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
(You tube)
“” 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
2 comments:
Alex,
I've enjoyed the RES podcast for well over a year and a half; your information scares the crap out of me and worries me. That being said, what is your view on how safe the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island/Gulf Islands areas are insofar as food, community survival and climate change impact is for one planning to move out there in the coming year? Also, do you have any information on how sea-level rise will affect Vancouver Island/Gulf Islands (I know there is a Google Earth scenario for Vancouver available)?
The interview portions recently with the homeless in Nashville and in California is very scary to imagine in Canada (but it's not impossible).
Keep up the good work and you've helped open my eyes more then they had been.
Hi BlackMac
The Vancouver area and islands should be a good "weathering place" for the next century or so, in my opinion.
The cool ocean currents will modify warming. The salty air keeps off mosquitoes (disease bearing ones). The prediction is for more rain - and water is needed for food growing, fire avoidance, drinking, everything.
That said, large parts of the Greater Vancouver area are likely to flood unless heroic dike building slows that down. Places like Richmond and the airport, for starters. The GVRD has already experienced an unusual wind storm that brought down trees hundreds of years old, and took out the power. There may be strong Pacific storms - but some of the Gulf Islands are sheltered from that. We still have risks not related to climate, like earthquakes and ash from nearby volcanoes. No place is perfect.
Also: the current population of Greater Vancouver cannot sustain itself without importing food from far away places. Some of the best growing land has been converted into housing tracts.
There are maps around, one created by the Sierra Club of B.C. showing the places where the sea level rise would flood communities.
But all in all, including a bunch of social factors, British Columbia should be a good place to ride out the coming changes for several generations.
We're all worried, and we should be.
Alex