"Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!"

"I want to talk to you about fear. I want to do so because, in my view, the most important issue we face is how we respond to this question. The crisis is now inevitable. The issue is how will we react? [...] We should feel a bit of fear. We are in danger, all of us. [...] Yes, things will get ugly and it will happen soon, certainly in our lifetime."

Paul Gilding has written a book called The Great Disruption. Sounds like I need to read it. He also blogs at the Cockatoo Chronicles and his latest post reflects upon his experience of speaking at TED, bringing a dark message amongst one of the bastions of bright green thinking (which he calls "techno-optimism").

Gilding's examples of humanity's ability to respond well to crises - Pearl Harbor, a life-threatening diagnosis, threat of bankruptcy - all point to what is perhaps our greatest asset at this moment, namely, our freedom to repent. Even at this late hour, it is possible to change course. This may not keep us alive, it may not preserve our way of life, indeed, it may involve further destabilisation of the status quo in the realisation that the status quo is inherently unstable and destructive. But it is our chance to wake up and grow up. Let us take it.

H/T Lou for the video. This post's title is a quote from Tom Stoppard's wonderful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and could well be an epigram for the chapter I'm currently writing.

Climate change contributing to rising food prices

Study links climate change and rising food prices, as I suggested back here, here, here and here. The study argues that changing weather patterns have held back the growth in global food production by around 5%, contributing about 20% of the recent doubling of prices (which also have other causes).

BBC: Nitrogen pollution estimated to be costing £55 billion to £280 billion annually in Europe alone.

Guardian: How to tell the difference between the rule of law and a police state in the light of Ian Tomlinson, the protester unlawfully killed by police and the subsequent alleged cover up.

Common Dreams: This is what resistance looks like.
H/T Matheson.

Paul Gilding: The great disruption arrives. Different authors use a variety of phrases to speak of the converging ecological and resource crises facing humanity: the great emergency, the long descent, Eaarth, planet triage, the Anthropocene, the great acceleration and so on.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases a new report that finds up to 77% of global electricity primary power generation from renewable power by 2050 is both technically and economically feasible. The primary barriers are political.

Guardian: Why supermarkets are odious. We are blessed with a weekly farmers market a few hundred metres from our door, and have a deal with a local farm to receive a box of fresh produce each fortnight. Even so, it is hard to avoid supermarkets entirely.

SMH: How much does an iPad really cost? Although Apple are far from the only company with shady production conditions, they are the largest and were recently fingered as also having the worst ecological record, so highlighting their failure is legitimate. These conditions are not inevitable. Companies could be held responsible for the full life-cycle of their product, which would provide a significant incentive to shift design assumptions away from built-in obsolescence (which is currently the industry standard). It is also worth noting that many of these pieces of equipment are not just bad for the workers who produce them and the ecological systems on which we all rely for life, but can be part of the shrinking of the consumerist soul into finding an identity and satisfaction in what is bought and consumed.

Guardian: In a secret deal between Pakistan and the US, agreed in 2001 and renewed in 2008, Pakistan allegedly agreed to unilateral US strikes as long as they were allowed to publicly decry them afterwards. I don't think that this kind of agreement is conducive to healthy international relations in the long term, as it undermines trust when parties are revealed to be dissembling.

And because I haven't raised enough controversial topics in this post yet, I thought I'd mention this new study of more than ten thousand children that found that breast feeding is linked to fewer behavioural problems.