Lots of short-sighted economic analysis in the mainstream media at the moment. Not many people have grasped the big picture.

Here is the Chairman of Shell UK giving a no-nonsense talk in Feb 2011.

Here is Chris Martenson giving a Nov 2011 talk to investors about the results of the incoming hiatus in the global energy supply. (Hint: Watch all of this, right to end, because few people paint such clear big pictures and offer so much balanced insight.)

Things to consider: When asking questions about what the e.g. UK Treasury and Chancellor are up to, bear in mind that they are trying to fend off huge medium- to long-term issues that do not yet have any clear solutions. No-one has clear workable answers to these issues yet. For example, a large percentage of the UK (or US) economy is financial, yet the continued wellbeing of this rests on precisely the issues that the above two speakers discuss. For various strategic reasons all states are talking about boosting their domestic industrial capability, but it is not yet clear that the energy supplies available will support this well in the near future. And so on. The issues are global in scope, and most of domestic and foreign policy is at the mercy of them.

A brief proposal concerning the "Responsible Capitalism" concept presently being touted by the UK government.

There is a very real requirement to think beyond the existing crumbling economic system and towards creating a better one, while being pragmatic about how to engineer the transition. Simply presuming that a new order can arise overnight and maintain itself upon the existing terrain of human nature and resource distribution is not enough. There has to be some foreknowledge of feasible robustness, rather than being doomed to revisit obsolete patterns. (Otherwise things might look like the aftermath of the dreadful wars on Iraq.)

Here are some thoughts[Updated] in this direction. It is currently a draft document and lacking in sufficient treatment of various pragmatic points. But I hope people will understand the intent of the gesture and seek to think further ahead. I will also continue to update the documents for as long as I continue to have bright ideas on the matter (and the spare time and energy to pursue it).

It doesn't matter which flavour of politician is in 'power'. Few things should bring on public apoplexy as much as a climate denier politician announcing their intent to waste billions of dollars on fighter planes during a time of economic austerity instead of spending the money on the development of something the world actually needs, like clean fusion power, or scaleable sustainable agriculture.

Let us ask whether denying the science and results concerning anthropogenic global warming is an extremist viewpoint. One definition of an extremist is "a person who favours or resorts to immoderate, uncompromising, or fanatical methods or behaviour, especially in being politically radical." This describes anyone who, faced with an overwhelming mass of cogent reasoned argument based on solid empirical evidence concerning an issue, fails to admit either the evidence or the argument. Such a person sticks to a baseless opinion unreasonably. Quite rightly, such people are considered to be delusional by any person who thinks brick walls are indeed hard. If a person of such delusion acquires a position of political 'power', such that their actions affect billions of people, we have to consider whether their delusions are still harmless or not. If their delusions are not harmless, nor likely to be harmless, and their delusions affect billions of people to mortal degree, then such an extremist politician must be considered highly dangerous, and a threat to national and international security.

Endless funds for endless, pointless wars seem to be available, but precious few funds for engineering a better future. Time to tip the scales toward green energy in earnest.

A hypothesis to test: The first company to combine solar-power, super capacitors, electric motor drive-train, body heat, and Stirling engine generators in a lightweight frame for a consistent power output of 2-3 bhp, will dominate the future single-seat personal transport market.

Wind turbine energy output nearly tripled by adding a simple cowling.

An excellent animated time history of atmospheric CO₂ levels for the last 800,000 years. It starts with the observed CO₂ increase accompanying the industrial era, and then pans out to put this alongside the geohistorical perspective obtained from ice-core, fossil, and other geological records.

Climate Science is not kidding.

One Million Pounds (lbs) of Food on Three Acres of Urban Farm, with sustainable green production, from part of a very interesting community project. (In that movie, it's a little difficult to hear a key point: That they heat the greenhouses all year round using the heat generated by the composting piles in the corners of the greenhouses.)

See also the not-for-profit consultancy Aquaponics UK.

A 2,000 Year Old Food Forest in Morocco.

UN Report Agro-ecology and the Right to Food.

See also this remarkable TED talk by Josette Sheeran.

If companies like Monsanto were smart surely they would have (g)engineered the bacon tree by now. Bacon that grows on trees. It's the obvious next move. Or maybe the biltong tree...

Apparently, nations that have banned pesticides containing neonicotinoids have seen their bee populations recover from colony collapse to a large extent. With this in mind, the Soil Association has produced a list of some common pesticide products to avoid. Wonder if herbicides are also implicated? Like Roundup.

Some beekeepers are prepared to speak out. There is also a new documentary, Vanishing of the Bees (main site vanishingbees.com). There is one simple interim action the public can take that might save the day.

Further to this point, I recently visited a garden (this July 2011) that contained a panoply of species of beautiful flowers, a veritable world garden, but I noticed something strange about the behaviour of the bees over the course of a week. All types of bee present (honey, bumble, other) were only feeding on two flower types: The white flowers of native clover in the lawn grass, and the purple flowers of native heather (a possibly native) lavender. They weren't touching any other species. Could bees be struggling to work with foreign or cross-bred pollen and nectar types?

With the recent US CorpsGov subpoena of Flitter for details of accounts of Wikileaks founders the question has to be raised as to whether internet entities that have more members than the nation enforcing the subpoena should be allowed to refer such subpoenas to international jurisdiction. (Flitter doesn't yet have quite enough members, but Bookface does.) It is possible that the principles of democracy require such internet entities to be legally placed in supra-national jurisdiction, not least because it is possible for such entities to undertake supra-national referenda with ease.

It is unfortunate that the present generation of social networking sites are considered as businesses operated as information silos under a single national, legal jurisdiction (or taxable estate). Perhaps the next generation of social networking software needs to properly embrace high-redundancy peer-to-peer protocols.

In this context: Here's a lively account wherein US CorpsGov just happens to have provided a representative sample of present CorpsGov behavioural bias.

At least many media organisations are recognising that the commercial future rests in exposing the lies and establishing a credit line of integrity with the public. The more controversial the truth is, the more it sells and the brighter their future becomes. Exposing the truth doesn't have any nasty blowback pending. This seems to make much better sense than other paths.

Has the popular music industry been slow to grasp an alternative online funding model for artists? Incremental collective funding. To some extent Pledge Music does this already (but perhaps not incrementally per track). Imagine a band has an album they want to release. They choose, say, three songs to release for free as teasers. Then, to gain each extra song on the album, the internet community as a whole has to pledge sufficient total funds for each track release. The artists can choose to shift the price of each track around a bit to suit their costs, needs and to ease judging demand. Once released the track enters the Creative Commons domain (since it is neither healthy, nor cost effective, nor practical to lock it down completely anyway). The same process could be applied to videos. Result: Artists (hopefully) get enough money to live on and produce good works, and the public gets to hear the music it wants.

It is possible that some variation on the Pledge Music funding model might work for many public projects and services, upgrading and extending the existing approach to taxation. Imagine the Inland Revenue, or local governments running "Pledge Tax"... with the public choosing to sponsor various projects suggested by providers who would then undertake to supply the good/service in question.

"In love and science we trust. Everything else is gambling."