Helen Caldicott's new broadcast/podcast program #1.Hands up everyone who wants to hear about nuke reactor safety.....Nobody?Perfect. That's just the way the nuclear industry wants it - as they plan a new "renaissance" of reactor construction as a "solution" to climate change. Really, the same big corporations want the government to back and insure their risky plans to rake in billions of bucks.George Bush loves the plan. So does the military. Republican candidate John McCain just told nutty talk show host Glenn Beck he's like to see America get 80% of it's electricity needs from nuclear power - just like the French do.Joseph Romm, the energy expert from climateprogress.org did the math. That means 700 new reactors, which we could build over the next 100 years, so long as we stop building anything else.Newt Gingrich loves nuclear power too. Obama has big nuclear donors in his home state - but hey, all the candidates take money from the nuclear lobby.For the sake of sanity, please listen to Helen Caldocott's interview with David Lochbaum, Director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists. In Blogger, just click the title above. Or download the fast Lo-Fi version shown below.You'll hear about near-melt-downs of U.S. reactors, spent fuel as terrorist targets, and a failure to protect public safety.Not much of that gets reported in the mainstream news. Funny, since once of the biggest nuclear reactor makers, General Electric, owns a TV network.Even with 10 years of warning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) failed to demand reactor changes when inconvenient for business operators. The wall of one American reactor was eaten away to a single layer of failing metal - ready to blow. Was that the one near you?As Chernobyl taught us, we are all down-wind from a blown reactor. The radioactive particles go into the upper atmosphere, and rain down upon the world, raising cancer rates, and worrying millions.Meanwhile, all the so-called "spent fuel" (still highly radioactive) is kept in tanks, concrete bunkers, wherever - around the plants. Some are above ground, easy targets for terrorism, especially an airplane hit.Also read Helen Caldicott's 2006 book: "Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer To Global Warming - Or Anything Else."Ecoshock show 080509 1 hourCD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.Production Notes: quick intro, re-intro (at 28:26), exit. Includes clips from original 1983 documentary If You Love This Planet, starting at 45:40.Stations needing time for ID or announcements cut into documentary clip. Or burn it and play it.The web address given in the show not will not be up until June. I add helencaldicott.com & beyondnuclear.org, which work now.Alex SmithhostRadio Ecoshock

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A new survey by worldpublicopinion.org shows that the majority of people in the world think oil is running out. They want their governments to find new energy supplies. Americans agree we have passed Peak Oil - but they are the only public to feel their government is operating on the wrong assumptions.One big bad assumption: biofuels are the way to energy independence. We investigate news reports from all over the world, connecting biofuels to the new world food crisis. Even U.S. sources say the Bush biofuel plan is a disaster. And it just makes global warming worse!Breaking climate news: the Jetstream moving toward the poles, CO2 is way up, and methane escaping. For the past 10 years, methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases (25 times stronger than CO2) has been relatively stable, for reasons we don't understand. But this year it's gone way up. Scientists suspect industrialization in Asia, and melting of the Arctic permafrost, may be the major causes. Bad, bad news.I spend some time trying to cope with just one week's worth of new developments - in science, and in the real world.In just one example, did you know the U.S. Air Force is proposing a massive program to combat climate change? Lots of news.From the UK: we interview off-grid living expert Nick Rosen. Whole groups of people are voluntarily unplugging from the matrix: off electricity, making their own. Nick has published a book on surviving off-grid. We discuss the various reasons why people leave, and the scene in the UK. Can you live if the power goes out? For a month?American housing crisis, storms, or fire: living in your car. Investigation into the new phenomenon of the "mobile homeless" or "half-homeless" growing in America. Uncounted in official statistics.Includes clips from a video feature by Californiaconnected.org on how Santa Barbara is allowing people living in cars to park in empty lots overnight - legally. We also hear from the comedian of the homeless Darrell Bedford. Some of Katrina victims are still living in their cars. But a surprising amount of car and van people actually work. A new study shows that this is the first year that a person working minimum wage cannot afford a one bedroom apartment anywhere in the country.Uncle Al gives solid tips for living in a car - in case it happens to you. Impossible? What if your job disappears, or a relationship ends suddenly? Terrorist attack? Fire in your home, or the whole region? Hurricanes? (all hotels will be full). Maybe it's worthwhile knowing what it really takes to survive in a car.Plus Medea Benjamin on Code Pink anti-war. This is a sample from an excellent series of activist radio interviews done by Sue Supriano. Check out her site at suesupriano.com for lots of free downloads. The radio show is called "Steppin' Out of Babylon."Code Pink, founded by women mad about the wars, and wasted military spending, has become one of the largest international war movements. These ladies want the U.S. to close the 800 military bases, in over 100 countries. They want that money spent on restoring crumbling schools - and hey, maybe even a working health care system, like every other developed country in the world!Just Google "Code Pink" and you'll find outfits all over the U.S. - and in many countries like Italy and the Philippines, where local people want the U.S. to pack up and go home. Medea says when she travels, people all over the world ask her: how can America borrow money to fight these useless wars, and yet they can't provide for their own citizens. Think New Orleans for example, or the need for alternative energy. Nope - billions, even trillions, for the war machine.The Radio Ecoshock Show 080502 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or LoFi 14 MBProduction Notes: Songs: "Here at the End of the World" by David Rovics and new hit "Sea Lion Woman" by Canadian star Feist. No copyright on these programs. OK for non-profit use.Alex SmithhostRadio Ecoshock

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Polluted cities kills hundreds of thousands. Under-reported plague from vehicle emissions. 2 interviews.We are honored to have as a guest on this weeks' show: Dr. Joel Schwartz, Harvard's top expert on air pollution. I discuss Dr. Schwartz' testimony to Congress in late 2007. His presentation is still available on the Net, as a .pdf file. It is on Carbon Soot and Global Warming.Schwartz presents one of the two most scary maps I have ever seen. (Number one was the map showing the new world regime under climate change, attached to a presentation to the Royal Society late in 2007, by Sir James Lovelock....)The Schwartz map is simple: is just shows where particulate soot, dangerous to human health, is congregating. Gray means very unhealthy amounts of particulates, black means lethal levels.In the United States, the whole of New England is gray, with black blotches. There is more heavy pollution over the Louisiana/Texas refinery area, and of course gray and black over Southern California.But all of Europe is one gray area, with huge blobs of black. In our interview, I ask Dr. Schwartz whether the new diesel cars being sold in Europe have filters to preserve the air. Not nearly enough, was the reply. Apparently, about 70% of all new private cars sold in Europe are diesel, not gas. That means a lot of particulates. There are new stricter rules for emissions from these new cars, but it won't stop the rash of heart attacks, pneumonia, and prenatal damage from diesel particulates.Worse, the Europeans have been buying diesels for a long time - and the engines can last up to 30 years. That means decades more diesel smoke from all the old engines still in use. Dr. Schwartz says anyone could tell, even blindfolded, whether they were breathing European or American air.We cover a new study from England, by Professor George Knox, finding that pneumonia deaths, thousands of them, caused directly by transport emissions, have been missed by medical authorities. The situation now is killing more people than the famous killer smog of 1952, but the reporting system just doesn't pick it up.The Joel Schwartz interview is a must - if you live in a city. We talk about smog canyons, how people die, and what could be done about it.The program starts, though, almost at the other end of the world, in Alaska, with Dr. Riki Ott. Why would we call a marine expert on oil spills, to find out about city smog? Because after the Exxon Valdez spill, the American government spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research into the toxicity of oil. It was the first time such research was ever done. They found that even small amounts of oil was toxic not just to fish, but to mammals - including mammals like ourselves.After the research, in 1999, the EPA quietly added one oil component, the PAH's, to the most deadly list of bio-accumulative toxic materials - along with things like DDT. The Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons are in your blood stream and mine. They persist, build up, and lead to cancer, birth abnormalities, and other ugly things.Dr. Riki Ott has the expertise to explain how toxic oil is infiltrating our cities and our lives - and the bravery to speak out against a well-oiled system.As you know, all the major TV newscasts now depend upon car advertising. So do the newspapers, which run full page ads, classified ads, and whole sections about cars they want you to want. This mainstream media is never going to tell you what this single Ecoshock program reveals.Nanoparticles in your bloodstream - and carbon soot makes more global warming.There are two basic kinds of air particles that impact climate. The sulphates, which come mainly from coal burning, can actually cool the planet a bit, by reflecting sunlight back into space. But these particles don't stay air-borne for more than a few weeks. It is a temporary effect.Black soot, from coal plants and from vehicle emissions, absorbs the sun's energy, heating up the planet. It is the second largest cause of global warming. These particles also land on the snow regions, especially in the Arctic. White snow reflects a lot of solar heat back into space - but when it becomes darker, grayish, the energy is absorbed. The snow may melt earlier, or ice may not form as thickly.I found it interesting that Dr. Schwartz, in his testimony to Congress, said that cleaning up coal emissions in North America, and car emissions, is a double win. We can save as many as 200,000 lives a year - and cut out the second largest emitter in the world. Why kid ourselves, and send money to China, or some forest project in Indonesia, when we can save lives, and reduce climate change, with action right at home. I agree.Finally, we talk to both our guests about what we need - to breath better, live longer.Radio Ecoshock Show 080425 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MBProduction Notes: end song "Highway to Hell" by Midnight Oil; opens with Gino Vannelli clip "Wild Horses". No copyright on interviews. Major media, loaded with car ads, will never report this story. Please help get it out there.Alex SmithhostRadio Ecoshock

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Even President George Bush admits we are addicted to oil. But what does that really mean?THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTIONDr. Bruce Alexander, a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Canada, is a pioneer researching addiction. His ideas are so unconventional, he won the Stirling Prize for controversy. Bruce Alexander is currently writing a book titled "The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in the Poverty of the Spirit." - coming out this summer."Addiction is a democratic disease, affecting both the rich and the poor. Sadly, scientific medicine has made no progress on addiction." In addition to addictions to tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs, Alexander reminded attendees that other addictions that will increase with globalization include gambling, pornography, and shopping."Dr. Alexander's recent study for the Centre for Policy Alternatives, "The Roots of Addiction in Free market Society", is available online, as a .pdf file.In our Radio Ecoshock interview, we pick Dr. Alexander's brain, on the addiction that could change our climate, virtually forever - fossil fuels.PEAK OIL AND ADDICTIONI've been listening to a talk given by Nate Hagens, at the 6th ASPO Peak Oil Conference, in Ireland. Nate is completing his PHD at the University of Vermont. There is a video of his speech online - and Hagens goes into great detail about our brain formation, and the importance of neurochemicals that determine, he says, our actions. Rather than using our relatively recently developed neo-cortex, to making rational long-range decisions, Hagens says science repeatedly shows, we use older portions of the brain, to ensure a continuing dose of chemicals like dopamine. He suggests this inability of the brain, to let thinking dominate decision making, is one of the reasons humans are unable to make better choices for the future, like alternative energy. Instead we just keep sucking up oil, which rewards us right away, today.Nate Hagens is perhaps unique in his experience. In his twenties, he was selling big investments, covering hundred of millions of dollars. In that world, there is a big discount for future risk, instead of taking profits now. Hagens claims psychological tests, in monkeys for example, seem to show that novelty and reward are absolutely necessary for our brain functioning. This could lead to an explanation, of why his rich clients needed to keep making even more millions, or why the suburban housewife must buy yet another pair of expensive shoes. The more expensive, the more the charge card is loaded up, the better the chemical hit in the brain. It makes me wonder...Is our whole society really in a state near overdose?By now almost all of us know the oil society is killing us, in many ways. We know exhaust is poisoning our lungs, deadly car crashes, the foreign wars, and now horrible prospects of climate change. And yet we still go like addicts to the gas pumps, and fill up. Why, why, why? And what can we do?Everyone likes to laugh about the hippies going back to the land... but are those people seeking a more natural environment, where their addictions to things like television, shopping, and lottery tickets can subside? Could that be part of the answer, making our living arrangement more suitable, for the mammals we really are?How can we apply what you've discovered, about the myths and realities of addiction, to really kick the fossil fuel habit, before it kills us?RADIO PLAY "ECOVENTION"While addiction is very serious, we just had to poke fun at ourselves as oil addicts. In this Radio Ecoshock show, you hear our new radio play "Ecovention." It is a parody of the A & E program "Intervention" which deals with addictions to drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, gambling and so on. Four people helped out with this radio drama:Matt Codrington is an up and coming Canadian actor, playing the role of "Gordon" the SUV-driving oil addict. His wife "Annette" is played by Colleen Kimmett - who in real life is a tech and science journalist. Colleen may be producing some pieces for Radio Ecoshock in the future. Sister "Ginny" was played by an anonymous radio industry personality, and Gordon's buddy "Norman" was none other than "The Simulator" - who hosts the wildly popular video podcast "It's The End of the World As We Know It" found at submedia.tv.The play is fun, and can be downloaded to pass around, from our web site at ecoshock.org.ADDICTED TO OIL SONGWe also got permission from Loose Bruce Kerr to play his parody of the hit "Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer. Now it's "Addicted to Oil" - and the lyrics are great. Bruce Kerr, who is a lawyer for Sun Microsystems (good thing I got permission first!) says he is now working on a video for the song.A BUFFET OF AUDIO CLIPSThen we play a collection of short clips on oil addiction, and our hopes of overcoming it. You hear a snatch from a speech given by Terry Tamminen, formerly green advisor to Gov. Schwarzenegger of California. Terry wrote "Lives Per Gallon" - one of the definitive books on oil addiction. I recorded his book tour speech in Vancouver over a year ago.You also hear a short clip from the new speech given by Tim Flannery in Toronto, also available in full from our web site. This was recorded and passed along by John-Paul Warren. Flannery describes new developments in Denmark to replace oil burning cars by all-electric ones. A company will make the new cars, and another group will make one in every six parking spaces in Copenhagen equiped with re-charging posts. You drive up, park, and plug in. The system recognizes your registration, and charges you for the power you use.Not enough juice? The new system will also have hundreds of "refilling stations" where you can quickly exchange for a new battery. This is supposed to be faster than filling up at an old style gas station, because the cars are designed for it. Neat, eh?We end up with a few sample quotes from Al Gore's recent (April 2008) presentation at TED, the Technology, Entertainment and Design folks. TED has some great talks, and you can still find Al Gore's new video there. Highly recommended.In the end, I hope we all think deeply about this oil habit. It's in our lives, in our brains. But just like tobacco, or heroin, we can kick the habit. We must - of face a ruined climate, and continuous wars - not to mention empty wallets!Good luck - and let's get clean together.Alex SmithRadio Ecoshock

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Calif. scientist Nate Lewis says CO2 is rising rapidly - and why only Solar can power the Earth.This includes Repodcast clip from ABC National's "In Conversation" with Robyn Williams. Robyn finds Nate frustrated with the gush of greenhouse gases in the last few years. We are going the wrong way, while conferences conference, politicians talk, and consumers take teeny tiny green steps.That leads to disaster, but scientist Lewis quickly knocks out the nuclear option. By his calculation, we would have to start building a new nuclear power plant, starting today, every day, basically forever, to meet the world's power needs (they only last about 40 years, and so we never quite make it, given the developing world's needs.) Nuclear really is no answer.But the Sun has more than enough. A single hour of the Sun energy striking the Earth, if we could capture it all, is equal to the total power consumption of our entire current civilization.Lewis explains that we can get enough solar, and build a civilization with it. We just need to get going. It is an impassioned speech, one of many scientists trying to get humans to act, while action is still possible.Then Wall Street insider of Climateer Investing explores solar market & new tech that could do the job. This interview is almost half an hour, from a person plugged into the multi-million dollar trades in alternative energy. Our guest explains how solar energy subsidies by governments can lead to some strange results. In fact, in some cases, subsidies might even be a transfer of wealth from the poorest people/ratepayers to the wealthy (who actually install the solar capacity, in part paid for by the rest of us...)We talk about what is going on overseas in solar, and whether the big oil companies were sincere when they bought solar companies (you guess....) Best of all, we peak into the hot new solar tech coming online - especially thin cell solar, which is reaching the Holy Grail of alternative energy: it can be build at the same cost as coal. Why would we ever use coal, if clean solar can do it cheaper? And the Google boys are in the race, with their company Nanosolar. Lots of info on what could be the world's most important topic: how solar energy could power the next civilization.Plus our look at who owns India's Tata, and why World Bank is financing Tata Ultra Mega coal plants as "clean energy." Just recently, the United States, Britain, and other OECD countries announced a multi-billion dollar clean energy fund. The World Bank is supposed to run it.Unbelievably, an arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is funding a $4.4 billion project to build five 800 MW coal-fired power plants in India - and they are calling it "clean coal". It even qualifies under the "Clean Development Mechanism" under the Kyoto Protocol! That's it: burning mega coal to save the planet.We give the details on this "Tata Ultra Mega" project - and learn about "supercritical" coal burning. Yes it is more efficient, but it will still release millions and millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - in a state renowned for it's sun power. Wrong way Jack.I always wonder who the mega-billionaires are, who could stop a project like this. We investigate Tata, and find a maze of Parsi charities own a big chunk. The Parsi (also spelled Parsee) are a tiny (less than 100,000 people) minority in India, who arrived from Iran many centuries ago. They are very successful business people, and own India's largest industrial conglomerate: Tata. It is the same Tata who just announced a cheap people's car, that will soon flood the roads, and skies, of India.The Parsi are renowned for their charity. So even though a Tata is still CEO, he doesn't really own control. However, there is one large block of stocks owned by another Parsi giant, the Mistry family. Palonnji Mistry took up Irish citizenry, now becoming the richest Irish citizen! But his whole empire runs out of Bombay. Remember, Tata also bought out the English steel industry, now known as Corus.Anyway, these are the people who may help wreck the climate of India, while trying to help their own people get the electricity they need to develop. The ideals are good, the technology choice is absolutely suicidal. We hope Tata Group will reconsider, and go solar.Ecoshock show 080411 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MBProduction Notes: Our feature ending song is "Until the Day is Done" from new album "Accelerate" by R.E.M. Participating stations can cut it, if you need more time for local station announcements.Visit our website at http://www.ecoshock.org

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In this show: a new speech by Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of "Ingenuity Gap" and "Updside of Down" Toronto 080320.Homer-Dixon says a carbon surge threatens the world, breaking IPCC predictions. He outlines the latest science, and makes an odd suggestion of how the Internet might help save us.This is one of the most powerful speeches I have heard this year. It was recorded by John-Paul Warren of Toronto - an example of the kind of recording and exchange that is pushing exchange of new climate knowledge, via the Internet. Thanks John-Paul for sending this in to Radio Ecoshock. Look for more from John-Paul, including a new speech by Tim Flannery...Plus, this week we have an Ecoshock interiew with climate modeller Andreas Schmittner. He is an ocean science specialist who is working the world's best computer model - looking up to 500 years into the future. According to British scientist James Lovelock (who summarizes the science of others in this case) - our atmosphere was formed by tiny organisms in the sea. Without them, we wouldn't have an oxygen layer to breathe.Now Schmittner has published research saying we haven't taken into account the full force of ocean life, once the oceans heat up. Will plankton blooms add to carbon? Can a warmer ocean accept as much of our excess carbon? Schmittner's models show, so far, that even if we stopped producing all carbon emissions by 2100 - the world would continue to heat up, a lot, for the next one or two hundred years! The science isn't certain, but it's a huge red warning flag - and another reason we need to act very quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.All in all, this show is a stunning, scary look at gap between the new atmosphere, and human inaction.Ecoshock show 080404 1 hour CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MBProduction notes: no station IDs. Clips from "Turn Off the Light" by Nelly Furtado (Canadian) and "Mother Earth" by Shane Philip (Cdn). Clip of Pres candidate John Edwards in New Orleans on climate.

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This week's program begins with a quick review of planet-shaking news.Then, we go to the book launch of "Transportation Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil"The authors are Richard Gilbert & Anthony Perl. I recorded that on March 18th, in Vancouver, Canada.You get the speech by Richard Gilbert, plus some of the Q and A.Both the talk, and the book, are loaded with real facts and figures on future transpo, and how to get there, sustainably. Finally, some answers. Are you ready to see U.S. airports shrink from 300 to 30, as the oil runs out? We learn why electric cars will dominate the road. Electric railroads.Richard Gilbert, an energy expert from Toronto Canada, opens with a speech explaining (a) the inevitability of Peak Oil and (b) what we can do about it - if we start now.Anthony Perl, a professor at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada - says we don't need any more road construction. Now that we know about Peak Oil, and ever-increasing oil prices, governments should "hit the pause button" on new highway construction, and airport expansions. We won't need them!A great book for students, activists, bloggers, and citizens trying to contain the old-school enthusiasm for building new oil-based infrastructure.As the economy deteriorates, you can bet governments will turn to new roadbuilding, bridges, and all the stuff that worked in the LAST depression. That's my opinion. This book shows why that is nuts, and gives us the graphs, facts, and figures to call for a future transportation system that actually works.I like the emphasis on conservation and renewables, instead of promoting nuclear as an answer. Good. But I wish the authors had a little more push on climate change, as a reason to use these same solutions. I ask that question, during the Q and A that followed.This book is expensive. It is loaded with references, and all the gear that lets people answer to government experts, and industry lobby people. If you want to get active in any serious way, this is a reference book that is well worth it. It is published by Earthscan.I predict people will use "Transportation Revolutions" for years. And yet the text isn't heavy going - it's clear and well written - an unexpected bonus these days, when it comes to authoritative books on any technical subject.Anybody can read it, and should.Ecoshock show 080328 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB.The web site for the book is here.If you want to run just the feature on Transpo Revolutions, it is available as a separate file, complete and ready to run on radio, computer, or your IPOD, at 48 minutes long. The CD Quality Transpo feature is 45 Megabytes. The Lo-Fi mono version is 11 MB. Or just look at the Climate Solutions page on our main website.AlexRadio Ecoshock

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This week we dig into the Wall Street Mess. Are we headed into the next Great Depression? We'll talk to a Finance Campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, to see how they fought some big bankers, and won. That interview with Matt Leonard of RAN is only available in the audio program.But first, Wall Street needs to dig themselves out with a new bubble scam. Why not use our concern about climate change. If a new American Administration takes on carbon emissions, they may hand out billions in new wealth, as tradable pollution credits. In just a couple of minutes, we'll talk with an anonymous Wall Street insider, about the big banker's plans to get rich, on climate change.There are lots of clips from the recent Bear Stearns debacle, to similar stuff from 1929. About 8 minutes of multimedia audio in the show.But for blog readers, let's get into Warren Buffett. (And incidentally, DNA tests have shown he is no relation to the singer Jimmy Buffett...)What does the world's richest man say about climate change? Can the multi-billion dollar empire of Warren Buffett help prevent the catastrophe?At the age of 77, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is listed by Forbes magazine at the top of the capitalist heap, with 62 billion dollars at his command.Buffett says he is not as good at giving away money, as making it. So, he has an agreement to steer countless billions from his estate, 83 percent of it, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That Foundation may be one key in the future fight against climate change, but not yet. Gate himself has said precious little about climate change. The Foundation is immunizing and helping poor African kids, but is apparently not yet tuned into the changing winds that stripped North Africa of its annual rain. We can only hope that the Arctic Ice melt last year, and continued storm damage in the United States and elsewhere, will melt the hearts of Bill and Melinda, so they begin to tackle climate change with the billions at their command.Meanwhile, there is gigantic cult of following Warren Buffett's investments, and his sayings. Whole books are devoted to being like Buffett. And the man has some common sense, without a doubt. Here is what Buffett said about the current economic debacle, on CNBC March 4th, 2008.[clip on Wall Street bankers drinking their own cool-aid]I've done an exhaustive search of the Net, and various media archives, and here is Buffett on climate change:[TV static]That's right. Nothing, nada. Is is possible this old-world man of sensible plaid shirts, and down-to-Earth companies, hasn't heard we are in trouble? While companies all over the globe are publishing advertising, about their new committment to saving the world, and themselves, from wrenching climate change, Mr. Buffett is Mr. Invisible. Why?I've been wondering why Buffett is misssing in action, and words, for years. But our guest today, the proprieter of the Climateer Investing blog, pointed out that Buffett's company reporting for 2007, which included a long philosophical report from Chairman Buffett, says absolutely nothing about climate change.It's not that Buffett companies are not agents of climate change. He owns many polluting industries. He also owns companies with major exposure to global warming, especially his massive holding of insurance companies. Every other big insurance company, companies like All-State and Munich Re, have acres of reporting on their exposure to climate change damages. The series of big Florida hurricanes, followed by Katrina, topped off their years of research showing an increase in catastrophic climate-related events, around the world, since the 1980's.Well, let's talk about Warren Buffett. Warren does not have a limousine. He drives himself in his own Cadillac, and is a big supporter of General Motors. He is known for his frugality, rather than the usual conspicuous consumption of other billionaires. Buffett has lived in the same small house for the past 50 years.The richest man does know about climate change. In a letter in 1993, he told investors that possible global warming indicated that, quote, ?catastrophe insurers can?t simply extrapolate past experience.? "If there is truly ?global warming,? for example, the odds would shift, since tiny changes in atmospheric conditions can produce momentous changes in weather patterns.? The question was still "if" back then.However, even more recently, he seems still on undecided about climate science. Buffett doesn't actually say that storms are impacted by "?atmospheric, oceanic or other causal factors." Its just the huge insurance losses have caused him to be more cautious. Hardly an endorsement of climate change, from the head of the third largest insurance company on Earth.In an article in 2006, Al Gore said: "The best long-term investors, including Warren Buffett, now realise that climate change can materially impact company returns." But there is litte on the Net to indicate that Gore and Buffett are close friends, or anything like that. However, Buffett has come out in support of the Democrats for 2008. He is on the record as unhappy with the Bush administration management, if it can be called that, of the economy.Inevitably, some of Buffett's subsidiaries are involved in climate change mitigation, one way or another. For example, PacifiCorp, a utility owned by the Berhsire Hathaway empire, will make a joint feaibility study in Wyoming, with a coal-fired power plant using Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC). That could be called a kind of carbon capture tech. The EPA, and the Electric Power Research Institute are looking at this technology, which gasifies coal, makes electricity, and then grabs the carbon for sequestration, as a way to keep coal plants working, without wrecking the climate. We shall see.NetJets Europe, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, is hoping to develop a plan to offset, or otherwise remediate, its carbon emissions.Meanwhile, other parts of the empire churn out planet-destroying levels of CO2. His companies make giant recreational vehicles, are involved in the trucking industry, and his utilities emit lots of carbon. For example, Buffett bought over $2 billion of the debt issued by the gross polluter TXU, the Texas utility. Berkshire Hathaway also ownd MidAmerican Energy Holdings, another utility conglomerate. One of those subsidiaries is Yorkshire Electricity and Northern Electric, with 3.8 million customers, making it the UK's third largest electricity producer.His subsidiary Northern Natural pipelines reportedly carries about 8% of the natural gas used in America. But MidAmerican also has wind farms, as we will hear in a moment.Buffett's recent investment in the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp, 10 percent of the railroad giant, has to be seen as climate friendly, considering the much greater efficiency of rail travel. Of course, the company should be moving to more electric rail power. And yet, at least 20% of Burlington Northern's business is just hauling coal from Wyoming to big power plants in the Midwest. Dirty fingerprints, there.And Buffet is a big supporter of the Canadian Tar Sands. Here is a clip from the National Post, February 7th, 2008:If Warren Buffett refuses to comit himself publicly to the reality of climate change, and ignores it in his annual company reports, he isn't so shy about Peak Oil. Let's listen to this interview on CNBC in March of 2008.[CNBC interview]My thanks to the Climateer Investing blog for some of these tips. Find at climateerinvest.blogspot.com. His entry for February29th is Who Cares What Warren Buffett Thinks About Global Warming?Well, I do, and you should too. If this seemingly amiable man at the top of the heap doesn't get it, we are all in trouble. This is no place to hedge bets. This is a planet that needs leadership, and so far, Mr. Buffett has failed to provide it, and that is damaging.That's my opinion, I'm Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock.

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Before I launch into the script for this week's Radio Ecoshock show, I want to get the key information into your hands. Here is new science, just published in the March 7th, Geophysical Letters scientific journal, explained by Ken Caldeira, senior scientist of the Carnegie Institute. Apparently, every bit of CO2 we emit eventually warms the atmosphere for thousands of years. Read on.KEY QUOTES FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH KEN CALDEIRA, Senior Scientist, Carnegie Institute, from the Mebourne 3CR radio program "Zero Emissions" in early March, 2008. Transcribed from the Radio Ecoshock show, March 14th, 2008.Ken Caldeira:But the basic idea of that paper, and we've all seen curves of how, when you emit CO2 into the atmosphere, at first the concentration is high, but then as it gets absorbed by the ocean, and then the land biosphere, and the concentration in the atmosphere goes down. And then, I'm involved in another project looking at how long it takes, so within some decades, to a century, a good fraction of that gets removed from the atmosphere. And then, that remaining portion that's in the atmosphere takes many thousands of years to go out of the atmosphere. And so most people have assumed that the warming influence of the CO2 emission would follow that same curve - that there would be a lot of warming at first, and then it would rapidly diminish, so that on a century timescale it wouldn't really be much warming from the individual release of CO2. But what we've found was something very much different. That the ocean is a large body that can absorb a lot of heat. And in order to heat up the atmosphere, you really need to heat up the ocean. When CO2 is first released into the atmosphere, it traps out going heat radiation, and that trapped heat at first mostly goes into heating up the ocean. And so it takes a few decades for the ocean to warm up, and then once the ocean's warmed up... when you warm the entire ocean through, the timescale for the ocean to cool off again is about a thousand years or so. And our simulations only went out about five hundred years, but at the end of five hundred years, you more or less have about as much warming as you had at the maximum warming after the CO2 emissions. And so this idea, that "Oh, this CO2 emission warms the Earth, and then in a century, or two centuries, it's mostly away" is really the wrong picture. More accurate is to say that each emission of CO2 produces a step, you know, increase in temperature that remains pretty much level for many centuries, and then decays away over many thousands of years. In a way, that kind of simplifies the discussion. Because each increment of CO2 emission leads to another increment of warming. And so it's obvious then, that if each CO2 leads to another increment of warming, that if you don't want more increments of warming, that means you can't have any more CO2 emissions. It's pretty straightforward.=============[WHAT IF WE SUDDENLY STOPPED EMITTING CO2?]Host: I was just wondering, if you did a very fast reduction in CO2 emissions, say in other words, we stopped using fossil fuels in power stations and cars and what have you, presumably we'll get a quick reduction in the aerosols, the soot and the dust and what have you, and then a slower reduction in the atmospheric levels of CO2. I'm just wondering if that spike would need to be offset in some way. Ken Caldeira: Again, I think the climate system is very difficult to predict, but you're right that if we were to go cold turkey today, and just turn off every power plant - that the immediate response of the system would be to warm things up, as the sunlight-reflecting aerosols, the sulphate aerosols that power plants emit go out of the atmosphere, and we did a calculation, that actually the average coal-fired power plant cools the Earth for about the first seven years, because it's sulfate emissions have a cooling influence more than the CO2. But then, after seven years, the CO2 accumulates enough to overwhelm the sulfate cooling. And then of course the CO2 levels remains high in the atmosphere for many thousands of years. And so, you are right that there would be a short-term warming.[ABOUT GEO-ENGINEERING]Ken Caldeira: With regard to geo-engineering, the thing that I'm most afraid of with geo-engineering is not really the direct climate effects, but it's political effects. If people see it as an alternative to emissions reductions, then I'm against it. And so, as long as we're building coal-fired power plants, and building big sports utility vehicles, and things like that, - your know, if you do geo-engineering under those circumstances, you are just allowing thos people - allowing us - to continue living that kind of way, living in a CO2 emitting economy.I think I would be against geo-engineering, unless we've already gone pretty far along the road to eliminating CO2 emissions, and then decided that that's not enough to prevent the environmental problem. =========[ZERO EMISSIONS]I had an opportunity to brief some Congressmen, this is now a couple of years ago, on this issue. And I was asked this same question about the stabilization target, and I said the same thing "Oh we have to think about emission targets." They said "Well, what's the right emission target?" And I said, well it's zero, and they laughed. And I said, "Well look, if you think emitting carbon dioxide is wrong, then zero is the obvious target." And I used the metaphor, if you think mugging little old ladies is wrong, we don't ask "Oh, what's our target for the rate of mugging little old ladies?" You know, we say we think it's wrong, and we're going to try to eliminate the mugging of little old ladies. And I think it's a similar thing. [with CO2 emissions.]END OF INTERVIEW CLIP USED ON RADIO ECOSHOCK.OK, now here is how the rest of the Radio Ecoshock program goes.[Opening melange of clips on extinction, storms, Obama, kids from Zero Carbon intro, with Manu Chao music]It's Radio Ecoshock, rocking this week with el grupo Manu Chao. We have Barack Obama and John McCain on climate. Pop quiz: which one works for the coal lobby, while the other pumps big nuclear? [Which big business lobby do you want for President?...][Hokey Soviet game show music]Meanwhile, American super-scientist Ken Caldeira says [clip][ we are creating a new mass extinction.] We'll hear Caldeira explain why zero carbon emissions is the best hope we've got.Never mind. Coal is still king. Great Britain, having exhausted it's natural gas wells in a few years, is planning to back to coal (boo!! clip). Canada is having second thoughts, saying it won't help any more "dirty" coal. And Canada has just announced that new tar sands plants will have to capture and store their carbon. Back in the coal mines, the U.S. government has quietly cut a billion dollar program that subsidized new coal plants. We'll dig into all that, including a quickie update, on carbon capture and storage, in many countries, from last week's expert, Professor Mark Jaccard.Did I say mass extinction? Things looking a little bleak? We'll hear new material from the radical deep green author, Derrick Jensen - exclusive to Radio Ecoshock.[Manu Chao Politiks Kills]Oh my God. When heavy precipitation falls as snow, all the "Ice Age is Coming" climate deniers pile it on. As the ocean warms, year after year, more water vapor goes into the warmer atmosphere. Then it fall out, all of a sudden - as Heavy Precipitation Events. HPE - learn that and weep. It can happen as flash floods, following a big drought. Or, if the air is a few degrees colder, it dumps half a meter of snow. Some places will get more snow, due to climate change. That sounds counter-intuitive, but that's the way it works, according to our best science.As James Hansen points out, "January 2007 was the warmest January in the period of instrumental data in the GISS analysis, while, as shown in Figure 1, October 2007 was # 5 warmest, November 2007 was #8 warmest, December 2007 was #8 warmest, and January 2008 was #40 warmest. Undoubtedly, the cooling trend through the year was due to the strengthening La Nina,..."Keep up to date on all that at climateprogress.org, the blog by Joseph Romm, a former Dept of Energy official, and author of "Hell and High Water." One of the top climate blogs, at climateprogress.org.In early March, we experienced yet another transcontinental super-storm. From Texas to Canada, record heavy snow. It moved on to huge wind and wave warnings in the UK, and a powerful storm across Europe.[Weather clips US, Canada, Britain]Over two thousand people downloaded my previous feature "Stormy Future" from the Ecoshock features page, at ecoshock.org. More than ten thousand downloaded a BBC feature on whether Europe can survive 3 degrees of climate change. And the top music download from the site continues to be "Power From Above" - a solar-powered gospel number by Dan Berggren - that's ber two g's ren of New England. Grab that underground green hit from the Ecoshock music page, visit berggrenfolk.com or get the whole album from cdbaby.com/berggren.[clip of Power from above]But why worry about mass extinctions, or the dull crash of the American economy? We have the Barack and Hillary Show, with John McCain singing baritone.[crazy oompah Manu Chao clip]We'll hold our skirts up, so they don't get muddy, and give Republican nominee John McCain 3 minutes or less to state his position on climate change.[John McCain clip][Manu Chao clip: Politik Kills]Now we'll change 180 degrees, well, 20 degrees, and get Barack Obama on the record. Tune right in, and listen closely to the first questioner. Who is he really?[Obama clip]Obama, the man from Ohio the coal state, which he lost incidentally to Hilary Clinton, - has a pre-crafted script of people who will ask questions, at this rally. Carefully included is Mike Draper, from "Americans for Balanced Energy Sources." That's the coal lobby with a fancy name. According to Associated Press, March 1st, 2008, Americans for Balanced Energy Sources paid the CNN TV network 5 million dollars, for at least 6 of the Democratic candidate debates, plus other network ads. Six whole programs, paid by big coal. And that's just part of the 40 million dollars, these balanced Americans will pay out this year for the elections. What a democracy![William Burroughs: "Are These The Words of All the Powerful Boards and Syndicates of the Earth?"]But coal does have a problem. Almost 60 planned coal plants were scrapped in the U.S., just last year. The American government has quietly dropped a billion dollar subsidy scheme. The Department of Agriculture has doled out over a billion bucks to the coal industry for new plant construction since 2001, but official James Newby said there will be no such sugar money in 2009.The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper reports, quote:"At the time of its suspension, at least four utilities were lined up for loans totaling $ 1. 3 billion ? for projects in Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas and Missouri. A project in Montana was denied funding last month. Two more were recently withdrawn: last October in Wyoming and earlier this week in Missouri."Maybe this has something to do with the lawsuit filed by EarthJustice, to cut off the black subsidies for coal.The Canadian government has just announced a new climate policy that apparently pours cold water on new coal plants there - unless they can be carbon free. The Canucks even promise to demand carbon capture and storage for any new tar sands facility, built after 2012 - that is after the current huge expansion by the multinational oil companies now polluting the land and skies of the Canadian West. The oil sands has been labelled the world's must destructive industrial project. It is a climate destroyer, dragging out oil, while burning up natural gas, and.... why go on. At least the madmen in Canada finally see there must be a limit, to this mammoth carbon smokestack, dragging us all into....HELL.[song Streetlight CO2 song]I'm Alex Smith, this is Radio Ecoshock, and we're talking dirty - dirty coal, that is.In Britain, John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business is announcing government support for new coal plants there, claiming that greens have blocked necessary power plants. The UK government is about to approve a coal burner at Kingsnorth in Kent - the first new coal-fired power station built in Britain since 1984.The company, E.ON UK, says it will demolish an existing coal plant, and replace it with newer technology - including capture of carbon, which will be stored under the North Sea. They call it "clean coal" - but none of this technology exists in England so far. Nevertheless, the government is planning another seven new coal-fired plants.Giant steps backward for Britain, which has closed down its archaic coal industry, and now imports from abroad. You can bet the strong environmental community there will be fighting back.So what is happening with so-called "clean coal" in the United States? The Bush administration axed the 1.5 billion dollar experimental carbon capture and storage coal plant. Was it just the need to send another $12 billion to Iraq this month, or was the technology just unworkable? The coal industry has been chanting "clean coal" as though dirty coal has been magically fixed. It hasn't.Let's hear what our energy expert from last week's show, Mark Jaccard, told the audience about upcoming coal research, at a speech in Vancouver, in March.[Jaccard clean coal research clip]We'll hear more about coal construction financing next week, in the Radio Ecoshock does Wall Street special.[Wall Street promo clip]Moving on to that mass extinction thing. A web site I check daily is: The Raw Story, at rawstory.com. Great tips on things we need to know, and things we wish we didn't. In amongst the Eliot Spitzer gossip, and more Obama-mania, is this little headline: "Carbon Output Zero to Save the Earth".That's right. Not 60% by 2050. Not even the 90% cut demanded by Professor Garnaut's report for the Australian government. Zero carbon emissions. Nada. Ladies and gentlemen, turn off your engines please. Or we're toast.Two different studies came out in the past week, saying we have grossly underestimated the impacts of carbon on the atmosphere. We are going to focus on the paper published by Ken Caldeira and Damon Matthews in GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, for March 2008. The best article about it is byJuliet Eilperin, published March 10th, in the Washington Post.Ken Caldeira is the senior scientist at the Carnegie Institute. He became well known for his provocative ideas about geo-engineering, to avoid climate catastrophe. But as we will hear next, Caldeira says geo-engineering is a last resort, - AFTER we take the SUV's off the road, and make all the sensible moves to cut carbon. We have a fine interview with Caldeira, done by a weekly Australian public broadcast show called "Beyond Zero". Of course there is a lot of interest down-under, where a vast drought has deeply damaged the country.I'm going to play you 3 short clips from the half hour show. [Transcribed at beginning of this post] You can download the whole thing from 3CR radio in Melbourne, at 3cr.org.au - or grab it from the climate solutions page of ecoshock.org.Here we go with an interview with Ken Caldeira, telling the awful truth.[medley of 3 Ken Caldeira clips]I found it interesting to hear that the soot from coal plants actually cool the Earth, for about 7 years, until the accumulation of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere overwhelms the global dimming effect. After 7 years, it's all just heating from there on out. The coal plants last 30 to 50 years, and the warming, as we have just heard, will last longer than most human civilizations.Now we know what our target is. Not only do we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases. Humans will have to invent ways to drag the excess carbon out of the atmosphere, to save themselves. Sad, silly humans.[Pinky and the Brain clip]When we hear world-respected scientists, like Caldeira, and a thousand others, talking doom talk, isn't it time to give up a few hours of TV a week, and get active yourself?What can you do? The radical green author Derrick Jensen gets asked that question, at almost every talk he gives. His answer is frustrating, and right. No one can tell you what your mission is. The trick, is to follow what you love. Jensen loves salmon, the great fish that travels from mountain streams to the wild oceans, only to return exactly to their birth-place. If we let them. And it turns out, to save the salmon, we have to end industrial civilization as we have known it. That's all.The European Union has just come out with a new report on climate change. It projects wars and revolution, as the climate wipes out agriculture, especially in Africa, but in many parts of the world. Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy coordinator, and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for external affairs have warned Europeans to expect millions more climate refugees. Ecoshock listeners have already heard this dire prediction for Britain, from James Lovelock's speech to the Royal Academy last winter, available from our website.[JL_Immigration Clip] Lovelock's speech clip on refugees][clip on European Union]Just another news blip, on a far-away place. Doesn't it seem like we are in a mass hallucination, as the world climate flips?Here is a clip from a speech I recorded in Vancouver in October of 2007. Nobody else has this speech, except, I suppose, the under-cover cops, with their hidden microphones. Derrick Jensen on the nightmare.[Jensen clip mass hallucination]Or, this is how the socialist eco-revolutionary thinker, Joel Kovel, put the problem:[the big predicament 1 and 2]We can call it the big predicament.And how do we keep hope alive? Again, here is Derrick Jensen:[Jensen clip on keeping hope alive]The alchemy is to find your rage, and turn it into love. Strong love. Active love. Be sure and tune in next week, for our special, "Wall Street and the Climate Crash". And check out our website at ecoshock.org, for a lot of free downloads, to stir your mind.I'm Alex Smith, for Radio Ecoshock. Most of our music clips this week were from the new album by Manu Chao, "La Radiolina". This is one of the world's best activist bands, blasting out insane energy, and sweet energy, in many languages. www.manuchao.net. Here they go, with "Welcome to Paradise"[Manu Chao, Welcome to Paradise]

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Why have all the political climate plans failed so badly? Targets are set, with big announcements, and yet greenhouse gas emissions just keep going up, and up.Canada's Professor Mark Jaccard has developed scientific models, to study how governments cope with the climate challenge. His results are solid, and controversial.Just knowing about the climate threat is obviously not enough. As consumers, we know, but just keep polluting. Some politicians mean well, but we can't seem to change our carbonized society. If knowing is half the battle, getting real protection for our atmosphere requires the other half: the dirty work we all want to avoid: taxes and compulsory controls on greenhouse gas emissions. Laws with teeth.This talk is about how nice guys finish with a wrecked climate. Maybe we have to seek other arrangements - with plans that nobody likes. Comfortable consumers don't want to change, politicians don't want to lose votes, business doesn't want to lose money. So, how can we really get emissions down?Who is Mark Jaccard? Professor Mark Jaccard is a much sought advisor, to many levels of government. Based out of Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada - Jaccard has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He leads the School of Resource and Environmental Management, at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada. For several years Jaccard Chaired the B.C. Utility Commission - in charge of the energy supplies for millions. Jaccard is the author of 90 scientific papers, and three books - including "Sustainable Fossil Fuels" and his latest: "Hot Air," co-authored with famous Canadian journalist Jeffery Simpson. As one of the few people with real solutions for governments, Jaccard is in constant demand. He has advised the Chinese government, the Canadian government, and worked with other scientists around the world. In addition to a 20 year teaching career at Simon Fraser University, Jaccard has his own consulting company, and is also funded by the C.D. Howe Institute.Throughout all this, Mark Jaccard tries to maintain the unbiased stance of science. He is not an environmentalist, a business hack, or a politician. Jaccard has analyzed why climate policies fail, and how they could work, in any country. The facts, as he finds them, are controversial, and yet increasingly implemented by governments. That is why we need to learn from this speech delivered in Vancouver on March 4th, 2008 at the Canadian Memorial United Church.The speech was organized by VTAAC, Voters Taking Action on Climate Change. It was recorded by Radio Ecoshock.Studies and models by Jaccard's team, and bolstered by other social scientists all over the world, tell us that human habits are very hard to change. I guess we can include oil addiction. It also seems there are several layers of "knowing" about something. I may "know" that smoking is bad for me, and still smoke. But at some point, I "know" I have to quit, and do. Reaching that gut level of knowledge that leads to real action is the key, when it comes to controlling greenhouse gas emissions. How can we do it?The problem gets worse because governments are basically geared to inaction on any contentious issue. They don't want to upset voters. Jaccard says environmental groups haven't helped, by insisting that solutions to the carbon energy problem are "easy" and "cheap". The Greens say we don't need new power plants, because energy efficiency will take care of the problem. In his speech, Jaccard goes over a long history of seeking energy efficiency, and says the reality isn't so easy or cheap at all.Just take the example of refrigerators. Fridges got more and more efficient from the 1950's to the 1970's, without any real government pressure. But that good news was blown away by people buying larger fridges, bar fridges, coolers to take to the beech, and just plain more fridges per household. Sometimes efficiency just leads to people using more of the product, not less.The solutions of subsidizing green choices doesn't work either, says Jaccard. First of all, some people will buy energy efficient appliances, for example, without any government subsidy. The real trick is to find those people who were going to buy a gas hog, and give the subsidy to them - that leads to a real gain. But how can you find the people who need the subsidies? And how can you develop a subsidy for all the new and crazy uses people find for energy? A government just works out rules for gas BBQ's (with an accompanying growth of bureaucracy) - and then people start bringing "outdoor heaters" to soccer games, not to mention patio heaters for bars, and a thousand other uses not envisioned by anyone. The subsidy games ends up very wasteful, not hitting the right people, and creates more and more government workers and offices to look after it.Anyway, countries like Canada who have depended on the light touch methods - like "information," "energy efficiency," subsidies, and "change your light bulbs" - have already experienced 20 years of failure. Like almost every other country in the world, including the United States and Europe, Canada's carbon emissions have just kept skyrocketing. None of that works in the real world.The awful truth is: when it comes to a problem this big, the individual cannot solve it. Jaccard asks: "What did you do to reduce your sulfur dioxide emissions?" back in the '80's when Acid Rain was the big problem. Obviously, governments made big industry clean it up. We didn't do much, other than complain the lakes were dying.Same thing for climate. When the modelers add up all the benefits of changing light bulbs, going for more mass transit, and buying green - the planet still goes under with climate change. In fact, it takes massive social change, including big industry, to have a hope of preventing the worst of climate change. And that takes a kind of bravery of leadership in governments - that we haven't seen so far.The inconvenient truth about social behavior: somebody has to make us do it. Again, Jaccard gives the example of school zones. Almost any sane person will agree that drivers shouldn't speed through school zones when there are children about. Surely, just common sense, good will, and love of kids will make these school zones safe, since we all agree it is good? No...we have patrol cars handing out tickets, stiff laws, fines - because someone needs to enforce the law.Ditto carbon emissions.Despite his earlier book "Sustainable Fossil Fuels" - Jaccard isn't pushing "clean coal" or anything like that. In this speech, he claims to be agnostic when it comes to using a carbon tax, a cap and trade system, or a hybrid that uses market mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gases. Any of those can be designed to work, he says, so long as the government is willing to enforce laws that work in reality.Personally, as soon as I hear the words "climate policy" my eyes glaze over. I've heard so much bull-shit, and seen so many fabulous announcements and "super-green" plans go down uselessly. So, I had low expectations for this speech. Surprise. Professor Jaccard has been lecturing for 20 years, with students who challenge him - so he does know how to communicate. It's a good speech - which taught me some of the realities we need to know, if we demand that governments act on climate. Act how? What really works?I'm hoping people in many countries will check out this speech, especially in America, where a lot of tough decisions need to be made, to reduce the load from one of the world's biggest polluters. The climate threat is so huge, we all need to understand "climate policy" - and what to demand.Alex.www.ecoshock.org

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Latest awful science on climate's impact: dead zones, acidification, extinctions. Forget Obamamania and gowns on the red carpet - oh, by the way, the oceans are dying.This show begins with clips from the 1973 classic "Soylent Green". The usual warnings apply: people with depression, cynicism, skepticism, or despair listen at their own risk.3 original interviews by Alex Smith, of top scientists, with news from the Boston meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. Then we cover new reports from the United Nations and Australia.1. From the AAAS in Boston - Ben Halpern has new global maps of ocean damage. 2. the Smithsonian's Nancy Wilson ("Code Red") - super biologist on climate's impact on ocean, new science, and the sad fate of corals. If somone was supposed to muzzle U.S. scientists on climate - they forgot to tell Nancy Wilson. Straight talk on a very serious situation.3. from Norway, Dr. Christian Nellemann, author of UNEP report "In Dead Water" - the frightening warning from the United Nations, that mainstream media in North America ignored.Plus: a reading from John Timmer, science editor at Ars Technica: the real deal on ocean acidification, in a way we can all understand it.and - "the new Stern report" from Australia. Prof. Garnaut says we all must cut emissions by 90%, by 2050 - and even then, our chances are only 50-50. Stunning wrap up of new science, since last IPCC, plus projections of the Asian economies, as China, India - and even Vietnam, head toward super-economy status. Australia will take the worst beating from climate change, says this government report.1 packed hour Ecoshock Show 080229 CD quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

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This is Radio Ecoshock. I'm your host, Alex Smith.Our audio show begins with a 21 minute interview with Robert Kunzig, author of "The Drying of the West" in the February issue of National Geographic. A great science writer and researcher, Robert Kunzig has discovered a wealth of science showing the American South West is entering into a period of prolonged drought.The whole Colorado River system, and the massive population who depend upon it (from Denver to Los Angeles) are imperiled. The rains of the past will seldom come, and the water table, with its river systems are drying out.The vegetation of the Rockies is already changing with the 8 year long drought, especially the trees. The human impact is only now beginning to emerge. Will some cities become endangered? Listen to the interview.Then...THE FIRST CARBON TAX IN NORTH AMERICA - BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADAOne way to curb consumption of fossil fuels, in the hope of controlling climate change, is a tax on carbon. The first carbon tax in North America has appeared in the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the wild west Coast.This really matters. It sets and example, and may start a series of similar measures in the most progressive American States. Changing our tax structures can, as the Friends of Earth say, "de-carbonize the tax code."Governments can encourage some behaviors, and discourage others, through the tax system. For the past many decades, governments have been handing out subsidies to the oil and gas industry, to encourage energy development. Even though we know fossil fuels are wrecking the environment, and people's lives, both the Canadian and the American government continue to give huge tax breaks - billions of dollars a year - to the most profitable companies in the world, like ExxonMobil, which made $39 billion profits just last year. That tax system encourages the end of the climate as we know it.But what if governments could penalize carbon production, and encourage conservation and alternative energy, through the tax system?Like Schwartzenegger in California, the Premier of British Columbia has sworn to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since B.C. gets most of its power from hydro-electricity, the largest single source of greenhouse gases is the transportation system - mainly trucks and cars.Isn't that just another big government tax grab? Carole Taylor, the finance minister for British Columbia, says no. They have announced a "revenue neutral" plan. While the price of carbon goes up, due to the added tax, the income tax rate will go down. And B.C. will mail a check for $100 to every resident, helping the poorest, who don't pay taxes. In balance, the government won't make a dime out of the new taxes, and theoretically, it won't cost consumers any more either - providing they continue to seek out better energy solutions, like buying a more fuel-efficient car.The tax covers all the fossil fuels at the consumer level. Including home heating oil. But it doesn't apply to the gas and oil producers themselves, which is a big loop-hole. The cement companies also get out scot-free.The legislation isn't perfect, but it is still an important milestone. A group of 70 economists in the Province called for this revenue-neutral carbon tax. It was backed by the largest environmental groups, and even the Chamber of Commerce, the voice of business, backed the plan. Business will also get a reduced tax rate, to offset their higher carbon costs.Let's listen to B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor announce the first Carbon Tax in North America, in the legislature. One note for listeners: the "PST" she refers to is the B.C. Provincial Sales Tax, which will be reduced or removed for some green alternatives.[Carole Taylor in the Legislature 4:54]To give you a quick snapshot of the carbon tax in other countries, I'm going to quote directly from the Wikipedia entry:"On January 1, 1991, Sweden enacted a carbon tax, placing a tax of .25 SEK/kg ($100 per ton) on the use of oil, coal, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, petrol, and aviation fuel used in domestic travel. Industrial users paid half the rate (between 1993 and 1997, 25% of the rate), and certain high-energy industries such as commercial horticulture, mining, manufacturing and the pulp and paper industry were fully exempted from these new taxes. In 1997 the rate was raised to .365 SEK/kg ($150 per ton) of CO2 released. In 2007, Sweden will raise taxes on carbon emissions.[15]Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway also introduced carbon taxes in the 1990s.The United Kingdom Treasury imposed the Fuel Price Escalator, an incrementally-increasing pollution tax, on retail petroleum products from 1993. The increases stopped after politically-damaging Fuel protests in 1999, at which time tax and duty represented more than 75% of the total pump price. Tax now represents about 2/3rd of the pump price[16]In 2005 New Zealand proposed a carbon tax, setting an emissions price of NZ$15 per tonne of CO2-equivalent. The planned tax was scheduled to take effect from April 2007, and applied across most economic sectors though with an exemption for methane emissions from farming and provisions for special exemptions from carbon intensive businesses if they adopted world's-best-practice standards of emissions. After the 2005 election, the minor parties supporting the Government opposed the proposed tax, and it was abandoned in December 2005.In 1993, President of the United States, Bill Clinton proposed a BTU tax that was never adopted. His Vice President, Al Gore, had strongly backed a carbon tax in his book, Earth in the Balance, but this became a political liability after the Republicans attacked him as a "dangerous fanatic". In 2000, when Gore ran for President, one commentator labeled Gore's carbon tax proposal a "central planning solution" harking back to "the New Deal politics of his father."In April 2005, Paul Anderson, CEO and Chairman of Duke Energy, called for the introduction of a carbon tax. In January 2007, economist Charles Komanoff and attorney Dan Rosenblum launched a Carbon Tax Center to give voice to Americans who believe that taxing carbon emissions is imperative to reduce global warming."That brief history of the carbon tax comes from Wikipedia. You can find out more about the American situation at www.carbontax.org.Of course, in September of 2007, Michigan Rep. John Dingell proposed what he called a "hybrid carbon tax." The bill had some really appealing ideas. In addition to a carbon tax, which included things like jet fuel, Dingell's bill called for an end to tax subsidies for monster houses over 4200 square feet.But the major Green groups couldn't support any climate change initiative coming from the dark representative of Detroit. Mr. Dingell had led the charge, year after year, to prevent any meaningful fuel-efficiency regulations for American car producers. Greenpeace descended on the parking lot of Dingell's district office, transforming into a car dealership for gas-guzzlers. After years of betrayal on CAFE fuel efficiency standards, where America has dragged behind Europe for decades, Dingell's bill seemed too much like Dick Cheney selling face protection armour - for hunters.Meanwhile America has been more focussed on the alternative carbon-reduction plan called "cap and trade." This works more with original big polluters, rather than consumers. For example, a giant coal-fired electricity plant in Ohio could pay for better coal burning equipment in China, or even re-planting some rain forest, rather than cut back their own emissions.The cap and trade system did work in the United States to help bring down the sulfur emissions that were killing off lakes and forests with acid rain. But the international situation with greenhouse gases is much more complex. Cap and trade is open to wild abuse and corruption, which we have already seen. I've found reports of one Chines company which made $800 million by not opening a polluting plant. Meanwhile, the original polluter kept on pouring out the greenhouse gases.All the super-capitalists on Wall Street back the cap and trade option. They are already testing out futures markets, to make money out of climate change. These are the same people who just brought us the sub-prime and Collateralized debt fiasco, which may bring down the whole ecomony.Frankly, cap and trade stinks. The carbon tax option is much more honest, and likely to work, in my opinion. Oh by the way, Al Gore happens to have my opinion as well.We may eventually have some combination of efforts. Certainly, the British Columbia plan isn't strong enough really protect the climate. The Province intends to keep on making money selling off oil and gas rights, and taxing production - it is in the oil and gas business itself. Maybe that is why the original producers got off with no taxes. Surprise, surprise.But climate active scientists like Andrew Weaver, a lead IPCC author, and Mark Jaccard, an expert in government carbon control, have backed the British Columbia carbon tax as an excellent start in a long process. Ian Bruce, climate campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation said: "It's a landmark decision in North America as far as governments taking strong action on climate change."You can find out more about the B.C. Carbon Tax from the best online source, the Tyee magazine at the t y e e dot ca, thats thetyee.ca.To wrap things up, here is an economist from the University of British Columbia, David Green. He was one of the 70 economists pushing for this legislation, and a member of VTACC, Voters Taking Action on Climate Change. This clip comes from the Canadian TV broadcast, the CBC:[short clip of David Green]Check out our website at ecoshock.org - and let's a hear bit from Andy Sloan, as Hummerman.[Hummerman clip]MUZZLING CANADIAN CLIMATE SCIENTISTSJust as U.S. President George Bush hit a record low approval rating of 19 percent - the Conservative Canadian government steps in to copy another lame duch move. Like Bush, Canada will now muzzle it's climate scientists.All calls from the press must go to the communications officers in the capital, who will answer with "approved lines." Environment Canada staff were advised to follow the policy of "one department, one voice". The department wants no surprises for the Minister, John Baird.Several Canadians were lead authors on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They are in demand as experts in everything from Arctic Ice to global weather impacts. Now, like NASA scientist James Hansen, the country's scientists are being told to follow the political line. It is anti-scientific, and a recipe for further disaster.Luckily, I happened to record one top Canadian Scientist, just a week before this edict was sent out. You can download the whole 28 minute speech by Dr. John Fyfe, of Environment Canada, from our website. Just look on the Climate Change page of Ecoshock.org. Here is the introduction, and the last part of that speech, by Dr. John Fyfe.[Fyfe Excerpt]The whole idea that our climate will change radically, within our lifetimes, is so difficult to grasp, personally. Every time I listen to a climate expert, explaining our real situation, something new seems to sink in.Although I had read the IPCC Summary Report, plowed through many news articles, and hours of audio - Dr. Fyfe emphasized something I failed to digest. All the projected scenarios of our future, made by the best expertise and super-computers of the Earth, suggest that we are "doomed" to suffer climate change, in the next few decades, no matter what we do.That is sobering. We will cut down on fossil fuels somehow. Many of us will choose less convenience, fewer products, smaller cars and houses, rather than continue to wreck the atmosphere. Our economies may founder, in the attempt to save ourselves. And still, despite our sacrifices, the world as a whole will get hotter, the seas will rise, species will disappear - it will happen.The short-sighted public will surely get tired of the new rules, taxes, and limits to their former consumption. Why bother giving up carbon, when Mother Nature is punishing us anyway, they will say. The environmentalists have failed us, our leaders mislead.But.... and this is huge, a real reduction in greenhouse gases, starting as soon as possible, will determine whether the world is really livable by 2100. For the first time in European-based civilization, there must be a willing reduction, something that does not benefit us - but acts to preserve our grandchildren. We are called to save the stability of the planet's climate, for all coming generations.Surely, this will inspire us, in new ways. We have a goal that is greater than ourselves, a gift to pass down in time.And I am not alone in this desperate hope that humans can, and really will, turn this around. Just this week, I heard that optimism in an interview with Simon Fraser University Professor Bruce Alexander. The topic was the globalization of addiction - not just drugs, but all our addictions from gambling to our fake second lives on television, games, and the Net.Here is that clip, from the penetrating weekly program called "Redeye" from CFRO, Co-op Radio in Vancouver.[Bruce Alexander - stumbling toward hope]Find all the Redeye interviews at www.coopradio.org/redeye.And that's it for Radio Ecoshock this week. Grab all our features, and a lot of good green audio, free, from our website at ecoshock.orgI'm Alex Smith, finally with a happier ending, and a hope that change is growing out of the dark. I've just come from a good place, where the Latin music pours out into the hot Havana night.Just for something different, we'll go out with a group you won't find anywhere on the Net, or hear anywhere else. This is the homemade album for El Groupo Santiago y Habana, from the club Monserate, en Viejo Habana.Adios, muchachos.Alexwww.ecoshock.org

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The report is called "Cool Farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential" It's from Greenpeace International.We have with us one of the authors, Dr. Pete Smith from the School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen. Dr. Smith was also a lead author, reporting for last year's climate series, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The total amounts of greenhouse gases coming from human agriculture are surprising to me. Your report finds that farming contributes at least 20 percent, and perhaps even up to a third, of all human-made greenhouse gases. Dr Smith and I looked at a lesser-known greenhouse gas - nitrogen dioxide, usually shown on charts as N2O. It has a global warming potential 296 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. So it only takes a tiny amount of nitrogen dioxide to kick up a great deal of global warming. According to Greenpeace:"The overuse of fertilizers and the resulting nitrous oxide emissions have the highest share of agriculture?s contribution to climate change:the equivalent of 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2 every year. And, the energy-intensive production of fertilizer adds another 410 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents. Of all chemical products,fertilizers are among the greatest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions."We know fertilizers were poisoning various river systems, and adding dead zones to coastal ocean areas - but I did not know they were such a potent force to change the climate.That's why we spent some time, in this Ecoshock interview, going over how fertilizer really works. It is made from natural gas - another fossil fuel in short supply. As James Howard Kunstler told us in previous Ecoshock programs, the big fertilizer plants formerly located in Alabama and Louisiana - close to the Gulf of Mexico gas fields - have now moved to the Middle East. The American gas fields are in decline, so fertilizer manufacturing goes where the gas is. That means our fertilizer is shipped thousands of miles by (oil-burning) ships. It also means that a Middle East conflict could not only cut off oil to the United States - but the very fertilizer required to feed America, used by the industrialized farm systems. Another vulnerability.It might not even take a war to start this shift. Competition, and higher prices from China and India, could divert fertilizer away from both America and Europe.You would think the big global warming gases would be in production of the fertilizer. Nope. Although those plants do spew out plenty of greenhouse gases, remember, the fertilizer itself contains fossil fuel derived greenhouse gases, especially nitrogen dioxide. Most of that goes into the water supply (our rivers and lakes, causing eutrophication) - but a significant amount just evaporates directly from the field, or from cow manure.One solution would be to use other farming methods to build up the natural soil, so we don't need these fossil fuel fertilizers. At the very least, farmers need to find ways to use the minimum amounts of chemical fertilizers. They need to contain the greenhouse gas emissions from their fields and feed-lots.BIO-FUELSThen we looked at all the former forest land that is being bull-dozed to make "green" biofuels. I want to refer our listeners to a study done by Paul Crutzen at the Max Planck Institute, along with a whole group of international scientists, titled "Nitrogen dioxide release, from agro-biofuel production, negates global warming reduction by replacing fossil fuels." That was published August 1st, 2007. That study finds that the process of growing biofuels creates so much nitrogen dioxide, as a powerful greenhouse gas, that we actually ADD to global heating, when we try and use biofuels.MITIGATIONDr. Smith, and the Greenpeace report, has some very positive suggestions for mitigation. Many of these are simple steps that could at least slow down the heating of the planet. I know farm talk isn't very sexy these days - but since we all eat - we all have to take responsibility for our impact on the planet's ecosystem derived from farming.Following my chat with Dr. Pete Smith, I went for a Greenpeace agriculture campaigner based in Vancouver, Canada - Josh Brandon. Josh has real credentials in the field. He's been working on GM (Genetically Modified) food, trying to get labeling, at the very least, in Canada. Really, Greenpeace wants the experimentation on our food chain stopped until we know more about the impacts and risks.Now Greenpeace has realized that farming itself is at least 20% of our climate change problem, maybe more. So, Josh Brandon has to morph into a climate change campaigner as well.We focused on the situation in North America, and the changes Greenpeace want, to help preserve out climate.Surely, it isn't necessary to burn out the planet, with droughts, storms, and floods, just to eat? Brandon doesn't think so, and again, there are some obvious improvements we can make to our farming process.Here is where to find the 20 page summary of the report (558 KB) as a .pdf file.www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/cool-farming The full version (995 KB pdf file) is here:www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/cool-farming-full-reportOr just Google "Greenpeace International Cool Farming"Check out the interview. Food activism is becoming strong - not just for our own health, but for the continuing health of the whole ecosystem.Alex SmithhostRadio Ecoshockwww.ecoshock.org

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How will we live as oil declines - and the price keeps going up?In our previous program, we ran the first hour of a speech by James Howard Kunstler, given as the first visiting scholar to the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University, in Canada.Today, we present the conclusion of the speech followed by a moving question and answer period, uncut. The audience reacts with admiration, animosity, and tough questions for author Kunstler.Hear what your neighbors think, their worries, suggestions - and the brilliant wit of Kunstler as he fields all questions.Recorded 080124 by Ecoshock.This is the Ecoshock Show for 080208 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB was podcast, (or listen by clicking the title above) but you can also get the Lo-Fi 14 MB mono version if downloading by telephone.Production Notes: 30 second music bed for station ID at 31:25 Also: Clip from David Rovecs song "End of the Age of Oil"Alex SmithhostRadio Ecoshockwww.ecoshock.org

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James Howard Kunstler lecture as 1st visiting scholar to Simon Fraser Urban Studies 080124From the Long Emergency to new measures after Peak Oil. The best speech of the year so far.Why the housing boom will not return, and what that means to the American economy. The disaster of investing in suburbia, as oil becomes more and more expensive, and dangerous to get.How Nationalization of most of the oil of the world (the major companies like Shell and Exxon only deliver about 5% now, Kunstler says) - means not only will oil run out - but the countries who control it (like the Emirates, Iran, Venezuela, and Russia) will (a) keep more for their own economies and (b) send it to their friends (which may not be America....)A whole range of social issues, tackled head on, with verve, from one of America's most articulate writers and speakers. Kunstler is the author of "The Geography of Nowhere" and "The Long Emergency" plus many other fiction and non-fiction books. His newest, a fiction novel set in the near future, after oil has run out, is titled "World Made by Hand." That comes out in March of 2008.Meanwhile, he has been appointed the first visiting scholar to the progressive school of urban design at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, Canada. This speech was one of two given for that program - and the conclusion plus the lively question and answer period will follow in the Radio Ecoshock program next week. Kunstler unsettled the audience, who responded with both admiration and antagonism. A sign of a good speaker.Part 1 of 2.Ecoshock show 080201 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

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[Show script][to hear the program, click the title above][sci-fi - but all too true clip from trailer for new game]Our opening clip comes not from a documentary of our times, but from a trailer for a new video game called "Frontlines, Fuel of War." I suppose gamers really know the game is up. But, even our collapse, can be made into a profitable fantasy, for the screen.I'm Alex Smith, and this is Radio Ecoshock.You know, life has always been a battle between routine and interruptions. I say, we are entering the age of interruptions.Privileged consumers hope the shopping carts will fill up, forever. Commuting to work, shopping for fun, planning vacations far away. It's been fun living fat. We like it, we want it to go on, living as model consumers, the hope of the world. We'll do almost anything to keep this mobile parade, of bursting store shelves, and stuffed closets. OK, we'll do anything.The big interruption appears to be the loud cracking sound, as Capitalism buckles under it's own weight. Now that the Wall Street Christmas bonus billions have been given away, by bankrupt firms, the media is allowed to discuss a slight re-adjustment.[Bush, Cramer, Beck]Authors like Demitri Orlov, and James Howard Kunstler, suggest the United States is falling, like it's counter-weight, the former Soviet Union. It just took a little longer to appear. Next week we'll have a new speech by Jim Kunstler, recorded in Vancouver by Radio Ecoshock.You've heard that America's largest bank, Citi-group, is being "rescued" by Muslim state governments. That the largest brokerage, Merill Lynch, declared a $16 billion loss. The largest mortgage lender, Countrywide, was saved by a fire-sale buyout by Bank of America. You probably didn't hear, that the fraudsters who sold all those fantasy investments, took off with $65 billion dollars in bonus money last year, from many of the same companies bleeding multi-billion dollar losses.Once the enormity of the situtation is realized, soon, there will be endless lawsuits, and government investigations. In fact, the city of Cleveland is already suing several banks, including Wells Fargo. The city alleges these lenders were predators on the poorest people, leading to mass foreclosures. Wrecked, abandoned homes have scarred the city. Over a thousand perfectly good houses have been torn down, after they were wrecked by the angry former home owners, and/or vandalized by the numberless urban poor. Millions of homeless in the country, but we have to tear down houses. It is pitiless madness.This has led to a new phenomenon in the United States - another measurement of the pain. Some cities are being designated as "refugee cities." This is where people are fleeing the breakdown of municipal services and city life. We have all imagined climate refugees, and those families fleeing war. We never imagined that some major American cities would break down, as they are breaking down.Here is an excerpt from a speech by a Canadian city Councillor, Clive Doucet, where he describes refugee cities.[clip][about 5 minutes, Clive Doucet in Vancouver January 14th, 2008, recorded by Radio Ecoshock - the author of new book "Urban Meltdown"]The flip side: some cities are still functioning. These Doucet calles "refuge" cities - the places where people go for a hope of jobs, medical systems that work, schools that are safe.The process of capitalism is a transfer of wealth from the many to the few. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the sub-prime mortgage scam. Lenders went agressively to the poorest people, to people of color. The African American community was particularly hard hit. Whatever people of color had managed to save, through working two or three jobs, was taken into the banks, with a promise of the American dream. A house of your own. A real bedroom for your kids. Now you can have it. But you can't keep it.Here is a digest of the radio program "Building Bridges" report, on how sub-prime mortgages were aimed at the poorest communities. This program was broadcast on New York Public Radio, WBAI, on January 14th, 2007. At the end of the full program, there is a phenomenal speech by Martin Luther King in 1965. I have only included a few bits from the original half hour show.[Building Bridges about 6 min]You can find "Building Bridges," a labor oriented radio program, at wbai.org. The report on sub-prime and people of color, is available from the organization "United for a Fair Economy." Find them at faireconomy.org. The report is called "Foreclosed: The State of the Dream."But the sub-prime scam, as we know, was just the water melting down deep, moving the whole financial glacier toward the sea. All the half-baked mortgages, and loans to people counting on ever-increasing real estate values, in their homes, were re-bundled as Collateralized Debt Obligations, CDO's, and other strange derivatives. The original mortgage values, already over-inflated, were multiplied several times, to many investors, as capitalist banks do. That mountain of multiplied debt was then sold off, all over the world. Big German and Korean banks bought them. Pension funds bought them. Small municipalities from Wisconsin to the Australian outback bought them.After all, the ratings companies said these investments were "AAA." Now the