technology

Key concepts:

Al Gore, Cuba, emergencies

Attention Conservation Notice:

great news for greenies all spoilt by glum Viridian futurism.

(((I'm now living in Torino, where the locals are vigorously rebuilding their former fossil-fuel car capital into an artsy creative-class design metropolis.)))
http://www.torinoworlddesigncapital.it/portale/en/

(((Amazingly, even Fiat, whose decline nearly wrecked this city, has a design hit in their new small urban car. What luck! Or was it design skill?))) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_03/b3967019.htm

(((It's fabulous to be on the ground where Europeans are visibly re-creating their infrastructure in such a design-centric, immediate fashion. There's something exhilarating about it... because it's not a Viridian Pope-Emperor theoretical design engagement; I mean, they're literally ripping up the street outside here and installing light urban rail. I wouldn't call it Oz; it's just an Italian industrial burg; but their previous situation was just so grim, glum, unbearable, palpably doomed and clearly unsustainable that they pretty much had to swallow the blue pill and leap for the unknown. So they suffered == but changed. Now one sees eerie stuff like THIS == a smokestack turned into a steeple dedicated to the Shroud of Turin.)))

Link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45506355@N00/1462923913/

(((I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help. I hope to learn something useful about real-world, hands-on, down-and-dirty, urban sociotechnical transitions. Practically every city in the world has got Torino's former problems, because they're all unsustainable. Changing that is the work of the world. It's happening.)))

(((In the meanwhile, just look at the Viridian issue coverage over here on "Wired Science." I wouldn't precisely call that mainstream science-news == it's WIRED, and also, uh, a new TV show == but they've got something like 50 times my audience, and that's on their bad viewership day. Why would I bother to cover such things when they do it all the time?)))

Links:

Entire Yucatan is a feral Maya garden, not a "wilderness." http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/yucatan-jungles.html#more

Albedo yachts.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/these-ships-cou.html#more

Particle spews.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/pumping-particl.html#more

Turning ocean inside out.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/could-huge-unde.html#more

Vatican goes green.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/the-vatican-goe.html#more

(((Great stuff, eh? I used to do two or three of those a month! Et cetera et cetera.)))

((( And then, of course, Al Gore just won the Nobel. I could let this event pass without a missive to longsuffering Viridian readers.

((( This is the ultimate imprimatur of the intelligentsia chattering-classes. At this point, the climate crisis pretty much wins the global culture war. But only, of course, culturally, and never within the dark terrified den of the American flat-earth contingent, who hate and fear Al and all his works on principle, and always will.)))

(((The good news is there's at least one American statesman left whom the world considers of Nobel class caliber. Gore's a kind of climate Solzhenitsyn in the midst of a dark regime. People from outside the Soviet Union used to look at Nobelist Solzhenitsyn and think: "Well, we can't give up on 'em; here's this heroic guy endlessly scraping up and archiving true data about gulags and torture and prisons, even when the regime denies such things exist." In the continental superpower biz, what goes around comes around.)))

(((I'd like to engage in some brisk triumphalism here... yeah, like I won the goddamn prize by sending a lot of emails... but I prefer to take a lead from Al's own sobering response. Al's not making any big deal of this. I suspect that's because Al has sincerely and actually come to realize, on some bone-deep, post-cynical, wolves-at-the-door level, that there really is a global climate crisis. That's not a vehicle for generating Al Gore worship. It's an emergency. A deep, terrible, lasting emergency whose permanent scars for society all lie ahead of us. The Turinese are certainly changing their local piece of the world == but they got scourged into changing. The bright spots here now are an inverse reflection of their sorrow and mayhem fifteen years ago.)))

Links
Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize == the Bright Green response.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007407.html

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101300284.html

"Gore: Award Puts Focus on Global Warming

"By SETH BORENSTEIN and LISA LEFF "The Associated Press
"Saturday, October 13, 2007; 7:48 AM

"PALO ALTO, Calif. == He spent decades trying to get the world to listen and believe as he did that global warming would destroy the planet unless people changed their behavior, and fast. But after former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their warnings, Gore took only the briefest of bows on a live world stage. He avoided the issue of a U.S. presidential run to 'get back to business' on 'a planetary emergency.'

"'For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency,' Gore said at the offices of the Alliance For Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded last year to engage citizens in solving the problem.

(...)

"If he felt any sense of triumph over the political and scientific critics who belittled or ignored his message, Gore did not betray it during his only public appearance Friday. He learned of his award at 2 a.m. while watching the live TV announcement _ hearing his name amid the Norwegian (((aren't those guys Swedes?))) at his apartment in San Francisco.

"Nine hours later, his tone was somber and his remarks brief. With his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report at his side, he referenced a recent report that concluded the ice caps at the North Pole are melting faster than previously thought and could be gone in 23 years without dramatic action.

"Gore said he planned to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize to the nonprofit alliance he chairs.

"This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now," he said...

(((I see Al's not living in San Francisco for nothing. Global consciousness, rock concerts, yeah, thanks a lot, sir. You deserve the prize. Congrats.)))

(((In the meantime, I wanted to share this long and remarkable document, which details a grueling transition undergone by a society which, unlike Torino, isn't all glossy, Eurocentric and designery.)))

(((Nobody imagines that life changes much in Cuba, because the same dictator's been running things for half a century. I just saw a local presentation by an exiled Cuban author == (periodically, Cuban agents try to push her under a Parisian bus) == and she said that the worst thing about being an exiled Cuban dissident in Europe is that Europeans somehow imagine that Cuba is a socialist paradise with free healthcare and cool mambo music. Also, Che had such a cool haircut and beret.)))

(((Just because US Republicans don't like them doesn't mean they're great, okay? They're authoritarian Reds on a scrawny island whose lives are pitifully delimited in all kinds of bleak, hairshirt-Marxist, soul-crushing ways. This article is by an American leftie Cuban sympathizer who's all perky about how the Cubans transcended their energy emergency. It's all about emergency living. Except you'd never guess it by the way it's phrased. It's a long, long article, but it serves pretty well as an unintentionally sinister portrait of an oppressed, hapless, stricken society in a no-kidding, tear-the-walls down Greenhouse emergency.)))

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This article appeared in the special Peak Oil issue of Permaculture Activist, Spring 2006, (www.permacultureactivist.net). The author, Megan Quinn, is the outreach director for The Community Solution, (www.communitysolution.org), a program of Community Service Inc., a nonprofit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For information about its soon-to-be-released documentary, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" visit its website, e-mail her at megan@communitysolution.org, or call +1 937-767-2161.

"The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil

By Megan Quinn, Permaculture Activist

First published on Sunday, February 26, 2006

Havana, Cuba == At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers' collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant.

"Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

(((I want you to stop here and try to imagine the stark reality of a Communist restaurant run by a workers' collective. In former Communist countries like Russia, there aren't any left. Because those are not "restaurants." The chef hates you. There aren't any "waiters." You have no reason to be there and they do not want to feed you.)))

In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and rooftops.

(((Did you ever wonder why people stopped planting "Victory Gardens" after World War II ended? Because farming parking-lots is hard work. All farming is hard work. That's why subsistence farmers flee farms and go to urban slums.)))

Since the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability. (((Fidel Castro == a prince of sustainability. Hasta La Sustainability Siempre. "Thank you Comrade, my vegetable hash from that parking lot was very sustainable.")))

A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy. (((I don't have a problem with Australians going to assist the Revolution == I think everybody oughta go to Cuba, and Eastern Europe is even more eye-opening == but is it "grass roots" when Australian politicals are doing it? In the old unashamed days, that used to be "Communist International Solidarity," not sustainable grass roots.)))

This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. (((This is a risk one takes when one gets all chummy with petrocratic states. They turn the fuel tap off? Man, you're toast == just like a Californian in the Enron glory days.)))

Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds. (((I didn't believe this assertion at first. I mean, try to imagine the law-and-order problems in an American suburb where the average American == the average! == lost thirty pounds of body weight from lack of groceries. And average Americans have got thirty pounds to lose, easy.)))

"In reality, when this all began, it was a necessity. People had to start cultivating vegetables wherever they could," a tour guide told a documentary crew filming in Cuba in 2004 to record how Cuba survived on far less oil than usual. (((These "tour guide" Potemkin figures are kind of a vanishing breed, but you run into 'em sometimes... I hate to say that they make Fox News look accurate. Nobody can do that.)))

The crew included the staff of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio which teaches about peak oil == the time when oil production world-wide will reach an all-time high and head into an irreversible decline. Some oil analysts believe this may happen within this decade, making Cuba a role model to follow. (((Activists of every stripe always imagine that they're "teaching" stuff.)))

((("Teaching" peak oil... or, you could just be in an oil-dependent power that loses an oil war. Or petrocrats could just charge whatever they please for the stuff. Oil doesn't have to actually run out for the lights to go off, as Californians should remember keenly. Cuba didn't have a "peak," they just had no fuel.)))

"We wanted to see if we could capture what it is in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time," said Pat Murphy, The Community Solution's executive director. (((Amazing how they gazed raptly at "people" and "culture" rather than the Cuban secret police, party apparatus and army.)))

"Cuba has a lot to show the world in how to deal with energy adversity." (((That part, I'm buying. Cuba shows all kinds of stuff, most of it about as attractive as watching your grandma drop thirty pounds from hunger.)))

Scarce petroleum supplies have not only transformed Cuba's agriculture. The nation has also moved toward small-scale renewable energy and developed an energy- saving mass transit system, while maintaining its government-provided health care system whose preventive, locally-based approach to medicine conserves scarce resources.
(((Closely study how this paragraph of perky eco-geek-speak paraphrases the stark reality that Cuba went broke and the people went desperately hungry. If an eco-calamity makes you lose thirty pounds, you'll be hearing a lot of this.)))

The era in Cuba following the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the Special Period. (((Oh brother.)))

Cuba lost 80 percent of its export market and its imports fell by 80 percent. The Gross Domestic Product dropped by more than one third.

"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash," Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, told the documentary crew.

A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock.

There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.

(((Now try to imagine yourself being Al Gore and watching this happen on a planetary scale. You think Al is gonna clutch his prize certificate and think, "Wow, I got the Nobel for warning about this sort of thing?" That's why he's got that glum look. He's paying attention.)))

According to a report on Cuba from Oxfam, an international development and relief agency: "In the cities, buses stopped running, generators stopped producing electricity, factories became silent as graveyards. Obtaining enough food for the day became the primary activity for many, if not most, Cubans." (((Note that Oxfam doesn't chime in about how Cubans got all sustainable and carbon-neutral due to imitating graveyards.)))

In part due to the continuing US embargo, but also because of the loss of a foreign market, Cuba couldn't obtain enough imported food. Furthermore, without a substitute for fossil-fuel based large-scale farming, agricultural production dropped drastically.

So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets.

Since they couldn't fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

"There are infinite small solutions," said Roberto Sanchez from the Cuban-based Foundation for Nature and Humanity. (((You gotta love an entity with a soft, mushy title like that one.)))

"Crises or changes or problems can trigger many of these things which are basically adaptive. We are adapting." (((In the climate crisis, we're gonna hear a lot of this kind of glum ideological lacquer. "The lawn is on fire! There's a flood in the basement!" "Stop whining, for such problems trigger a basically adaptive behavior." You wouldn't want to rebel against Nature and Humanity, I hope.)))

A New Agricultural Revolution

Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinery with oxen, (((boy, there's a step forward == ask any Indian))) and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation distances. Today an estimated 50 percent of Havana's vegetables come from inside the city, (((outdoing the siege of Stalingrad))) while in other Cuban towns and cities urban gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they need. (((You've got too many squash and green beans in that dirtpile where you used to own a car. "Wow, I have more than 100 percent of what I need!")))

In turning to gardening, individuals and neighborhood organizations (((read: party apparatus))) took the initiative by identifying idle land in the city, cleaning it up, and planting. (((At least, being a dictatorship of the proletariat, they don't have much trouble with NIMBYism and eminent domain issues.)))

When the Australian permaculturists came to Cuba they set up the first permaculture demonstration project with a $26,000 grant from the Cuban government.

Out of this grew the Foundation for Nature and Humanity's urban permaculture demonstration project and center in Havana.

"With this demonstration, neighbors began to see the possibilities of what they can do on their rooftops and their patios," said Carmen López, director of the urban permaculture center, as she stood on the center's rooftop amongst grape vines, potted plants, and compost bins made from tires.

(((It's kind of touching to see these "permaculture activists" interviewing their own cadres to confirm the glowing success of their "demonstration projects.")))

Since then the movement has been spreading rapidly across Havana's barrios. So far López' urban permaculture center has trained more than 400 people in the neighborhood in permaculture and distributes a monthly publication, "El Permacultor." (((That sounds pretty great until you realize we've got two thousand people in Viridian List and we never even got a Cuban state grant.)))

"Not only has the community learned about permaculture," according to López, "we have also learned about the community, helping people wherever there is need." (((Given that Marxism is all about that issue, you have to wonder what they've been learning since Fidel took power in the early 1960s.)))

One permaculture student, Nelson Aguila, an engineer-turned-farmer, (((and this represents a major civilizational advance, presumably))) raises food for the neighborhood on his integrated rooftop farm. On just a few hundred square feet he has rabbits and hens and many large pots of plants.

Running free on the floor are gerbils, which eat the waste from the rabbits, and become an important protein source themselves. ((("Mom! Mom, the former engineer has brought us gerbils!" I hope they've got this post-slaughter waste-consumption thing cleared with the spongiform encephalopathy. What do they feed the gerbil waste to?)))

"Things are changing," Sanchez said. "It's a local economy. In other places people don't know their neighbors. They don't know their names. People don't say 'hello' to each other. Not here." (((Yeah == because if you don't have a steady source for fried gerbils, you're gonna lose thirty pounds.)))

Since going from petrochemical intensive agricultural production to organic farming and gardening, Cuba now uses 21 times less pesticide than before the Special Period.

(((That phrase "Before the Special Period" sure has a chilly tang, doesn't it? "Did you know Al Gore once won the Nobel?" "Oh, that was Before the Special Period." "Both my grandparents were alive Before the Special Period." "Before the Special Period, these tires were on my car instead of serving as compost heaps.")))

They have accomplished this with their large-scale production of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, exporting some of it to other Latin American countries. (((Until Chavez started shipping them subsidized oil, and then, whew! Thank God!)))

Though the transition to organic production and animal traction was necessary, the Cubans are now seeing the advantages.

"One of the good parts of the crisis was to go back to the oxen," said Miguel Coyula, a community development specialist. "Not only do they save fuel, they do not compact the soil the way the tractor does, and the legs of the oxen churn the earth."

(((I hate to think of a place where farmers hide their tractors from the "community development specialists." When you think how many bad Socialist Realist novels were written about the heroic effort to get tractors... In the peasants and workers states, Communism and tractors were practically synonymous. But no, now those dainty little oxen hooves have become organic plows somehow... yeah, a political rhetoric is a multipurpose tool.)))

"The Cuban agricultural, conventional, 'Green Revolution' system never was able to feed the people," Sanchez said. "It had high yields, but was oriented to plantation agriculture. We exported citrus, tobacco, sugar cane and we imported the basic things. So the system, even in the good times, never fulfilled people's basic needs."

(((Yeah, and once the Russians, who bought those exports, shut off the taps, trade withered and the island could suddenly aspire to the autonomous status of glorious North Korea.)))

Drawing on his permaculture knowledge, Sanchez said, "You have to follow the natural cycles, so you hire nature to work for you, not work against nature. To work against nature, you have to waste huge amounts of energy." (((Isn't "hiring" nature just a tad exploitative? Where's nature's union and free health system?)))

Energy Solutions
Because most of Cuba's electricity had been generated from imported oil, the shortages affected nearly everyone on the island. (((One wonders who the unaffected were. Security services, I'd be guessing.)))

Scheduled rolling blackouts several days per week lasted for many years.

Without refrigerators, food would spoil.

Without electric fans, the heat was almost unbearable in a country that regularly has temperatures in the 80s and 90s. (((Or higher. Most every summer.)))

The solutions to Cuba's energy problems were not easy. (((Though I don't doubt there was some hairshirt ideologue eager to make all that sound progressive.)))

Without money, it couldn't invest in nuclear power and new conventional fossil fuel plants or even large-scale wind and solar energy systems. Instead, the country focused on reducing energy consumption and implementing small-scale renewable energy projects. (((Yeah, that sounds all grass-rootsy and romantic till you get to those years of rolling blackouts and the spoilt food.)))

Ecosol Solar and Cuba Solar are two renewable energy organizations leading the way. They help develop markets for renewable energy, sell and install systems, perform research, publish newsletters, and do energy efficiency studies for large users. (((Reading stuff like this can be a useful corrective. Like: somewhere in this world is the world's most evil, backward and exploitative solar energy company. I'm not saying they're in Cuba == maybe they're a merciless voodoo warlord solar-energy company somewhere in the war-torn Congo. But they're somewhere, and they've got solar panels and they're awful.)))

Ecosol Solar has installed 1.2 megawatts of solar photovoltaic in both small household systems (200 watt capacity) and large systems (15-50 kilowatt capacity). In the United States 1.2 megawatts would provide electricity to about 1000 homes, but can supply power to significantly more houses in Cuba where appliances are few, conservation is the custom, and the homes are much smaller. (((And the homes smell of solar-fried gerbils.)))

About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar's installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. (((Look, the entire island is a "social program" and "community center." It's a Communist society. If you don't count hard-currency hotels packed with guys spending euros.)))

It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers. (((This is teaching an entire generation of rural Cuban kids to hate solar power as the very symbol of their backwardness, but what the heck; there's no power in their grid anyway, and maybe they'll at least learn to read.)))

A visit to "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp.

Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the "Round Table." (((Yeah, I bet that program's real newsy.)))

Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together. (((Has Jerry Mander been informed of this?)))

"The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years," said Bruno Beres, a director of Cuba Solar. "Only when we [humans] arrived and changed the way we use energy was the sun not enough. So the problem is with our society, not with the world of energy." (((The invention of fire was also clearly a problem.)))

Transportation - A System of Ride Sharing (((It just trundles right along, bearing its bundles of red-green ideological joy.)))

Cubans also faced the problem of providing transportation on a reduced energy diet.

Solutions came from ingenious Cubans, who often quote the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

With little money or fuel, Cuba now moves masses of people during rush hour in Havana. In an inventive approach, virtually every form of vehicle, large and small, was used to build this mass transit system. Commuters ride in hand-made wheelbarrows, buses, other motorized transport and animal-powered vehicles. (((Even if Cubans are "the masses," a heterogenous crawl of hand-made wheelbarrows is not a "mass transit system.")))

One special Havana transit vehicle, nicknamed a "camel," is a very large metal semi-trailer, pulled by a standard semi-truck tractor, which holds 300 passengers.

(((The "Transportation of Cuba Pool." Man, FlickR is awesome.)))
http://www.flickr.com/groups/transportation_of_cuba/pool/

(((A "Havana Camel.")))
http://www.flickr.com/photos/r-harder/317773656/

Bicycles and motorized two-passenger rickshaws are also prevalent in Havana, while horse drawn carts and large old panel trucks are used in the smaller towns. (((Large old heavily polluting panel trucks, but let's gloss over that.)))

Government officials in yellow garb pull over nearly empty government vehicles and trucks on Havana's streets and fill them with people needing a ride. Chevys from the 1950s cruise along with four people in front and four more in back. (((Imagine the joy of being brusquely waved to the curb by one of these "government officials in yellow garb.")))

A donkey cart with a taxi license nailed to the frame also travels Cuba's streets. Many trucks were converted to passenger transport by welding steps to the back so riders could get on and off with ease. (((Scientific socialist production buries inefficient capital, making the exploitation of man by man a thing of the past.)))

Health Care and Education - National Priorities

Even though Cuba is a poor country, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product of only $3,000 per year (putting them in the bottom third of all nations), life expectancy is the same as in the U.S., and infant mortality is below that in the U.S.

The literacy rate in Cuba is 97 percent, the same as in the U.S. Cuba's education system, as well as its medical system is free. (((I'm all for free health care, but not really nuts about the prospect of being in the bottom third of all nations. You'd think that a society with so much savoir faire and unleashed ingenuity would rank in a little above, say, fascist-plagued Chile.)))

When Cubans suffered through their version of a peak oil crisis, they maintained their free medical system, one of the major factors that helped them to survive. Cubans repeatedly emphasize how proud they are of their system. (((Cue agitprop.)))

Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was one doctor for every 2000 people. Now there is a doctor for every 167 people. Cuba also has an international medical school and trains doctors to work in other poor countries. Each year there are 20,000 Cuban doctors abroad doing this kind of work. (((With the obligatory nationalist bragging taken care of, we can now return to the topic of permaculture.)))

With meat scarce and fresh local vegetables in abundance since 1995, Cubans now eat a healthy, low-fat, nearly vegetarian, diet. They also have a healthier outdoor lifestyle and walking and bicycling have become much more common.

"Before, Cubans didn't eat that many vegetables. Rice and beans and pork meat was the basic diet," Sanchez from the Foundation for Nature and Humanity said. "At some point necessity taught them, and now they demand [vegetables]." (((I wonder what they really demand. I bet they wouldn't turn up their noses at a 14-ounce T-bone steak with all the trimmings.)))

Doctors and nurses live in the community where they work and usually above the clinic itself. In remote rural areas, three-story buildings are constructed with the doctor's office on the bottom floor and two apartments on the second and third floors, one for the doctor and one for the nurse. (((In other words, the Cuban medical profession is a rural mom-and-pop shop.)))

In the cities, the doctors and nurses always live in the neighborhoods they serve. They know the families of their patients and try to treat people in their homes.

"Medicine is a vocation, not a job," exclaimed a Havana doctor, demonstrating the motivation for her work. In Cuba 60 percent of the doctors are women. (((One wonders why pink-collar jobs are ritually demeaned and disenfranchised == likely its this time-honored willingness of women to go out and labor for social-capital rather than actual pay.)))

Education is considered the most important social activity in Cuba. Before the revolution, there was one teacher for every 3,000 people. Today the ratio is one for every 42 people, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 16. Cuba has a higher percentage of professionals than most developing countries, and with 2 percent of the population of Latin America, Cuba has 11 percent of all the scientists. (((Another state poster glued here... how come all these teachers and scientists can't boost the economy out of the bottom ranks? China is Communist, everybody hates and fears them much more than they do Cubans, and yet they're rockin' it.)))

In an effort to halt migration from the countryside to the city during the Special Period, (((try to imagine the scenes of woe and mayhem there))) higher education was spread out into the provinces, expanding learning opportunities and strengthening rural communities. (((Kind of a "send those weak intelligentsia to the countryside" Red Guard innovation. Bet those scientists got a lot of labwork done in those quiet, scholastic retreats.)))

Before the Special Period there were only three institutions of higher learning in Cuba. Now there are 50 colleges and universities throughout the country, seven in Havana. (((Why?)))

The Power of Community

Throughout its travels, the documentary crew saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people, often hearing the phrase "Sí, se puede" or "Yes it can be done." (((They're also a handsome people who can dance like angels and their ice cream is really tasty.)))

People spoke of the value of "resistir" or "resistance," showing their determination to overcome obstacles. And they have lived under a U.S. economic blockade since the early 1960s, viewed as the ultimate test of the Cuban ability to resist. (((The US has lived under a Cuban economic blockade since the early 1960s, leading American food producers to put fructose corn syrup into prepared foods instead of Cuban sugarcane sucrose sugar, causing hapless Americans to bloat as drastically as overfed Cuban gerbils. Also, no decent cigars.)))

There is much to learn from Cuba's response to the loss of cheap and abundant oil. (((Yeah. It shows that a repellent regime deprived of oil fails to collapse, becoming even more repellent, while disguising the sufferings of the population with wads of predigested green rhetoric. And: no matter how bad things get in the climate crisis, there's gonna be some moron wandering around claiming that all the mayhem is great and should be construed as a civilizational advance. Pray that this guy doesn't have a gun, a uniform and the power of arrest.)))

The staff of The Community Solution sees these lessons as especially important for people in developing countries, who make up 82 percent of the world's population and live more on life's edge. (((Yeah: "Third World" people, always be leary of white guys with "appropriate" "solutions" that they would never dream of imposing on themselves.)))

But developed countries are also vulnerable to shortages in energy. And with the coming onset of peak oil, all countries will have to adapt to the reality of a lower energy world.

With this new reality, the Cuban government changed its 30-year motto from "Socialism or Death" to "A Better World is Possible." (((Did Cuba really do that? That's like changing the motto "Of the People, By the People, For the People" to "How about some extra fries with that?")))

Government officials allowed private entrepreneurial farmers ((("kulak class enemies"))) and neighborhood organizations ((("Marxist party cadres"))) to use public land to grow and sell their produce.

They pushed decision-making down to the grassroots level and encouraged initiatives in their neighborhoods. ((("You're on your own, sucker.")))

They created more provinces. (((Don't blame Castro, blame the provincial flak-catchers.)))

They encouraged migration back to the farms and rural areas and reorganized their provinces to be in-line with agricultural needs. (((Forced relocation out of cities before they implode.)))

From The Community Solution's viewpoint, (((I know I've been going on a bit here, but this is ALL the "Community Solution's viewpoint" == this whole thing is a put-up job without a whisper of dissent))) Cuba did what it could to survive, despite its ideology of a centralized economy.

In the face of peak oil and declining oil production, will America do what it takes to survive, in spite of its ideology of individualism and consumerism? (((Why not worry about Australia? They've got the very same problems, plus no rain.)))

Will Americans come together in community, as Cubans did, in the spirit of sacrifice and mutual support? (((Or will we all end up in the handbasket to hell of Cuban reality, with spies on every block, commandeered cars crammed with strangers, wheelbarrow traffic jams and food grown on the levelled sites of former strip malls and fried-food shacks? Yes, yes, I know this sounds very James Howard Kunstler == there are times when one has to appreciate the prophet of a long emergency. At least the guy writes in real English instead of a numbing, tapioca nomenklatura-ese.)))

"There is climate change, the price of oil, the crisis of energy," Beres from Cuba Solar said, listing off the challenges humanity faces. "What we must know is that the world is changing and we must change the way we see the world."

(((Or we can face the facts on the ground without blinding ourselves with political spin, which may be Al Gore's greatest gift to his fellow politicals. He knows they're in major trouble even if they can't force inconvenient truths out of their mouths.)))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
WELL, HE GOT THE NOBEL,
ANYHOW, AND YEAH, I
COULDN'T BE HAPPIER
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

SHARE festival 2008, SHARE contest, digital art prize

Attention Conservation Notice:

an announcement probably pretty typical of the work I will be up to for the next seven months. It's about Italian cyberculture and design.

Competition Announcement: Share Prize 2008 Introduction

SHARE AWARD : DIGITAL ART PRIZE 2008 Competition announcement
Art. 1
Subject
Piemonte Share Festival announces the second edition of the Share Prize 2008 for digital art. The competition jury will award a prize of E2,500.00 to the work (published or unpublished) which best represents experimentation between arts and new technologies.
(((I am the chairman of this competition jury. Yes, me! As all entrants to Viridian Design Contests know, I take such duties with lethal seriousness. Are you an experimental new-media digital-arts type with a hankering to stun all Europe? You are? Then trot that thing over pronto.)))

The candidates for the prize (a short list of a maximum of 6 competitors) will be guests at the 4th edition of the Share Festival, taking place in Turin March 2008 at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin. In order to be declared winner of the prize, every artist has to take part in the 4th edition of Share Festival, by preparing his or her work of art, to be properly evaluated by jury and public.

The organization is available at offering all the costs regarding the preparation of the 6 selected works as well as travel and accommodation expenses for the artists, and, possibly, the prize itself. (((That's right, we will FLY YOU TO EUROPE and likely feed you spaghetti there, given that the Euro is at an unprecedented $1.38. That'll might even make up for mysterious Italian withholding taxes on the Italian prize.)))

Nomination of 6 candidates for the prize: by November, 2007. The announcement will be published on the following website: www.toshare.it The winner will be announced in March 2008 during the award ceremony at Share Festival. (((And I certainly plan to attend that and to congratulate the winner personally.)))

Art. 2
Aim
The prize aims to discover, promote and sustain digital arts. (((Who can't like THAT?!)))

Art.3
Entry Conditions
The contest is open to any Italian and foreign artist using digital technology as a language of creative expression, in all its shapes and formats and in combination with analogical technologies and/or any other material (i.e. computer animation / visual effects, digital music, interactive art, net art, software art, live cinema/vj, audiovisual performance, etc.). Each artist or group can enter up to 3 works. Artists who are part of a group participating in the contest may also enter up to 3 individual works.

Participating entries must be registered on the site www.toshare.it using the registration form.

Registration and description of the competition entry forms should be either in English or Italian; English is preferred.

Art. 4
Conditions of exclusion

The competition is not open to:

• Jury members, organising body, their partners or relatives up to the sixth degree inclusive (((That's right, I can't plan to enter myself! Even though I am a net.art critic of long standing, and I not only know what I like, I even know why it's good!)))
• employees or collaborators of Jury members or announcement committee
• anyone who drew up the competition or any associated document
• any person working as a civil servant in Public Institutions or Administrations unless it is specifically permitted by the administration of affiliation (((This is Europe, they have to say stuff like that)))
• unfinished projects or work (((This means you, design students == you actually have to finish the project and ship it.)))

Art. 5
Deadlines
a. Entries must be registered on the site www.toshare.it by using the registration form only.

b. Registration must take place by 12.00 pm on 30 September 2007. Entries after that date, for whatever reason, will be excluded from the competition. (((That's why I'm telling you NOW.)))

Art. 6
Required documents
Candidates must fill in the on line registration form available at www.toshare.it
Applications must contain the following information:

• Title of the work
• C.V. of artist or artists (in case of new groups of artists, each member's C.V. is necessary)
• Concise description of the work (max. 150 words).
• URL documents concerning the work itself, where further details of the work can be found (see Art. 6bis)
• No material must be sent (paper, DVD, CD, etc) in addition to the specific requests of the public notice. Art. 6bis Further details on URL document Every participant must provide further details from those given in the information on a specific web site. It must contain:
• Description of the work (max 500 words) explaining the main concept and technologies used
• Images (.jpg) and/or video (.avi) and/or audio (.mp3) of the work
• C.V. of artist or artists (in case of new groups of artists, each member's C.V. is necessary) NB: competitors are responsible for the design and costs incurred in producing the Web Site regarding the work for the contest.

Art. 7
Selection jury
The jury, meeting in non-public sessions, will select 6 works among those presented for the contest within November, 2007. The candidates for the prize (a short list of a maximum of 6 competitors) will be asked to take part in the 4th edition of the Share Festival, taking place in Turin March 2007 at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin. (((An academy not far from the romantic banks of the River Po, an area of slanting sunbeams, cute cobbled plazas, straw-wrapped Chianti bottles, sunglassed babes in tailored Milanese suits and stiletto heels, yes, when they said "Belle Arti" they weren't kidding about it)))

The announcement will be published on the following website: www.toshare.it
The winner will be announced on March 2008 during the award ceremony at Share Festival.

The jury is composed by:
Bruce Sterling (writer and journalist, Austin) - chairman
Piero Gilardi (artist, Turin) Anne Nigten (managing director, v2 e DEAF, Rotterdam) Oscar Abril Ascaso (curator Sonar, Barcelona) Stefano Mirti (architect, Interaction design Lab, Milano
(((That's right, your jury's from Austin, Turin, Rotterdam, Barcelona and Milan == so try not to suck!)))
Art. 8
Information
The Contest Information offices are located at Association The Sharing premises. General coordination: Manuela De Caro tel. +39.011. 588.36.93 faxes: 0039.011.83.91304 manuela.decaro@toshare.it
Art. 9
Property and rights concerning projects and selected works
With the registration to the contest, the authors of the winning works grant The Sharing Association the right to publish and reproduce the works, totally or partly, as part of cultural promotion.

Art.10
Publishing this notice
This notice is made up of three pages and will be published via Internet at the following address: www.toshare.it. News will also be available via all interested parties.
*two thousands five hundreds gross taxes and national insurance contributions (((I'll let you know when I figure out what that means.)))

Manuela De Caro
SHARE FESTIVAL
experiences in digital cultures

manuela.decaro@toshare.it
www.toshare.it

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O LIFE IS A DASHING AND BOLD ADVENTURE,
AS THE FORTUNE COOKIE LIKES TO SAY
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

Serbia, climate crisis, Jasmina Tesanovic

Attention Conservation Notice:

guest-star Viridian pundit is wife of Bruce Sterling.

Links: Today was the hottest day ever recorded in Belgrade, Serbia. Broke the previous heat record by two-and-a-half degrees Celsius. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6913152.stm

Naturally, I was there. Hey, I could have been worse off in Tewksbury. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6914254.stm

I'd be betting that when they start counting the elderly ex-Communist dead in this region, they're going to stack up in surprising, French-heat-wave style numbers. Although we Viridians have been predicting and describing these calamities for years now, surprisingly, nobody in power seems used to them yet. Even the victims still act a little surprised. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/24/news/heat.php

I try not to yield to the temptation to repeat the obvious to 2,000 people day after day, though, when mayhem arrives on my doorstep, I still feel that Viridian urge. Nevertheless, I have to shut this list down soon. It makes no sense to mimic news that's on the front page of Google News every day. And it's getting louder. Every year. All those NGOs, corporate-funded professionals, energy speculators... let them do the heavy lifting, dammit!
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/

It's not like the climate crisis is news to people in power; they all know it's there, like AIDS, or a fire in the basement; they just wonder what they can possibly do about their drowning, baking constituents. http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/dimas/index_en.htm http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/brown-links-floods-to-climate-change/2007/07/24/1185043111436.html

Besides, I've now come up with a new,
non-Viridian design-journalism scheme which is going to occupy all my efforts for about six months! Rather than being global and theoretical and involving a lot of eco-handwringing, it's going to involve stuff like heavy industry and lots of cool conventions and glamorous parties! Furthermore, rather than being parochial, Texan and American, it will have a decisively Italian flavor! Did you know that Torino, Italy, is the official 'world capital of design' for 2008? Well, neither does anybody else, and I plan to help change that. Link:
http://www.torinoworlddesigncapital.it/portale/en/

You can help, too. There will be more news in September. In August I'm fleeing the heat by heading into the hills to finish my novel. Hey, somebody's gotta write 'em.

In the meantime, here is an article by Viridian guest star Jasmina Tesanovic.

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmina_Tesanovic http://blog.b92.net/blog/59/Jasmina%20Tesanovic/

Serbia and the Flames

Today was the hottest day in Serbia ever since the temperature has been measured, 45 C.

If we Serbs were truly interested in our survival as a nation, we'd be scrambling to get some modern hardware for dealing with ecological catastrophes. It's been ten years since Milosevic sold off our forest fire-fighting aircraft and pocketed the money.

We would talk together seriously about last year's massive floods throughout the Danube basin, about this year's deadly heat wave in Serbia and throughout the Balkans, about the state of emergency in our neighbor Greece, about the electricity shortages and blackouts throughout the region, about the woods of our homeland set on fire.

Even tidy Britain is being overwhelmed with their flood catastrophes, while here in Serbia we lack any organized emergency-response because the Serbian state is, by its nature, in an emergency situation all the time.

Instead, the Serbian Parliament spent this day discussing Kosovo: angling for Russian friendship to fend off the US demands, while dodging EU pressure to simply let go of that long-lost province. They have no air conditioning inside the Serbian Parliament, so delegates were comically fanning themselves with official papers while the presidents were sweating in their stuffy official suits.

The Russians promised us practical help for the smoldering forests of the border, but they have yet to send a single Russian helicopter. Meanwhile the firemen and local peasants are saving our burning forest heritage with raw courage and mostly hand-tools.

When will we overcome our local obsessions and realize we are part of a world in a general crisis? The climate crisis isn't for rich countries, it's for every country. Especially us. We had Floods in 2006, now Fires in 2007 == the cause is in the Air, and we will end up with no Earth.

Global warming is invisible... it steals up on us like a slow fever, but our daily lives are being transformed by it. Kids can't get milk at school, eggs might be poisoned with salmonella, the crops are wilting in the fields.

My friend, a pianist, sews clothes by her air-conditioner instead of playing her piano.

I am singing after dark instead of writing at noon.

My friend is writing a book about the future but is not sure if it is the same book he started anymore.

My young friend, the web designer, had her computer collapse. So she went out to walk her three dogs and collapsed from the heat in two hours.

My friend activist from inner Serbia is sleeping in an office where there is an air conditioner. Two weeks ago before, she condemned air conditioners because they burn fossil fuels and make the global warming worse. She also has the very Serbian superstition that cold drafts of air are not good for your bones. Well, any hot draft of air over 40C does not cool your body == it heats your body and can kill you from heatstroke.

My pregnant Albanian friend from Pristina sleeps heavily day and night while her friends in Kosovo demonstrate for some unilateral declaration of independence.

If there is any justice in this injustice, it is that global warming has no borders or nationality, and yet it has guilty and victims. Guilty: all of us who ignored inconvenient truths and sacrificed the ecological conscience for other more or less legitimate priorities. Victims: everyone yet to be born on our damaged planet; when crops wilt and forests burn down to black stumps, does it matter if that wasteland is called Kosovo or Serbia?

Year by year, mankind is becoming justly afraid of our vengeful climate. I have an epiphany: our world in 1999 is becoming all the world. No electrical, no water, no business-as-usual: fear. I remember those bombing days of Serbia and Kosovo when everyone in this land, without exception, was a refugee under a scowling enemy sky.

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
IT'S NOT ABOUT SURVIVING;
IT'S ABOUT PREVAILING
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, climate crisis, nuclear war, Russian petrocracy, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, Khaki Green, apocalyptophilia

Attention Conservation Notice:

some Russian worrying a lot about the steady approach of doomsday.

(((We Viridians have often referred to the climate crisis as "the dirty little sister of nuclear armageddon," but there is some small possibility that a mere nuclear war is the cleaner little sister of a climate armageddon.)))

(((So there's something charming about having lived long enough to see a Russian soberly discussing a Dr. Strangelove Automatic Doomsday Climate Calamity. This guy's not just a little upset about it == he's petrified. Given that Russia is today's number-one
petrocracy and almost as fussy about selling fossil fuels as the USA is about suicidally buying them, this rant can be construed as good news. Remember how worried people were about a rapidly accelerating out of control nuclear arms race that nobody could stop? Well, it stopped. Today we've got an out of control unsustainable fossil-fuel race. And here's a Russian telling other Russians about it.)))

Links:
The Russians: a handsome, whimsical people.
http://www.faceyourpockets.com/index1.html

The Americans: in a Soviet-style ideological delirium and doomed to a similar collapse. Says French demographics expert. Okay, fine, but THEN what? It's not like Russia vaporized and went away just because their economy made no sense.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml

The birth of agriculture: a prehistoric global response to climate change.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2007/06/29/plant-domestication-early-and-often

"We are about to leave the Holocene." Re-entering the Holocene ought to be pretty bumpy, too.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006967.html

The Chinese. Far more seriously worried about their own energy consumption than Americans are.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/24/content_6285765.htm

Swiss can no longer sell Swiss snow to global Indians. "We lost the glacier." So everybody's catching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntOjGVRimPc http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/video_prod_en.cfm?type=detail&prodid=1025&src= 1

Feel much better about imminent apocalypse through buying a neat-o bamboo PC!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/27/asus_ecobook/

Arnold Schwarzenegger gets standing ovation from a thousand American mayors. "I was so happy and so delighted when I found out that you've made climate change No. 1 on your 10-point plan to strengthen the nation," he told the crowd in the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza ballroom.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayors24jun24,1,5778707.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

Austinites conspire to seize solar-power market, will talk to anybody, even Germans and Japanese.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:497017

Impact Of Climate Change Equal To Nuclear War by Viktor Danilov-Danilyan

Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jun 29, 2007

Global climate change defies forecasting. Unprecedented heat, floods, droughts and typhoons brought about by climate change cause tremendous damage. The number of such calamities has doubled over the last 10 years, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Some experts think there is nothing to worry about == periodic alterations in the climate are normal. Some believe the general alarm is the result of a mere lack of knowledge. But then, the danger posed by climate change is no smaller than the danger posed by nuclear war, and we have to face and evaluate it, however vague it might appear.

There is no way to hide from global warming. In fact, the repercussions of climate change might be even worse because the entire climatic system will be thrown out of balance. The average surface temperature is going up, and so are annual deviations from it.

Natural calamities go hand in hand with warming.

(((So do unnatural calamities; if we have an unbearable climate disaster that creates a nuclear war, that'll have to rank as an ultimate Wexelblat Disaster. Did you know Alan's got his own Wikipedia entry here? Kinda awesome reading, eh?))) Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wexelblat_disaster

Disastrous floods are getting more frequent in Russia and many other countries. They account for more than half of weather-related dangers.

Floods alternate with droughts in European Russia's south. Heavy rains in spring and early summer cause floods, after which there is not a single raindrop for three months, destroying those crops that survive the floods.

The Kuban and Stavropol regions, Russia's breadbasket, permanently face this danger.

(((Why did the Soviet Union really collapse? The Reds took the Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, lavishly applied ideological delirium, consistently couldn't feed themselves or anyone else, sold fossil fuels to get bread, then went broke. So says Yegor Gaidar, anyhow. Basically, this means that Lysenkoism, the political inability to scientifically face a very basic resource problem, eventually doomed the Soviet Union.)))
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Economic disasters caused by natural calamities are becoming ever more frequent. The World Bank estimates Russia's weather damages, largely caused by climate change, at an annual 30-60 billion rubles, roughly $1-$2 billion. (((Kyoto == "too expensive to implement.")))

Floods, usually caused by typhoons, are also frequent in the Russian Far East-the Primorye and Khabarovsk territories, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

Winter floods are typical of the Arctic Ocean basin.

The spring inundation of the Lena, the largest Eurasian river, washed away the town and port of Lensk in 2001. The town was rebuilt on a new site. The evacuation and ensuing housing and infrastructural reconstruction cost an exorbitant sum. (((At least they did rebuild it, unlike Holly Beach, Louisiana.)))
Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Beach,_Louisiana

Average warming in Russia due to anthropogenic factors is about one degree. In Siberia, it is four to six degrees == enough to shrink the permafrost area. Pernicious effects are visible even now, with the borders of the taiga, forest tundra and tundra itself receding northward == suffice it to compare space photographs from 30 years ago with the latest ones.

The change endangers oil pipelines (((as you can see, Alan Wexelblat fully BELONGS in Wikipedia))) and the entire infrastructure of Siberia's west and northwest.

Permafrost thawing has not yet achieved a scale that poses a threat of infrastructural accidents == but we can never be too careful. ((("Wexelblat Permafrost Disaster.")))

Warming also poses a great danger to regional flora and fauna, which have to undergo a very painful adaptation process. Considerable warming will result in changes to ecosystems, for example, broadleaved woods ousting the coniferous taiga. Warming makes the climate unstable, with bitter frosts and sultry summers, which is bad for both forest types == conifers suffer in the heat, while broadleaf trees do not survive frosty winters. So the biota will face many shocks before the climate stabilizes. (((Assuming that the climate EVER "stabilizes.")))

Warming is also a major problem for marshes and the permafrost, which will release accumulated methane and carbon dioxide gas. Gas hydrates from the northern sea shelf will vaporize. All that will drastically increase atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, spurring the warming on in a vicious circle.

The environmental balance has already been upset. Many plants and animals will suffer. In particular, the polar bear's habitat is doomed to shrink, and millions of wild geese, eiders, brants and other birds will lose half of their nesting grounds in a matter of 20-40 years. A three to four degree warming may interrupt the food chain of the tundra ecosystem, lead to the extinction of many species.

Invasions of ecosystems by alien species are one of the worst manifestations of global warming. Thus, locusts are moving north, and have become frequent guests in the Samara Region on the Volga and certain other areas. The mite habitat is rapidly expanding, too. Pests migrate north far quicker than the border between, for example, the taiga and the forest tundra shifts.

Once they find themselves in a foreign ecosystem, pests become gangster species, crowding out the native biota with dynamic multiplication. ((("Gangster species." One can see that this article was written for domestic Russian consumption.))) Climate change thus brings epidemics in its wake. Subtropical malarial mosquitoes now feel at home in the area around Moscow.

Scientists who welcome warming as a boon for Russian agriculture are entirely wrong. True, the vegetation period is becoming longer == but this benefit is outweighed by the hazard of spring frosts destroying young crops.

Another argument in favor of warming is the energy that would be saved by a reduced need for heating. But then, the United States uses more energy for air conditioning than Russia does for heating even now.

How can humankind fight climate change? It's no use opposing Nature == but we can reduce pollution and other adverse environmental effects brought about by humankind. The problem appeared on the political agenda in the 20th century.

The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, which brought together several thousand scientists, including Russians.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force in 1994. One hundred and ninety countries have joined it since then. The document determines the scope of the international partnership to deal with the issue, whose first achievement was the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

Intensive economic activities are surely bad for the climate. That is why the protocol demands a reduction in air pollution caused by methane, carbon dioxide and other gases. (((It isn't "economic activity" that wrecks climate, it's "greenhouse emissions" that wreck climate. They're not the same thing, and they've only been related for about 200 years.)))

Russia ratified the protocol along with another 166 countries, and has been true to its pledge. It is introducing new, clean technologies for industry and everyday life. Cleaner air will help reverse the trend of climate change.

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan is director of the Institute of Water Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

(((Defeated on the facts, fossil-fuel fans like to resort to nationalist arguments. "But he's Russian! Russians sell oil, don't they?" Of course he's Russian; he also exhaled carbon dioxide while writing the article, and most of the Internet, with the exception of Google, Gopod bless them, spewed emissions while transferring his sentiments to your computer screen. If you were born before 1989, you paid for the Cold War. The point isn't who paid to prepare for Apocalypse == the point is that we successfully got it together not to have one.)))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
YES, WE COULD HAVE
BLOWN OURSELVES TO
SHREDS AT A MOMENT'S
NOTICE. WE DIDN'T
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

Khaki Green, British military, Air Marshall Jock Stirrup, military implications of the climate crisis

Attention Conservation Notice:

keenly depressing, yet something of a tribute to Viridian foresight.

Links:

Climate crisis in former location, central Texas: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/06/climate-crisis-.html

Climate crisis in current location, southeast Europe: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/06/planet-ark-five.html

Link:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42799/story.htm

Armies Must Ready for Global Warming Role – Britain

UK: June 26, 2007

LONDON – Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain's armed forces said on Monday.

Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning.

Link: Air Marshal Sir Graham Eric Stirrup, (1949 - ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Stirrup

But he said first analyses showed planners would not have to switch their geographical focus, because the areas most vulnerable to climate change are those where security risks are already high.

(((Interesting, isn't it? The places where we've already got hell are gonna have more hell.)))

"Just glance at a map of the areas most likely to be affected and you are struck at once by the fact that they are exactly those parts of the world where we see fragility, instability and weak governance today.

"It seems to me rather like pouring petrol onto a burning fire," Stirrup told the Chatham House think-tank in London. (((Nice fossil-fuel metaphor there.)))

Link:
Chatham House studies on climate change: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/index.php?id=189&pid=403

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chaired the first debate on climate change at the UN Security Council in April this year. She argued that the potential for climate change to cause wars meant it should be on the council's radar.

Stirrup said the unpredictability of the immediate effects of global warming on rainfall patterns and storms meant flashpoints could be advanced by years without warning.

He did not identify the problem areas, but Bert Metz of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the meeting they included Central America, the Amazon Basin, large parts of north, central and southern Africa and swathes of Asia.

(((And New Orleans. And maybe Los Angeles. And Australia.)))

Scientists say average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport, melting ice caps, bringing floods, droughts and famines, and putting millions of lives at risk.

Stirrup said the security threat was far more immediate than those figures might suggest.

"If temperatures rise towards the upper end of the forecast range we could already start to see serious physical consequences by 2040 – and that is if things get no worse." (((He's not a scientist, folks. He's a general. Well, an Air Marshall.)))

"If things do get worse you don't need to come very much forward from 2040 before, in my terms at least, you are talking about the day after tomorrow," Stirrup said.

He said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington showed the devastation that attacks fuelled by political, economic and social deprivation could achieve.

(((It's a tribute to the political genius of Al Qaeda that, six years later, people still talk about the damage to two and one-fifth buildings. Meanwhile, where the real paramilitary trouble is:)))

Global narco-guerillas in North America: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/06/journal_mexicos.html Hollow states:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/04/hollow_states.html

"Now add in the effects of climate change. Poverty and despair multiply, resentment surges and people look for someone to blame," he said.

Even if the world agreed quickly on a way of equitably tackling the climate crisis – which was far from sure – the nature of the problem meant a significant degree of adverse change was already in the pipeline.

"That rapidity, alongside the size of the global population and the complexity of today's society, leaves us particularly vulnerable," Stirrup said. "It is bound to present substantial security challenges of one kind or another."

Asked on the margins of the meeting if that meant military planners should opt for premptive action where they saw a security crisis emerging, he said: "Only in the sense of building governance. Recognising the problem is the first step."

Story by Jeremy Lovell

(((So, what's the story here? Well, as I pointed out earlier, green design is winning. Practically every state with a trace of civilization has got capitalist-green fever now. They'll even do it in the teeth of government opposition, as they do right now in the USA. So design, in the sense of a comprehensive grass-roots effort to change the infrastructure, is doing great. It is scarcely necessary to talk about this; it has become mainstreamed.

(((However, nation-states couldn't get it together to create a Kyoto-friendly world order, so we're seeing many failed states and hollow states. These areas are defeating the armies of nation states through the simple tactic of becoming and remaining ungovernable. This, as Stirrup is pointing out here, is making failed states indistinguishable from climatic disaster areas. They are going to become the same thing. Khaki Green, as an idea, is far from mainstreamed, but this article is a strong signifier of it.

(((The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, but the rain is going to fall with particular virulence on places where there is no government. No army. No civil services. And no functional ability to restore the infrastructure. Peoples who defeat nation-states through tactics of civil disorder are going to be particularly vulnerable to climate-crisis starvation and epidemics. After the era os operations-other-than-war, there will be mass-deaths-other-than-genocide. Mass deaths of peoples, mass deaths of former nations, but without any institutional entity inflicting it. That's the Unthinkable, but it is certain to happen, and is already happening in isolated locales. The question for the next decades is: how much Unthinkable, how big is it. It's a process that "could be advanced by years without warning.")))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
THE LESSONS HERE? (A)
DON'T LET YOUR STATE FAIL;
(B) DON'T IMAGINE YOU CAN
PUT OUT FIRES WITH BAYONETS
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

Austin Texas, Corporate Green, cleantech, clean energy, venture capital, Austin Technology Incubator, start-up companies, Clean Energy Venture Summit

Attention Conservation Notice:

It's about a bunch of start-up companies asking rich people for money.

Links:

The first and possibly not-only Clean Energy Venture Summit, which planned for 300 attendees and got 400, me included.
http://www.cleanenergyventuresummit.com/

The Austin Clean Energy Incubator, braintrust of the event.
http://www.cleanenergyincubator.org/

Austin Technology Incubator. http://ati.ic2.org/

Letter from the Mayor of Austin, who has a degree in environmental design:

"To the Guests of the Clean Energy Venture Summit:

"I'm pleased to welcome you to Austin for the inaugural Clean Energy Venture Summit. I believe you will find Austin a unique place, ideally suited for the development of the cleantech industry."

Link:
(((Where the Mayor of Austin went instead of attending this local biz event: The Large Cities Climate Summit.)))
http://www.nycclimatesummit.com/

"In Austin, we have a long tradition of creativity, entrepreneurialism and respect for our natural environment. It's the nexus of these traditions that has resulted in Austin recently being named the nation's top city for cleantech development." (((Yeah, take that, Green San Francisco, Green LA, Green Chicago, Green Seattle, and Green New York.)))

"What sets Austin apart from many cities striving to foster cleantech industry is the exceptional combination of resources we're bringing together to help us achieve our goals. The Austin team includes our municipally owned Austin Energy, unquestionably the most progressive utility in the nation; the Clean Energy Incubator, the first ever of its kind; the University of Texas, with its breadth and depth of knowledge; and the citizens of Austin == our most important resource of all.

"The Austin City Council recently adopted some of the most ambitious clean energy and energy efficiency targets in the nation. To achieve our goals, we will need new technologies to help us meet the growing energy demands of our rapidly growing community.

"Our plan is to build the cleantech industry of the future == and that means attracting the right talent, applying the right resources and leveraging a great team to achieve this. I invite you to play a role in this important endeavor. Together, we can build a tomorrow as limitless as our creativity and vision will allow. Regards, Mayor Will Wynn"

(((If you'd told me ten years ago that the Mayor of my home town would be indulging in this kind of rhetoric, I would have been turning cartwheels. The Clean Energy Venture Summit was an intensely dull event. There was scarcely a "visionary" to be seen. On the contrary: suited, duely-diligent lawyers and bankers were throwing millions of dollars at engineers. That's the work of the world, folks. This is our third swing at this particular baseball: 1970s: eco-consciousness raising; 1990s, global political accords; 2010s, cybergreen ecotech. They gotta win, they must not fail, because otherwise, by the 2030s it's gonna be Khaki Green all the way: a future of All Katrina, all the time, for everybody.)))

(((I conveyed these bracing sentiments to the attendees. I then went to my Austin home to find a tree in my yard freshly blasted by a massive lightning storm. As a Viridian guru, I'm pretty much getting what I begged for here. But, just like everybody else under our planet's overheated skies, I'm gonna pay a price.)))

Link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45506355@N00/502244707/

The corporate darlings of the event (for you boisterous tech investors out there):

AgiLight:
http://www.agilight.com/
"The AgiLight Team brings a combined 50+ years of experience in the electronics and solid state lighting industry and has tremendous experience in manufacturing, sourcing, material science, and product integration of LED and other electronics solutions."

Ausra.
http://www.ausra.com/
"Ausra, Inc. is developing large-scale solar electric power parks. Endless electrical energy at affordable prices without carbon emissions is now possible due to our breakthroughs in the design of concentrating solar power systems."

PCN Technologies.
http://www.pcntechnologies.com "PCN Technology, Inc. (PCN) designs, develops and markets advanced I/O subsystem components that leverage existing energy systems of products, devices, machinery, and installations in order to transmit triple play data.PCN products interoperate with legacy and new systems eliminating or decreasing communication hardwire in order to provide alternative RF wireless communication, convergence, and networking for companies & applications having critical needs for secure, reliable, robust data transmission."

SolBeam.
http://www.ngenpartners.com "SolBeam markets and sells concentrating photovoltaic systems."

AccuWater.
http://www.accuwater.com/
"AccuWater delivers products and Internet-based services that enable property owners to optimize landscape irrigation using landscape modelling and local weather conditions."

(((And, as they like to say, "many others.")))

Austin Energy's political pitch: a shotgun marriage of electrical utilities and a (somewhat imaginary) hybrid fleet of American plug-in cars.

Link:
http://www.pluginpartners.org/ "Plug-In Partners is a national grass-roots initiative to demonstrate to automakers that a market for flexible-fuel Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) exists today. Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles can reduce dependence on foreign oil, decrease greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, lower fuel costs, make American agriculture a fuel source, save and created American jobs, and increase use of renewable energy."

Media sponsors: GreenBiz, GreenerBuildings, ep Overviews Daily Report, Inside GreenTech, and Red Herring.

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT THEY'RE MOVING AS FAST
AS THEY CAN THROW THE CASH... AND BESIDES,
IT'S SOMETHING OF A PRIVILEGE
TO HAVE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE THIS!
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

2012, futurism, John L. Peterson, Arlington Institute, prognostications

Attention Conservation Notice:

Happy new years... these meditations by Washington-based pundit John Peterson seem to reflect the current mood of the times in the Beltway, which are about as dazed and miserablist-apocalyptophile as one can imagine. Looks like the world will be hit on the head with a series of hammers until morale improves. I'm having a lot of black-humored fun at this guy's expense here, but I think he's dealing with the season as best he can. His newsletter FUTUREDITION is consistently amazing.

Links:
Global warming affects the very fringes of the atmosphere, so much so that spacecraft can feel it.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39427/story.htm

Daisies are blooming in a Moscow December. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39439/story.htm

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39455/story.htm "Regional Nuclear War Could Spark Climate Change." It's our dear old friend, "nuclear winter," now creatable by most anybody. Imagine global warming AND a nuclear winter. "We are at a perilous crossroads," said Owen Toon of the University of Colorado at Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. "The current combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability and urban demographics form perhaps the greatest danger to the stability of society since the dawn of humanity." Hey, Merry Christmas, Doc! How 'bout and oil peak and some bird flu to go with that mistletoe?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm Two percent of the planet's richest people now own fifty percent of the world. Hey, rich folks, you bought it, you fix it! If anything remotely practical gets done by the year 2012, it's obviously gonna get done by rich people. They own the works. Any "solution" that they can't buy and install is kinda silly.

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/columns_third.cfm?NewsID=34308&pic=2 Look, (says irate Aggie engineer), knock it off with the bullshit leftist social-engineering! Just suck the damn CO2 out of the sky! Simple! End of problem! "Air-capture" it!... Okay, fine, great; if you can do that, you can scold Greenpeace as much as you want. I won't mind a bit! Honest!

http://wpweb2k.gsia.cmu.edu/ceic/phd.htm I mean, so far you don't seem to have much more than a PhD dissertation versus all those melting icebergs. Where are the giant miracle-solution sodium hydroxide racks and sulfur-cure atmosphere sprays? Get after it, dude! Let Exxon pay!

From: thefuture@arlingtoninstitute.org FUTUREdition Special Holiday Punctuations Issue, Volume 9, Number 18
Date: December 11, 2006 4:51:08 PM PST To: bruces@well.com

John Peterson writes:
"This time of the year always generates an unusual amount of deep thinking. People try to stop for a moment and consider what has happened over the last year and attempt to get a handle on the more profound implications of what this thing called life is all about and where we are all going. "And then, here's one from me. It's a chapter for a book which will be published next year."

Getting to 2012: Big Changes Ahead John L. Petersen

Consider this recent BBC headline: "Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned." One that followed was: "Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund" (((Great name for a Christian development agency.)))

About the same time the Washington Post said: "Birds, bees, bats and other species that pollinate North American plant life are losing population, according to a study released yesterday by the National Research Council."

Reuters added: "Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down."

Author James Howard Kunstler chimed in: "The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.” (((You gotta love J. Kunstler. A situation that dire creates "a religion of hope?" The top religious activists in the world already cultivate a religion of holy suicide and blow up their own mosques! Imagine the jolly, affirmative, carry-on mood those jihadis would be in during a Regional Nuclear Winter.)))

"Then, in a landmark report compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government, comes the admonition: The world has to act now on climate change or face devastating economic consequences. Sir Nicholas estimated that at most humanity has ten years before the shift is unrecoverable. (((What if it's already ten years too late? Or twenty years? Shouldn't we be giving this prospect a lot more serious thought? We're not averting anything much; there are daisies blooming in Moscow.)))

What's going on here? What does this all mean? (((Settle in, folks; he's about to let fly.)))

These are extraordinary statements about massive earth changes. Are they just random trends that happen to be coincidentally showing up at the same time, or perhaps they reflect some big, historic, underlying dynamic == maybe the world is about to experience a shift unlike anything ever seen before. (((You know what's worse than a futurist who over- promises? A futurist who over-delivers.))) There are reasons to believe the latter could be the case. Many sources, both conventional and unconventional, suggest that we are living in a special time == that between now and 2012 the world will undergo an epochal shift to a new era.

This rapid evolution will produce a world that operates in fundamentally different ways than it has in the past.(((For instance, it might well operate the way a 500-pound gorilla operates when it (a) has Ebola (b) is on fire and (c ) has recently converted to Islam.)))

The indicators are there. Take a closer look at what is already happening.

Demographics:

Nearly a half of all people on the planet are under the age of 25[i]. That's the largest youth generation in history. The overwhelming majority of these young people live in the developing world and almost a quarter are surviving on less than $1 a day[ii] Most of them know about the quality of life in the West. Many have seen and used a computer or a mobile phone. (((Bring it on, kids! Got all the pirate MP3s and YouTube you can eat!)))

Peaking of the Global Oil Supply:

Regardless of the increased awareness that our oil resources are finite, demand for oil is growing. In the last years it grew from 79.8 (2003) to 84.3 (2005) million bpd[iii]. Even if the Chinese economy were to slow down, the growth is still likely to continue with a pressure from India.

Supply, on the other hand, appears to have peaked. We now have nine and a half months of "rearview mirror" action to look back and see that world oil production has retreated from its all-time high of just over 85 million barrels a day (m/b/d) achieved in December 2005 (just as geologist Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton had predicted). For 2006, production has remained in the 84 m/b/d range every month reported so far, while demand has exceeded that.[iv]

Oil curse is a term coined to reflect the desperate situation of many oil rich but otherwise underdeveloped countries. The Chinese are now involved in a comprehensive international outreach to African countries, buying up resources (not just oil) in Nigeria, Angola, Congo, Sudan. So far oil importers used mostly economic and political means to compete for oil but will inevitably resort to military strategies as soon as they realize that they have probably passed peak oil threshold. ((("Inevitably?" It's a done deal; the Iraq War's been going on for years now and producing LESS oil, not more.)))

The report "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management” prepared by SAIC for the Department of Energy concludes that humanity is facing asymmetric risks associated with the peaking of oil. Although mitigation actions initiated prematurely may result in a poor use of resources, late initiation of mitigation may result in severe consequences. Early mitigation measures are necessary to install production capacities for alternative energy in time for the peaking of oil. (((Why do weird spook-boffin outfits like SAIC use such bland and anonymous bureaucrat-speak?)))

Species Extinction

Despite an avowed reverence for life, human beings continue to destroy other species at an alarming rate, rivaling the great extinctions of the geologic past. In the process, we are foreclosing the possibility of discovering the secrets they contain for the development of new life-saving medicines and of invaluable models for medical research, and we are beginning to disrupt the vital functioning of ecosystems on which all life depends. We may also be losing some species so uniquely sensitive to environmental degradation that they may serve as our "canaries," warning us of future threats to human health.[v] (((Not to mention that they make all the oxygen.)))

The speed of species extinction has forced scientists to refer to the current era as the sixth extinction event comparable to only five other events in the known history of biosphere (that's a few billion of years!) (((Yeah, and imagine how the scientists will direly refer to these things when the scientists themselves are extinct.)))

A good example is a new study that shows that the oceans' fish are being depleted so fast that eating seafood might be just a memory in 40 years. The researchers say more is at stake than our diet, for they find the dwindling of fish stocks hurts the world economically and the ocean environmentally. Researchers say it is not too late to reverse the trend.[vi] (((What if it WAS too late? "Welp, the ocean's turned to carbonic seltzer-water and all the fish just died." I wonder who would be hired to spin that.)))

According to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services could be partially met under some scenarios that they have considered but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions and practices, that are not currently under way. (((Unless you count nuclear proliferation, which could create some big flaming changes in institutions and practices as quick as you can say "Jack Robinson.")))

Climate Change: (((Let's settle on down and throw another shrimp on the barbie... wait, the shrimp all died and Australia's consumed with brushfires.))))

Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1°C of being its hottest for a million years. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change[vii]. (((Well, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen; an outright futurist prophecy of doom.)))

Feedback loops (the self-reinforcing relationships between the change in CO2, global warming and other factors) are driving the dynamics of climate change. In fact, they are the source of exponential rates of growth. We may be entering a phase in which global warming becomes a runaway train. (((Good thing the train ran out of oil, then.)))

Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and if the present rate of retreat continues, they may be gone by 2035. More than 2 billion people == a third of the world's population, rely on the Himalayas for their water[viii] (((Definitely dents our prospects for Szechuan chow and Bollywood movies.)))

An increase in global temperatures can interfere with the workings of the ocean conveyor belt and bring another ice age to Europe. The earth's ocean system is characterized by thermal inertia. This means that it adapts slowly to global cooling and warming but once it starts to warm up or cool down, the process will extend for a long period of time. For us, it means that even if all human emissions were to stop now, thermal inertia of the ocean could sustain an increase in global temperatures.

According to conclusions of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (((These IPCC guys need a much snappier name == I suggest "Giant Planetary Flaming Doom Patrol"))) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

Major Economic Disruption (((Show me the money!)))

During 2003-4, in a concern about possible "deflation", the Federal Reserve ran the interest rates that they charged banks down so low (1%), that mortgage lenders began offering below-prime mortgages with little or no money down. Refinancing of existing mortgages was at an all-time high. Huge increases in mortgages resulted (more than five times the amount between 2002 and 2006 than in the preceding five-year period).

Many if not most of those loans (whose real interest rate was higher than "prime" mortgages secured in historical ways) had extra-low payments in the loan's early years with a substantial increase in payments after the "balloon" period. People were buying homes whose income would never have allowed them to own a home previous to that time . . . and those least able to pay their loans began using credit card credit to make up for the shortfall in income.

In 2005 for the first time since 1933, the savings rate in America became negative.(((Could this possibly make any difference at all if the Chinese and the Indians have no water to drink and America's pollination species have died off? This is like a banker in a collapsing World Trade Center tower trying to re-schedule lunch with his broker.)))

This happened about the same time that personal credit card debt reached its highest level ever (number of U.S. credit cards grew 75% from 1990 to 2003 while the amount that was charged increased 350%). Consumer credit as a percentage of personal income has never been so high (30 % increase since 2000 alone) and household debt as a percentage of house assets is at a record. (((So what? They're supposed to scrimp and save so their kids can enjoy the Sixth Great Extinction? Obviously the only course for a rational economic actor under these conditions is to eat drink & be merry. Max out the plastic! Hey, it works for the government.)))

Independent analysis shows that credit card defaults begin about 24 months after a borrower has fundamentally overextended him or herself and therefore history suggests that we should see a dramatic increase in mortgage defaults starting in 2006. In fact, the percentage of U.S. subprime loans that were made in 2006 and delinquent in payments by 60 or more days by August of the year rose 100% over similar loans made in 2005.[ix] (((Okay, I'm getting a little confused here... we get a Great Depression first, then the oil peak, the oil warand the self-reinforcing climate juggernaut that freezes Europe and also parches the Himalayas? Can we have one from Column A and two from Column B?)))

All banks have a great percentage of their assets tied up in mortgage-based securities. If the default rate on mortgages increases significantly it could well translate into a major threat to the solvency of many banks. (((Why would we even NEED banks? I don't remember many ATMs on the set of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.)))

The debt situation will be exacerbated by the retirement of the baby boomers (((The "flood of gray hippies threat," oh Lordy))) and implementation of the new banking regulations under the auspices of the Basel II Accords that demand the revamping of the global banking system, for which no banks are likely to be ready. (((If nobody's bothering with Kyoto or the Geneva Convention, why would they care about the "Basel II Accords"?)))

According to Warren Buffet, the current financial system is highly unstable. Highly complex financial instruments == derivatives == are time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction". "Derivatives generate reported earnings that are often wildly overstated and based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years". (((Or, in fact, ever. You think we'd be worried about Enron's books if Katrina had wiped out Houston?)))

"Large amounts of risk have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers . . . which can trigger serious systemic problems" Derivatives can push companies onto a "spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown". (((Given that 2 percent of the planet owns fifty percent of everything, why don't they just buy themselves some fresh governments and re-invent all the paper?)))

Investor George Soros pronounced the same criticisms regarding the global financial system. He believes that unless fundamental reforms are implemented, the current system will continue on a spiral of crises[x].

Watershed Time?

Is the nexus of these forces a unique watershed time that will usher in a new era on this planet? Will the structures and institutions that we are all familiar with and depend upon struggle and even fail in the near future under the stress produced by breakdowns in multiple sectors? (((Those words sound so amazingly dull compared to what that would "breakdowns in multiple sectors" would actually feel like. Oh well, at least, unlike most Oil Peakists, he's not rubbing his hands in glee about it.)))

Add to the litany above (((oh goody))) increasingly sophisticated terrorism, serious global shortages of drinking water, growing population pressures, and the possibility of other shocks like a global pandemic (((bird flu, you return at last, we scarcely knew ye))) and you've got the line up for the potential for a major directional shift. The convergence of climate, oil and financial trends alone could produce a "perfect storm" that reorders the future of humanity on this planet. (((Really, pretty much any one of those factors would pop the World As We Know It like a boot on a Christmas ornament... "re-ordering?" Is that quite the proper word?)))

A New Paradigm

If failure of the present system is what we're looking at, it would certainly be followed by a new paradigm. If the old system came down, a new one would evolve that attempted to bypass the systemic frailties of the previous world. (((Kind of like Soviet Communism being replaced by a sunny new realm of Mafia Petrocracy.))) It would necessarily be a fundamentally different way of understanding reality, attended by new perspectives of science, ecology, economy, cosmology, governing, agriculture, and education, among the other basic intellectual structures which support human activity. (((You know, that sounds pretty radical, but I'm so fed up by this time that I think I might be willing to go for that. Sure, man, junk the works! The rotten Roman Empire has gotta go! Just as long as I don't get vandalized, become feudal slave labor or undergo a religious conversion.)))

The new world, as in all paradigm shifts, would not make much sense from our present perspective. Never having seen group larger than a clan, a hunter-gatherer contemplating the future would have been hard-pressed to envision a world that included people living in towns and villages. Similarly, the future that may arrive with 2012 would necessarily seem strange in the context of most of our upbringing.(((That's five years away, folks. I hope they're still reading sci-fi novels in Wonderland.)))

But as we get closer to the time of this epic shift the early outlines of a new future appear to be emerging. First of all, the new world is a highly interdependent and connected one. The complexity of our present communications systems link individual humans in ways that would have seemed impossible just two decades ago (the World Wide Web had not yet been invented only fifteen years ago!) As the ability to interact in increasingly more sophisticated ways develops, a point will be passed when humanity begins to act like an organism, rather than unrelated individuals and small groups. (((What KIND of "organism"? Hope it has a backbone.)))

Ideas will transit the world like rumors in a small town. Concepts and perspectives will infect the global brain and produce behavior never before seen. We will see our future tied to others many thousands of miles away from us in ways that would have made no sense five years ago. We will rapidly become planetary citizens. (((Hey, it's working for me here in Serbia.)))

Similarly, ecological interconnectedness is also rapidly becoming obvious. For many of us, we now know that we are all related to the larger environmental system in which we live in ways that we never previously understood. The death of a third of the coral reefs in the world and ten-thousand other species a year will surely affect the system that supports human life . . . and certainly not beneficially.(((Yeah, and while you can always start a new bank, good luck re-inventing the coral reef.)))

All of this new knowledge will of necessity change our behavior in the future. We will see ourselves as an integral part of the whole system in which we live. We will know that we are all in the same life boat and each of our futures is a function of the future of all of us. Self-interest and security, whether characterized in personal or national terms, will very quickly encompass far more space and people than it has in the past.

In the face of rapid climate change, for example, national security would approach becoming synonymous with global security. ((("Khaki Green." I'd be happier about this prospect if I'd seen any national army win a war lately.)))

We'll also see ourselves connected in spiritual terms. Perhaps this is where the real paradigm shift will take place.(((No it isn't. At least, I sure hope not.)))

More and more individuals are beginning to experience and internalize the fact that we are connected to each other and with animals, plants and even the earth in ways that even though inexplicable are nevertheless demonstrable. Serious new scientifically based books are now being written about how human behavior is connected to the larger cosmos and how that throughout history it has predictably reflected in how we behave. Agricultural systems are in place that claim to tap into elemental spiritual forces in order to grow crops better. Many studies now show that the intentionality of prayer significantly affects single-cellular life as well as humans . . . and it doesn't make any difference whether either party knows the other one (or that they're praying) or not.(((It's kind of pitiful to see the guy reduced to this kind of knee-wobbling guff. It's like the last reel of Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL, the one with my personal favorite, the utterly terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future. He must be really, seriously scared to offer prayer to bacteria as the sign of way forward.)))

(((Here are some interesting bacteria that probably aren't much affected by prayer because they apparently CAME FROM MARS. "What, you're kidding, right?" Uh... maybe.))) Link:
http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22750

"There is evidence now that somehow humans anticipate big disruptions to the system (like 9/11 and the Indonesian tsunami) and begin to have extraordinary precognitive dreams before these major events. (((If that's somehow so, I really, really hope that I'm spared those. Imagine DREAMING about total ecological collapse before it happened. It'd be like something out of Stephen King.)))

This spiritual awareness seems on a trajectory that will expand to include the ability to tap into the global collective unconscious and may even become somewhat predictive == marrying advanced knowledge technology with dreaming and other intuitive processes.(((If you can't think of a way out of this mess, maybe you'd better sleep on it.)))

Growing numbers of thoughtful people are coming to the conclusion that intentionality directly shapes reality. How our thoughts translate into the reconfiguration of matter and different behavior in others is not clear, but for many, life-long experiences tell them that that is how it works.

In all of this there appears to be an alternative dimension(s) for communication that facilitates this interconnectivity. Who knows, perhaps human telepathy may be emergent as we see ourselves more tightly committed to each other in the future. (((I'd be tempted to read the mind of a climate skeptic and see if there's anything actually in there.)))

In any case, there are a great number of indicators, both historical and contemporary, that suggest that we are approaching a time of extraordinary change. Although no one now alive has ever lived through a similar shift, the history of the planet, as we know it, suggests that these kinds of major upheavals have happened many times in the past == in fact, they are the fundamental evolutionary mechanism for the planet. Biological life moved abruptly from single-cellular life to multiple-cellular life after a very long period of equilibrium. Then multiple- cellular life was punctuated by a radical transformation that yielded vertebrates . . . which were followed by rapid shifts to mammals, early humans, and then homo sapiens.(((Which then briskly killed themselves off and left the world to its next possessors, the telepathic Martian microbes. Hey, it could happen!)))

Social evolutionary punctuations continued moving hunter-gathers into villages and towns, finally resulting in the printing press which enabled the industrial age. Perhaps the Internet represents the new communications infrastructure upon which the radically new paradigm will be built.(((Or, if there's no fuel whatsoever and complete economic collapse, a printing press in a village would be lookin' pretty good.)))

Perhaps we are about to experience another punctuation in the equilibrium of human evolution. Patterns from the past suggest that the time is right for another one. The question is, are we ready? (((For THAT!? By 2012? Gimme a break!)))

If the change that seems to be forming on the horizon is anything like it appears it might be, then all humans will need to move into a new mode of living and thinking in order to survive the transition.(((Aw come on, we can't ALL survive... is it too much to ask that the living won't envy the dead in five years? I like to think that my demands on futurity are pretty modest, but, well. . . .)))

There will need to be a constant orientation of openness == having a wide aperture for sensing subtle indicators that point toward coming change and being receptive to newly emerging approaches to dealing with the rapidly changing environment. If one is not open to the suggestions and ideas of others, they will necessarily falter, as no one individual will have the capability to deal with this change by themselves. New ideas and explanations about how reality works will begin to bubble-up in many places; they must be openly considered and honestly evaluated. (((And, if the ideas turn out to be moronic, the guys who hold them need to be kicked out of power.)))

There must also be an openness to adapt == to rapidly change when it is required. The survivors of this epochal shift will necessarily live closer to the earth. They will know that their food does not come from the supermarket . . . in fact, they may well know the farmer who grows it. They will be sensitive to the earth in ways that they perhaps previously reserved only for humans. The current movement toward "relocalization" == shifting one's life and relationships closer to a sustaining support system == will probably be rather mature.(((Well, none of that is sending my morale soaring, just yet... You know what would be really great right now? A twelve-year-old single-malt Scotch and a big chocolate ice-cream sundae.)))

Effectively transitioning to this new world will require envisioning it into reality. We will all need to develop a basic, but coherent idea of what the new world might look like == the principles, values, structures, behavior, etc. == and begin to carry that common picture in our minds. (((Kinda like the concepts of cyberpunk in the early 1980s == "Hey wow, someday there will be a world rather like the late 1990s.")))

We need to "get together" at regular times with as many others as possible to project the new images into the space from which everything comes. (((I hope there's catering.)))

We should do it as though our life depends on it, as it probably does. (((Well, that's a nicer sentiment than packing up some survivalist ammo and heading for the hills.)))

We are all blessed to live at this time of extraordinary transformation. Each in his or her own way has a special role to play in contributing to the ultimate shape and function of this new world. That's probably why we are here at this time. We should not hesitate to vigorously play our part. Time is short.

(((Well, it may be that we're damned to live in this time of sinister and extraordinary collapse. But even if so, he's right: we need to vigorously play. Just look tomorrow right in the eye and go for it. The silliest suggestion in here is a thousand times better than sticking your fingers in your ears. We're gonna catch-it big time, so we might as well put our hands out.)))

John L. Petersen is the president and founder of The Arlington Institute (www.arlingtoninstitute.org). He can be contacted at johnp@arlingtoninstitute.org

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
WELL, HAPPY HOLIDAYS
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Key concepts:

Lysenkoism, political purges of scientists, New Scientist, lustration, truth and reconciliation, future public show trials for crimes against climate stability, Exxon-Mobil, allies

Attention Conservation Notice:

It's a notion that may seem a little improbable at first glance, but it's much less improbable than tornadoes in London and a lost war for oil.

Links:

The eco-chic Yves Behar "Leaf Light." Wow, that would make an ideal desk lamp for vengeful lawyers dismantling Exxon-Mobil and their fellow conspirators.
http://www.dwr.com/productdetail.cfm?id=10859&CMP=EMC-WR0179981131

(((The Purge at work:)))

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19225765.000-climate-change-special-state-of-denial.html

Climate change special: State of denial 04 November 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

KEVIN TRENBERTH reckons he is a marked man. He has argued that last year's devastating Atlantic hurricane season, which spawned hurricane Katrina, was linked to global warming.

For the many politicians and minority of scientists who insist there is no evidence for any such link, Trenberth's views are unacceptable and some have called for him step down from an international panel studying climate change.

"The attacks on me are clearly designed to get me fired or to resign," says Trenberth.

The attacks fit a familiar pattern. Sceptics have also set their sights on scientists who have spoken out about the accelerating meltdown of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the thawing of the planet's permafrost. These concerns will be addressed in the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global organisation created by the UN in 1988 to assess the risks of human-induced climate change.

Every time one of these assessments is released, about once every five years, some of the American scientists who have played a part in producing it become the targets of concerted attacks apparently designed to bring down their reputations and careers.

At stake is the credibility of scientists who fear our planet is hurtling towards disaster and want to warn the public in the US and beyond. (((Not to mention that the planet itself is at stake, but the science press is always far more interested in scientists than they are in the low-IQ hoi-polloi with which scientists share the planet.)))

So when the next IPCC report is released in February 2007, who will be the targets and why? (((Sounds like a great premise for an Internet betting-site.)))

When New Scientist spoke to researchers on both sides of the climate divide it became clear that they are ready for a showdown. (...)

One of those who knows only too well what it is like to come under attack from climate change sceptics is Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. The lead author of a chapter in the 1995 IPCC report that talked for the first time about the "discernible human influence on global climate", he was savaged by sceptics and accused of introducing this wording without consulting colleagues who had helped write the chapter.

One sceptic called it the "most disturbing corruption of the peer-review process in 60 years". Another accused him of "scientific cleansing" – at a time when the phrase "ethnic cleansing" was synonymous with genocide in Bosnia.

Another scientist to suffer the ire of the sceptics was Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He was attacked after the IPCC assessment in 2001 (...) The sceptics accused Mann of cherry-picking his data and criticised him for refusing to disclose his statistical methods (...).

Last year, Texas Republican Congressman Joe Barton, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, ordered Mann to provide the committee with voluminous details of his working procedures, computer programs and past funding. Barton's demands were widely condemned by fellow scientists and on Capitol Hill.

"There are people who believe that if they bring down Mike Mann, they can bring down the IPCC," said Santer at the time. Mann's findings, which will be endorsed in the new IPCC report, have since been replicated by other studies.

Santer says, however, that he expects attacks to continue on other fronts.

"There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of the science into disrepute," he says. "And Kevin [Trenberth] is a likely target." Mann agrees that the scientists behind the upcoming IPCC report are in for a rough ride.

"There is already an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC by climate change contrarians," he says.

The "contrarians" include scientists and politicians who are sceptical of the scientific evidence for climate change. Some of those who spoke to New Scientist insist that they are not planning character assassinations (...) (((They're not "skeptics", either. They're Lysenkoist political operatives in the pay of polluters.)))

Many of the IPCC's authors, some of whom asked not to be named, say this is a smokescreen. They claim there is an extensive network of lobby groups and scientists involved in making the case against the IPCC and its reports.

Automobile, coal and oil companies have coordinated and funded past attacks on them, the scientists say. Sometimes this has been done through Washington lobby groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose officers include Myron Ebell, a former climate negotiator for George W. Bush's administration. Recently, the CEI made television advertisements arguing against climate change, one of which ended with the words: "Carbon dioxide, they call it pollution, we call it life." (...)

The money trail

Some sceptical scientists are funded directly by industry. In July, The Washington Post published a leaked letter from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association (IREA), an energy company based in Colorado, that exhorted power companies to support the work of the prominent sceptic Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

(…)
So what is this money buying? For one, an ability to coordinate responses to the IPCC reports. (...)

(…)

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and with a US administration that has a record of hostility to concerns about climate change, Trenberth's statements are political dynamite. (...)

Trenberth himself fears the worst. "I would not be surprised if the hurricane aspect of the report is targeted, along with my own role," he says. "But I am proud of what we have achieved."

(...)