The Climate Mash

"Much of our obsession about knowing in advance what is coming has to do with fear."


  Our favorite subjects for this blog are climate change, energy and civilization collapse. We spend equal amounts of time describing the remedies for these evils — permaculture, ecovillage, biochar, and carbon farming, for instance, because we hold out a sliver of hope humanity still might be able to redirect our otherwise dismal prospects.

Malcolm X said "tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” Much of our obsession about knowing in advance what is coming has to do with fear. We feel insecure about the future. We sense a chill wind blowing, a storm approaching. It is visceral. It is in the zeitgeist. No one has to speak of it, we all … just … know. Can we find a safe place? Can we lay in some supplies? What about our loved ones? What about our previous life, possessions, skills, interests?

But to prepare we first need to know. What are we talking about? Can we know, even in rough outlines? And if we get that right, can we do anything now that would change the outcome to something more to our liking?

That is why we study climate, and write about it, and try to understand. It is a really angry beast at the gates. A hundred thousand years ago it gave us an extraordinary gift, and by delicately, respectfully, reverently abiding within a dance of life and death with that gift, we won an extraordinary, unprecedented run of the perfect global climate for mammalian life, capped by 12000 years of exceptionally good days. And what did we do? We blew it off for an infatuation with muscle cars and motorcycles.

Here then is what we learned about the future in 2014.





Our special thanks for the many who contributed to this report:

BBC News
Bill McKibben
Biochar Bob Cirino
Biochar Solutions
Biodiversity for a Livable Climate   
Blue Sky Biochar
Carbon Roots International
Eoin Campbell / GoPro Camera
Fox News
General Anthony Zinni
General Chuck Wald
General Gordon Sullivan
General Ron Keyes
General Wesley Clark
Global National
Global Observatory
Guy McPherson
Hugh McLaughlin
Jason A YouTube Channel
Jeffrey Wallin
Johannes Lehmann
Josiah Hunt
Kelpie Wilson
Michael Wittman
Mycorrhizal Applications, Inc.
Natalia Shakova
Paul Beckwith
Peter Sinclair
Peter Wadhaus
Rear Admiral David Titley
Right Livelihood Foundation
Rosie Boycott
Stuart Scott, UPFSI
The Biochar Company
Tom Goreau, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Tom Newmark, The Carbon Underground
Tufts University
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
US Biochar Initiative
Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn