Author: alan

So, I always think there are way less of these than there probably actually are. Not only parks per se, like the champs du Mars above, but public, community gardens that are a combination of available land and whatever the local residents want them to be – fruit trees, vegetable patches, sports fields – whatever. There was an article in Harper’s from a while back (referenced here) about the community gardens that were springing up all over that blighted city, we’re talking row crops and feeding people in an urban environment. It didn’t seem so much to be the kind of idyllic Utopia you might imagine; just places where people could become re-attached to the land.

Some of the gaps in (my) perception come, of course, from living in the south, where ‘public’ anything is a kind of semantic variable meaning lesser and/or vulnerable – as in scary, as in, other people might be there.

But living other places, like the above, where space is at more of a premium, I’ve also seen the magnified role public space plays in people’s lives – and the enhanced meaning that derives therein precisely from sharing with so many others.

He probably doesn’t want word to get out but, in the first link, 50 Cent is behind the funding of the garden in Jamaica, Queens. Bette Midler’s got skin this game, too.

One thing maybe not so green – I only saw this article because I got a copy of the paper paper. Hmm.

Start here, and make sure you make it all the way.

Andrew Bacevich on the end of one particular form of arrogance.

From Kazantzakis’ Report to Greco:

As it was two thousand years ago, so today also life is again in a process of decomposition. But the problems that are destroying the equilibrium between the heart and mind today are crueler and more complicated, their solution more difficult and bloody. A simple message of utmost sweetness was discovered in those times, and salvation shone splendidly on earth, like springtime. No simpler, sweeter message exists. (1964a: 294)

and

We ourselves must bear the blame if we are villains, cowards, or liars, for although we have an all powerful force inside, we dare not use it for fear it might destroy us… How terrible not to know that we possess this force! If we did know, we would admire our souls. In all heaven and earth, nothing so closely resembles God as the soul of mankind. (1964a: 427-428)

This is funny, not least because it shows how sensible the guy is:

When he was preparing for them (debates) during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

via.

This also brings up a great point about the costs associated with going more sustainable: mainly, that they are huge and we’ve got to get creative. I won’t even get into the weeds about the car-buying precipice upon which Mrs. Green and I have recently perched. Suffice it to say that while the options for hybrid, diesel, mpg and room (sedans only) are truly pathetic, fortunately they are also all ridiculously expensive.

So think about doing something to your house, like installing solar panels, or even roofing it with nano-solar material. You might as well double-plate your house in copper. But as others point out, there’s always room outside of the box.

it’s worth checking out what the city of Berkeley’s doing: As the mayor’s former chief of staff, Cisco DeVries, explains over at Grist, the Berkeley FIRST initiative, which gets underway next week, will let property owners install solar systems without paying the hefty upfront cost—instead, the city will issue a municipal bond to cover the installation, which is then paid back over 20 years via a new line item on the property owner’s tax bill. (If the property is sold, the tax is just transferred to the new buyer). The beauty of the thing is it’s entirely voluntary—no taxes, no mandates; it’s just that, if you do want solar power, it’s easier to finance. If Berkeley’s scheme ends up being popular, I’ll be curious to see if the private sector starts cobbling together similar offers.

I’m always thinking local, local, local in terms of our food and where it comes from. But switching our energy sources – directly using the sun for power in your house – will also be about scale, as the materials become commonplace, and public/private innovation on making the transition sufficiently affordable that it’s use can become widespread. A massive scale is necessary for all sustainability measures in concert – conservation, innovation, imagination. It’s only a paradox when we try to fit it into the way we have been doing everything.

I guess Time Magazine is the gorilla canary in our national coal mine. So they, of course, sit right on the curve and ask the question on this day before election, will green progress be stalled by the bad economy?

Let me be as clear about this is as possible, as clear as we all should be: Yes, if all green progress means is a new investment trend. The trend is over before it started, in effect, if it is one that must wait for proper allocation of capital and can be overtaken by events like a stock market crash or a credit crunch. Green, as it were, can and will be pushed to the backseat.

But because the long term condition underlying these events is the inherently unsustainable path on which they have been built, actions taken in the service of Green – that is, sustainability – must overturn this construct. Underlying factors of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and the resulting resource shortages are not going to be put on hold until we can deal with them. They are the events by which economies and societies are being overtaken. We’re just still choosing to see them through the prism of market factors and predictive indices. Green is a word that’s been made into a label, that some of us may think will, given sufficient time, be able to trickle down to and effect great change in the way we live.

We will have missed a great opportunity to change, not least by shunning the mother of invention, if we continue to think this.

It took a while, but finally I can post one of several upcoming installments of a recent interview with eminent systems ecology theorist and professor, Bernie Patten.

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The new Flagpole column is out and up, depending of what kind of reading you do.

This was my starting point, but didn’t make it past the first draft:

If you’ve ever had any near-life experiences, you know that forever indelible is the sensation that there was something almost wrong about the very right thing that was happening. If it was beautiful, maybe it was the larger injustice in which the beauty swirled; if was horrifying, maybe it was the fact that others elsewhere in the world were carrying on, completely unbothered and oblivious. Whatever it was, this contradictory awareness, of the within and the without, added to the bite and by elevating the experience, keys us into one of the great dichotomies: destroying what we love.

The poetry of the cutting room floor.

The new Flagpole column is out and up, depending of what kind of reading you do.

This was my starting point, but didn’t make it past the first draft:

If you’ve ever had any near-life experiences, you know that forever indelible is the sensation that there was something almost wrong about the very right thing that was happening. If it was beautiful, maybe it was the larger injustice in which the beauty swirled; if was horrifying, maybe it was the fact that others elsewhere in the world were carrying on, completely unbothered and oblivious. Whatever it was, this contradictory awareness, of the within and the without, added to the bite and by elevating the experience, keys us into one of the great dichotomies: destroying what we love.

The poetry of the cutting room floor.