indigenous/imperialism/colonuialism/genocide/the story of our civilisation The Holocaust We Will Not See
Avatar half-tells a story we would all prefer to forget ... I agree with its rightwing critics that Avatar is crass, mawkish and cliched. But it speaks of a truth more important - and more dangerous - than those contained in a thousand arthouse movies.

post copenhagen coverage/video from the stimulator himself!/video Plan C 1.Climate Crooks 2. Naked Truth 3. African Holocaust 4. Aussie Uranium Resistance 5. Dakota uprising 6. Border Blackout 7. Hitlers torch blocked 8. The Coup 9. Plan C

copenhagen coverage Scramble For The Atmosphere
The useless, destructive talks at Copenhagen show that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years.
First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. This is no longer about saving the biosphere: now it’s just a matter of saving face. As the talks melt down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile is being scratched out. Any deal will do, as long as the negotiators can pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the texts currently being discussed would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest; it was nice knowing you, not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

copenhagen coverage Copenhagen climate rage: Who's the villain? It's no surprise that accusations of ‘carbon colonialism' are filling the air in Denmark

copenhagen coverage Met Office figures confirm noughties as warmest decade in recorded history The past 10 years have been the warmest decade recorded in 160 years, despite 1998 being the warmest year on record

climate denial We have met the deniers, and they are us While An Inconvenient Truth was critically important as a wake-up call, the title of the movie became part of the problem: Climate change isn’t simply “inconvenient.” It’s lethal. Yet now that it’s been branded as “inconvenient,” it’s not so bad, we can live with it—we work around inconveniences, right? We do it all the time. Suppose that just yesterday a CFL burned out and it was dark in the hall and I stubbed my toe looking for my shoes and I had to bike to the hardware store (I don’t own a car) and it was chilly and wet outside and my glasses fogged up. That’s “inconvenience.”

richard heinberg Our Evanescent Culture
And the Awesome Duty of Librarians How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge?

richard heinberg SOMEBODY’S GOTTA DO IT (First published May 4) Hi. My job is trying to save the world, and I’d like to tell you a little about my line of work & A Look on the Bright Side

species depletion/fisheries Millions of missing fish signal crisis on the Fraser River More than nine million sockeye have vanished from B.C. river. How it happened remains a mystery

land grabs/colnialism Wish you weren't here: The devastating effects of the new colonialists
A new breed of colonialism is rampaging across the world, with rich nations buying up the natural resources of developing countries that can ill afford to sell. Some staggering deals have already been done, says Paul Vallely, but angry locals are now trying to stop the landgrabs

climate/denial/fossilfuel industries Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming ... But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

climate emissions Canada's greenhouse gas emissions soared to new high in 2007
At 26 per cent above 1990 levels, emissions in violation of Kyoto Protocol pledge; rates far worse than in United States. The growth of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada soared at the fastest pace on record in 2007 to reach a new high, indicating the difficulties the country faces in trying to curb the release of pollutants many scientists say are responsible for global warming.

climate/copenhagen A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. If you think preventing climate change is politically difficult, look at the political problems of adapting to it.
Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.

garbage/oceans The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan. A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.