B e t r a y T h e A g e

Richard Heinberg, The Red Pepper. The imminent demise of the global petroleum industry will necessarily entail a complete redesign of industrial societies.

. By Gordon Dritschilo - Rutland Herald Staff After two years at Green Mountain College in Poultney, the music festival and renewable energy technology showcase that started out on a farm in Middletown Springs is moving to a farm in Tinmouth.

James Howard Kunstler - Rolling Stone Magazine What is going to happen when we run out of cheap oil to guzzle? Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble.

If you go to the website of the Environmental Defense Fund and locate their Scorecard page, you can find out information that has been gathered about who is polluting your air and water. It is amazing to find out that Rutland County is within the worst top 40% of polluting counties nationside in air and water pollution releases. Can you guess who the worst polluters are in Rutland County? If you guessed Rutland Plywood, you would have guessed right with a release of 5,465 lbs. Second on the list is U.S. Simica with 4,736 lbs. And if you guessed G.E. in North Clarendon, you were close as it came in third place with about 1,058 lbs of pollution in 2002. What amazes me is that information of this importance is not disseminated with the public. Maybe I'm paranoid, but does the recent problems we have been having with the media extend to literally our back door? Perhaps local newspaper and TV would find publishing this information a bit too sensitive for general public knowledge. We are...

By Tad Montgomery | Special to the Vermont Guardian There has been a fair bit of scuttlebutt in Vermont the last few months about biodiesel. Michael Feiner, writing in Rural Vermont’s Farm Policy Network Newsletter takes aim at the “big business” side of biodiesel and calls it “agribusiness’ new Trojan Horse.” Biodiesel is not a simple issue, and there are many cons and pros.

Beverley Thorpe, AlterNet. Posted March 22, 2005. The first U.S. study to test chemicals in household dust found a toxic cocktail in our homes, made of hazardous chemicals emitted from commonly used products.

by Lester R Brown, Earth Policy Institute

Mitch Tobin - Arizona Daily Star, Tucson as reported in National Geographic News "A civilization able to envision God and the afterlife and embark on the exploration of space, for heaven's sake, can surely find a way to save the ecological integrity of this planet,"

by E.O. Wilson With the world population at 5.7 billion and sure to keep on growing rapidly until well into the next century, humanity has entered a dangerous environmental bottleneck. We hope--surely we must believe--that our species will come out the other side in better condition than when we entered. We should make it a goal to take as much of the rest of life with us as is humanly possible.

Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network, answers Grist's questions - Grist Magazine

by James Marc Leas, Colleen McLaughlin, and Ashley Smith In the state's (Vermont)largest city, the Burlington Anti-War Coalition (BAWC) proposed a resolution (full text below) that called for bringing the troops home now. It passed with 65.2% of the vote. It won in all the city's wards, including the two most conservative. In the towns of Marshfield and Hinesburg (one of the more conservative towns in Vermont) voters also considered and passed "Out Now" resolutions by overwhelming margins.

by Julian Borger in Washington, Guardian/UK Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent US economist and a special adviser to the UN secretary general, argues in a new book that extreme poverty could be eradicated by 2025. In The End of Poverty, he says much will depend on the choices made by Americans, who are paying a far smaller share of their income in foreign aid than they promised three years ago, and only a 30th of the "nearly $500bn [£260bn] the US will spend this year on the military".

By Katie Benner, CNN/Money staff writer A once-fringe group saying we'll run out of oil is gaining attention, even within the oil industry.

Essay by Richard Manning, Harper's Magazine "There is no alternative to plant energy, just as there is no alternative to oxygen. The results of taking away our plant energy may not be as sudden as cutting off oxygen, but they are as sure."

from The Vermont Guardian More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been told to change research findings concerning the protection of plants and animals .

By Joe Milliken | Special to the Vermont Guardian “For 30 years, wastewater treatment plants have been key to the return of the river’s health,” River Commissioner Henry Swan of Lyme stated on CRJC’s website. “We must be certain that these plants continue to operate efficiently as they age.”

by John Nichols, The Nation Declaring that "The War in Iraq is a Local Issue," citizens in communities across the state voted of Tuesday for resolutions urging President Bush and Congress to take steps to withdraw American troops from Iraq and calling on their state legislature to investigate the use and abuse of the Vermont National Guard in the conflcit.