Dave Pollard writes: Earlier this year I set out the political and
ecological philosophy behind what I called ‘Plan B’, a set of radical
solutions to use once it becomes clear that social and political
activism, networking, education, and the plodding pace of new
technological innovation simply aren’t going to be enough to save the
world from inevitable social, political and ecological catastrophe and
collapse in this century. The principles of this philosophy are: 
* We need to end the ‘growth’ economy quickly, putting a stop to the
increased destruction of our environment and increased consumption of
scarce resources.  To reach a sustainable level and stave off
collapse, we must achieve an 80-85% reduction  in resource
consumption,  through a combination of conservation and population
reduction. Today this consumption is doubling every forty years. The
longer we wait, the greater the challenge to achieve
sustainability.  * We need to drastically cut the disparity of
wealth and power between rich and poor, so that the means of control of
our future would return to all of us. Globally the Gini index (the
difference between the percent of income or wealth of the richest and
poorest 20% of the population) stands at an astronomical 80 (81% owned
and earned by the richest 20%, <1% owned and earned by the poorest
20%, with a sizeable proportion of that 81% owned by the world’s
richest 0.1%); it should be close to that of civilized nations like
Denmark and Japan, which have Gini indices of 25 (35% of wealth owned
by the richest 20%, 10% by the poorest 20%). Economic power and wealth
often trumps (or buys) votes, making democratic political and economic
change impossible.  * We need to increase our self-sufficiency,
resiliency and readiness to make the rapid transition to a new and
radically different human culture. Individuals and communities are
currently helpless in the face of centrally controlled infrastructure
and total dependence on  government and foreign markets.
Communities and individuals are currently enslaved  and imprisoned
by political, social and economic systems they simply can’t walk away
from without dying. … I believe it is now time for Plan B. Like the
rest of nature, humans only change their behaviour (adapt) when they
must — there is a little minority serendipitous experimentation with
changes occurring all the time as an inherent part of evolution, but
for the most part that is merely fine-tuning and diversification to
protect the gene pool. The vast majority of the world’s people support
the Kyoto Accord and even more radical action to protect the
environment, and appreciate that the world is overpopulated, but in the
face of opposition by the rich and wealthy elite and of religious
leaders, they’re not about to rise up and overthrow the intransigent
governments, stop having children, disband the churches and revoke the
charters of polluters. They would only do that when they know beyond
reasonable doubt that they must do it — when there is no other choice.
By the time we reach that point it will be too late. Persuasion has
almost never brought about radical change in human culture. There must
be a ‘burning platform’ — either you jump or you perish. Radical
change occurs when there is no choice: Change or die. (12/18/04)
more…

Bill Moyer
writes: I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the
camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates,
activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in
reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We
journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people’s
knowledge, other people’s experience, and other people’s wisdom. We
tell their stories. The journalist who truly deserves this award is my
friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own
pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about
the environment. His bestseller The End of Nature
carried on where Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring left off. Writing in
Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists
routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget
shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all,
he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a
weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the
kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations. That’s one
challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story without coming
across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to
understand what’s happening, who must act on what they read and
hear.  As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion
a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers
and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology
that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in
politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal.
It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval
office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and
theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts
propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a
world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as
reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not
always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters
and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. (12/18/04)
more…

Common Dreams — An alarming, but not surprising, investigation in today’s Vancouver Sun
illustrates why the mad cow feed rules in both Canada and the US are
completely inadequate. The paper reports that “secret tests on cattle
feed conducted by a federal agency earlier this year found more than
half contained animal parts not listed in the ingredients, according to
internal documents obtained by the Vancouver Sun. The test results
raise questions about whether rules banning the feeding of cattle
remains to other cattle — the primary way in which mad cow disease is
spread — are being routinely violated. … Controlled experiments have
shown an animal needs to consume as little as one milligram — about
the size of a grain of sand — of material contaminated with bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to develop the brain-wasting disease.”
Sheldon Rampton and I reported in our 1997 book Mad Cow USA
how Britain learned a decade ago that nothing less than a total ban on
feeding animal by-products to livestock can stop the spread of mad cow
disease. Canada and the US are still legally feeding billions of pounds
a year to cattle as fat and protein supplement. As the Vancouver Sun
article reveals, even feed marked as “vegetable” is contaminated with
animal byproducts. December 23, 2004, is the first anniversary of the
announcement of the US mad cow. Since then the few steps taken by the
US government have been completely inadequate, even though the USDA’s
own expert panel concluded last February that mad cow disease has been
spreading and amplifying in US feed for many years. (12/18/04)
more…

BBC Environment – 
Quiz: Do you know your pollution? 
Is there anything toxic lurking in your PC? Pollution is a growing
problem in our increasingly chemical-dependent world.  Concerns
range from food scares and asthma to species loss and mountains of
toxic waste. How much do you know about the knock-on effects of the
everyday substances around you? (12/18/04)
more…

BBC Environment — The
World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced that 2004 is
expected to be the fourth warmest year worldwide since records
began.  And the insurance industry says this year will face
unprecedented claims for damage from weather-related disasters. Both
sets of figures were released as ministers from 180 countries heard a
message from the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urging an end to
doubts and delays on action to combat climate change. The WMO reported
that the average temperature of the world’s surface for 2004 was
expected to be 0.44C higher than the mean for the period 1961-1990,
making it the fourth hottest year since 1861, just behind 2003, but
still well below the all-time record year of 1998. And this year has
been the most expensive ever for the insurance industry in terms of
payouts for damage from natural disasters such as hurricanes and
typhoons. …  Thomas Loster, a climate expert with Munich Re
said: “As in 2002 and 2003, the overall balance of natural catastrophes
is again clearly dominated by weather-related disasters, many of them
exceptional and extreme. “We need to stop this dangerous experiment
humankind is conducting on the Earth’s atmosphere.” The figures were
released as ministers gathered for the final stage of the UN conference
to discuss future action on climate change. The executive director of
the UN environment programme Klaus Toepfer read a message from Mr Annan
saying the eyes of the world were on the governments gathered in Buenos
Aires. Mr Annan said: “People around the world want to know that you
are working together, on a multilateral basis, to address this
challenge with all your creativity and will. (12/18/04)
more…

BBC Science — Researchers
at Rockefeller University in the US have made the first tentative steps
towards creating a form of artificial life. Their creations, small
synthetic vesicles that can process (express) genes, resemble a crude
kind of biological cell. The parts for their “vesicle bioreactors”, as
they call them, all come from diverse realms of life. The soft cell
walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents
are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its
genetic material. This essence of life contains ready-made much of the
biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also
added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA
code. When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins,
just like a normal cell would. A gene for green fluorescent protein
taken from a species of jellyfish was the first they tried. The glow
from the protein showed that the genes were being transcribed. With a
second gene, from the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, the researchers
got their cells to make small pores in their walls.  These let
nutrients in from the surrounding “soup”, so that the cells could
function, in some instances, for several days. Albert Libchaber, who
heads the project, stresses that these bioreactors are not alive -
they’re performing simple chemical reactions that can also happen in
cell-free biological fluids. But the research is one strand in a new
field called synthetic biology, where the aim is to re-design entire
organisms, or recreate them from scratch. (12/18/04)
more…