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Prosperity Gospel Vamp

As mentioned many times, including public fora, sustainability is a vanishingly low bar. Just transfer the concept to say, friendship, and try to be whelmed at all.

Accordingly, this discussion about ‘everything-bagel-liberalism’ as a stymie to de-carbonization and other incursions into societal progress looks a bit pekid when corporate interests and provincial politicians are allowed the posture of disinterested bystanders:

Green-energy developers will tell you that among the biggest obstacles to new solar or wind projects online are 1) intransigence by gas-dominated utilities that make it practically impossible for renewable developments — which are less profitable for utilities than fossil-fuel infrastructure — to interconnect with the grid, and 2) campaigns by oil-and-gas front groups that work to gin up opposition to clean energy with deceptive claims like “wind turbines kill whales” and “solar panels cause cancer.”

We could pass all the federal permitting reforms Klein and Thompson could dream of, but if powerful fossil-fuel interests continue to call the political shots, we’ll never achieve the clean energy build-out we desperately need.

Similarly, when it comes to the scarcity of affordable housing, Abundance primarily blames zoning laws for constraining supply and driving up prices.

So much of the discourse on sustainable solutions reaches for just-in-time incrementalism that never can be, and only serve to preserve the status quo when radical change is required. Just like prosperity preachers, Abundance liberals need all of the attention for which they clamor. The best of among of them, like those cited here, even move us to consider why their arguments achieve such lift-off velocity in major media. Kudos – it’s a gift. Look askance and ponder.

 

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The Solar Glut

Drafting on last week’s post, what if the news the way news is presented was reversed?

Europe’s solar energy season is getting longer and more intense, threatening to disrupt markets and overwhelm grids with a glut of cheap power.

Solar energy production surges in April as longer days combine with sunnier weather, while the warmer conditions also curb household heating demand. Swaths of new solar capacity are generating a flood of electricity that can drive power prices below zero, eating into the profits of renewable-energy producers and scaring off some investors.

Not artificially reversed, only mindful that this happening, too.  Of course Bloomberg (only the messenger) frames this in a grave ‘We Must Do Something About This Immediately’ context, as though strong solar production paired with milder temperatures is a disruptive problem.
Which it could be, but not for the planet. And there are all manner of gluts – sun, solar power, solar panels themselves. One man’s glut is another man’s boom.
Image: raise your hand if you remember this band
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Chimurenga – who no know go know

Along with promoting some recent work, a new project is making clips from my Unscripted interviews available on social media. One of those we’ll get to eventually is with journalist and DJ Ntone Edjabe, founder and editor of Chimurenga, an innovative platform for free ideas and political reflection by Africans about Africa.

And this is one of the rare, correct uses of ‘innovative’ as an adjective. in newspaper form, the issues have a little of everything – poetry, photography, plays, terrific writing of all kinds and of course, news. However,  and I only started to understand this much later and not especially because of the times we are a’living in, Chimurenga’s journalism often presents news stories long after actual events. That is, rather than so-called breaking news – which honestly leaves us mostly flummoxed and discombobulated by its sheer volume (not to speak of those who work the sheer volume for their purposes, ahem) – Chimurenga presents news much later. Maybe more information has come available, maybe people still don’t understand a thing that happened… does this sound familiar?

It really changes the idea of news into information for action and understanding.

A sample of the excellent writing, in an article by saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings:

In a lecture he gave on Afrofuturism, Kodwo Eshun used a phrase which resonated with me – “encoded language”. I believe there is an alternative vernacular present in both hip-hop and jazz which relates the two musics intrinsically, and which exists outside the orthodox analysis. This idea that music has layers of encoded information, passed down through generations, without explicit acknowledgement even from the participants, fascinates me. It speaks to the question of why certain elements of African musical stylings are propagated by the diaspora. Are there more stories within musical elements which survived the middle passage than we choose to admit? Are we in a position to grasp the meanings of these tales? Maybe the formulation of new myths is a valid way of approaching these questions, if only for the creative stimulus imagined answers can inspire.

Let us then try to explore the worlds of both jazz and hip-hop as vessels for an informational network outside the parameters of pre-packaged discourse. What happens when you take away the notion of harmonic movement in jazz as being central to its intrinsic meaning or the message the improvising soloist has to offer? What happens when you take the focus away from lyricism in hip-hop?

Yes, we could learn a thing or three – and wow do we need to. There’s so much more to all of this – and take that however you want. Chimurenga is supported by donations, if you are able. My interview with Edjabe is here.

Image: an issue of Chimurenga I keep in my office.

 

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Know your business

Imagine a new, but irreversible global appetite for good bread.

What if McD––––’s corporate decided to shift from fast food to baguettes? Locations around the globe were to undergo a radical makeover – a shift toward fresh bread, maybe assorted pastries, in cities and the smallest of towns around the world, as both a cost-cutting initiative as well as a new commitment to the importance of demand for delicious, high-quality bread. Sparking immediate reaction from competitors and observers in the fast food business media, would McD____’s put experienced bakers in the C-suite? In charge of marketing and vertical integration? Or open their kitchens to the people who know how slap the dough?

“This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

Mr. Thompson has been spreading this message inside CNN during his first 15 months in the job. But now, he is taking the biggest steps yet to overhaul the company, steering it away from its reliance on traditional television and trying to cash in on digital audiences wherever they are, at the same time that President Trump has sent the news cycle into hyperdrive.

On Thursday, the company said that it would eliminate about 200 jobs focused on CNN’s traditional TV operations, and add about the same number for new digital roles like data scientists and product engineers. CNN is aiming to hire 100 of those people in the first half of the year, Mr. Thompson said.

CNN also previewed a new streaming service, similar to its TV product, that it will charge for. Mr. Thompson said that CNN would also release a new subscription product this year around “lifestyle” content — examples include food and fitness — though he didn’t specify what the product would be.

…

The push into vertical video illustrates some of the challenges that Mr. Thompson faces.

Speed is of the essence in digital publishing, where breaking news is only relevant for a few hours at a time. But getting those videos published has been slowed at times by CNN’s review process, known as the Triad, which used to include fact-checking and standards and legal vetting, according to two people familiar with the matter. Last year, Mr. Thompson moved fact-checking, formerly known as the Row, into a new unit called CNN Fact Check that works closer with editors and producers earlier in the story-generation process. CNN still maintains teams dedicated to legal and standards reviews.

Mr. Thompson and Ms. MacCallum have recruited several executives to overhaul CNN’s digital operations. Some were former co-workers of Mr. Thompson or Ms. MacCallum at The New York Times, including Ben French, who helped launch The Times’s cooking app, and Ben Monnie, who worked on subscription pricing and bundling.

Whether it’s baking baguettes or becoming using TikTok, there are people who know how to do these things. Also the news cycle doesn’t passively ‘get sent into hyperdrive’.

What business are they in again?

Image: Mmmmmm

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The costs of economic illiteracy

Discussions around financial literacy abound – and slosh over into the role (and track record) of journalism schools NOT teaching reporters how to educate the public. Or that it’s part of their job, to research a story sufficiently to inform and educate. Which is why we get a vibes election about inflation and the price of eggs. See? Sloshy.

En tout cas,  the Financial Times takes a run at efforts in Finlandia to learn-up their young charges with super-positive reinforcement:

Fully 91 per cent of Finnish students take part in a 10-lesson programme, during which they learn how business, the economy and society work as well as how to apply for a job. Finally, they are let loose in the business village for a day to practice teamwork in their work uniforms, buy drinks and food with the money they earn, and even find out what happens if they spend too much and they need to make emergency cash.

…

“The goal in Finland regarding financial literacy is that people make sustainable and value-creating economic decisions,” said Simo Karvinen, a teacher at Lauttasaari High School for International Business in Helsinki. “These decisions are made in various roles, whether as individuals, in households, in businesses, or almost in all activities within society. Therefore, it’s not just about how to manage your own financial wellbeing and capital.”

Anu Raijas, a financial literacy adviser at the museum of the Finnish central bank who led the writing of the national strategy on financial education, said the Nordic country still had more to do, particularly with women and less-educated young people.

Meanwhile, we’re missing flights trapped in circling robo taxis.

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Are greenhouse gasses actually a delicious dessert topping AND a floor polish?

NYT runs an ad sponsored content article about AI and Hollywood without once mentioning water or energy usage.

Can’t honestly quote it because it’s so cheerlead-y all the way through, it doesn’t seem to have any other point – and yet it leaves out so many. And Tom Hanks’ concerns about his estate are simply adorable.

The energy usage requirements of super-computing aren’t just downsides. This weird thing no one seems to actually want isn’t possible without massive electricity consumption. See also, bits o’coin.

Image: Inadvertently apropos actual article at Bloomberg today.

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Natural selection

It’s important to step back for a moment and consider the scrum from which the hype around Artificial Intelligence arises.

Even without casting [m]any aspersions on the tools as they are bandied about – and there ARE documented, purposeful uses for crunching data with super computers, from folding proteins to finding exoplanets; real stuff and revolutionary for these fields – the general rush to embrace AI for all sorts of, let’s say, less purposeful application should be acknowledged.

After decades of artificial sweeteners, fabrics, food, and foliage, and of course the accompanying, devastation of health impacts and pollution from plastics, PCBs, and many more, a noticeable shift toward the all-natural, hand-selected, bespoke, organic, non-invasive ensued, at least in the marketing materials. This acknowledgement, more human-centered, initially had a kind of desperate last-gasp tone to it that morphed into a realm of preference, if not elevated choice. Thanks, branding!

But it was more than that, and the shift itself coincided with a growing awareness about the dangers of this fakeness and its seamless integration into the activities as well as the mindset that led to and accelerated global warming.

So, now – if you’re keeping score at home – because some of our overlord disruptors in Silicon Valley need to get in on the ground floor of the next new thing, we’re ready to reek further devastation on the information and images we use to navigate the world. It’s not enough to use the verb ‘consume.’ Once we began to use the word and consider ourselves consumers and now just customers instead of citizens, students, patrons, whatever, everything else became easier. And by everything else, I refer to most things unpleasant, empty, lesser, vapid, wasteful of your time, and detrimental to your heart. Yes, doesn’t that sound quaint. Your heart, come now! C’est drôle.

It’s not that the next new thing could destroy us, but that we are so happy to play our part in the destruction. Suddenly we’re helpless to watch another dynamic seize control of how we navigate the physical world as humans. You need not be an AI skeptic to be a tiny bit underwhelmed by that prospect.

The next new thing after this (not investment advice!) will surely consist of selling us back the key to imagination(tm) we somehow lost because everything is fake.

We worry about AI taking jobs but do our part in cheer-leading the takeover, in wonder no less at the ease with which it all happens and the productivity gains sure to follow. In this senseless meandering from one shiny thing to the next, AI might appear to be just another trend we might try, even get used to. Meanwhile, our only job ever has been to discern not the good from the bad, but the real from the fake.

Natural selection, by humans. Darwin should have been more specific.

And by the way, I’m not at all amused by the extent to which this all rhymes with the original rationale I presented for the green blog, oh so [no that] many years ago.

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Making Whether

This Bloomberg Cleaner Tech (!) article about whether humans can control forces beyond our control (the weather) accidentally highlights the ways we ignore the choices and actions well-within our grasp:

In an effort to control future rainstorms, scientists in Japan are working on an ambitious government-backed project involving everything from giant curtains floating on the sea to fields of wind turbines to protect the island nation. Their goal, they say, is to turn extreme weather into “a blessing” — if it works.

The effort feels ripped from the pages of a sci-fi novel, but it’s attracted dozens of researchers across Japan. The team, led by Kosei Yamaguchi, an associate professor at Kyoto University, is focused on reducing so-called “guerrilla” rainstorms that can bring large quantities of rainfall within a short period of time. Their goal is to develop an array of weather control technologies that can reduce deluges to manageable rain and roll them out by 2050.

It’s the shiny-object school of journalism – the very next words in that article are the subhead ‘Dams in the air’ – we need something new/fresh/exciting/risky/improbable/easy to attract eyeballs and viewers and clicks. What actually happens even when this works – and let’s not consider whether it’s the true function (whoopsie!) – is that people simply move on.

That’ simply moving on’ repeated over and over into perfection becomes its own feedback loop. Not sure ‘soothing’ is the right word, but numbness definitely follows. An ensuing restlessness opens the door to helplessness, what can I do, what does any of it matter? At the bottom of that fountain (l’eau impotable) lies despair. And adding in the crucial context for a business publication, of course Billions are at Stake. And they certainly are. But which billions, other billions, are left unconsidered.

Image: cloud seeding rocket (Photographer: Zhang Haiqiang/VCG/Getty Images)

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The Long Slow before the Quickening

Before it takes shape, as it gradually gains hold, the transition to consuming less – basically, what sustainable neutrality reverse is all about, no matter how specifically construed – is happening painfully too slowly. That ‘pace,’ if that’s the right word, explains part of the associated pain that feels all around, as though it were the the only thing accompanying the shift.

News media – ‘legacy’ is a very generous modifier at this point – have little at their disposal beyond the language of cost, suffering, loss, giving up, change in the context of deprivation. We can say this is the wrong framing, but acknowledging the limitation is important, especially if we are going to progress beyond it.

No magic button here, but a recognition of a kind of system-wide failure, of education, articulation, creativity. But that limit is shading another, broader system-wide failure unfolding right in front of us so slowly, slowly as it can and gradually as a massive system/combination of overlapping massive systems does, that it can seem invisible, not believable, deniable.

Maybe it has slipped the bounds of deniability, as several big things begin to occur at once and more quickly. The need to reckon with the slowness and the quickening, while not seeming to be our major challenge, is the key to unlocking all the other challenges. The cognitive dissonance of a world on fire/drowning will lead to despair absent the ability to think our way out of it.

In some quarters, that is indeed a dark thought. But that’s what we’ve got to do. As I’ve written here and elsewhere over the years, the Earth is still a kind of lady in waiting, with waning patience for us to get our act(s) together. She’s going to start touching herself soon and we’re still not close to ready to think about that.

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No new shows

Another episode in the continuing series ‘what does green mean?’ Ahem.

And a sub-them of what does the Screen Actors Guild strike have to do with sustainability – in the business sense, everything. Every. Little. Thing.

The issues of the strike might simultaneously seem clear and be difficulty to parse, especially when the sides are show writers, actors, and creators versus the studios. One might think they would be able to work in concert, at least for the sake for of self-preservation. But panning out just a little, the sand in the gears becomes a bit more apparent. From the third link above:

If you read any of the business, publishing or entertainment press you’ll see stories about hard times in streaming world. This means Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Max, Hulu et al. This is undoubtedly true. You’ve likely seen this in the rising prices you pay and the declining offerings your subscription gets you. I don’t write to dispute any of this. But it’s nothing new under the sun. It is more or less exactly what we’ve seen in the digital new industry. The same pattern.

Entrants raise large sums of money (or use cash on hand from other business lines) and then spend substantially more than your subscription merits. They lose money in order to build market share. At some point the industry becomes mature and then they have to convert the business to one that can sustain itself and make a profit. That means substantial retrenchment. Inevitably that means spending less on the product and charging you more.

Another way of looking at this is that the product as you knew it was never viable. You were benefiting from the excess spending that was aimed at building market share. Now the market is saturated. So that era of great stuff for relatively little money is over. At a basic level what many of us enjoyed as a Golden Age of TV was really this period of excess spending. It was based on a drive for market share, funding lots of great shows with investments aimed at building market share.

Very important to realize that, as Josh points out, streaming media is not a viable business. Without transparency and the upfront, continual re-investment in creative, there is no model, because there is no business. The streaming services don’t own anything – they have platforms and partners. One set of partners is now standing up for themselves but pointing out something very important to us and to the tech companies. If we will  listen. World domination or bust is a faulty Silicon Valley idea and a very costly reality. Maybe they’ll make a show about that. Maybe that’s what they’re doing. Don’t touch that dial.

Image: SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher, left, takes part in a rally by striking writers and actors outside Netflix studio in Los Angeles in July. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press) via LA Times