Politics

A day before President Elect Obama is sworn in, Crop To Cuisine explores the politics of our food. We speak with professor and author of Food Politics Marion Nestle about the incoming administration, and Bart Miller, Water Program Director at Western Resource Advocates.

These four presentations were taped at the ASPO-USA 2008 conference. Morey Wolfson's GoogleEarth presentation zooms into global Choke Points, primarily in the middle east. Jeff Vail discusses geopolitical elements to energy limitations. Tom Whipple describes ASPO resources and current energy strains. Terry Backer explains how to get a peak oil resolution through a legislative body. Episode 137.

The global crises of 2008 all relate to growth in debt, pollution and consumption reaching their limits, but will the incoming Obama administration recognize the new reality? This show discusses "Energy Realism and the Green New Deal" with Richard Heinberg of The Post Carbon Institute. Hear what message Post Carbon Institute is presenting to the incoming U.S. President.

The Cultural Economist reviews the options facing the president-elect. "Yes. Oil depletion creates a real political dilemma for Barack Obama. If he acknowledges oil depletion – Peak Oil – then he will be expected to do something about it. Barack will have to challenge embedded political philosophy."

James Howard Kunstler muses on the increasing irrelevance of the two political parties in America. Neither party seems to be truly facing our energy predicament and the coming obsolescence of suburbia. Yet this is with the complete connivance of the voting public, which is too heavily invested in the status quo. Episode 37.

In this show, Jason Bradford and Professor Michael Klare discuss the geopolitics of resource competition. Nations are engaging in a dangerous zero sum game as they jostle over finite supplies of fossil fuels, including the positioning of opposing advanced weapons systems in unstable parts of the world.

James Howard Kunstler is not a hope dispenser to passive consumers of hope. But ultimately he believes that life is moving into a more favorable phase, even if it will be difficult to get there. In this show Kunstler responds to a listener call about our moral responsibility to do the right thing and fix our country.

The Reality Report interviews Daniel Lerch, author of Post Carbon Cities: Planning for Energy and Climate Uncertainty, the first major local government guidebook on peak oil and global warming. The interview opens with a discussion of the responsibilities and roles of local government, where important decisions are made regarding land use, transportation, water systems, schools and emergency services. It reviews how systems thinking can be used to understand the impacts that "energy uncertainty" will have on basic government services, and covers what some local governments in the U.S. and Canada are already doing in repsonse to peak oil. With transcript.

"The only way to avert massive social chaos and famine as extraction levels decline will be to devote public capital domestically toward the building of low energy infrastructure (e.g., electrified rail networks, trolley lines, wind farms) while moving many people to rural areas and teaching them to farm sustainably. Production and consumption will have to be largely re-localized, essential goods rationed by quota. Basically the same thing will have to happen in the poor nations."

It’s getting pretty damn obvious that the world is sliding head-first into the abyss at an accelerating rate, with most Americans as oblivious as ever. Museletter #186 has been completed in two parts - both of which are now available.