GARLAND NIXON—Garland analyses how the global strategic balance has changed to forbid US military hegemonist ambitions and the possibility of a victory against China or Russia, and even less against both combined. This is evident in the cautious words of US Gen Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Council. Milley warns that a war between the superpowers will be a military, economic and civilisational disaster for all participants, and that the US should basically quit its supremacist warmongering. Garland’s analysis suggests that the Pentagon may in fact harbor voices that will push back against further Neocon insanity.
-
-
Viewed by many as an “eco-terrorist”, and certainly as an “annoying obstacle to human progress”, Tompkins, a onetime dedicated capitalist, eventually embraced the rights of all species, and the right of nature not to be exploited to death, with total equanimity. His transformation had profound consequences. Now Tompkins’ legacy—attained with his wife Kristine’s collaboration and support—will be the single biggest philanthropic gift in history, with an ecological footprint twice as large as Yellowstone Park in the US.
-
BRIAN TOKAR—While most honest writers have at least acknowledged the obstacles to commercially-scaled fusion, they typically still underestimate them – as much so today as back in the 1980s. We are told that a fusion reaction would have to occur “many times a second” to produce usable amounts of energy. But the blast of energy from the LLNL fusion reactor actually only lasted one-tenth of a nanosecond – that’s a ten-billionth of a second. Apparently, other fusion reactions (with a net energy loss) have operated for a few nanoseconds, but reproducing this reaction over a billion times every second is far beyond what researchers are even contemplating.
-
ERIC ZUESSE—The Democratic Party’s two primary debates in Miami had devoted “only 15 minutes worth of discussion about the climate crisis … within the four hours of debate, both times not until the second hour of the debate,” in order NOT to allow many Democratic Party voters to know more than the superficial level of the candidates’ actual policy-positions on this issue which concerned “the highest percentage of any policy category.”
-
DMITRY ORLOV—Although some people claim that wind and solar farms have an EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) of 5 or even 7, it is trivial to prove that this just isn’t so. If, for each 1 kWh of energy invested in their design, marketing, production, installation, maintenance, removal and safe disposal, they were to return 5 or even 7 kWh over their useful lifetime of, optimistically, 20 years, and assuming a constant (inflation-adjusted) cost of energy, they would produce at least 400% of pure profit! Compare that to a bank deposit or a guaranteed income investment yielding 3% over inflation (if you can find one!). Over the same 20 years it would produce a mere 80% profit, which is equivalent to an EROEI of just 1.8. If wind and solar installations were so lucrative, their promoters would not be asking for government subsidies; they would be running away from frenzied mobs of investors shouting “Shut up and take my money!” Such a huge, and guaranteed, rate of return, is something to die (or at least risk going to jail) for.
