An Outside Chance

Guns, energy, and the coin of the realm

Also published at Resilience.org. While US debt climbs to incomprehensible heights, US banking authorities continue to pump new money into the economy. How can they do it? David Graeber sees a simple explanation: There’s a reason why the wizard has such a strange capacity to create money out of nothing. Behind him, there’s a man … Read More

Shiny Things

This week’s photo post is all about things that catch the eye with a flash of sunlight – even when that light is first reflected by the moon. In our garden the first of the summer fruits are just about ready to eat. Meanwhile out in Bowmanville Marsh the water smartweed (persicaria … Read More

Fossil fuel empire: a world of vulnerability

Also published at Resilience.org. “It’s all about the oil,” many commentators said about the US assault on Iraq in 2003. Attributing a war to a single cause is almost always an oversimplification, but protecting access to the 20th century’s most important energy source has been a priority of US foreign policy since World War II. … Read More

The stratospheric costs of The American Century

Also published at Resilience.org. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” Chairman Mao famously stated in 1927. Political power grows out of a barrel of oil – that’s an important theme in Daniel Yergin’s classic book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. Political power, including the use of … Read More

Pollination Nation

There are many beautiful flowers in the meadows and marshes this month, and the insects that visit the plants are photogenic in their own right. For today’s post we venture to some of the farthest reaches of greater metropolitan Port Darlington – from the east end of West Beach Road out to the meadow beyond … Read More

Energy And Civilization: a review

Also published at Resilience.org and BiophysEco. If you were to find yourself huddled with a small group of people in a post-crash, post-internet world, hoping to recreate some of the comforts of civilization, you’d do well to have saved a printed copy of Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization: A History. Smil’s new 550-page magnum opus would … Read More

salsify etcetera

The colours of June: they’re often at their most intense at the smallest scales. Today’s photos feature wild and cultivated beauties growing around the yard right now. Yellow salsify goes by many aliases. Goat’s beard. Johnnie-go-to-bed-at-noon (for its flower’s habit of opening in the early morning sunshine, but folding back into a bud in the … Read More

birds birds birds

Today’s post features just a few of the birds seen in the waters, on the shore, and in the treetops in recent weeks in our neighbourhood.

tricks of the light

While the sun is low or storm clouds blow through, light beams bend and scatter, painting sky and water in extraordinary tints. Between thunderstorms last night, a vivid rainbow fragment held its place over Lake Ontario for twenty minutes or more. The standard rectangular framing imposed by digital cameras is a reasonable default for most images. … Read More

The Carbon Code – imperfect answers to impossible questions

Also published at Resilience.org. “How can we reconcile our desire to save the planet from the worst effects of climate change with our dependence on the systems that cause it? How can we demand that industry and governments reduce their pollution, when ultimately we are the ones buying the polluting products and contributing to the … Read More