Policies – Page 278 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/09/052014/09/05

Berto Jongman: Naomi Klein on Capitalism versus Climate Change — a “People’s Shock” Coming? Robert Steele Disagrees — Precipitants of Revolution Missing

11 Society, Civil Society, Crowd-Sourcing, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Governance, Liberation Technology, Officers Call

“Worth a look.”

Naomi Klein to Degrowth Conference: Climate Change Can Deliver ‘People's Shock'

Status quo is not an option if we are to rein in runaway emissions, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. the Climate author says in address to conference

“You're having the core conversation of our time.”

That was the message delivered on Tuesday by author Naomi Klein to participants of a conference whose focus is on “concrete steps towards a society beyond the imperative of growth.”

Klein's opening address to the Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, which kicked off Tuesday in the German city of Leipzig, made perfect sense, as the themes of her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate, overlap those of the conference — that addressing the climate crisis is incompatible with the current growth-focused economy.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Naomi Klein on Capitalism versus Climate Change — a “People's Shock” Coming? Robert Steele Disagrees — Precipitants of Revolution Missing”

2014/09/05

Yoda: Peer-to-Peer Energy — Distributed, Open, Ethical

03 Economy, 05 Energy, Advanced Cyber/IO, Ethics

An Airbnb or Uber for the Electricity Grid?

How DERs prepare the power sector to evolve into a sharing economy platform

As Thomas Friedman reported in the New York Times, the shared economy is booming, with companies like Uber and Airbnb continuing to disrupt the incumbent taxi service and hotel sectors. The Ubers and Airbnbs of the world tap the huge value of underutilized assets and create millions of dollars of value for users in the process. Shared economy companies unbundle existing assets and enable value exchange out of those assets, with close to zero marginal capital cost since the users themselves own the actual physical assets, whether a car or a home. Could the electricity grid be next to go the way of a sharing economy?

For more than a century, the electric grid has relied almost exclusively on centralized infrastructure, such as large power plants and long-distance transmissions lines. But distributed energy resources (DERs)—and the customers buying, installing, and using them—are changing the economic landscape for the power sector. Energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation such as rooftop solar, distributed storage such as batteries, smart thermostats, and more are poised to become the front lines of a sharing economy revolution for the grid. Shared economy solutions will help to increase asset utilization rates and improve consumer and overall system economics, just as they have for other sectors.

Read full article.

2014/09/052014/09/05

SchwartzReport: BP Gulf Spill “Gross Negligence” – $18 Billion Fine? Does Corporate Accountability Begin Now?

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 12 Water, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Law Enforcement

Here is some excellent news about the Gulf oil spill. A major court decision has seriously placed the blame and responsibility where it belongs. And the court also made it clear what it thinks about BP, Transocean, and Halliburton ethics and behavior.

‘Worst Case' BP Ruling on Gulf Spill Means Billions More in Penalties
MARGARET CRONIN FISK, LAUREL BRUBAKER CALKINS and JEF FEELEY – Bloomberg

BP Plc acted with gross negligence in setting off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a federal judge ruled, handing down a long-awaited decision that may force the energy company to pay billions of dollars more for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: BP Gulf Spill “Gross Negligence” – $18 Billion Fine? Does Corporate Accountability Begin Now?”

2014/09/042014/09/04

Yoda: Death of the University + RECAP

04 Education

Diary

Marina Warner

London Review of Books, 11 September 2014

EXTRACT

What is happening at Essex reflects on the one hand the general distortions required to turn a university into a for-profit business – one advantageous to administrators and punitive to teachers and scholars – and on the other reveals a particular, local interpretation of the national policy. The Senate and councils of a university like Essex, and most of the academics who are elected by colleagues to govern, have been caught unawares by their new masters, their methods and their assertion of power. Perhaps they/we are culpable of doziness. But there is a central contradiction in the government’s business model for higher education: you can’t inspire the citizenry, open their eyes and ears, achieve international standing, fill the intellectual granary of the country and replenish it, attract students from this country and beyond, keep up the reputation of the universities, expect your educators and scholars to be public citizens and serve on all kinds of bodies, if you pin them down to one-size-fits-all contracts, inflexible timetables, overflowing workloads, overcrowded classes.

Among the scores of novels I am reading for the Man Booker International are many Chinese novels, and the world of Chinese communist corporatism, as ferociously depicted by their authors, keeps reminding me of higher education here, where enforcers rush to carry out the latest orders from their chiefs in an ecstasy of obedience to ideological principles which they do not seem to have examined, let alone discussed with the people they order to follow them, whom they cashier when they won’t knuckle under.

Continue reading “Yoda: Death of the University + RECAP”

2014/09/012014/09/01

SchwartzReport: Top 12 Ecologicially Sustainable Countries

01 Agriculture, 05 Energy, 11 Society, 12 Water

Because we are controlled by carbon interests we rank 33rd on the Environmental Performance Index. Other countries not as encumbered have already begun to move to sustainability. In the coming decades they are going to prosper, we are going to suffer increasing decline until we change our social policies to reflect well as the first priority.

12 Ecologically Sustainable Countries and Why They Should Be Admired
JODIE GUMMOW

LIST ONLY:

1. Iceland . 2. Switzerland . 3. Costa Rica . 4. Sweden . 5. Luxembourg . 6. Germany . 7. Cuba . 8. Colombia . 9. Singapore . 10. France . 11. Norway . 12. Finland

2014/08/302014/08/30

Sepp Hasslberger: EU OK for Salt Water Car

05 Energy

2014/08/302014/08/30

SchwartzReport: Feds Lie, Marijuana Good… Could Marijuana Plus 9/11 Plus Unemployment Plus Wanton Wars Lead to Electoral Reform?

07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement

I think this essay is stating the truth. I have read stuff coming out from the government on the subject of marijuana so flagrantly wrong that it has to be deliberate. Nobody speaking truthfully about the present state of research could possible make those statements.

The Feds Are Incapable of Telling Truth About Pot
PAUL ARMENTANO – AlterNet (U.S.)

In her latest blog post [3], US National Institute on Drug Abuse director Nora Volkow claims that ‘science should guide marijuana policy.” But if the nation’s top anti-drug doc truly believes that facts, not ideological rhetoric, ought to shape America’s drug policies, why does she feel the need to keep distorting the truth about pot?

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Feds Lie, Marijuana Good… Could Marijuana Plus 9/11 Plus Unemployment Plus Wanton Wars Lead to Electoral Reform?”