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Got Milk?

Sweet little baby in the manger I don’t even know where to start with this. A family portrait of our bloat if there was a need for a new one. The economic ‘slowdown’ (c’mon!) has led to a growing surplus of so many things we’ve been overproducing as a means to take advantage of growing markets… either we’re such children about this or our economic system remains too primitive as to allow for self-destructive indulgence – which are basically the same things.

Anyway, cows. Too many. Producing far too much milk. So much that the government price floor kicks in and we begin to buy the excess while producers continue to feed and milk Elsie so as not be caught flat-footed when things ‘recover’. Please. And this.

In China, for instance, per-person dairy consumption nearly doubled in just five years, to 63 pounds in 2007 from 33 pounds in 2002 (though it remains far below the per-capita consumption in the United States of about 580 pounds), according to the U.S. Dairy Export Council. The growth translates into the need for nearly 40 billion pounds more milk each year, roughly equal to California’s annual milk production.

Okay, stop right there. 580 pounds of milk per year per person, and the Chinese are up to 63? Forget methane and the effects of cow flatulence on CO2 emissions for a second and just think about how
much more we are consuming than, one might suspect, we really need. It’s not just a little extra but on the level of orders of magnitude. I do not know what the optimum consumption of milk per annum would be. But I do think that whether it is 137 or 683 lbs. it should be separate and apart from how I define the idea of personal freedom. If I want to consume 974 pounds per year, fine. Set a healthy range for my consumption (b/c I’m obviously incapable) and charge me more when I whiz past it. For the milk, for the extra weight on my plane ticket, for the added trips to the doctor, for the car tips to work b/c I’m feeling too ‘slow’ to bike in. The impulse to set price floors for the cost of anything is being calibrated in the wrong direction. Let’s determine what consuming all this milk is costing us and set price parameters based on that.

As a part of this we can begin to understand all of these excess points in housing, automobiles, and commodities of all sorts as part and parcel of the ‘slowdown’. We’re slowing down because we’re bloated; when you’re out of shape and out of breath, you can’t help but slowdown. I don’t mean to make this sound so simple and will stop if others will throttle back on making it seem so complicated.

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Greens

Collard Greens, that is, which allegedly represent the wealth in your future but are really just soul food. Sometime this afternoon take:

One mess (approx. 1 1/2 pounds), Collard Greens

Four cloves of garlic

one tbsp. red vinegar

soy sauce and salt, to taste.

Soft boil Greens and spices for an hour. Serve with black-eyed peas and cornbread, maybe a Newcastle or two.

Good year and good luck.

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Carbon-free city, sea view

Via, the United Arab Emirates capital of Dubai is planning construction of the world’s first ‘zero-carbon’ city in the middle of a petroleum-drenched desert. It sounds like offering pony rides in the middle of a zombie theme park, but also looks like they’re serious.

Using the traditional planning principles of a walled city, together with existing technologies to achieve sustainable development, this six sq km expanse will house an energy, science and technology community.

Called the Masdar (meaning ‘source’ in Arabic) Initiative, this ambitious plan for a ‘Green City’ is being driven by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a private, joint stock company established and wholly-owned by Mubadala Development Company.

‘‘As the first major hydrocarbon-producing nation to take such a step, Abu Dhabi has established its leadership position by launching Masdar, a global cooperative platform for open engagement in the search for solutions to some of mankind’s most pressing issues — energy security, environment and truly sustainable human development,” Masdar chief executive Sultan Al Jaber said.

Abu Dhabi accounts for more than 90 percent of the UAE’s oil resources, and the country’s reserves, exceeding 100 billion barrels, ranked third largest in the world.

The ‘Green City’ will house the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a graduate science and research institute that will be established in cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; world-class laboratories; commercial space for related-sector companies; light manufacturing facilities and a selected pool of international tenants who will invest, develop, and commercialise advanced energy technologies.

There is also a lark in there about ‘rapid personal transport systems’ and reference to the fact that Abu Dhabi sees temps north of 50C in July and August, so  like any good theme park brochure there’s a little something for everyone.

Even with petroleum reserves of more than 100 billion barrels, the Sultan is seeing the writing on the wall. From the time of Aristotle, scientific knowledge has profited from time spent in Arab hands, so we’ll see. It’s not like we’re trying anything similar outside of Indianapolis or anything. Imagine the headlines if that were the case.

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Happy New Year

Metamorfossi

“You Americans need to step out of yourselves, we like you people,” George White Eye* insisted, his own focus lit wide, wider than the small room in which I lay. I cannot respond with his fingers inside my mouth. “You understand what I say?”

More…

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Green Recovery

With the stock market ready to record its biggest annual drop since 1931, conversation automatically advances toward January and what kind of economic recovery investors can look forward to. Pick any of the questionable words/phrases out of that last clause to gauge how out of touch we remain, from a media standpoint, with what is happening to the country, the economy and the planet in concert.

The optimism is hard to overstate; we’re a resilient people, no doubt. The dissonance is amazing. And, truthfully, we shouldn’t be cowering. But we need to put that optimism to the test and face facts. Keeping your head up when things are grim, that’s optimism. Doing the same things over and over and hoping for different results, well, that’s just another way of licking our ears clean.

This future that we’re afraid of is within site; ours is to embrace it, prickly though it be. The assumptions coming back into focus in hopes that this little economic tremor will pass need to be held as suspects for a while longer. Habeas for all – read them their rights, charge them and give them their one phone call. But hold them. We seem to never be able to concentrate on any one problem long enough to get it by the short hairs, if you will, before something conveniently displaces it. I’m not talking conspiracy here. It’s the millions of false equivalences that are a natural outcome of a shallow cultural paradigm we’ve allowed to slip into place, where everyone speaks in the language of commodity but no one understands the slang.

All you money managers out there need to hold your seats for a while. Alternate reality: Figure out something to do with your money within five hundred yards of your driveway as a method to tilt the local tax coffers again. Seriously. Economies of scale have nothing to do with humans.

Recovering the green will mean having people make things for other people. Re-establishing local identities, putting people to work, paying taxes, furthering the public good is the only way to increase the wealth of a wealthy society.

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Ourselves in

Boxing, that is. Via Think Progress, The U.S. Geological Survey now thinks that published estimates on how much sea levels will rise as a result of melting ice caps were a little on the light side.

Tom Armstrong, senior advisor for global change programs at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the report “shows how quickly the information is advancing” on potential climate shifts. The prospect of abrupt climate change, he said, “is one of those things that keeps people up at night, because it’s a low-probability but high-risk scenario. It’s unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, but if it were to occur, it would be life-changing.”

In one of the report’s most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea levels could rise as much as 4 feet by 2100. The intergovernment panel had projected a rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the last two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice in the Alps.

So we can continue with the out-of-sight-out-of-mind routine until further notice and new models have been developed which can present finally-irrefutable proof that was has been happening all along has, in fact, been happening all along. Great.

But in the meantime, just until we decide it’s too late to do anything, how about some massive public infrastructure spending to alleviate some of what might be the causes of the above? Ahem.

Building the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles and Anaheim line that will be the spine of the system will cost between $32.8 billion and $33.6 billion, according to the High Speed Rail Authority’s business report. Extensions built later would cost another $12 billion. In addition to the $10 billion from state bond sales, the authority is counting on $12 billion to $16 billion in federal funds plus $6.5 billion to $7.5 billion in private investment and $2 billion to $3 billion in local contributions.

Whoa. Sexy numbers like that are usually reserved an investment bank bailout or derivatives swindle. And this to build something no one will own, that only benefits the public? Who even goes there?

Update: Catching up on Krugman for the last few days, he explains the econ 101 behind my last bit of pith there.

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O, brother

This is exactly the type of lame-O ‘Green’ article everyone comes to expect on the road to meaningless for the term, but especially as a stand-in for sustainability.

Maybe it’s the post-modern tendency to strafe both sides with cover fire while you move in for the ambivalent shrug. It works in a dig at two sides that have been set up up for no other reason than to (possibly) make you feel better no matter what side you’re on. Fascinating.

How green are your branches? How useless are your articles? End that one with an exclamation point, you pinheads!

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Just in Time

is an inventory strategy implemented to improve the return on investment by reducing in-process inventory and associated costs. In order to achieve JIT [status] the process must have signals of what is going on elsewhere in the process.

This means that the process is often driven by a series of signals […] that tell production processes when to make the next part. [These] are usually ‘tickets’ but can be simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. When implemented correctly, JIT can lead to dramatic improvements in a manufacturing organization’s return on investment, quality, and efficiency. Some have suggested that “Just on Time” would be a more appropriate name since it emphasizes that production should create items that arrive when needed and neither earlier nor later.

Semantics of ‘on’ vs. ‘in’ aside, what do these kinds of signals tell us? I alluded previously to complexity theory and the principle of indirect effects as constituent elements of systems ecology; one of the questions we need to reckon with in the ‘what’s next’ phase of our mourning is, how do we begin to untangle some of the many ways in which the American way of life and self-worth is connected to scams and schemes? A dangerous loss of legitimacy is waiting right around the corner for yet another cheek to be turned when a perp-walk might be warranted.

For a proper idea on the state of the reckoning, we can probably zoom past the savvy of green ads for a little while. Just sample/monitor the holiday editorials in your local paper and see what you come up with. Are they typical paeans to the year that was? Or are there little hints and allegations that actual people have had enough? Are people starting to ask questions with uncomfortable answers?

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Building blocks

This is the ING Bank Amsterdam, designed by Alberts & van Huut.

From chapter 5 of Natural Capitalism, Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory  and L. Hunter Lovins:

In Southeastern Amsterdam, at a site chosen by the workers because of its proximity to their homes, satnds the headquarters of a major bank. Built in 1987, the 587,000-square-foot-complex consists of ten sculptural towers links by an undulating internal street. Inside, the sun reflects off colored metal – only one element in the extensive artwork that decorates the structure – to bathe the lower stories in ever changing hues. Indoor and outdoor gardens are fed by rainwater captured from the bank’s roof. Every office has natural air and natural light. Heating and ventilation are largely passive, and no conventional air conditioners are used. Conservatively attired bankers playfully trail their fingers in the water that splashes down form-flow sculptures in the bronze handrails along the staircases. The building’s occupants are demonstrably pleased with their new quarters: Absenteeism is down 15 percent, productivity is up and workers hold numerous evening and weekend cultural and social events there.

The results surpassed even the directors’ vision of the features, qualities and design process they had mandated for their bank. Theor design prospectus had designated an “organic” building that would “integrate art, natural and local materials, sunlight, green plants, energy conservation, quiet and water” – not to mention happy employees – and that would “not cost one guilder more per square meter” than the market average. In fact the money spent to put the energy savings in place paid for itself in the first three months. Upon initial occupancy, the complex used 92 percent less energy than an adjacent bank constructed at the same time, representing a saving of $2.9 million per year and making it one of the most energy-efficient buildings in Europe.

Architect Tom Alberts took three years to complete the design of the building. It took so long mainly because the bank board insisted that all participants in the project, including employees, understand its every detail: The air-handling design had to be explained to the landscape architect, for example, and the artwork to the mechanical engineers. In the end, it was this level of integration that contributed to making the building so comfortable, beautiful and cost effective.

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