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Eco Hustle – the Hustle Lives!

In 2008-9, I wrote a series of Columns for Flagpole magazine. The columns were titled Eco Hustle – What Green Means, and were a take off on this very blog from those years. Anyway, the columns had disappeared but are now back online, so I am going to re-publish them here. Thanks, Flagpole!

This is one of the early ones:

It’s a verb, it’s an adjective, it’s… green. But what does it mean? Before you can truly get hustled you need to be off your game, out of your element, down on your luck or stuffed with a false sense of security. From the looks of things, we seem to be many of these at once. Tighten up your laces: we’re going in.

Whether attending rock shows or major sporting events, we all seem to enjoy entering the biggest, fanciest stadiums around. So, just imagine that finding new energy sources while controlling carbon emissions is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. There; now pull out your circle and square diagrams, bell curves and line drawings, and let’s boil the whole system down to basics.

A system is an absolute human artifact, devised primarily for the sake of scientific conversation, though a lot of this we just don’t talk about. Systems are defined by their relationships to energy and matter crossing into them, and as such there are three types of systems: open, closed and isolated. Our bodies are open systems that exist within a closed system, the earth, and we’re constantly cycling material in and out of our systems. That material is made up of elements, basically identified in the periodic table, and they comprise living things like plants and animals or non-living matter like soil, rocks and the physical environment. But there is a fixed amount of material – its overall quantity never changes.

The earth is a closed system, where energy from the sun enters. Now, this is a tremendous energy input – more energy from the sun hits the earth during one hour than every man, woman and child on it could use in a year. There’s a strong case to be made that we should actually highlight the fundamental distinction between energy sources and energy storage. The sources are rather obvious (solar, tidal, geothermal) – what we keep looking for are the ancient energy storages hidden all over the planet (pockets of fossil fuels) so as to exploit nature’s geological-timescale labor.

Sustainability for earthlings therefore, be they Pakistani or Michigander, means living within the bounds of that solar input. Simply, if you outpace that input, you’re not sustainable.

The sustainability equation is all about…

More

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Climate change denial is a political strategy

NileBasinInitiativeThat it will come as news to exactly no one is not a reason that the disingenuous origins of climate change denial-ism should be woven into the general culture fabric. They do not belong, and they have nothing to do with climate change or science or Michael Mann, or hockey sticks, or warming/cooling trends. Denial-ism was a last gasp fruit from a poison tree that has achieved beyond Luntz’s wildest dreams. Who’s Luntz? This is Luntz:

a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.

The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.

“Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.

“Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

The phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as “conservationist” instead of “environmentalist”, because “most people” think environmentalists are “extremists” who indulge in “some pretty bizarre behaviour… that turns off many voters”.

Words such as “common sense” should be used, with pro-business arguments avoided wherever possible.

Way to go, C-Plus. It is disgusting that so many people cop to this ‘controversy’ that never was, but that has so many plain consequences for them/us. There is no them, remember. Even these duplicitous charlatans are us.

Image: A river in Egypt

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Super statues

There’s so much awesome about this.

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Having recently visited the former East Germany and Prague, I can affirm that there is much weird remaining in the form of Communist-era buildings and monuments. For one thing, Prague still has Nazi and Communist numbering on buildings – and they’re still in use. Then you have this thing:

strahov

 

 

 

But really, nothing outdoes the creativity of re-painting statues as some kind of frozen justice league. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Take a swing through the former East bloc.

 

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The Way We Develop

plosOneSEStories we tell children about a long ago time and place, a verdant, green land with cities and towns that glistened within their limits and only slipped beyond those with the greatest care and caution. Linked by tiny roads and fast rail lines, seen from the air the denser areas were surrounded by neat parcels under cultivation. It all looked so orderly and organized to work properly, if not effectively. Oh, yes, then there was that other meaning of denser:

Giant urban sprawl could pave over thousands of acres of forest and agriculture, connecting Raleigh to Atlanta by 2060, if growth continues at its current pace, according to a newly released research paper from the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We could be looking at a seamless corridor of urban development,” said Adam Terando, a research ecologist with the USGS and an adjunct professor at North Carolina State University who was the study’s lead author.

The development will engulf land from North Carolina to Georgia, and possibly spread to Birmingham, Ala., “if we continue to develop urban areas in the Southeast the way we have for the past 60 years,” he said.

Combining USGS demographic modeling with North Carolina State’s High Performance Computing Services and analyzing the data for six years, Terando and his five co-authors estimated that urbanization in the Southeast will increase by up to 190 percent.

See also, the Myth of Progress for further edification. That orderly view is also available, but you’ll have to make arrangements to take a different route.

Image: The Southeast U.S. region used in this study. (Terando et. al/PLOS One)

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Algal Blooms Ohio

Sediment_and_Algae_Great_LakesNot a band name, but the question of how long 500,000 people can go without drinking water already has its answer: Not long.

Experts say the bloom, which was nurtured by excess phosphorus runoff, appears to be pinned to the western edge of the lake by a combination of winds, waves, and currents.

So far, the city of Toledo, which provides water to about 500,000 people in the region, has been the most severely affected. The Toledo Blade reports that city officials are still running tests and trying to figure out how to make the water drinkable again. They’re still not sure how the toxin could have gotten through the plant’s treatment systems — or how widespread the contamination actually is.

Ongoing. They’re now saying the water is safe, but something like this doesn’t just go away over night. Increased phosphorous levels in a body the water the size of Lake Erie qualifies as an environmental catastrophe, so what to do now? How quickly do people return to their normal routines without factoring in the causes and then trying to factor them out of thier everyday lives? Probably at something approximating the speed of sound, which means the problem will persist.

Learning is hard. Math is mean.

Image: streaks of blue and green that color the Great Lakes, via Wikimedia Commons. The green is Lake Erie is algae. NASA photo from 2011.

 

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Brandenburger Tor

The Brandenburg Gate has played a variety of roles in the history of Germany. Commissioned by Friedrich Wilhem II to represent peace, Napoleon also used it for a triumphal procession in 1806. I prefer to connect it with peace, at least until peace, too, becomes triumphal. This photo is from Sunday night, taken by Green boy young man.

Brandenburg

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Are We There Yet?

As the impacts of global warming slam into the present, are you the frog or the boiling water? While you contemplate the metaphor, a brief round up of Notnecessarily the climate-related news:

Temperatures in Seattle reached into the nineties this weekend:

The main reason for the heat watch is because it will not cool down much in the evenings, causing homes to retain more of that heat.

The last excessive heat watch for the area was issued July 29, 2009 when it was 103 degrees.

Oregon is baking under the same heat with highs in the mid to upper 90s forecast in Portland, Salem and Eugene.

Seattlelites were in search of public decks to hang out on to catch the breeze on the waterfront which, in a twist, only the tourists knew about.

The University of Miami (FL) continue to distinguish itself, this time by selling about 88 acres of globally imperiled habitat to Walmart:

To secure permission for the 158,000-square-foot box store, plus an LA Fitness center, Chik-fil-A and Chili’s restaurants and about 900 apartments, the university and the developer, Ram, agreed to set aside 40 acres for a preserve.

Ram also plans to develop 35 adjacent acres still owned by the university.

But with less than 2 percent of the vast savanna that once covered South Florida’s spiny ridge remaining, the deal has left environmentalists and biologists scratching their heads.

“You wonder how things end up being endangered? This is how. This is bad policy and bad enforcement. And shame on UM,” said attorney Dennis Olle, a board member of Tropical Audubon and the North American Butterfly Association, who wrote to Florida’s lead federal wildlife agent Friday demanding an investigation.

You definitely wonder about that, among other things.

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Money and How You Spend It

There was a weird point about ‘political capital’ George W. Bush kept making after he won the 2004 election: he had it (via beating Kerry) and he was going to spend it. A non-sensical notion outright, talking about political capital this way always seemed like one of those things he didn’t understand – to which we can now add painting – whose utilization in this case was not only inappropriate but ultimately futile. Recall that he was going to used his to privatize Social Security. Amazing.

For some reason this comes to mind with the news that the half-billion dollars spent in anti-Obamacare advertising has actually led to increased enrollments in the program.

Divestment is almost political capital in reverse; you have little or no political momentum whatsoever, and so you resort to your next best, perfectly legitimate weapon in a capitalist system  becomes making a moral distinctions about how you spend your money. It might be one of the only uses of morality relevant in a capitalist system, but we’ll leave that to Adorno. The Unitarian Universalist Association, however, have decided to exercise their full rights:

An overwhelming number of the 2,000 delegates present at the meeting voted to approve the resolution. But some did raise concerns about the influence the divestment movement actually has on companies. “Some people said that disinvestment is ineffective because it doesn’t actually affect companies,” Tim Brennan, Chief Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, told us. “But it’s not about affecting the companies as much as it is about making a strong moral statement.

This a very political use of capital. Identifying Carbon Tracker 200 companies is an aggressive attempt to inform and speed the divestment movement. Just like physicians and insurance companies were within their rights to spend in the service of protecting the status quo, so to are groups seeking to upend the fossil fuel economy. Will it work? Can the moral case be made? Past attempts can be instructive.

 

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Quitting the Gang

kool_and_the_gangsomethin__specialYou may wonder, as I do, why and how conservatives (Republicans… however you choose to respectfully refer to them) can continue to fuel climate change denial. Evidence suggests that the house-of-cards policy package ( low taxes, drill everywhere, no regulations) they support cannot admit one such reality without a torrent of others coming into the discussion and justification for their political existence vanishing overnight. A pathetic justification, it also makes the most sense.

However, there are conservative pockets drawing pretty ‘reform conservative’ stick figures in the wet cement. As the concrete dries, so do their creaky explanations evaporate. Especially when it comes to climate change, one extraordinarily sawn limb gets walked out on, and it’s really something. A crazy metaphor involving an insurance salesman at your door is proffered to explain why now is still not the time to do anything about carbon emissions… caveat lector. But a rejoinder is offered in the comments that is quite instructive:

I generally think you show a good appreciation for the explanatory power of metaphor and incentives, but this piece is a disappointment. Your insurance policy description is fundamentally flawed: insurance exists to refund some of the losses that will indisputably occur if a low-probability event takes place. Changing our energy consumption and production habits is an action designed to reduce the probability of the catastrophic events occurring. Let’s think about a high-pollution lifestyle as similar to gang membership in the inner city, a popular conservative issue. It may cost a gang member real present resources and satisfaction to quit the gang. It may not even improve the gang member’s chance of not being shot, unless others also stop the violence. But the gang member has no moral claim on others to cease their violence unless he quits as well. And if he continues his present lifestyle he is unlikely to live a healthy or successful life. Based on your recommendation, if fewer of his friends than he expected were killed last year even though he didn’t quit the gang, and he could really use some drug money now, he should stick with it- after all, it’s uncertain future benefit versus known present costs.

People around the world are losing their homes and dying while we argue about whether or not the causality is strong enough, or what magnitude of impact we’re trying to avert.

Lying or stupid was a 2004-vintage take on why Republicans said or supported certain things. Perception certainly evolves and as they get closer and closer to honesty, the trend horizon  collapses on available policy prescriptions. That is intentional, and candidates with (R) should rewarded for learning how to run out the clock for the sake of propping up their ideology. One prize we might suggest is election losses, constant and everywhere.

Image: One of my very favorite bands and records of 1981. Never quit this gang.

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News Profit

papersI guess that could be prophet, but that’s a bit cheeky and I already miss the Amatriciana.

The impetus of media properties to destroy their product marches on. Bottom-line news gathering, a strict misnomer, has become the new if nonsensical metric. Where can this be headed, other than the obvious? The Washington Monthly looks at the future of cross-subsidies:

In the past, when media companies funded labor-intensive journalism—foreign coverage, investigative projects, beat reporters who spend days tracking down leads—we believed this reportage was very valuable, even financially. Readers wanted to know, advertisers liked the prestige that high-quality reporting brought, and the publications made plenty of money.

Occasionally a wiseass would say something like, “The box scores are paying for the Baghdad bureau,” and we thought, Well, maybe that cross-subsidy exists, maybe it doesn’t—but the whole package seems to be doing just fine.

The Internet blew apart the package and eliminated the cross-subsidy. Now readers can go to ESPN and get box scores, and they can go to a separate site to get news. Sports scores no longer subsidize the foreign correspondent, and the comics no longer support the city hall reporter.

This has led us to confront the ugly reality of just how lousy—financially speaking—many of our journalistic projects were. Media managers can now produce a profit-and-loss statement not only for the news division as a whole, but for each reporter—and each piece of content.

That is a dangerous sort of urgency. Immediate returns on investment is just instant gratification by [barely] another name. It’s not a viable practice for anything.

More broadly, news can be boring. What we are convincing ourselves to be true is merely self-fulfilling, and an indication that any number of things could be. But once information and news reporting become just more ‘content’ that has to compete for eyeballs, then we really need to keep one eye on the till. But beyond certain levels of comfort, even paranoia is not a sufficient motivating force. The challenge to education is ignorance; the need to know, in order to inform our assent or rejection, only grows with the complexity shrouded in simple choices. Re-discovering self-interest can be brutal and unforgiving, but it’s the only thing that will liberate the buyer’s impulse.