These are three of the cheerful passages in the article. If you've never read the whole thing I'd recommend it...

The Delusion Revolution:
We're on the Road to Extinction and in Denial
By Robert Jensen

Imagine that you are riding comfortably on a sleek train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone's way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to court catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, "Well, we like the train, and arguing that we should get off is not realistic."

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My Mom is where I learned about public service. For 17 years she was a County Commissioner in the second largest county in Michigan by population. During that time she had opportunities to run for higher office, but stayed where she was because she though it was the highest level of public office where one could see the affect of the work one was doing.

It wasn’t always an easy row to hoe. Being that it was Michigan there was always a problem with finding enough money in the budgets to fill all the priorities. There were times when she did what she thought was right, even though people complained. When she set up two health clinic where teens could get condoms without shame or hassle (in the ‘80’s) there was a lot of out cry. Still Mom knew that with the 17% teen pregnancy rate in her district something had to be done.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

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Thanks to Dr. Soul Shava, Training Manager at the Aurecon Training Academy, in Pretoria, South Africa for sharing a recent study, by researchers from Rhodes and Cornell Universities and the Sebakwe Black Rhino Conservation Trust, on indigenous crops with the Nourishing the Planet project. We encourage everyone to continue to send in suggestions for examples of, and writing about, environmentally sustainable agriculture innovations to dnierenberg@worldwatch.org. Your input is helping to shape our research! Written by Ronit Ridberg and cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.

A recent study by researchers from Rhodes and Cornell Universities and the Sebakwe Black Rhino Conservation Trust found that traditional food crops, such as mubovora (pumpkin) and ipwa (sweet reed), are an important source of community resilience in Zimbabwe—including resilience to climate change and economic turbulence.

Unlike traditional crops, the majority of commercial crops that have been introduced to the region “are not adapted to local conditions and require high inputs of agrochemical inputs such as fertilizers, mechanization, and water supply,” according to the study. These crops tend to be more vulnerable to climatic changes, such as the drought and subsequent flooding that occurred in Zimbabwe’s Sebakwe area in 2007–08.

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A couple of weeks ago on May 17 we heard and saw Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Jeremy Jackson talk about and show us the shockingly overfished, overheated, and polluted state of our oceans today and how they have been so for long before BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, with indicators that things will get much worse.

Though he's been a contract photojournalist for National Geographic Magazine since 1998, Brian Skerry has spent the past three decades telling the stories of the ocean. His images portray not only the aesthetic wonder of the ocean but display an intense journalistic drive for relevance.

In another TED talk posted only a couple of days ago Skerry "brings to light the many pressing issues facing our oceans and its inhabitants. Typically spending eight months of the year in the field, he often faces extreme conditions to capture his subjects. He has lived on the bottom of the sea, spent months aboard fishing boats and dived beneath the Arctic ice to get his shot. He has spent over 10,000 hours underwater."

Spend 16 minutes with Skerry here and let him share some of his stories of the oceans and show you more of the beauty and natural treasures our society seems so bent on wrecking and losing.


Brian Skerry reveals ocean's glory -- and horror
TED.com - June 2010

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Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet blog.

For pastoralist communities like the well-known Maasai in Kenya, livestock keeping is more than just an important source of food and income; it’s a way of life that has been a part of their culture and traditions for hundreds of years.

But, in the face of drought, loss of traditional grazing grounds, and pressure from governments and agribusiness to cross-breed native cattle breeds with exotic breeds, pastoralists are struggling to feed their families and hold on to their culture.

The key, however, to maintaining the pastoralist way of life, at least in Kenya, may also be the key to preserving the country’s livestock genetic biodiversity, as well as improving local food security.“Governments need to recognize,” says Jacob Wanyama, coordinator with the African LIFE Network in Kenya— an organization that works to improve the rights of pastoralist communities in Eastern Africa, “that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.” (See also: The Keepers of Genetic Diversity)

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In the nineteen sixties and seventies the western world was in the throes of a cultural and psychological revolution of awareness that at times threatened to bring down the governments and destroy the societies of some of the most powerful countries on earth, and terrified many who were unable to step outside of the structure and limitations of the worldviews they had constructed for themselves in the course of their lives.

Questioning cultural norms and prejudices and searching for alternatives that better respected and valued human beings and their relationship with the larger society and with the natural world as the basis and reason for societies actions and existence rather than society and the state and the status quo as the determining factors of how people should interact with each other, were the drivers behind this revolution.

The insecurity of many in the face of insistent and deep questioning that in a religious context would have been labeled blasphemy and heresy caused knee-jerk fear reactions that in many arenas turned into violent confrontations, particularly but not only race riots and countless smaller horrors of the racial Civil Rights Movement, and in the struggle for equality under law and social systems of  more than half the population in the Gay and the Women's Liberation Movements, and what was often termed a Sexual Revolution, all of which had been percolating and growing for many years and all of which naturally contributed to making up the more encompassing psychological or awareness heightening Cultural Revolution of the times.

Noted philosopher Alan Watts in the nineteen sixties in "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" described our situation, our human condition, this way:

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Markey to Get Live Feed of BP Oil Spill on Website
BP Acquiesces to Markey’s Request, Will Release Video Stream Tonight to Chairman

May 19, 2010 – Following a demand from Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) for a live feed of the BP oil spill to be made publicly available on the web, BP said they would release the feed and it will be shown on Rep. Markey’s committee website at http://globalwarming.house.gov. The release of the live link to Rep. Markey is expected tonight.

“This may be BP’s footage, but it’s America’s ocean. Now anyone will be able to see the real-time effects the BP spill is having on our ocean,” said Rep. Markey, who conducted a briefing today with independent scientists where he reiterated the call for a video feed. “This footage will aid analysis by independent scientists blocked by BP from coming to see the spill.” [...]

From the Latest News on the Wires it seems the BP's getting some "stonewalling help" from the Coast Guard too.

[Rep. Markey (D-MA) continues ...]

"This is 4th grade math. We know the numerator here -- the couple thousand barrels a day BP is siphoning out of the sunken pipe. But we still don’t know the denominator," said Rep. Markey. "BP is capturing a fraction of the oil, but they don’t know what that fraction is. By releasing this video, we’ve taken the first step towards allowing better access to the information BP has about this spill.

But, but, this week's 'bad news cycle' is almost over Mr. Markey -- Can't you just let, sleeping Oil Plumes, lie?

40% Containment/Recovery -- that's a News story worth crowing, don't you think?

And if that Junk-Mud-Cement-Plug Shot works, this Weekend -- Problem's Solved! ... Right?

Fortunately, some in Congress, don't yet take their 'PR Orders' from BP ...

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Over the past few weeks since the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe has put the oceans and the environment at the center of our consciousness again, we've been hearing a lot about what the oil leak is doing to the Gulf of Mexico.

Juan Cole put it rather eloquently earlier this month in I want My Country back from Big Oil:

We need to end the hidden government subsidies for fossil fuels and make sure their true cost, including climate change, is built into them.

Moreover, we should be generating electricity from alternative sources or natural gas (of which we have a lot) and then moving to electric and hybrid automobiles. (Natural gas burns cleaner than petroleum or coal and is probably a necessary bridge fuel to the alternatives). Going to electric vehicles powered by natural gas, wind and solar plants would be cheaper than rebuilding all the gas stations in the country. Coal should be banned altogether and its use made a hanging crime.

And, we should be matching every penny of the cost of the Gulf clean-up with a huge government Manhattan project on solar energy.

The environmental and economic costs of the oil spill are enormous, but they are tiny compared to the costs of actually burning the oil and spilling more masses of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If you're not alarmed about your future, it is because you have bought the cover-up of climate change, just as Obama bought a cover-up when he believed what he was told about the unlikelihood of oil spills from ocean platforms.

But something else which should probably be concerning us all is the condition our oceans are in, and have been in for many years, even prior to the oil gusher. We live in a much smaller and more fragile world than we tend to think we do, and our decades long mistreatment of our environment, our rivers, lakes and oceans, the dwindling fish and large ocean mammal populations are all very serious concerns.

Jeremy Jackson is the Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Painting pictures of changing marine environments, particularly coral reefs and the Isthmus of Panama, Jackson's research captures the extreme environmental decline of the oceans that has accelerated in the past 200 years.

Jackson's current work focuses on the future of the world’s oceans, given overfishing, habitat destruction and ocean warming, which have fundamentally changed marine ecosystems and led to "the rise of slime." Although Jackson's work describes grim circumstances, even garnering him the nickname Dr. Doom, he believes that successful management and conservation strategies can renew the ocean’s health.

In this 18 minute talk from TED.com, Professor Jackson lays out the shocking state of our ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse.

Jeremy Jackson: How We Wrecked The Oceans
TED.com May 2010
Full transcript below

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Global Analysis
March 2010
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center

1. The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 13.5°C (56.3°F), which is 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F).
   
   This was also the 34th consecutive March with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average.


2. The March worldwide land surface temperature was 1.36°C (2.45°F) above the 20th century average of 5.0°C (40.8°F) — the fourth warmest on record.


3. The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.7°F) and the warmest March on record.


4. For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 13.0°C (55.3°F) was the fourth warmest January-March period. This value is 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average.

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Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In this regular series, we profile advisors to the Nourishing the Planet project. This week, we feature Jacob Wanyama, coordinator with the African LIFE Network.

Name: Jacob Wanyama

Affiliation: African LIFE Network

Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Bio: Jacob Wanyama is a coordinator with the African LIFE Network in Kenya, an organization that works to increase rights for pastoralist communities. He has been working for pastoralist peoples for nearly two decades with organizations such as Practical Action (formerly ITDG) and Veternaires Sans Frontiers (VSF).

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