Waiting to Exhale

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Thanks to Sarath Guttikunda for bringing this to my attention

Peaking Early

With oil running out, and biofuels not being the answer, perhaps humans should grow and trade their food closer to home.

Perhaps we suffer from collectively traumatised amygdalas

A brake with tradition?

Technology is fallible

Infernal Combustion

Frank is feeling a little better today. Thanks for asking.

While the UK entrenches itself up to its neck in car culture, the scientific world debates whether it is best to starve us all and destroy our biodiversity in the name of biofuel or bio-electricity - whichever gives most miles per acre. Motorists, as ever, expect to be coddled through without inconvenience.
Those on two wheels had better watch their backs.

So many choices, so little accurate information.

What price action?

China and Italy invest heavily in renewables

Carried Away

Frank doesn't often get infected with enthusiastic optimism, but he's been listening to Frank Turner CDs and Barack Obama speeches so it had to happen sooner or later.

There are figures of every kind being hurled around at the energy summit in Abu Dhabi -amongst them these.

The electric car lobby still need to explain where all this extra capacity will come from - things being as they are. Lifestyle is still not on the table, it seems.

Manchester United

I've said it before (hence the repost) and I'll say it again...



All very predictable. BRRRRRRM BRRRRRRRM BRRRRRRRRRM.
I apologise to the more far flung readers (far flung from my vantage point, anyway) for indulging in some local anti-democratic whinging. The voters of every single city borough rejected a public transport initiative that guaranteed them 3 Billion pounds and wouldn't cost them a penny for 4 more years, because they couldn't be arsed to organise their lives more efficiently. Fuck 'em.

The most boggling reaction I heard today was from a public transport user who was glad the Tif bid failed because it meant less money for corrupt stagecoach and Metrolink directors to cream off (allegedly). So the reasoning is that we will refuse any investment in a sustainable transport infrastructure until all the big bidders are in the hands of the angels or the whole shebang is back under public ownership. (in which case we can unpack a whole different set of prejudices to excuse us from action)
All large organisations are infected with widespread and often mind boggling levels of corruption and incompetence, as I know only too well from my many years in the NHS. This is because they are run by humans, and until we can successfully train what few alternative species we have left at our disposal, humans will have to do.
We are surrounded by fuckwits

BRRRM fucking BRRRRM

Running on empty

The Eu agrees to not bother on car emissions until it suits the car industry

The Brazilian government agrees to destroy the rainforest at a slower rate

Meanwhile an invasive creature with a tactic of constructing interlinked super-colonies, whilst exploiting other creatures and over-running the environment, makes a nuisance of itself. It's lasius neglectus - superants!
It seems a bit rich for humans to take exception to such a strategy. We make so much of it, ourselves

George Monbiot whistles in the wind

Another senseless re-up

Sniping from the sidelines

With apologies for the poor timing

Throbgoblins International would like to point out that - by and large, for the most part, in any given circumstance - SHOOTING PEOPLE IS WRONG.

A lot of people might say that Frank is a bad example, and a poor excuse for an activist - as he is always so bad tempered and antagonistic. This may well be so.
Research suggests that we are much more pliable monkeys when we are patted on the head and spoken to kindly, or even offered nuts. We are but children, after all. Frank forgets this, and so do I. Maybe Frank can act as "bad cop". (this would be a good point to make a COP - Conference of Parties - gag, but I shall resist, lest we all feel cheapened.)

Thanks to Adam Corner, Rob Honey et al at Cardiff University


Barack Obama - will he? or won't he?

Ugliness abounds

Car-wash

No matter how much manufacturers reduce the direct emissions of individual vehicles, (and putting the ethical and practical absurdities of biofuel aside) there is still the small matter of replacing the entire planetary fleet of cars and building and servicing the infrastructure and maintaining the disconnected living arrangements that the car habit encourages -for an imminent NINE BILLION people . This monumentally destructive endevour cannot be hidden behind a handful of hybrids and a lot of empty promises.
Kick the car habit.


This cartoon originally appeared in the NEW INTERNATIONALIST magazine

Life as we know it

The Carbon Trust are developing technology that is perfectly poised to take advantage of a rapidly developing ecological niche -ie -the whole planet is turning into a stagnant swamp of fetid pond-scum. So Mad Max can still be a road warrior. Hoorah!



An illustration of an established point

Congestion explained

On my way to work this morning I was obliged to abandon the bus in gridlocked traffic and walk the last mile or so. As I passed junction 17 of the M60 I saw a poor deluded soul parading throught this belching impromptu car park wearing a sandwich board declaring his opposition to the Manchester congestion charge, and handing out leaflets to the thousands of stranded drivers. I crossed the motorway bridge and looked down on the stalled traffic, breathing in the poison and the frustration, and observed that at least 90% of the vehicles were occupied by single individuals all ruthlessly enjoying the freedom that personal transport brings. I must admit that I was temporarily overwhelmed by a combination of pity, despair and contempt that boiled briefly over into loud swearing and gesticulation before collapsing back into the general bewilderment that characterises my working day.

The sad fact is that most people get a car because "it's what you do, innit?"
We'll get the future we deserve.

(Thanks to Marc Hudson for the monkey/bottle idea)

His master's voice

The entire planet's financial well-being hung by the one thread of lending increasingly unsustainable amounts of debt into existence. Should the planet's nutritional well-being be hung on the single hook of oil dependent, genetically modified monocultures copyrighted by the Transnationals? The GM debate rolls on.
As the range of insects and diseases spread, and those of most animals decline with a changing climate, the possibilities for a domino effect toppling any single strategy seem quite large.

The good news is that the dirty coal bandwagon has been slowed by an EU vote.

The public gets what the public wants

I was looking through a survey the other day that sought people's opinions on difficult subjects requiring specialist knowledge and a broad command of a range of complex issues. It wasn't child's play, and it's purpose was serious. But it's tone reminded me of the tone of appraisal documents the world over - Are you satisfied, very satisfied, unsatisfied, very unsatisfied, not bothered, suicidal etc. As if how the respondent felt about the situation was the important thing.
I might be reading rather too much into this, but - We find ourselves strapped into a car that's hurtling up the sharp incline of half a dozen exponential hockey-stick graphs towards almost certain calamity on a roller coaster without breaks - and we are being asked if we're comfy. Something is amiss. Maybe it's just me, but I think it might be time to put our feelings on the back burner and concentrate on issues for a while. Maybe we should be saying to ourselves, "Never mind how you feel - read a few books and have a bit of a think. Leave the comfort zone. You don't have to like it, and you probably won't. Grow up and put your fairy tales away"
Maybe we could all specifically ponder...
How does one run a democracy when no one is paying attention? When most of the people think that more and more people can have more and more forever?; when most of the people think that the looks and style of a politician are the most important considerations?; when most of the people are watching X-factor?: when most of the people want a Beamer, a boob-job and a McMansion?: when most of the people spend more time cultivating their appearance than their understanding? when most of the people are under the impression that they are only here to have a good time and that some supernatural superbeing tucks them in at night? Can serious and necessary work be undertaken under those conditions? And if not, how do we change those conditions? Or do we wait for circumstances to change them for us?

Fucked if I know.

Anyway - I colourised these old strips for a Brasilian biofuel-awareness campaign, which gives me an excuse to re-up them, and an opportunity to cheer the demise of the Hummer that was so recently considered acceptable in some quarters