society is rubbing up against the ecological reality.

It's all very well, taking to the streets to kind of urge our leaders to act at Copenhagen. But our leaders are running this enormous machine, and this machine IS about cannibalizing resources from the rest of the world. It's about keeping the consumer economy going. You can't just turn that around, however much mass action you have.

And the problem is with climate change, is that actually you're never going to get millions of people on the streets to campaign against climate change. Because they'll be campaigning against their own way of life. They'll be campaigning against their own comfort, in the West at least.

And so we're all complicit in that system. The voters are complicit, the corporations are complicit, the politicians are complicit. We might want to stop climate change, but actually I don't think that we can, at least within the time scale that's apparently available to us.

I think we need to be honest about that. Because only when we're honest about that, can we start to think about what we do next....

Hear this interview with Paul Kingsnorth. (27 min, 6 MB)

Find out more about The Dark Mountain Project

or Paul Kingsnorth

COPENHAGEN: AMERICA VS. AFRICA

There is no single story coming out of the Copenhagen climate talks in December 09. There are hundreds. Today we'll cover the struggle of two continents: North America, the great wealthy polluter, and Africa, the poorest victim of global climate change.



We'll do it as only radio can. On a shoestring, a band of radio activists found the voices we never hear in mainstream media. They broadcast it daily to London, to Resonance FM, and to the States through Democracy Now! You'll hear Amy Goodman, Phil England, and Frederika Whitehead, plus audio from 350.org. More importantly, you'll get first hand the voices of the dispossessed, the representatives of Africa.

In spite of my years of studying climate change, my many interviews with top climate scientists, I never understood until now the real impact of climate disruption on Africa. Where hundreds of millions depend upon simple rain-fed agriculture, the rains are not coming, or flood everything out when they do. Wealth measured in cattle is now mile upon mile of skulls strewn across the widest part of the continent. Lake Chad, Africa's largest lake, has almost disappeared, drying out into a few marshes. Even farming rich South Africa is drying out, with worse to come in the next decades. We all need to wake up and listen to the distress calls from Africa.

Here is a map of some climate change impacts on Africa.

Meanwhile, the oil empire of America is trying to decide what to do. We'll begin there, with a quick news bite from Amy Goodman, an interview with Cassie Siegel on the legal moves, and then Naomi Klein on Obama's damage.

Does America have to gut the Clean Air Act to make new climate legislation? Hear Phil England of climateradio.org with Cassie Siegel, of the Center for Biological Diversity....

Incredibly, in oil-dependent Nigeria, there has been a major conference calling for a halt to further oil exploration. Leave it in the soil, to develop a real economy, and to save the climate of Africa. Listen to Phil England of climateradio with Nnimmo Bassey, head of Friends of the Earth, Nigeria.

But African representatives at Copenhagen were aggrieved and angry to discover their Danish hosts colluded with the biggest countries to write a polluters treaty, called the Danish Accord. We play a clip from the spontaneous protest that broke out in the main conference hall. It's heart-breaking - a deal that condemns millions of Africans to drought, more diseases, and heat deaths.

And it all links back to the United States, historically the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. We wrap up with a passionate letter to Obama, written by the African delegates. Really, it's a letter to Americans as they decide about their energy future - and the right to go on polluting the atmosphere.

Listen to this digest of alternative radio. (29 min 30 sec, 7 MB)
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate09/ES_Copenhagen_Digest_1_LoFi.mp3

It's official, this past decade was the warmest ever recorded. Doubt and despair, as the world hurtles into more decades of climate change.

Alex Smith

The Economy: Dinosaurs Will Die

Welcome to Radio Ecoshock. This week's program is about schizophrenia: the state of hoping the system will crash before it kills the planet, while counting on all the usual creature comforts of home, jobs, and a well-stocked supermarket.

Yes, I know the Western world is hanging in suspension. We're waiting for the shopping to resume, for the economy to rebound, for the good life to return. Most politicians and the mainstream press promise that it will all go back to the normal process of chewing up and spitting out the last of the planet's goodness.

Meanwhile we go to movies like 2012, slurping up scenes of the destruction of everything. Part of our secret selves hopes it all goes down in flames, or floods. Even while we worry about our children having a decent life. You see how it goes?

I know you are worried about the economy. Maybe even your own job or home is at risk. Despite the propaganda, we'd be crazy not to worry about it. I've been told the general formula for every speech and radio program goes as follows: we paint the grim picture, but always, always end on a positive note. Give humans solutions, or they'll just go numb and do nothing.

Sorry. This week we violate the rules. Lately Radio Ecoshock has run a series about greening our cities. A couple of listeners have written back, saying cities can never be sustainable, as Derrick Jensen says. Have I fallen into the camp of false good cheer?

We'll start out with one of the most promising solutions I've heard about lately - a dream of new economics coming from a British government advisor, Professor Tim Jackson. He's got a new book out "Prosperity Without Growth".

Then we'll head into more pessimistic territory with Dave Cohen, an analyst for ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Having written the American Empire is now obviously in decline, Cohen asks "Now What?" We talk more about the economic crisis, Wall Street bull (and bears) - and the energy crisis.

Along with James Howard Kuntsler, and our recent guest Richard Heinberg, Cohen says normal consumption is never coming back. We might as well prepare ourselves for very hard times.

We'll trash smug Canadians a bit, since real estate north of the border is just as stupidly over-leveraged as the American market. Then we'll notice Australia melting in the heat, while they push even more coal. A big Canadian company has just bought into the dirty Aussie coal market. Aren't we proud?

In the end, I wonder, is hope just getting in the way of dealing with the limits of reality?

This show is peppered with audio clips, including shorties from Max Keiser, Jeff Buckley's song "The Sky Is A Landfill", Bob Holman's "We Are the Dinosaur", and of course ending with the show title "Dinosaurs Will Die" from NOFX. We open with "Times Is Hard" by Loudon Wainwright III.

READ MORE

SMART DECLINE

Bill Rees, originator of the ecological footprint, says we are already into overshoot. We can plan to reduce our use of Earth's resources, or plunge through a series of disasters.

Full keynote speech from "Resilient Cities" 091021 plus Q and A with Warren Karlenzig on Post Carbon Cities, including China's "eco-cities". That presentation, with host Daniel Lerch from the Post Carbon Institute, was October 20th, all at the Vancouver Convention Centre, Canada.

Breakthrough information.

Ecoshock 091030 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production note: end music clip: "99 and a half won't do" by Mavis Staples.

HOW COMMUNITIES SURVIVE DISASTER

Everything in the techno-capitalist society forms us into separate atoms. We demand our own space, travel in personal metal boxes, and struggle as individuals.

When disaster strikes, hardly anyone remembers how to respond. How will your community react to a major threat? Will it fall apart, or grow stronger? Is there anything you can do to prepare?

This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm your host Alex Smith.

It's a real shock when those lonely atoms, conversing through electronic screens, realize their real community is endangered, or falling apart.

The cause may be economic. A major employer, or a whole industry like the auto sector, shuts down. Or maybe gas prices collapse real estate prices in a former commuter haven.

Communities can also be hammered by a climatic event: long-term drought, burned over by fire, drowned by super-floods and storm surges, or hit by a devastating storm. The disaster can even be environmental. A nuclear plant or a pesticide plant blows up, or a super-tanker spills it's oily guts.

Not to mention the possibility of a terrorist attack, like a dirty bomb or a biological release. Did I mention earthquakes?

In this program, I'll interview Riki Ott, THE Exxon Valdez spill expert. Her town of Cordova Alaska became an early case study in how a community reacts to disaster. Still fighting the big corporation who ruined their fishing industry, and split the townsfolk, Dr. Ott has developed a program to help damaged communities anywhere in the world. She gives us practical tips you should know BEFORE your community gets hit with the unexpected.

We'll follow up with a speech by Dr. John Helliwell. He's an economist called in to an audience that included mayors of towns experiencing near total loss of employment, after major forest mills shut down. I expected a pep talk about business plans and government rescues. Helliwell surprised us all, with a new way of looking at success - one not based on wealth and more production. Instead, John Helliwell is part of a growing consensus that our economic emphasis is all wrong. We should be aiming for Gross National Happiness. An economist who sees the community links becoming more valuable than business, a voice long overdue.

First, let's talk with Riki Ott.

[Ott interview]

I want to add to Riki's Ott's response about the role of women when communities hit a calamity, whether it's natural or human-made. Riki explained that women took up a leadership role in organizing not just meetings, but the networking and re-organization that helped partly heal the community. Women tend to be experienced in both communication and working co-operatively.

The darker side is this: when things go badly, women can also be further victimized by the despair and rage felt by men. I've lived in a town where the mine closed. I reported on the increased domestic disputes, growing alcohol and drug abuse, and outright beating of women by their spouses. If a factory or a mill closes, or natural events wipe out jobs - the community will have to increase services for women, at the very time when there are fewer municipal resources to go around. A women's shelter, or at least a network of safe-houses, may be needed quickly. Keep that in mind.

In an ideal world, both men and women would find some kind of counseling for the loss of value which accompanies unemployment. Without a job, many lose their sense of self definition and worth. We can't count on higher levels of government to provide this. People need to self-organize to talk to one another.

It's my observation that larger governments are beginning to fail. They spend themselves into bankruptcy, and over-build into huge bureaucracies that are unable to respond in any meaningful way. This is true in the most advanced countries, as the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi showed. If your community is struck, don't wait around for the government to save you. Organize and act locally.

There are also a few cases where the community fails, and nothing can really save it. There are plenty of ghost towns where a big mine closed, and the economy shut down with it. People just moved on.

I can foresee similar situations coming from the developing economic meltdown, coupled with climate disruption. Take the Ohio rust-belt, where heavy industries fled overseas. Former CIBC investment guru Jeff Rubin predicts they will rebuild, because soaring oil prices will make shipping from China too expensive. Others calculate that ocean shipping will remain far cheaper than trucking, so imports of Chinese products will continue.

I say the Ohio and Indiana area will not re-industrialize because they are 95 percent powered by coal. As climate change becomes too obnoxious to deny, and carbon pricing clicks in, new industry will only locate where renewable power is available. The Mid-Western states will either have to enter a crash program to find carbon-free power, or face a permanent loss of population.

Sometimes communities do survive to find new and safer economies. It's happened many times, in many places. In some cases, though, it's better to get out, no matter what your loss in real estate, hopes, or good memories.

Let's get into a different kind of optimism, built from a different kind of economic world view. This speech by Dr. John Helliwell was recorded by film maker Clancy Dennehy on September 17th, 2009 at the Forestry building, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. While it contains some references to B.C. towns devastated by mill closures - this speech is really about a global movement to redefine what an economy is. Does it produce happiness?

The introduction is by Jack Saddler, Dean of the UBC Faculty of Forestry.

[Helliwell]

You have just heard the 2009 Forestry Lecture in Sustainability, presented by economist Dr. John Helliwell. The speech was organized by the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry on September 17th, 2009.

The lecture was followed by an eminent panel including two top government officials, Doug Konkin, Deputy Minister of Environment, and Dana Hayden, Deputy Minister of Forests and Range. Plus Don Roberts, Managing Director, CIBC World Markets, offering a business critique.

You can download a full one hour presentation, which includes the panel comments, from the Brownbagger radio show archive, located at ecoshock.org. That's a free mp3.

My thanks to Clancy Dennehy for his recording. Look for Clancy's upcoming art film simply titled "Vancouver".

So what have we learned?

If a major disaster strikes your community, at some point you have to decide whether it's time to pitch in and rebuild - or to leave. There's an old saying, which is only true half the time: "The strong give up and move on. The weak give up and stay." I'm just saying.

If you decide to fight on - don't wait for an outside savior. Big government can't create community. Lawsuits can take 20 years before they let you down.

Big corporations can leave or fail. Build a local economy.

Redefine who you are, and include everybody. Listen to each other. Organize. And if you can, ...do it before disaster strikes.

I'm Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. Write me any time. The address is simply radio at ecoshock.org.

Thank you for listening this week.

Gas Pump Blues - for 100,000 Years

They're on practically every corner. Some people feel nervous at the gas pump. Others are outraged. Everybody knows prices are going nowhere but up.

Did you know a gallon of gas weighs about 6 pounds - or 2.7 kilos? Almost all of it - 5 pounds, 2.2 kilos - goes straight into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, out the exhaust pipe. And that substantial weight, for every additional gallon or liter we burn, remains as CO2 for 100,000 years.

Don't believe it? Stay tuned. We'll talk with David Archer, a top climate scientist. He's the author of "The Long Thaw". That's what we're living in, the time all humans will live in, for ten times the length of all history. In our second half hour.

First, I want to know: when does the oil society seize up? What happens to the American way of life, if gasoline goes to $7 a gallon? That's what financial expert Jeff Rubin predicts. Think that's tough? What about $20 a gallon?

We're going to dive right into an interview with Chris Steiner. Christopher Steiner is senior staff reporter at Forbes magazine. His new book is Twenty Dollars per Gallon: How the inevitable rise in the price of gasoline will change our lives - for the better.

READ MORE
with more links.

ECOCIDE OR ACTIVISM?

Obviously it's pointless. We are doomed.

Or it that just a frightened voice inside, knowing what we know?

Social failure rears it's ugly head, as half million more Americans, and countless millions more around the world, head home, if they have one. You are no longer valued. Kiss consumerism, and your future plans, good-bye.

That's all good for nature, who needs a break, but still heartless to see it in motion, with real people - people who will work hard, who want a role.

All this breakup of the fraudulent financial system takes place against a backdrop of climate pessimism. The bad news keeps piling up, and you'll hear in a series of interviews coming up on Radio Ecoshock this Fall.

What to do?

After I have my mandatory weekly nervous breakdown - we get a report from Europe, as I chat with UK radio host Phil England. We hear about climate camps in Britain, and around the world. In the U.S., they may be called "convergence camps", and Greenpeace Canada has their own series of actvist training going. These instant meetings, with hundreds of workshops, are popping up all over.

Then, despite my admitted apathy, we wonder whether political negotiators at the Copenhagen climate conference this December - will they really have the guts to do the right thing? Will they set a carbon limit that could preserve the Arctic, for example - or will they hand all the hard work off to the next generation (when it's too late)??

There is one way you and I can push these old-school energy hustlers, so they know we are awake and watching. Bill McKibben is the center of a world-wide day of action, coming up October 24th. You can find out what is going on in your area by going to 350.org. Use that as a tool to wake up all your friends. You can join an existing parade, or dream up some creative attention-getting action of your own.

I've peppered this week's show with quotes from a speech McKibben gave April 30th, 2009 in Dunedin, New Zealand. The version I used came from this great program (12 MB 53 min Lo-Fi) edited by the legendary Pacifica host C.S. Soong. I admire his "Against the Grain" program, and his contributions to other shows, like Terra Verde.

If you live through all that - the reward is one of my favorite interviews ever. I chew over our dim prospects with one of America's really witty authors and social commentators: Joe Bageant.

Joe's best seller was "Deer Hunting With Jesus" - a kind of personalized, slightly gonzo investigation into the poor underclass of America. I read every essay Joe posts on his blog. We delve into ecocide, and the ticklish problem of whether a heavily brainwashed American public has the tools to understand the damage around us.

Joe Bageant makes people laugh, makes them angry, makes them think. That kind of writer/thinker is very valuable. Enjoy the interview. I did.

Music this week: in honor of Phil England - "London Calling" by the Clash. "London calling" used to be the call signal for the BBC World Service, back in the day. But I couldn't find a clip of those words, in the old empire voice for the show! Not on youtube, not on the BBC archive site, not on archive.org. Surely those classic words have not disappeared! If you know where to get an audio clip of the "London calling" opening to the old BBC, like 1950's or before, please drop me a line at:
radio [at] ecoshock.org.

Also: a small clip from "Get Off Your Ass" by Gene Burnett, found on youtube. A theme of this show, I suppose. It's time to get going, or die off.

I'll be asking you - what are you going to do October 24th? We need to make "350" an international sensation, right quick. While there's still time to draft a climate treaty - a treaty with nature, peace with the atmosphere.

Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock

Climate Catastrophe - Can the Economic Crash Save Us?

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

DEAD MALLS, GLOBESITY & SIMPLICITY

[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....

ASTEROID STRIKES & INVISIBLE WOMEN

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

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

TROUBLE DOWN BELOW

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.