[Source: http://www.complementarycurrency.org/ccDatabase/les_public.html ] According to Illargi over at Automatic Earth, although today’s contested $700 billion+ plan will probably get the go-ahead, it does not even begin to address the true scale of the global problem.”Far more money than that will be needed to keep the present financial structure standing”, he writes, adding surreally – but plausibly – […]
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The true size of the hole? $70,000,000,000,000?
As in: “The unregulated and poorly reported credit default swaps may have actually passed $70 trillion last year, or about $5 trillion more than the GDP of the entire world”. The story that includes this number is a really excellent analysis of why and how we got to this point: do read it. By the […]
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Did this architect trigger global financial mayhem?
We don’t know yet whether $85 billion dollars will be enough to save American International Group (AIG), the world’s biggest insurance firm (although some apparently insider commentators are not reassuring). But could an architect have been responsible for starting the panic? The Stern Review, when it was published two years ago, stated that failure to […]
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Pass the phugoid bag
A terrific new word arrives just in time for the weekend: “phugoid”. I learned about phugoids from an airline pilot called Paul in his reply to John Michael Greer’s piece on “the effluent society”. “As a pilot (writes Paul) I like to use flying analogies. An aircraft, if disturbed from straight-and-level flight, will execute a […]
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Palin’s poisonous pump and dead ducks
A diary piece at daily Kos investigates the environmental impacts of the so-called Palin Pipeline. It points out that the pipeline is not a conduit of natural gas to US consumers, but (as the map shows) to the tar sands of Alberta, Canada where it will be used to power the extraction of oil. Canada […]
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Green noise: expert meeting
The biggest challenge we face in City Eco Lab (see below) is the explosion of public events, media channels, reports, platforms, trade shows, and government initiatives, at all levels, to do with sustainability. Paul Hawken’s WiserEarth web portal, alone, alone lists over 100,000 non-profit projects and organisations. In the UK, the Transition Towns movement is […]
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City Eco Lab – Preview -70 days to go
This two-week-long market of sustainability projects opens in 70 days from now in St Etienne, France. We have set out to design a scalable, reproducable event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 in North East England, citizen co-design of projects are at the core […]
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How dematerialisation adds value
Did you ever turn a packet of dried biscuits to dust trying to get them out of the packet? Me too. This brilliant solution from Bolletje, a venerable Dutch brand, adds value by de-materialising an aspect of the product. Go to the top of the class, Mr/Ms biscuit designer.
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London: burning, flooding, drying ….
Fifteen per cent of London is at high risk from flooding due to global warming – an area that includes 1.25 million people, almost half a million properties, more than 400 schools, 75 underground and railway stations, 10 hospitals, and an airport (London City ). According to the draft of The London climate change adaptation […]