H2Oil opens with a dramatic aerial shot of the tar sands – which are awe-inspiring, but in a bad way, like watching a plague of locusts advance toward your crops. You just know it’s not going to end well. The tar mines are a massive sprawl of destroyed landscape populated by machines and the people who work them; otherwise not a sign of life. No trees, not even bushes or grasses. Certainly no animals; birds unfortunate enough to land in the tailing ponds are doomed.

H2Oil is really the ongoing story of men seeking money versus Canada’s First Nations, versus ‘the environment,’ versus anything that gets in the way of that money, including integrity. Guess who’s winning and who’s dying? It is one of 2009′s top documentaries and is a must-see for Canadians.  Continue reading →

Our society runs on cheap and readily available energy just as our bodies require oxygen. And, just as any restriction in our supply of oxygen causes us immediate and serious harm, so will any crimp in the supply of energy rapidly drop our civilisation to its knees. That energy has allowed us to do fantastic things. In fact, we have been “high” on energy since the Industrial Revolution, but the party is winding down. We must change how we think about energy – now.

Substitute “energy” for “love” in the song by Sweet and you ruin the rhythm but get a fairly accurate idea of how important energy is:

Love is like oxygen
You get too much you get too high
Not enough and you’re gonna die
Love gets you high

Why is energy considered so critically important to our civilisation? Simply, there is no civilization-as-we-know-it without the energy we use in its current forms and proportions, mainly fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydroelectric. Any significant change in any of those energy sources and our civilisation would be severely shocked. We have built our society upon cheap and reliable energy. Continue reading →

[Disclaimer: I've said before and repeat here: Predicting when a major event like a collapse will happen is for mugs. One can look at current trends and extrapolate, but one cannot know how humans will respond to changing circumstances. That said, one can make educated guesses.]

We face ‘converging catastrophes,’ driven by pollution and resource depletion, and made worse by overpopulation. The two most visible and clearly dangerous are climate change and peak oil.

The Climate Change Social Tipping Point

At current rates of sea-level rise, tens of millions of people will be displaced within 25 years. If you think all those people, and the countries they live in, are going to go quietly into the night…well, would you?

Current projections suggest a sea level rise of at least one metre this century is now likely. A one-metre rise will displace at least 56 million people, and possibly double that.

From Bangladesh to the Maldives, from Vietnam to Pakistan to Alexandria to Venice, millions upon millions of people will be driven from their homes and livelihoods. And where are they to go? Into ever-more crowded areas of their own – and neighbouring – countries. Rising sea levels will produce a tide of climate refugees that will make the chaos in Darfur look mild.

Many of those refugees, and the people whose lands they attempt to crowd into, are going to be angry. Combine that with nothing left to lose, and we have a recipe for human-caused Armageddon . Continue reading →

I have previously written rather caustically of Rex Murphy’s climate denial. For those who don’t know, Rex Murphy has a segment on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The National Newshour, in which he regularly dismisses climate change as nonsense. Ernst Zündel is a lunatic neo-nazi Holocaust denier deported from Canada for being “not only a threat to Canada’s national security, but also a threat to the international community of nations.” He was convicted in his native Germany of various Holocaust denier-related charges and sentenced to the maximum five years.

How on Earth can Rex Murphy be equated to a neo-nazi stirring up hatred against Jews? The similarity is in their denial of reality, and what that means. Zündel wrote, published, and spoke out repeatedly to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Rex is a climate change denier, which is already causing great destruction and will certainly cause much more; top scientists are saying climate change is extremely dangerous. The climate holocaust has started, and Rex Murphy is denying it. Like Zündel, Murphy is “not only a threat to Canada’s national security, but also a threat to the international community of nations.” Continue reading →