An enormous debt bomb threatens the US federal government and the nation’s financial system unless warring politicians can agree on a plan to defuse it. However, there are even bigger debt bombs ticking away beneath us all, of which fewer people are aware. It may be impossible to disarm all of them, but action is required to minimize the casualties.
Let’s start by focusing on the immediate US debt threat, then widen our view to take in longer-term and more serious liabilities that have the potential to bring down the entire global industrial economy.
The last three years were objectively hot, numbering among the warmest since records began in 1880. But the scorch factor of recent years was actually tempered by a climate pattern that slightly cools the globe, “La Niña.”
Germany benefited from the cancellation of most of its debt as of February 27, 1953 (...) no other country has received such a favourable treatment. - Eric Toussaint
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27.2.2023
Open Letter to Christian Lindner, Finance Minister of Germany
Sane, logical article about a green transition. It mentions "systemic roadblocks" at one point, but fails to consider what is surely the largest--our dominant, global, for-profit, eternal-growth economic system.Which is not to argue that a post-capitalist system will make the green transition a piece of cake. Even with genuine democratic social and economic planning, we'll still need to "get better at using less."
Fossil fuel giant Enbridge faces the risk of a “death spiral” as the energy transition to renewables unfolds, according to evidence the company filed with the Ontario regulator. A death spiral could occur when customers, fed up with the increasing costs of gas, switch to cleaner and cheaper sources of energy.
Trans Mountain Corporation purchased carbon credits from a tiny, non-functioning Alberta startup proposing to produce seaweed-based additives that reduce methane emissions from cows, Canada's National Observer has found.
David Spratt is research director for the Melbourne-based Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration and coauthor of the book Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action (Scribe, 2008). He published “What Lies Beneath: The Underestimation of Existential Climate Risk” with Ian Dunlop in 2018.
