Climate sceptic admits that humans cause global warming

Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at California University, has had a change of mind following the results of his own recent research, published in July. "The average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by 1.5 degrees C over the past 250 years ... The most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions."  http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/berkeley-earth-press-release-july-29.pdf 

The Sorcerer's Apprentice - a metaphor for capitalism

International globalised capitalism is a system that humanity has created and, like the broom in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, it is out of control. We have created a tool to work for us and now we cannot stop it from destroying our environment. Here is the wikipedia entry for The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Der Zauberlehrling, poem by Goethe).

The poem begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. Tired of fetching water by pail, the apprentice enchants a broom to do the work for him — using magic in which he is not yet fully trained. The floor is soon awash with water, and the apprentice realizes that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know how.

Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a new broom and takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now at twice the speed. When all seems lost, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day. The poem finishes with the old sorcerer's statement that powerful spirits should only be called by the master himself.

Capitalism is a system that puts short-term profit and greed above all other values. The present-day symptoms include widespread corruption: expenses scandals, phone-hacking, Libor-fixing among, respectively, elected politicians, the media and police and the banks. It is not enough to tackle the symptoms. If we don’t dismantle capitalism it will destroy us.

Democracy Now! on the Olympics

Democracy Now! is the best daily alternative to the corporate-controlled media: yesterday’s (Tues 31 July) show was about the Olympics and headlined “Olympic Goodwill Image Belied by Arrests, Censorship and Corporate Ties Behind London Games”. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t yet tuned in to Democracy Now! to sample this edition. It is at http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/31/goodwill_image_belied_by_arrests_censorship where you can view it online on video or download a podcast.

Why GDP per head is a flawed measure of economic well-being

One reason is that, being expressed as an average, it hides shocking disparities between the top and the bottom. So, for example, if you look up Gross World Product in the World Factbook at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook, you find that in 2011 it was 79 trillion US dollars, which is orld population was just approaching seven billion, the average for every man, woman and child on the planet was $11,800 per person per year. 

Compare this to the widely quoted statistic that more than one billion people live on a dollar a day, which is mentioned for example in “Millennium Development Goal 1 – To eradicate extreme poverty” at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_steps/files/goal_1_updated.pdf

www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/change_the_world_in_eight_st

Similarly, the UK average hides shocking disparities between the top and the bottom. In 2011 GDP per person per year was average for every man, woman and child on the planet was $36,600 or £23,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. This would be £92,000 a year for a family of four.

‘High pay is good for Britain' ...?

‘High pay is good for Britain. In fact it is vital.’ So wrote Michael Spencer, chief executive of interdealer broker, ICAP, who has a fortune worth half a billion pounds, in the Independent on 10 March 2012. Not true, as shown in this rebuttal of “trickle-down” economics by Stewart Lansley of The Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at Bristol University and the author of The Cost of Inequality: why economic equality is essential for recovery.

See Inequality and instability: why more equal societies have more stable economies at www.cpag.org.uk/sites/default/files/CPAG-Poverty142-inequality-instability.pdf

Marx's Ecology

Went to “The End of Oil: Capitalism and the Future of Energy” at Marxism 2012 on 9/7/12: excellent workshop by Gareth Dale. I asked him about Schumacher’s comment that Marx’s labour theory of value takes for granted that the earth provides natural resources free, and he referred me to "Free Gifts” by John Bellamy Foster. a leading proponent of Marxist ecology. Can't find it but Mr Google comes up with “Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature", which sets out a “basis for ecosocialism grounded in Marxist science rather than mysticism.”
On my question how the planet can cope with growing population amid dwindling resources he referred me to his article, The growth paradigm: a critique, in International Socialism, March 2012
Further reading also at http://www.green-blog.org/2012/07/04/the-growth-machine-is-killing-our-planet-so-why-hasnt-it-been-stopped/

Germany sets new solar power record

On Sat 26 May, German solar power plants produced "nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs" according to a Reuters report:

Germany sets new solar power record - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday … Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50 percent of the nation's midday electricity needs.

The point was also mentioned, slightly wrongly, by Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, on Democracy Now! on 27 June.

Contrast this with DECC’s statistic that UK renewables contributed 9.5% of electricity in 2011.