This is a video that I discovered on Home Page Daily. Those guys are doing some of the best aggregation of video available on the web today for people who are awake and who care about the planet and the issues. Definitely worth visiting. Unfortunately they haven't yet figured out how to run personalized RSS feeds or alerts in the way that Real News Network has...

This is Lester Brown at the recent Pop Tech:

What a wonderful story!

Daniel Barenboim, the conductor, who also is an Israeli, has accepted a Palestinian passport.

His comment in this article in the UK Independent says it all:

There is some really important news developing at the moment.

Just like Bill Clinton said, "Its the economy, stupid". It's the economy of the world, though. Not just that of the USA.

Here are some important ingredients of the story that we all need to really take on board:

1. President Bush has convened the Plunge Protection Team. This is the group that gets together to try to save the stock market in times of major stress. The last time it got together was after 9/11. The fact that it has got together should be like the fire alarm going off in the building for all of us.

2. The Sub-Prime Crisis. This is not just something that is going to affect the US. Look what Anna Schwartz has to say about it. When they say she wrote the book, believe it.  Professor Anna Schwartz co-authored the seminal work about monetarism with Milton Friedman. She says that Allan Greenspan screwed it and that he should admit it.

3. Peak Oil. By now everyone should know what Peak Oil is. Now read this interview with Matthew Simmonds. He is one of the elder statesmen of investment banking in the oil industry. He is saying that we are now beyond the peak. And just in time for demand to go through the roof from India and China.

There is a tendency from people to try to point fingers and apportion blame.

We actually have to get beyond that right now. Pointing fingers now is like being on the Titanic post iceberg and debating whether it was the captain's fault for not posting more lookouts or the company that made the ship's fault for not putting more lifeboats into the design spec. Once you are taking on water that is all quite irrelevant.

Over the last weekend my older daughter told me that she recently saw an interview with David Suzuki where he said that the most important things for us to learn was how to fish and how to preserve fruit. How right he is!

The Christian Science Monitor is running a series of pieces about the big challenges ahead for the coming year.

The first one is about the end of the era of cheap food.

It is worth reading...

Beyond that however we have the biggest challenge - which is that while the Presidential race in the US is on, no one over there is paying any attention to the real issues - survivability of the planet. So we are going to have to wait another year while the various candidates blast the media with rhetoric and do nothing.

At the same time, look at this trend, which is all too visible in Australia right now - government held hostage by a single industry and lobby group. In the case of Australia one of those lobby groups with huge power is the oil industry. As the price of oil continues to rise, so too does the marginal rate of tax on petrol at the pump. The federal government now has too strong a vested interest in the continuance of revenues from the pump to have any motivation to change the revenue collecting dynamic. That means that the government will now do exactly what the oil industry wants, if it didn't do it before!

In New South Wales the 500lb gorilla in the room is the poker machine business. There is so much revenue going to support the cost of infrastructure build (and incidentally salaries and benefits for politicians too) to allow the politicians to make any decision other than one that allow continuance of the industry.

We need to have a public analysis of the trends relating to these gorilla industries that fund government. We need to understand which industries are likely to be the key funding engines for the nation and the states and for the elected officials who are charged with making decisions that affect all of us.

When food prices double as is predicted by the Christian Science Monitor and petrol prices double there is going to be growing hardship in the community. We need to have a look at whether government is really capable of making an unbiased decision, when they know that in many cases making the 'right' decision for the community will almost certainly negatively impact the companies that are providing both money by campaign contributions or by indirect taxation of utilities etc.