"China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy"

For what? Towards what are they racing? Sustainable industrialism? Impossible.

We are talking about more consumption, more demand, more need for resources, more development, more land clearing, more ocean-emptying. This is insane.

It does not matter if it is done with "green" technology. Solar-powered homes where trees once stood is still the annihilation of an ecosystem.

But you can read all about it in this New York Times article from a few days back:

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China...

Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.

Do you see that all of this effort is orchestrated for no other reason than to keep industrial society and economies self-perpetuating? I promise that world leaders do not give a fuck about the state of the environment for its own sake. Clean air and water has no intrinsic value for these people. They value it only for its necessity to keep people alive so that they may continue to work, consume, reproduce, bolster the economy and fight in wars. Wild land serves a purpose only as a place to visit, on which to hunt and to keep sucking carbon out of the air. These people only regard things inasmuch as they perceive them to serve a purpose for people.

They have had, and continue to have, no problem whatsoever ruining land, air and water in ways and on scales unimaginable even one hundred years ago. This goes on every moment of every day, unabated. There will be no more new petroleum-related pollution only when there is no petroleum left. The remnants (all things plastic) will be here to remind us (but we won't care) and whatever may be left after us virtually infinitely.

All of this "green" commercialism is about conserving resources so that they do not run out too quickly. Battery-powered or assisted cars are still insanely toxic, but they provide a way to cut back on consumer oil consumption. That way, there is more left for industry and the military.

Government and industry do not, nor will they ever, put forth discussions of fundamentally changing our lifestyles into something remotely "sustainable;" we only hear about how to maintain what we've already got. There will be no profound change until we force our own hand by running out. Scarcity will be the force of the future. It is already shaping the present.

"Dark Side of a Natural Gas Boom"

Wow. And the bright side is? It's really something how the fundamental source (human existence aside) of environmental and planetary destruction, petroleum and natural gas extraction, is portrayed in the media.

In the end, I can promise you, very, very few people truly benefit from an economy based on resource superexploitation and environmental subjugation/annihilation. People who were born in the 1920s and 1930s, got rich as fuck off of oil and gas, and have already died or will soon, are the ones who had a good time with this stuff. They were the life of the party. They raged their whole lives. Not a whole lot of downtime for them. The economy kept expanding, and nobody gave a fuck about anything. However, their kids are going to suffer. Their grandchildren are going to SUFFER. In the days to come, it won't matter how rich you are nearly so much as it does now; you will not be able to stop the oceans from rising. Your money will be able to stave off the worst, but only for a time. Once the cash economy crumbles, you will be just like everyone else as far as resources go. You will be more resented than others and likely have less knowledge of how to do anything related to surviving.

Anyway, a bunch of people throughout the country, more than ever, are living with filthy water coming from their taps. In this instance, we can blame people extracting natural gas, "a very reliable, safe, American source of energy," through a process called hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic fracturing consists of "injecting huge volumes of water at high pressure to break shale rocks and allow natural gas to flow out more easily. The water is mixed with sand, chemicals and gels to lubricate the process and help keep the rocks open."

Well, I don't understand it. Incomprehensibly, the "chemicals and gels" being shot into the ground have apparently created some pollution.

Good use of water, too.

Trashing the planet to trash the planet

Thankfully, and with a great deal of foresight, Russia is constructing five floating and submersible nuclear power plants in the Arctic, so that they may drill for petroleum. There are no problems that could arise from this decision. Russia has an excellent history of nuclear safety and consideration for the natural world. The world needs the gas and oil deposits they may find, so that we may continue hemorraghing safe, non-toxic fumes and chemicals into the air, water and land. These deposits must be extracted at any cost, and Russia is the country for the job.

Here are some asinine things environmentalists have to say about this glorious achievement:

"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

They are crazy people who hate progress and worship at the altar of Howard Dean.

Iraqi journalist whips his shoes at George Bush

He's pissed. Rightly so. The dude encouraged and presided over the ruining of his country.

supporting the troops

by forcing them into life-threatening living conditions and repeatedly ignoring their pleas for repair. these are the people the american government coerces us into venerating. while the public worship of individual military members is just a way to stanch opposition to any invasion, the federal government doesn't do a great job of respecting these same people.

saudi arabia

is going to be so fucked very soon. 9.45 million barrels a day. they don't have an economy. they sell oil. that's it. their shortsightedness is stupefying. it's so concentrated.

it's funny, because i think they will get richer for a bit, and then their profits will not bottom out, but vanish. supply and demand, you know? oil prices have exploded. they are straight raking it in. they can raise prices all they want, but you cannot sell something that no longer exists. at some point soon, they will no longer have a product to sell. and before that, they will not have enough to sell to people to interest them any longer.

i guess maybe they will do the best out of anyone, at least initially. other manufacturing-oriented economies will be feeling the effects sooner, when those countries cannot get the supply of oil necessary to run their facilities and supply themselves. as a result, all the countries dependent on them will not be able to get the products to which they have made themselves addicted either.

it won't be long though. saudi arabia will have some money, will be able to hold onto some oil for its own uses. money is no good when there's nothing (or as aus rotten puts it, no one) left to buy. i'm sure some people will get militaries to take some of that last oil by force. it doesn't really matter in the end though. just one fix. they won't get off their addiction. those who built this industrial reality are and were so profoundly stupid. they constructed it on such a weak fucking foundation. they can't stand for long. and when they fall, i mean really fucking fall, we are going with them. they have already taken so many lives. more will be lost. more than we can imagine. and those lives will be so fucking degraded before they end.

"when i look back and think, when i ponder and ask 'why?' i see my ancestors spend with careless abandon, assuming eternal supply."