This book, by by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews, the authors of "How to Kill A Country", is a damning expose of how the same Howard Government which cites 'Australia's national Interest" as an excuse to sabotage international efforts to act against the threat of global warming, has, in fact, betrayed those very same interests. Subjects covered include Energy, Rural Industries, Culture, Defence and Blood.
Global economic turbulence and the prospect of deep recession as we move towards an energy crisis, presents huge challenge. There has been little forewarning and planning. Every local and national authority needs to start now to address these challenges seriously, yet still we carry on with our head in the sands, wasting resources on an epic scale. 
The current social/political/economic system is based on the notion that greater economic/material well-being will lead us to "happiness." It doesn't seem to be working too well. Here's why. Although a certain degree of material well-being is necessary for a "decent" life, it is not a sufficient condition for "happiness." What's missing is a centuries-long colonization of the mind that has divorced human life from nature. Unless we reconnect, we will never find "happiness."
Article by Toni Recsei: Citizens in Australia’s major cities are becoming increasingly unhappy about what they perceive as the escalating deterioration in their quality of life - traffic congestion, overloaded public transport, unaffordable housing for young people, increases in the costs of basic services and overcrowding. There is little doubt that recent election results and unfavourable opinion polls are partly an expression of this dissatisfaction. (Article first published on On-Line Opinion, where you may also currently make comments.)
Hugo Chavez, President of the South American oil-producing state of Venezuela, has proposed an international peace mission to Libyan leader, Kadhafi, according to the Venezuelan Minister for Communications.
In our one-party growthist state, left and right factions wage a phoney battle of whether to grow the energy pie to satisfy growing demand or to slow down that growth with more conservation measues. But conservation only postpones the day of reckoning. It is time that we stopped growth at its roots. 
Greens and Libs promote Population Inquiry idea; Dick Smith suggests a population risk study would be better; High-rise buildings don't save energy; recycling is increasing along with total waste
Moscow plasma physicist, Boris A. Osadin comes in from the cold winter with a fascinating account of the political history of trends in plasma physics theory, experiment and finance in Russia during the Cold War and today. This is an account of exotic Soviet scientific personalities and rival theoretical schools, as well as the broader associated military and international politics and the tolls on science of an 'atomic Gulag'. It is also a tale of how the financing of the ITER project today may be an outcome of the ways in which US, European and Soviet scientists exploited the crazy Cold War politics to the benefit of their research preferences and to survive.
The author responds to news of some so-called 'Green groups' preventing discussion of population numbers as a factor in carbon emissions. "Women should have the right not to have children. But they have no right, in the context of overshoot, to have as many children as they or their husbands want. The “right to choose” cannot be the right to abuse. Even the most jealously guarded right must be measured against equally fundamental rights, most especially the right of our species, and others, to live."
Victoria is outsourcing its essential services for competitive profit and marketing taxpayer-funded 'gifts' to taxpayers as if they were 'free'. The activities of the sector are to be monitored - but only economically - by a new body called
It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn’t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs. 
How can we ever meet the needs of a rising number of people with growing energy demands, when fossil fuels are running out and population growth is undermining efforts to substitute green energy supplies for fossil fuels? Governments are planning massive expansion of nuclear power but it is no answer. Energy is a hugely complex issue. Brian McGavin tries to simplify the picture.
The Garnaut Report has failed to discuss the energy assumptions underlying its conclusions. Tim Flannery argues that the core assumption that alternative energy technologies can be scaled up by the huge magnitudes required to replace fossil fuels is invalid. This failure should invalidate the Garnaut Report.
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