Balloons Translated into Energy Future

Photo: heartlover1717, Creative Commons, Flickr I’ve been seeing balloons lately, and it’s not a circus or senility, or even the fact that age has me revisiting the delights of my childhood, but rather the potential for balloons (or blimps, or kites) to provide virtually unlimited energy to an increasingly power-hungry world.

Sisyphus and the Third World

Photo: litmuse, Creative Commons, Flickr Since the first Western explorer set foot in the New Worlds, those inhabitants have had to roll the rock up an ever steeper hill. From outright military domination and expropriation of resources for the smelters and factories of the industrialized countries to decades of struggles for national liberation and the…

Cold Midwest Spring is a Harbinger of Hunger

Here in the upper Midwest temperatures have remained low, and nighttime temperatures are still falling into the frost range, a weather pattern that seems ominously persistent as spring approaches with slowly greening trees, and the absence of sunshine and fallow cornfields.

Proxy Voting Turnout Small for “Say on Pay”

Shareholders aren’t voting on proxy issues dealing with executive pay.  With the proxy voting season more than half done (there are only a few companies left with shareholder votes), a somewhat disturbing trend is developing with regard to "say on pay." Through proxy voting, shareholders can make their will known.

2012, Hopi Legends and Ecological Meltdown

I normally wouldn’t write in this vein, being more inclined to scientific research than mysticism, but I have Native American roots, and the appearance of the Holmes comet – which has recently expanded to fill an area greater than our sun – brings to mind Hopi prophecy of the End Times.

Jatropha: Another Bad Path to Biofuels

Photo:snake.eyes, Creative Commons, Flickr With oil at an all-time high of $128 per barrel, and gasoline prices soaring – not to mention double-digit inflation in food prices (4.9 in 2007-08 as compared to the usual 2.1), some consumers are becoming hard-pressed to fuel their bodies or their vehicles.

Rethinking GDP/GNP and Growth

Photo:NieckQ-, Creative Commons, Flickr If we’re going to convert our economy to a sustainable one, we must first and foremost begin to measure our economic activity in a way that is connected to reality.

The Environmental Libertarian

I try not to make a habit of citing the New American, but there is quite a bit of data to support the theory that the current warming trend is just a continuation of a climate cycle the Earth has been in for thousands, if not millions, of years.