brainiac conspiracy

Slave Drivers

I know some people might take offense to drawing a comparison between the plantation masters of the 19th Century and the energy barons of the 21st, but I can sorta see a parallel. The plantation masters earned their obscene fortunes by brutalizing an ethnic subset of humanity, while the energy barons are making their obscene fortunes today by brutalizing the entire planet---and with it, all humankind. I'm not sure how we ever stop this violence short of some global accord requiring every country to nationalize all of its energy assets, and it's frankly hard to ever see that happening. So those of us who reside in coastal cities had better get fitted for swim fins and complete our SCUBA certifications.

---Baron V

Some Days You Just Want to Stay In Bed

It's difficult at times to be terribly sanguine about our future on this planet when we stop to consider that the neoliberal Thought Leaders who govern us, by and large, believe in policies that are insane. I mean, we're running out of water here out West, so let's sell off a bunch to some energy company so they can use it to contaminate groundwater---that farmers rely on---and start a few earthquakes. I dunno, maybe we'll "innovate" our way out of impending mass extinction events, but as long as enormous profits can be extracted from the despoliation of our environment, it's hard to see where this ever stops until its just too damned late to prevent the extinction of everything. Cheery thought!

---Baron V

Hump Night Music Blogging

Because who knows, maybe we are living in the Last Days. Sure seems like it sometimes.

---Baron V

Bad Policy

Also too, bad politics:

Democratic Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Warner of Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska, who all face tight races this November, signed the letter, which urges Mr. Obama to put in place an explicit timeline to decide on the project and to make a final decision by May 31 [...]

The letter, organized by Ms. Landrieu, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, also included Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Montana’s Jon Tester and John Walsh.

Your humble blogger is willing to bet dollars to donuts here that every one of these awful people who is up for reelection this year will lose. Run as a Democrat, at least Democrats will vote for you. Run away from Team Democrat, why should anyone vote for you? It's not like we haven't seen this before . . . but thanks for reminding me again why I left the party.

---Baron V

Definitions of Insanity

This:

For Tom Frantz, a retired teacher and third-generation farmer, the exploratory drilling is already too much.

"This is prime farmland and they have drilled between 200 and 300 wells in the last 10 years in the Monterey Shale," Frantz said. "Every one took out an acre or two of farmland. Every one has used hundreds of thousands of gallons of water. Each one has contributed to our air pollution. Each one has had spills on the ground of different chemicals and crude oil. Each one is emitting methane as we speak. If this thing happens and there are thousands and thousands of wells---that's scary because an accident is bound to happen," he said.

In a state that is running out of water, and that is prone to earthquakes.

I wonder if our wretched corrupt species will ever come to the realization that there are no guarantees against extinction, or if it's already too late for us to save ourselves. I kinda hate to think that way, but reading stuff like this every freaking day on the Interwebs is slowly turning me into a fatalist. Might as well keep railing for a return to sanity anyway. It beats giving in to cynicism and despair.

(Via.)

---Baron V

12-Step Programs

I've always been somewhat skeptical about their efficacy on the level of the individual, but there's no doubt that our nation, and the people who lead it, are going to need to adopt one, and soon. And the first step is to admit that we have a drug problem that we need to be healed from. Because our fate as a nation, and the fate of human civilization, depends on it---and if we don't kick the habit, game over.

---Baron V

Giving Up Hope

Some days, I'll admit it's awfully easy to say that all is lost, let's go back to sleep and party like it's 1789 because we're all doomed anyway. But cynicism and suicide are not our natural inclinations, so I guess we have to keep plugging away and doing whatever we can to increase people's consciousness of what we are allowing to be done to our world. Perhaps there really is no hope for our greedy, wretched species, but that doesn't excuse us from doing everything in our power to regain control of the biosphere from the greedheads and the rent extractors who are bleeding the planet dry.

---Baron V

The Epitaph Of Our Species

All Of The Above.

---Baron V

Foot-Dragging

This:

The White House on Friday opened the way to cutting emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry, saying it would study the magnitude of leaks of the powerful greenhouse gas [...]

[T]he White House said the EPA would undertake a series of studies to determine the magnitude and prevalence of methane leaks from fracking sites, compressors, and gas pipelines.

The agency would decide by the autumn of 2014 whether to propose new controls on the industry. “In the fall, we will determine the best path forward to get reductions,” a White House official told a conference call with reporters.

But they can't mandate any methane reductions without disavowing their existing energy policy---which, you know, is a big part of the problem.

---Baron V

Amoral Grifters

Sadly, they don't all play for the other side.

Bet you anything she loses in November.

---Baron V

Writing's on The Wall

Easter Island . . . still chopping down trees . . . oh the humanity.

---Baron V

Priorities

You'd never know that our Western states are running out of water:

Estimates have ballparked the water usage of the agency’s new Bluffdale facility around 1.2 to 1.7 million gallons every day to cool an approximate 100,000 square feet of computer equipment [...]

Bluffdale is giving the NSA a massive discount on its utilities, allowing the facility to use essentially as much water as it wants without facing higher rates. Meanwhile, Utah is facing one of the worst droughts in recent history. The vast majority of the state is in a moderate drought or at least abnormally dry, and water reservoir levels are below normal for the third year in a row.

A couple of million years from now, when explorers from the planet Remulak are surveying our barren and uninhabitable world, they will surely wonder who these creatures were who behaved so insanely, and how they ever managed to ascend to the top of the food chain.

---Baron V

Worse Than We Think It Is

I know I've mentioned this before, but I suspect that one day in the future---and likely, not far away---we will find that our scietists' original climate-change forecasts were, in fact, overly cautious and conservative, and that we are hurtling toward mass extinction events at an ever-faster pace because we've been underestimating the degree to which we've been heating up the planet. I don't know what the answer is for this, but policymakers had better come up with one fast!

---Baron V

We're Doomed

In case you hadn't guessed it by now:

People don’t need to live near an incinerator to be exposed to dioxins, which can be carried great distances by the wind. For instance, the Inuit, people native to the Arctic Circle, live thousands of miles from most dioxin sources. But they have some of the world’s highest concentrations of the contaminants in their bodies because their diet is rich in animal fat.

The handful of treatment plants that handle waste like Silicon Valley’s are significant sources of dioxins, the EPA says. But it’s difficult to measure precisely how much dioxin they contribute to the environment. The plants aren’t required to report releases of dioxins and regulators haven’t researched the issue since 1987.

I've been transitioning (hate that word, but it works) over the past few months to a 100-percent plant-based diet, and am basically 90 percent of the way there. (Eating fish for two meals per week; otherwise, all plants, all the time.) The way I see it is like this: We're all going to be forced to start eating a lot farther down the food chain eventually, so we might as well get used to it now. It's our future, and even then, I suspect it will only delay---not prevent---our extinction as a species, though obviously I would love to be proved wrong on this. Not terribly optimistic, though.

---Baron V

Mayans

It wasn't so long ago that they were the most powerful and technologically advanced civilization in the Americas. But gradually over time, the combination of incessant wars, prolonged droughts, unsustainable resource extraction, and lack of a reliable water source caused their society to utterly collapse. You can read a good account of it here. I only mention this because, you know, our shit stinks just as bad as the Mayans'---only our collapse will be much, much harder. There's probably still enough time to turn the ship around, but we'd better think about doing it soon!

---Baron V

Tuesday Night Music Blogging

Because resistance is futile, and we're utterly hosed. Nice while it lasted, though!

)

---Baron V

Writing's on The Wall

Wish I could a bit more sanguine about the fate of humanity, but it's really difficult to imagine a rosy future for the species when the people who govern us have, essentially, thrown in the towel and said there's nothing they can do about it---even though, of course, they could. Cockroaches and jellyfish will soldier on in our absence, then.

---Baron V

Safe Clean Nuclear Energy

It's another lie we tell ourselves because it simply doesn't exist.

---Baron V

Don't Know What They're Waiting For

Because if there's anything that qualifies as an "all hands" moment at this point in human history, it's the prospect of the wholesale irradiation of the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, the people on the scene have been utterly incompetent and incapable of devising a fix, so perhaps the people who govern us would stop engaging in pissing matches over stuff that doesn't matter, i.e., Ukraine, and offer to lend their talent and resources to stuff that really does. This is a serious existential crisis!

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Edmund G. Brown, Jr.

Yeah, his environmental record has been basically good, but come on: We are running out of water and we are prone to earthquakes. Why on earth would we waste the water---which can't be recycled---on energy extraction, and trigger more earthquakes while we're at it? This serious centrist "all of the above" energy strategy is, good intentions aside, slowly destroying the planet, and we don't have a Plan B on which we can rely in the event the world becomes uninhabitable.

---Baron V