We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The last days of economic growth

from Life After Oil. This is a book review of a recently released book published in Swedish only; but the review summarize a lot of valuable content which illustrates the inability of capitalist media to cope realistically with the issue of peak oil, just as it can't with any other issue that suggests that economic growth, from a capitalist point of view, must stop. Thus capitalist media coverage of such issues often takes on Orwellian characteristics such as "newspeak".