Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Picking Up The Pieces

Commentary By Ron Beasley


Steve had a post yesterday on how the left should be looking forward to 2020 not 2012 which ties in with John's post on Chris Hedges claim that it's time for the left to right off the Democratic Party.  The reality is none of it really matters.  Why you ask?  The Nation Magazine has a new video series, Peak Oil and a Changing Climate.  This is part one - warning it's 20 minutes but well worth a watch:











By 2020 the world as we know it will be history.  We have lived in an economy and civilization that is dependent on constant growth and as I have noted before that growth has be driven by not just oil but cheap oil. There may be oil left but the cheap oil is gone.   In the above video Richard Heinberg sums up the problem really well"



Too many people using too much stuff.



About eight and a half minutes in Noam Chomsky  explains the mechanics of denial.  People in big business and government know that peak oil, climate change and a no growth society are real but for various reasons they can't tell us.  In the case of corporate CEO's they have an institutional responsibility to maximize short term profits.  Politicians and governments would not survive if they suggested that their citizens were going to have to accept a life with less "stuff."   We can see why it is inevitable that complex societies like ours eventually collapse.  When people have stuff they refuse to recognize they may have to expect less stuff.  Less stuff means a simplification of a complex system.



Collapse is nothing more than involuntary simplification.


~Joseph Tainter



That simplification is going to occur before 2020.  The United States and the world of 2020 will be a local one not a global one.  Preparing for 2020 means planning on how to pick up the pieces in a world where we can no longer expect economic growth or unlimited  transportation.  Growth industries may be hand tools and draft animals.  The new jobs will be in agriculture.  Cheap oil has resulted in a smaller percentage of the population involved in food production - the loss of cheap oil will reverse that trend.


I'm not going to blame any individuals or political parties, I suspect the problem is human nature.  We are still animals and survival means waking up in the morning not what is likely to happen a few months or years in the future. 


 



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