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29 Nov 07
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The response of most politicians and corporations is that new technologies and "green consumerism" will solve the problems: Innovate and shop to save the planet.
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"Clean coal" depends on technologies that optimists say are two decades away, if ever. But it's not only emissions from coal that are problematic. There's also the mining.
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And regarding the mega-panacea, biofuels, Bush says he wants to see 35 billion gallons of auto fuel from bio-agriculture within ten years. He's pushing subsidies nearly equal to those funding the Iraq War.
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And Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is supporting Bush's plan to subsidize the likes of Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto and Cargill. These companies no longer advertise how they're "feeding a hungry world"; now they're addressing climate change
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To try to use corn ethanol to replace even 10 percent of the fossil fuels used globally would require finding new or converting agricultural lands equal to about half the area of the United States.
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Where did all the materials come from? The nickel used in Prius batteries, for example, comes from mines that are responsible for the devastation of a huge swath of Ontario. Other key scarce materials come from Africa, South America and Asia.
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All that stuff is made of something scarce that came from the Earth, and it took scarce energy to put it together. Overconsumption, corporatism, advertising, the drive for growth and profit--those are the roots of this crisis. Real solutions begin with recognition that the Earth has limits that are now in plain sight. Ultimately all solutions will involve "powering down," using less energy, fewer materials--less consumerism. "Less and local" should be the standard
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How can we make the shift to less resource consumption while recognizing that many places do not now have enough, because of centuries of theft by industrial nations?
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