In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher attended a protest at a federal auction of drilling rights to Utah wilderness lands. He found a better way to disrupt the auction when he picked up a paddle and began bidding on the leases as “Bidder 70.” He won $1.8 million worth of parcels and inflated the price of many others. When it was discovered that he had no money to back his bids, the auction had to be shut down.

I was thinking about something Nate Hagens said : On a higher level, we have a superorganism, our civilization, which has accessed an energy gradient the same way that old growth forests have. The human population makes up this superorganism’s myriad of cells. The nervous system is made up of the various mediums that transmit information – internet, television, phone, print media,  etc… The circulatory system is the transportation system providing paths of production and distribution – roads, bridges, trains, airline and shipping routes, etc… Of course energy, primarily oil and fossil fuels, are the life-blood that fuels this system

By Pat Bagley, Cagle Cartoons, Salt Lake Tribune Related Entries May 23, 2013 A Mission on Climate Change May 23, 2013 Terracide and the Terrarists: Destroying the Planet for Record Profits

  EMBARGOED till 2301 GMT on Thursday 23 May Members of the British royal family make more news in the US than climate change Image: Carfax2 By Kieran Cooke The major US news broadcasters are hot on stories about the British royal family, but media monitoring research shows that they are still left cold by climate change – despite Prince Charles’ s dire warnings LONDON, 23 May − Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, made one of his strongest speeches yet on the dangers of a warming planet when he warned this month that climate change is “the greatest risk we have ever faced”. Action must be taken now, the Prince said,  because the risk of doing nothing is “too great”

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide

Source: UN Department of Public Information Country: Kenya, Niger, World IHA/1319 Proactive Strategies, Water and Land Conservation, Early Warning Systems and Data-sharing Advocated GENEVA, 22 May (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) ‑ Every one-degree rise in temperature means a 20-fold increase in global conflicts, Wadid Erian, a specialist in arid zones and dry lands, told a meeting on drought resilience this morning. He and other speakers warned that, with droughts set to become even more frequent and intense, food shortages, water shortages and conflicts will also increase

EMBARGOED until 2301 GMT on Wednesday 22 May Drought in California: If global warming slows, this may become a rarer sight Image: NOAA By Alex Kirby New research suggesting that the Earth may be warming a little more slowly than expected certainly does not  mean climate change is a false alarm, experts say. LONDON, 23 May – Several leading authorities on climate change have given a guarded welcome to research suggesting the Earth may warm more slowly than scientists had expected. An international research team led by Dr Alexander Otto of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI) at the University of Oxford, UK, has reported its conclusions in the journal Nature Geoscience

A coalition of grassroots environmental groups—plus a few professors and celebrities—issued a public message to the Environmental Defense Fund on Wednesday: You don’t speak for us on fracking. The coalition of 67 groups released an open letter to EDF President Fred Krupp criticizing his organization for signing on as a “strategic partner” in the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that bills itself as an “unprecedented, collaborative effort of environmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, energy companies and other stakeholders committed to safe, environmentally responsible shale resource development.” CSSD’s partners include Chevron, CONSOL Energy, and Shell. The partners have been working together on voluntary industry standards for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from shale rock.

Susanne Posel Occupy Corporatism May 22, 2013           In Manhattan, the Citi Bike is offered to residents in a campaign to get individuals out of their cars in the name of saving the planet. However, there is an implied weight limit for using the Citi Bike. In Section 5 of the terms of service , the manufacturer of the Citi Bike states that it will shatter under the weight of a rider over 260 pounds

The story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Global climate change and politics are linked to each other—for better or worse