A bitter irony --- the press, as the only constitutionally protected industry, is the mechanism of bringing down our democracy in its quest for ever increasing profit.

More than once I've come across stories about ancient military raids and expeditions that ended in death because the soldiers while looting loaded up with treasure instead of food and water.....this even after being warned about upcoming lengthy treks without those necessities being available. Guess what happened? Seems unlikely today's carbon baron billionaires would be that foolish, but then again?

Starving to death clutching a gold cross in place of food and water, or knowing your greed has sealed a miserable fate for your grandchildren are kind of the same numb nutted thing as far as I'm concerned.

The untold wealth that comes from looting the ground for fossil fuels will never replace the dwindling supply of food and water necessary to sustain life on our planet.

Aesop wrote of the “empty threat” that “a mountain labored vigorously, but brought forth only a ridiculous mouse.” And wise men have developed the theme. {Search-line something like “Aesop the Mountain in Labor”.} - - - The by-Republicans version: - “The party labored and brought forth a ridiculous coiffure, - and under the pompadour is a FRIGHTENING creature.”

Reply to #2. According to Thom, fossil fuel billionaires are killing children. Celebrate. That helps the population explosion you are so concerned about.

Fossil Fuel Billionaires Kill Children

Thom, the climate change movement is always complaining about over-population. I would think you would be celebrating.

The inconsistency of the climate change crowd never ceases to amaze.

President Trump

{… a rhyme …}

As a President, he’d be an atrocity:

√ A persona of flashing pomposity,

audaciously pretending virtuosity,

’tho’ of talents which instead are in paucity.

√ A mouth of a muzzle velocity

which spatters offensive animosity

in patterns of a shotgun’s ferocity.

√ A brain of untutored viscosity.

√ A soul of feigned religiosity.

√ Future historians’ curiosity

might puzzle ‘bout how this monstrosity

ever got elected.

Should’ve been rejected.

====================

Last time I checked, we were often above 400ppm. But that's not the real problem. The true "upstream", source problem is the ongoing human population explosion--220,000 more humans, net, every day for the earth to house and feed. Even if we wake up and reduce our net reproductive rate to 0.5, with one-child families, we won't be back down to 1950 levels of 2.5 billion humans until 2,100. You might (or not! :)) want to check out my free e-book PDF, "Stress R Us". Just Google the title. Thanks Thom! From a fellow ex-SDSer, Gregg Miklashek, MD

The geologic context: Average CO2 rise-rate for the Pleistocene was ~1-ppm/1000-years, big jump up at the end of the last ice-age ~1-ppm/180-years we hit 3.05-ppm gained last year.

The rate-of-change is the problem along with how high ppm's get because that controls how high sea-level goes and it keeps rising well after we drop CO2 levels that's well after we end emissions, the planet isn't connected to slider switches.

We got commitment & wedding rings like at the altar for CO2 the wifey bulging with heat-pregnancy before the wedding at 400-ppm we own 25m/82ft more sea-level if it stops there at 400 ... we're only dealing with how fast it happens, eh?

So at 3-ppm/year we'll be commited to melting all the ice-sheets reaching 800-ppm within 130-years on a linear gain, they start really going fast at 600-ppm and the bonus is losing all meaningful coral reefs by 750-ppm.

The issue now is that we can't do squat about it because there's so much carbon up there now the heating wherever we get to will last 150,000-years, no shit Sherlock that CO2 in the sky takes a long time to remove, there are no practical ways of doing so.

[The Pliocene was a COOLING from the Miocene so 400-ppm's or so doesn't represent at all what we're doing today, with continued cooling from rock erosion & continental configurations the Quatenary Era of ice-ages began over millions of years.]

Nuff on the situation my solution to flipping the switch is to dam Bering Straits to stop warm Pacific Ocean water from entering the Arctic Basin, while not much current flow it destroys the sea-ice early.

This is a geophysical thermal switch to throw to re-establish sea-ice in the Eastern Arctic Ocean by a geographically unique opportunity to grow sea-ice in spite of our high CO2 levels and high air temperatures now in the Arctic, it's a physical solution.

Second suggestion to use sewage treatment plants to switch from chemicals to remove dissolved solids to be able to release the water to a water body to photo-bioreactors growing algae they remove the "nutrients" better than chemicals taking 2.5-days versus 6-hours the reason for growing 24x7 at a city plant to keep up with volume.

This supplies all local transportation biofuels, algae-to-crude now $7/gallon for bio-gasoline for those engines requiring it, most IC-engines run fine some better my design work from home-farm-ranch scale up so people can have biodiesel from their own sewage.

Insulate buildings from the outside, it's 3-4 times more efficient by turning the mass of whatever structure is there into a thermal-mass storing thermal-energy keeping the interior in the comfort range for heat or cooling applied.

Provide a thermal-mass storage for solar-thermal collections tied to the standard ductwork in buildings the key to taking 80% of the architectural electricity off the grid because that's how much of the power is used for Joules, heat, not electricity.

We are children at sustainable design, honor the Indigenous People, the Inca Emperor knew food security and hydrologic systems were tied indelibly, the modern Andean people know they're losing their water supply so restoring ancient water-works.

All societies must use rain-catchment and cisterns to handle new seasonal variability to when water falls from the jetstream distruptions. Consider using ballast-rock this a road-building material 40% voids the capacity of the cistern and you can drive on them, sealed with clays to sand-gravels to eliminate evaporation.

Consider the issue is to leave the Steam Age on electricity using way more storage as that's what makes solar-wind reliable once capacity is adjusted, battery-inverter arrays now in containers to 2-Mwh capacity provide on-phase, digitally regulated power no smart-grid required.

For windmills small towns can DIY small 2kw units to array on hillsides if vertical-axis these gain 10-times more power than the huge windmills and can be installed under them this a TED by the main researcher; "John Dabiri | Opportunities and Challenges for Next-Generation Wind Energy"; 25:13; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAGAcGoyP8Q

That's enough from me ... hth,

[Like many, fixed-income Nam Vet, like fewer Xbox Azure dude couldn't get a job too long in the down economy switching careers back to architecture & living system did that before first passive-solar homes 1980.]

For a different, more critically analytical, perspective, please consider:

Recently Grant Township supervisors "passed a first-in-the-nation law that legalizes direct action to stop frack wastewater injection wells within the Township."

If a court does not uphold the people’s right to stop corporate activities threatening the well-being of the community, the ordinance codifies that, “any natural person may then enforce the rights and prohibitions of the charter through direct action.” Further, the ordinance states that any nonviolent direct action to enforce their Charter is protected, “prohibit[ing] any private or public actor from bringing criminal charges or filing any civil or other criminal action against those participating in nonviolent direct action.”

The community of Grant Township, in other words, has the right to participate in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience/direct action in the effort to prevent the construction of a PGE deep injection well (or whatever) that's inconsistent with the township charter that ostensibly protects its members' right to clean water. Moreover, criminal charges cannot be brought because these would be inconsistent with the township charter.

This sounds great--in principle. Grant Township is to be applauded for taking this principled stand. But the law also illustrates the extent to which CELDF is obviously willing to go in advancing their vision of a "Pennsylvania Revolt" by using--exploiting--townships in the pursuit of that larger agenda. Fact is, Grant Township does not need a "not-really disobedience" law, and CELDF's assistance in drafting it just makes Grant Township more beholden to CELDF--all the while CELDF gets to claim another victory.

The principle here is simple: the ends do not and cannot justify the means when the means--bankrupting a township and subjecting its citizens to genuine hardship--create very real and very great harm.

Grant Township supervisor Stacy Long claims that she'll "do whatever it takes to provide our residents with the tools and protections they need to nonviolently resist aggression like those being proposed by PGE." I respect this principled position, and I applaud Long for it. But there are serious logical and practical problems with the direct action law--and Long has a right to know this before she puts her body on the line.

First, to legalize civil disobedience is to make that particular variety of action--say, blocking a backhoe--precisely not disobedient. This might seem like mere semantics--but it's not. In fact, if blocking a backhoe is a right I have under my community charter, and I am bound by that charter to protect the community's right to clean water, what stops that action from becoming a responsibility?

In other words, the potential effect of this law is to transform civil disobedience into civil obedience because rights--as all civil libertarians know in their bone marrow--create responsibilities. And a law that allegedly liberates me from being prosecuted for civil disobedience is a short step from erecting a law that compels me to obedience in the defense of my community, in this case, putting my body in front of a backhoe.

A right to protect my community where there is no penalty for not doing so confers a responsibility to protect my community. Linzey might point out that the explicit language of the law reads "may then enforce the rights," not must. But this has little logical or practical force since what the community charter protects is the right to something essential to the existential conditions of living things: clean water. How could any morally thinking citizen--freed from the prospect of prosecution--not feel it as a duty to engage in direct action in blocking that backhoe?

Linzey, of course, knows all this, and he knows better on at least two counts:

First, Linzey knows that unless a compelling number of other communities join forces with Grant Township, this law will have less than zero force--it will simply expose courageous Grant Township citizens like Stacy Long to arrest and prosecution. While CELDF may be there to defend her in court, that will be cold comfort the next time she makes, say, a job application. The only community members in a position to take the real risk of standing up to PGE are those with little to lose when they're arrested--and that won't be many.

Second, Linzey knows that if this experiment fails, he can still refer to it as a CELDF victory for having drafted the charter and the law defending it. The harm, after all, isn't to CELDF. And when CELDF leaves, the harm to Grant Township will still be there--right along with the deep injection well.

To be very clear:

I am absolutely not advocating against civil disobedience.
I am apprising Grant Township members of the very real risk that no new ordinance is going to protect them from.

It is a lie to tell brave community members anything else.

CELDF is selling community members a bill of deceptive goods by leading them to believe that there will not be very real consequences that follow on direct action.

There will be, and if there weren't, civil disobedience would have no real force.

I stand with Tim DeChristopher, co-founder of the Climate Disobedience Center, who says he's "encouraged to see an entire community and its elected officials asserting their rights to defend their community from the assaults of the fossil fuel industry," and that he knows "there are plenty of folks in the climate movement ready to stand with Grant Township.” I hope he's right.

But that's just the point: what makes direct action powerful and valuable is that it is disobedient.

With CELDF's help, Grant Township has gutted its most powerful tool. I hope they'll reconsider.

http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2016/05/from-civil-disobedience-...

More information on Public Banks at

http://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/

ct

I agree there should be state owned banks and the United States should have a federal bank which is actually run by the federal government. I grew up in North Dakota, a great place to live. as long as you can handle the winters.