CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Is it just me... or is the world falling apart?

The Radio Ecoshock Show 080516

Worried? Need a hole to hide in?

All through Western history, the human herd has reached panic points. Civilization was expected to end. And sometimes it did.

In this program, we'll take the bullet train through global defrosting, climate adaptation, rogue capitalism, economic crash, selling out, capital flight, and the food crisis.

You will hear samples from a conference call with world food expert Lester Brown, and clips from a tell-all speech by the radical Canadian nationalist Mel Hurtig. Top Harvard environmental teacher James Gustav Speth says environmentalism has utterly failed. An expert in the hidden economy, Loretta Napoleoni explains Rogue Capitalism. Bill McKibben says we have one last chance.

LINKS FOR THIS SHOW:

Here are some links to the full interviews and speeches referenced in this show:

Lester Brown press call conference on the causes of the world food crisis (34 minutes in a tiny fast-downloading file). Brown, of Earth-Policy.org says this isn't a passing crisis, but a new trend which will cause mass starvation from here on out.

Mel Hurtig "The Truth About Canada" book launch speech (1 hour) on sell-out, corporate concentration, merger with U.S. and capital flight.

WNYC Leonard Lopate interview with Yale's James G. Speth

Loretta Napoleoni book launch speech "Rogue Economics" (1 hour)

Here is the best spot to find Bill McKibben's "Last Chance for Civilization" article - with some really intelligent blog reader comments - at commondreams.org.

TRANSCRIPT FOR THIS SHOW:

You can find the whole thing tied together in this rough and ready transcript for the show.
Learn how the billionaires are skipping out on taxes - and on paying for the energy and transportation transformation we will need to confront climate change.

This includes a brief profile of one rogue corporation: the Swiss banking giant UBS. Just after we went to air, a former UBS executive was arrested, charged with helping a California billionaire avoid U.S. taxes. Just one of many.

American listeners will also be interested in Mel Hurtig's description of secret meetings - a real-life conspiracy among the business elite (and your elected representatives) to sell out America, Canada, and Mexico to create the North American Union (that nobody voted for, and nobody wants...)

You have to get that from the audio of the program. Blogger readers, click the title above, or get the one hour program (14 MB) at:
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080516_Show_LoFi.mp3

There is a hilarious bit on biofuels from John Oliver (the "Senior Correspondent" on Jon Stewart's "Today Show") and Andy Saltzman in this program. Find their running series "The Bugle" at the Times Online site here.

The whole food crisis is so sick we need to poke black fun at our wasteful fat selves, to see through our thick lenses. Then Lester Brown tucks into the real issues, including a call for an end to the heartless process of using up food for SUV fuel.

IMPORTANT Note to Podcast listeners:

By popular demand, I have switched this podcast to the smaller Lo-Fi format (32 Kbps, mono).
This downloads faster, stores better on your hard drive, and sounds pretty good.

The only downside is slightly less quality, if you are into good stereo sound for your Ipod or sound system. And you can't burn this LoFi version direct to older style CD's. It will burn to CD as an mp3 file, which can be played by newer CD players, computers, DVD players, etc.

If you are a radio station getting the podcast from this source, you should switch over to the podcast found at our radio support site: www.ecoshock.net

That site will continue to podcast the full 56 MB 44 Hhz version. There is an easy sign-up podcast subscription button there. Then you can burn direct to CD from the podcast, and toss it into any station CD player. This is handy for late night, or unattended play.

Other listeners who want to continue receiving the higher quality 56 MB version are quite welcome to sign up for the podcast coming from www.ecoshock.net as well. You don't need to be a radio station to use that podcast.

One final note: we need more stations! As the number of stations go up, it gets easier for me to bring on the big name authors and scientists. Although, I have to say, we have had no problems so far!

Still, if you can contact your local non-profit college or community radio station, please ask them to add Radio Ecoshock to their programing. I realize there is a lot of competition for local air space, but we need one big environment program with the world view. Things like climate change are too important. We can't just say "Oh sorry, we don't have time to tell listeners about that..."

Please write or email requests to your local station. If you get some contact with a program director or station manager, can you forward it to me? My address is
radio [at] ecoshock.org.

I'm also trying to find more Low Power FM stations to broadcast the show. Your suggestions (and their contact info) are also very welcome.

We need a revolution to save what's left - and I'm hoping podcast listeners, and blog readers, will help out. From the emails I have received from you - we have a really intelligent bunch here! A lot of activists, scientists, professionals, and even government people are listening to Radio Ecoshock.

I appreciate the tips and help people send in. Some programs, including next week's "Too Hot to Handle" - come from listener tips. This has become a group effort - thanks so much!

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

IF YOU LOVE THIS PLANET

Helen Caldicott's new broadcast/podcast program #1.

Hands up everyone who wants to hear about nuke reactor safety.....

Nobody?

Perfect. That's just the way the nuclear industry wants it - as they plan a new "renaissance" of reactor construction as a "solution" to climate change. Really, the same big corporations want the government to back and insure their risky plans to rake in billions of bucks.

George Bush loves the plan. So does the military. Republican candidate John McCain just told nutty talk show host Glenn Beck he's like to see America get 80% of it's electricity needs from nuclear power - just like the French do.

Joseph Romm, the energy expert from climateprogress.org did the math. That means 700 new reactors, which we could build over the next 100 years, so long as we stop building anything else.

Newt Gingrich loves nuclear power too. Obama has big nuclear donors in his home state - but hey, all the candidates take money from the nuclear lobby.

For the sake of sanity, please listen to Helen Caldocott's interview with David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists. In Blogger, just click the title above. Or download the fast Lo-Fi version shown below.


You'll hear about near-melt-downs of U.S. reactors, spent fuel as terrorist targets, and a failure to protect public safety.

Not much of that gets reported in the mainstream news. Funny, since once of the biggest nuclear reactor makers, General Electric, owns a TV network.

Even with 10 years of warning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) failed to demand reactor changes when inconvenient for business operators. The wall of one American reactor was eaten away to a single layer of failing metal - ready to blow. Was that the one near you?

As Chernobyl taught us, we are all down-wind from a blown reactor. The radioactive particles go into the upper atmosphere, and rain down upon the world, raising cancer rates, and worrying millions.

Meanwhile, all the so-called "spent fuel" (still highly radioactive) is kept in tanks, concrete bunkers, wherever - around the plants. Some are above ground, easy targets for terrorism, especially an airplane hit.

Also read Helen Caldicott's 2006 book: "Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer To Global Warming - Or Anything Else."

Ecoshock show 080509 1 hour

CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.

Production Notes: quick intro, re-intro (at 28:26), exit. Includes clips from original 1983 documentary If You Love This Planet, starting at 45:40.
Stations needing time for ID or announcements cut into documentary clip. Or burn it and play it.

The web address given in the show not will not be up until June. I add helencaldicott.com & beyondnuclear.org, which work now.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

Radio For Troubled Times

A new survey by worldpublicopinion.org shows that the majority of people in the world think oil is running out. They want their governments to find new energy supplies. Americans agree we have passed Peak Oil - but they are the only public to feel their government is operating on the wrong assumptions.

One big bad assumption: biofuels are the way to energy independence. We investigate news reports from all over the world, connecting biofuels to the new world food crisis. Even U.S. sources say the Bush biofuel plan is a disaster. And it just makes global warming worse!

Breaking climate news: the Jetstream moving toward the poles, CO2 is way up, and methane escaping. For the past 10 years, methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases (25 times stronger than CO2) has been relatively stable, for reasons we don't understand. But this year it's gone way up. Scientists suspect industrialization in Asia, and melting of the Arctic permafrost, may be the major causes. Bad, bad news.

I spend some time trying to cope with just one week's worth of new developments - in science, and in the real world.

In just one example, did you know the U.S. Air Force is proposing a massive program to combat climate change? Lots of news.

From the UK: we interview off-grid living expert Nick Rosen. Whole groups of people are voluntarily unplugging from the matrix: off electricity, making their own. Nick has published a book on surviving off-grid. We discuss the various reasons why people leave, and the scene in the UK. Can you live if the power goes out? For a month?

American housing crisis, storms, or fire: living in your car. Investigation into the new phenomenon of the "mobile homeless" or "half-homeless" growing in America. Uncounted in official statistics.

Includes clips from a video feature by Californiaconnected.org on how Santa Barbara is allowing people living in cars to park in empty lots overnight - legally. We also hear from the comedian of the homeless Darrell Bedford. Some of Katrina victims are still living in their cars. But a surprising amount of car and van people actually work. A new study shows that this is the first year that a person working minimum wage cannot afford a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the country.

Uncle Al gives solid tips for living in a car - in case it happens to you. Impossible? What if your job disappears, or a relationship ends suddenly? Terrorist attack? Fire in your home, or the whole region? Hurricanes? (all hotels will be full). Maybe it's worthwhile knowing what it really takes to survive in a car.

Plus Medea Benjamin on Code Pink anti-war. This is a sample from an excellent series of activist radio interviews done by Sue Supriano. Check out her site at suesupriano.com for lots of free downloads. The radio show is called "Steppin' Out of Babylon."

Code Pink, founded by women mad about the wars, and wasted military spending, has become one of the largest international war movements. These ladies want the U.S. to close the 800 military bases, in over 100 countries. They want that money spent on restoring crumbling schools - and hey, maybe even a working health care system, like every other developed country in the world!

Just Google "Code Pink" and you'll find outfits all over the U.S. - and in many countries like Italy and the Philippines, where local people want the U.S. to pack up and go home. Medea says when she travels, people all over the world ask her: how can America borrow money to fight these useless wars, and yet they can't provide for their own citizens. Think New Orleans for example, or the need for alternative energy. Nope - billions, even trillions, for the war machine.

The Radio Ecoshock Show 080502 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or LoFi 14 MB

Production Notes: Songs: "Here at the End of the World" by David Rovics and new hit "Sea Lion Woman" by Canadian star Feist. No copyright on these programs. OK for non-profit use.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

HIGHWAY TO HELL: How Smog Kills

Polluted cities kills hundreds of thousands. Under-reported plague from vehicle emissions. 2 interviews.

We are honored to have as a guest on this weeks' show: Dr. Joel Schwartz, Harvard's top expert on air pollution. I discuss Dr. Schwartz' testimony to Congress in late 2007. His presentation is still available on the Net, as a .pdf file. It is on Carbon Soot and Global Warming.

Schwartz presents one of the two most scary maps I have ever seen. (Number one was the map showing the new world regime under climate change, attached to a presentation to the Royal Society late in 2007, by Sir James Lovelock....)

The Schwartz map is simple: is just shows where particulate soot, dangerous to human health, is congregating. Gray means very unhealthy amounts of particulates, black means lethal levels.

In the United States, the whole of New England is gray, with black blotches. There is more heavy pollution over the Louisiana/Texas refinery area, and of course gray and black over Southern California.

But all of Europe is one gray area, with huge blobs of black. In our interview, I ask Dr. Schwartz whether the new diesel cars being sold in Europe have filters to preserve the air. Not nearly enough, was the reply. Apparently, about 70% of all new private cars sold in Europe are diesel, not gas. That means a lot of particulates. There are new stricter rules for emissions from these new cars, but it won't stop the rash of heart attacks, pneumonia, and prenatal damage from diesel particulates.

Worse, the Europeans have been buying diesels for a long time - and the engines can last up to 30 years. That means decades more diesel smoke from all the old engines still in use. Dr. Schwartz says anyone could tell, even blindfolded, whether they were breathing European or American air.

We cover a new study from England, by Professor George Knox, finding that pneumonia deaths, thousands of them, caused directly by transport emissions, have been missed by medical authorities. The situation now is killing more people than the famous killer smog of 1952, but the reporting system just doesn't pick it up.

The Joel Schwartz interview is a must - if you live in a city. We talk about smog canyons, how people die, and what could be done about it.

The program starts, though, almost at the other end of the world, in Alaska, with Dr. Riki Ott. Why would we call a marine expert on oil spills, to find out about city smog? Because after the Exxon Valdez spill, the American government spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research into the toxicity of oil. It was the first time such research was ever done. They found that even small amounts of oil was toxic not just to fish, but to mammals - including mammals like ourselves.

After the research, in 1999, the EPA quietly added one oil component, the PAH's, to the most deadly list of bio-accumulative toxic materials - along with things like DDT. The Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons are in your blood stream and mine. They persist, build up, and lead to cancer, birth abnormalities, and other ugly things.

Dr. Riki Ott has the expertise to explain how toxic oil is infiltrating our cities and our lives - and the bravery to speak out against a well-oiled system.

As you know, all the major TV newscasts now depend upon car advertising. So do the newspapers, which run full page ads, classified ads, and whole sections about cars they want you to want. This mainstream media is never going to tell you what this single Ecoshock program reveals.

Nanoparticles in your bloodstream - and carbon soot makes more global warming.

There are two basic kinds of air particles that impact climate. The sulphates, which come mainly from coal burning, can actually cool the planet a bit, by reflecting sunlight back into space. But these particles don't stay air-borne for more than a few weeks. It is a temporary effect.

Black soot, from coal plants and from vehicle emissions, absorbs the sun's energy, heating up the planet. It is the second largest cause of global warming. These particles also land on the snow regions, especially in the Arctic. White snow reflects a lot of solar heat back into space - but when it becomes darker, grayish, the energy is absorbed. The snow may melt earlier, or ice may not form as thickly.

I found it interesting that Dr. Schwartz, in his testimony to Congress, said that cleaning up coal emissions in North America, and car emissions, is a double win. We can save as many as 200,000 lives a year - and cut out the second largest emitter in the world. Why kid ourselves, and send money to China, or some forest project in Indonesia, when we can save lives, and reduce climate change, with action right at home. I agree.

Finally, we talk to both our guests about what we need - to breath better, live longer.

Radio Ecoshock Show 080425 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: end song "Highway to Hell" by Midnight Oil; opens with Gino Vannelli clip "Wild Horses". No copyright on interviews. Major media, loaded with car ads, will never report this story. Please help get it out there.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock

ADDICTED TO OIL

Even President George Bush admits we are addicted to oil. But what does that really mean?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION

Dr. Bruce Alexander, a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Canada, is a pioneer researching addiction. His ideas are so unconventional, he won the Stirling Prize for controversy. Bruce Alexander is currently writing a book titled "The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in the Poverty of the Spirit." - coming out this summer.

"Addiction is a democratic disease, affecting both the rich and the poor. Sadly, scientific medicine has made no progress on addiction." In addition to addictions to tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, Alexander reminded attendees that other addictions that will increase with globalization include gambling, pornography, and shopping."

Dr. Alexander's recent study for the Centre for Policy Alternatives, "The Roots of Addiction in Free market Society", is available online, as a .pdf file.

In our Radio Ecoshock interview, we pick Dr. Alexander's brain, on the addiction that could change our climate, virtually forever - fossil fuels.

PEAK OIL AND ADDICTION

I've been listening to a talk given by Nate Hagens, at the 6th ASPO Peak Oil Conference, in Ireland. Nate is completing his PHD at the University of Vermont. There is a video of his speech online - and Hagens goes into great detail about our brain formation, and the importance of neurochemicals that determine, he says, our actions.

Rather than using our relatively recently developed neo-cortex, to making rational long-range decisions, Hagens says science repeatedly shows, we use older portions of the brain, to ensure a continuing dose of chemicals like dopamine. He suggests this inability of the brain, to let thinking dominate decision making, is one of the reasons humans are unable to make better choices for the future, like alternative energy. Instead we just keep sucking up oil, which rewards us right away, today.

Nate Hagens is perhaps unique in his experience. In his twenties, he was selling big investments, covering hundred of millions of dollars. In that world, there is a big discount for future risk, instead of taking profits now.

Hagens claims psychological tests, in monkeys for example, seem to show that novelty and reward are absolutely necessary for our brain functioning. This could lead to an explanation, of why his rich clients needed to keep making even more millions, or why the suburban housewife must buy yet another pair of expensive shoes. The more expensive, the more the charge card is loaded up, the better the chemical hit in the brain. It makes me wonder...Is our whole society really in a state near overdose?

By now almost all of us know the oil society is killing us, in many ways. We know exhaust is poisoning our lungs, deadly car crashes, the foreign wars, and now horrible prospects of climate change. And yet we still go like addicts to the gas pumps, and fill up. Why, why, why? And what can we do?

Everyone likes to laugh about the hippies going back to the land... but are those people seeking a more natural environment, where their addictions to things like television, shopping, and lottery tickets can subside? Could that be part of the answer, making our living arrangement more suitable, for the mammals we really are?

How can we apply what you've discovered, about the myths and realities of addiction, to really kick the fossil fuel habit, before it kills us?

RADIO PLAY "ECOVENTION"

While addiction is very serious, we just had to poke fun at ourselves as oil addicts. In this Radio Ecoshock show, you hear our new radio play "Ecovention." It is a parody of the A & E program "Intervention" which deals with addictions to drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, gambling and so on.

Four people helped out with this radio drama:
Matt Codrington is an up and coming Canadian actor, playing the role of "Gordon" the SUV-driving oil addict. His wife "Annette" is played by Colleen Kimmett - who in real life is a tech and science journalist. Colleen may be producing some pieces for Radio Ecoshock in the future. Sister "Ginny" was played by an anonymous radio industry personality, and Gordon's buddy "Norman" was none other than "The Simulator" - who hosts the wildly popular video podcast "It's The End of the World As We Know It" found at submedia.tv.

The play is fun, and can be downloaded to pass around, from our web site at ecoshock.org.

ADDICTED TO OIL SONG

We also got permission from Loose Bruce Kerr to play his parody of the hit "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer. Now it's "Addicted to Oil" - and the lyrics are great. Bruce Kerr, who is a lawyer for Sun Microsystems (good thing I got permission first!) says he is now working on a video for the song.

A BUFFET OF AUDIO CLIPS

Then we play a collection of short clips on oil addiction, and our hopes of overcoming it. You hear a snatch from a speech given by Terry Tamminen, formerly green advisor to Gov. Schwarzenegger of California. Terry wrote "Lives Per Gallon" - one of the definitive books on oil addiction. I recorded his book tour speech in Vancouver over a year ago.

You also hear a short clip from the new speech given by Tim Flannery in Toronto, also available in full from our web site. This was recorded and passed along by John-Paul Warren. Flannery describes new developments in Denmark to replace oil burning cars by all-electric ones. A company will make the new cars, and another group will make one in every six parking spaces in Copenhagen equiped with re-charging posts. You drive up, park, and plug in. The system recognizes your registration, and charges you for the power you use.

Not enough juice? The new system will also have hundreds of "refilling stations" where you can quickly exchange for a new battery. This is supposed to be faster than filling up at an old style gas station, because the cars are designed for it. Neat, eh?

We end up with a few sample quotes from Al Gore's recent (April 2008) presentation at TED, the Technology, Entertainment and Design folks. TED has some great talks, and you can still find Al Gore's new video there. Highly recommended.

In the end, I hope we all think deeply about this oil habit. It's in our lives, in our brains. But just like tobacco, or heroin, we can kick the habit. We must - of face a ruined climate, and continuous wars - not to mention empty wallets!

Good luck - and let's get clean together.

Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock

SOLAR TO SAVE US

Calif. scientist Nate Lewis says CO2 is rising rapidly - and why only Solar can power the Earth.

This includes Repodcast clip from ABC National's "In Conversation" with Robyn Williams. Robyn finds Nate frustrated with the gush of greenhouse gases in the last few years. We are going the wrong way, while conferences conference, politicians talk, and consumers take teeny tiny green steps.

That leads to disaster, but scientist Lewis quickly knocks out the nuclear option. By his calculation, we would have to start building a new nuclear power plant, starting today, every day, basically forever, to meet the world's power needs (they only last about 40 years, and so we never quite make it, given the developing world's needs.) Nuclear really is no answer.

But the Sun has more than enough. A single hour of the Sun energy striking the Earth, if we could capture it all, is equal to the total power consumption of our entire current civilization.
Lewis explains that we can get enough solar, and build a civilization with it. We just need to get going. It is an impassioned speech, one of many scientists trying to get humans to act, while action is still possible.

Then Wall Street insider of Climateer Investing explores solar market & new tech that could do the job. This interview is almost half an hour, from a person plugged into the multi-million dollar trades in alternative energy. Our guest explains how solar energy subsidies by governments can lead to some strange results. In fact, in some cases, subsidies might even be a transfer of wealth from the poorest people/ratepayers to the wealthy (who actually install the solar capacity, in part paid for by the rest of us...)

We talk about what is going on overseas in solar, and whether the big oil companies were sincere when they bought solar companies (you guess....) Best of all, we peak into the hot new solar tech coming online - especially thin cell solar, which is reaching the Holy Grail of alternative energy: it can be build at the same cost as coal. Why would we ever use coal, if clean solar can do it cheaper? And the Google boys are in the race, with their company Nanosolar. Lots of info on what could be the world's most important topic: how solar energy could power the next civilization.


Plus our look at who owns India's Tata, and why World Bank is financing Tata Ultra Mega coal plants as "clean energy." Just recently, the United States, Britain, and other OECD countries announced a multi-billion dollar clean energy fund. The World Bank is supposed to run it.

Unbelievably, an arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is funding a $4.4 billion project to build five 800 MW coal-fired power plants in India - and they are calling it "clean coal". It even qualifies under the "Clean Development Mechanism" under the Kyoto Protocol! That's it: burning mega coal to save the planet.

We give the details on this "Tata Ultra Mega" project - and learn about "supercritical" coal burning. Yes it is more efficient, but it will still release millions and millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - in a state renowned for it's sun power. Wrong way Jack.

I always wonder who the mega-billionaires are, who could stop a project like this. We investigate Tata, and find a maze of Parsi charities own a big chunk. The Parsi (also spelled Parsee) are a tiny (less than 100,000 people) minority in India, who arrived from Iran many centuries ago. They are very successful business people, and own India's largest industrial conglomerate: Tata. It is the same Tata who just announced a cheap people's car, that will soon flood the roads, and skies, of India.

The Parsi are renowned for their charity. So even though a Tata is still CEO, he doesn't really own control. However, there is one large block of stocks owned by another Parsi giant, the Mistry family. Palonnji Mistry took up Irish citizenry, now becoming the richest Irish citizen! But his whole empire runs out of Bombay. Remember, Tata also bought out the English steel industry, now known as Corus.

Anyway, these are the people who may help wreck the climate of India, while trying to help their own people get the electricity they need to develop. The ideals are good, the technology choice is absolutely suicidal. We hope Tata Group will reconsider, and go solar.


Ecoshock show 080411 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: Our feature ending song is "Until the Day is Done" from new album "Accelerate" by R.E.M. Participating stations can cut it, if you need more time for local station announcements.

Visit our website at http://www.ecoshock.org

Climate: Who If Not Us?

In this show: a new speech by Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of "Ingenuity Gap" and "Updside of Down" Toronto 080320.

Homer-Dixon says a carbon surge threatens the world, breaking IPCC predictions.

He outlines the latest science, and makes an odd suggestion of how the Internet might help save us.

This is one of the most powerful speeches I have heard this year. It was recorded by John-Paul Warren of Toronto - an example of the kind of recording and exchange that is pushing exchange of new climate knowledge, via the Internet. Thanks John-Paul for sending this in to Radio Ecoshock. Look for more from John-Paul, including a new speech by Tim Flannery...

Plus, this week we have an Ecoshock interiew with climate modeller Andreas Schmittner. He is an ocean science specialist who is working the world's best computer model - looking up to 500 years into the future. According to British scientist James Lovelock (who summarizes the science of others in this case) - our atmosphere was formed by tiny organisms in the sea. Without them, we wouldn't have an oxygen layer to breathe.

Now Schmittner has published research saying we haven't taken into account the full force of ocean life, once the oceans heat up. Will plankton blooms add to carbon? Can a warmer ocean accept as much of our excess carbon? Schmittner's models show, so far, that even if we stopped producing all carbon emissions by 2100 - the world would continue to heat up, a lot, for the next one or two hundred years! The science isn't certain, but it's a huge red warning flag - and another reason we need to act very quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

All in all, this show is a stunning, scary look at gap between the new atmosphere, and human inaction.

Ecoshock show 080404 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production notes: no station IDs. Clips from "Turn Off the Light" by Nelly Furtado (Canadian) and "Mother Earth" by Shane Philip (Cdn). Clip of Pres candidate John Edwards in New Orleans on climate.

PEAK OIL = TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION

This week's program begins with a quick review of planet-shaking news.

Then, we go to the book launch of "Transportation Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil"

The authors are Richard Gilbert & Anthony Perl. I recorded that on March 18th, in Vancouver, Canada.

You get the speech by Richard Gilbert, plus some of the Q and A.

Both the talk, and the book, are loaded with real facts and figures on future transpo, and how to get there, sustainably. Finally, some answers.

Are you ready to see U.S. airports shrink from 300 to 30, as the oil runs out? We learn why electric cars will dominate the road. Electric railroads.

Richard Gilbert, an energy expert from Toronto Canada, opens with a speech explaining (a) the inevitability of Peak Oil and (b) what we can do about it - if we start now.

Anthony Perl, a professor at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada - says we don't need any more road construction. Now that we know about Peak Oil, and ever-increasing oil prices, governments should "hit the pause button" on new highway construction, and airport expansions. We won't need them!

A great book for students, activists, bloggers, and citizens trying to contain the old-school enthusiasm for building new oil-based infrastructure.

As the economy deteriorates, you can bet governments will turn to new roadbuilding, bridges, and all the stuff that worked in the LAST depression. That's my opinion. This book shows why that is nuts, and gives us the graphs, facts, and figures to call for a future transportation system that actually works.

I like the emphasis on conservation and renewables, instead of promoting nuclear as an answer. Good. But I wish the authors had a little more push on climate change, as a reason to use these same solutions. I ask that question, during the Q and A that followed.

This book is expensive. It is loaded with references, and all the gear that lets people answer to government experts, and industry lobby people. If you want to get active in any serious way, this is a reference book that is well worth it. It is published by Earthscan.

I predict people will use "Transportation Revolutions" for years. And yet the text isn't heavy going - it's clear and well written - an unexpected bonus these days, when it comes to authoritative books on any technical subject.

Anybody can read it, and should.

Ecoshock show 080328 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.

The web site for the book is here.

If you want to run just the feature on Transpo Revolutions, it is available as a separate file, complete and ready to run on radio, computer, or your IPOD, at 48 minutes long.

The CD Quality Transpo feature is 45 Megabytes. The Lo-Fi mono version is 11 MB. Or just look at the Climate Solutions page on our main website.

Alex
Radio Ecoshock