During a broad scope text on the suicidal tendencies of our global society Noam Chomsky touches a couple of resource conflict topics. all over the world – Australia, India, South America – there are battles going on, sometimes wars. In India, it’s a major war over direct environmental destruction, with tribal societies trying to resist…
“Without Water, Revolution”
From Without Water, Revolution by Thomas L. Friedman on The New York Times: THIS Syrian disaster is like a superstorm. It’s what happens when an extreme weather event, the worst drought in Syria’s modern history, combines with a fast-growing population and a repressive and corrupt regime and unleashes extreme sectarian and religious passions, fueled by…
For the youth
[Wikipedia]
George W. Bush is painting too many puppies
My brain was going into my feet from reading Salon.com (not The Onion) / George W. Bush’s art teacher says he’ll “go down in the history books as a great artist”. He has painted “more than 50” puppies!? However, after posting this breaking news to Facebook, a friend of mine pointed out the cosmos in…
Review: EARTH WARS – The Battle for Global Resources
“If the Earth wars were a sporting contest, here’s how the half-time score might stand at the beginning of 2012…” Georff Hiscock concludes his near 300 pages factual account of who owns the world with a surprisingly relaxed “scoreboard”: 1st: USA 10 points 2nd: China 8p 3rd – 4th: Europe, Japan 6p 5th – 6th:…
Call for moratorium on extraction in contested territories
As can be seen in this recent infographic by Information is Beautiful and The Guardian, we need to leave about 86 percent of known fossil fuel resources in the ground to stay within our carbon budget and hopefully avoid raising global temperatures by more than two degrees Celsius. Still exploration and extraction continues unabated. However,…
Come to Greenland
Island for sale. 2,166,000 km² (mostly still ice). 56,744 inhabitants (many working at minimum wage, animosity towards Greenpeace is legendary).Watch some of the world’s last ice melt to reveal a wealth of riches below. Copper, zinc, iron, gold. Make your investment before it’s taken. Look at all the deposits that have already been found. Off…
Government soldiers and rebel insurgents are slaughtering hundreds of elephants
Protecting endangered wildlife is not just about donating to WWF, funding parks, keeping endangered lizards as “pets” and abstaining from buying ivory. It’s an arms race and it’s fighting a war. In 2012 the poachers have gone on blitz krieg killing more elephants than ever before, operating across borders from helicopters and shooting at park…
Amazonian tribal village razed, 80 people massacred by miners
Several places in the Amazon illegal miners and loggers clash with indigenous tribes in conflict over access to and use of land. “Use of” as in clear cutting, strip mining or chemically polluting. This particular report is a tad more gruesome than most of them. Only three hunters who were away when the village was…
The Ecowar rages (especially elsewhere)
[<a href=”http://storify.com/bennohansen/ecowar-july-2012″ target=”_blank”>View the story “Ecowar, July 2012” on Storify</a>]<h1>Ecowar, July 2012</h1><h2>No new stories were posted to the Ecowar blog July 2012. Generally, I write up fewer stories since publishing the book. But I started tweeting pretty much every online story I find in stead. Here is a summary of the month of July 2012…
Greenland to export uranium & rare earth minerals to China?
Perhaps you have already heard oil corporations are looking for oil in the Arctic seas around Greenland. But also the Chinese show some interest in Denmark, Greenland’s mineral wealth especially. Greenland holds untouched resources of uranium which pose a dilemma to the nuclear free kingdom. Recently, Hu Jintao visited Denmark and Danish politicians visited China….
A quite frank comment on climate migration from Israeli expert
Israeli expert says it exactly like he sees it after having researched his country’s challenges: “The migration wave is not a problem for the future. It is today; it is going on now […] It will just increase from day to day. […] In India, they shoot; in Nepal, they shoot; in Japan, they shoot [at…