http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/10/two-cl...

Our failures of leadership are comprehensive, including leadership in my nominal sector, journalism. For two weeks in a row, the price of oil on the futures markets has closed above $80-a-barrel, and for these two weeks The New York Times Sunday Business Section has failed to run one story on the consequences of oil rising into this uncharted territory of high price. Are the Times editors on crack? Surely $80-plus oil will thunder through the American economy.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

-- we are past the point of "painless" return. We have so consistently and drastically overshot our sustainable consumption and population levels that returning to sustainable levels will necessarily involve significant lifestyle disruptions -- living standard degradation, population level reduction, and the possible loss of sovereignty; there can be no "soft landing."

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070927-9999-1n27icemelt.html

Sewall said climate change is inevitable, even if no more greenhouses gases were added to the atmosphere.

“The average person should start thinking seriously about where their water comes from now, what they're doing with it, and where the water will come from in 10 to 20 years,” he said.

Barnett, the Scripps researcher, said the West's drought, no matter what its cause, has not received enough attention.

“I don't know why people don't take it more seriously,” he said. “We're not going to have enough water for what we're doing. Nobody's facing up to it.”

Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens