To those who think us puny humans can’t really affect the weather, the climate, the environment, the planet — see this sad, shocking video.

“NUKUS, Uzbekistan — The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet’s most shocking disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday, as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world’s fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

The shrunken sea has ruined the once-robust fishing economy and left fishing trawlers stranded in sandy wastelands, leaning over as if they dropped from the air. The sea’s evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand, which winds can carry as far away as Scandinavia and Japan, and which plague local people with health troubles.”

Read more at Huffpo.

The problem with each environmental disaster that humans create is that it creates a domino effect and affects so much more than the initial reaction.  Lack of water where once local fishermen depended on the food and the work also leads to heart and health troubles far away.  Coal plants the burn coal in the midwest pollute air on the east coast and cause asthma and heart problems in the east, where they don’t even burn the coal that comes from there.  What will happen to the Great Barrier Reef now that yet another ship has run aground on the shoal on the southern tip of the reef,  with a hole in its hull?  The Shen Neng 1, was carrying about 65,000 tons of coal and about 950 tons of oil were on board.  Now it’s leaking into the ocean.  It’s a small amount, but any oil leaking into marine reserves is completely unacceptable.

Unfortunately greedy people, grasping on to their addictions to fossil fuels and with complete disregard for the environment, are causing these immense environmental disasters, and there is a big price to pay now and in the future.

(Mining pollution in WV stream. Photo by J. Henry Fair)

Finally, an environmental victory we can all celebrate, because it’s a real victory. Yesterday,  the EPA said it would no longer issue permits as before for valley fills. Valley fill refers to the rubble and rocks blown up with the detonations that blow off the tops of mountains. The debris falls into the valleys, (these are mostly in Appalachia) and into streams and rivers, destroying the ecosystems and polluting the environment. This ruling was far overdue, but the EPA was very methodical about it, making sure their legal standing was air-tight before the announcement.   This is great news,  but now we need legislation ending mountaintop removal once and for all.  (See what Appalachia Voices has to say about that below).  From SolveClimate, discussing the EPA’s conference call about it yesterday:

“. . . . in a conference call with journalists, just an hour after the administration for the first time finalized regulations setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, officials spelled out guidelines that they acknowledged would make it virtually impossible for mining companies in Appalachia to carry on with business as usual.”

The Obama administration effectively stopped one of the most destructive industries in America, proposing new environmental guidelines for mountaintop mining removal that will make it nearly impossible for business as usual to continue. And if business as usual can’t continue with coal mining, the price of using coal for energy will skyrocket, and it will open the door wide open for renewables to fill the gap. Renewable energy is already getting less expensive and this ruling could lead to a new solar panel and wind turbine installation boom this summer.  More from SolveClimate:

In recent years, opposition to the practice has spread from local activists to celebrities, with Robert Kennedy Jr. and Darryl Hannah [and James Hansen]  demanding an end to the method.

Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said(yesterday) that  it is unlikely that valley fills would meet the new standards.

“You are talking about either no or very few valley fills that are going to be able to meet standards like this,” she said. “What the science is telling us is that it would be untrue to say you can have any more than minimal valley fill and not see irreversible damage to stream health.”

Jackson said the new guidelines were not intended to end coal mining.  But she admitted it would be hard work for mining companies to meet the new standard.

“They are going to require folks to roll up their sleeves to protect water quality,” she said. “We believe that they are often going to need adjustment to projects proposed because of these new guidelines.”

The guidelines laid out by Jackson . . . would set limits on conductivity in streams near mining sites. The electrical conductivity [...]

Even if it’s partially by force, Xcel Energy is taking a few big steps  into a more realistic  energy future. Unlike some people in government and energy, they are not asking us to adapt to global warming,  but to buy their renewable energy.*    Adaptation to runaway climate change,  or to a 4-6 degree temperature rise is most likely  impossible.

It’s a good thing then that Xcel Energy is moving into a new renewable, cleaner energy future in several states.  In Colorado it’s not completely out of the goodness of their hearts — it’s because Colorado just passed its new clean air and jobs law.   It’s another example of when govenrnment and laws actually work. From Clean Technica:

“Colorado’ s largest utility, Xcel Energy is shutting down 900 MW of coal plants and replacing them with natural gas power plants. This move by just one utility will reduce the entire Colorado coal power fleet by a staggering 30%. What prompted this rather dazzling move?

The Colorado Clean Air – Clean Jobs Act just passed. …  All new (or re-powered) electric power plants may not emit more than 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, effectively ruling out coal burning (without CCS).”

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) does not yet exist for large commercial coal burning use.  It may never operate as promised and it’s still a big question whether it will ever work adequately or even be remotely affordable.

“All utilities in the state must find a way to achieve the goal. They can replace or re-power coal plants with natural gas or add energy efficiency measures such as combined heat & power, or they can switch to renewable energy sources.  . . . . Natural gas is the easy way out, since the state has the third-largest reserves of natural gas. Although natural gas is a fossil fuel that potentially harms drinking water, its contribution to climate change is only half that of coal.”

Only??  Comparing it to coal isn’t saying much.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel that is finite, like all the others, and it definitely pollutes the air when its processed and burned. Just as bad seems to be the process of hydraulic fracking to get the natural gas out of where it is, often in rock or hard to get at.  This process uses lots of toxic chemicals that are mostly unregulated because the energy companies won’t even reveal exactly what is in their fracking formulas.  Xcel Energy needs to be pushed to use more wind energy which it’s already using to great effect in Minnesota and South Dakota.

XCel Energy is building an enormous new wind farm in southern Minnesota.  I’ve been down there recently twice in the past 5 years and it’s very windy there and even more so in South Dakota.  It’s probably not [...]

Yesterday, Obama shocked a lot of people and announced he was lifting a long-term ban on offshore drilling off the coast of the U.S. It was even more shocking considering this directly goes against a campaign pledge. (See that in the video below). No one is happy about this.  This is from Grist:

President Obama will open large swaths of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Alaskan coasts to offshore oil and natural gas drilling in a stunning concession to fossil-fuel companies, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and others are reporting.

. . .  The Arctic Ocean north of Alaska will be opened too, while the Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected—the sole new protection.  [Yesterday I heard Bristol Bay would be opened for drilling].   New areas of the southeast Gulf Coast would also be opened, despite bipartisan opposition from political leaders in Florida and Alabama. The Times has a map of all of this, and you need to see it to comprehend the size of the affected area.

“This is not a decision that I’ve made lightly,” Obama said (full speech here).

Who was twisting his arm?  This wasn’t necessary. Huge expanses of coastline along the south and east of the U.S. are now going to be opened, sadly, to drilling and oil exploration.  This will result in completely unnecessary environmental and ecosystem damage, and will open the areas up to new disasters like oil spills.  This just makes no sense. There is hardly any oil there in any of these locations, not enough to provide us with oil beyond a year or two after the drilling begins.  Meanwhile, the drilling itself could harm the environment.  Later yesterday afternoon,  some blowhard on MSNBC spent a half hour yelling about how we need to transition all our cars and vehicles to run on natural gas.  No, that’s a terrible idea — almost as badly advised as drilling in the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Unfortunately science is not guiding our climate change policy, as Obama promised us during the campaign, when he also told he we needed an Apollo plan  to deal with the threat of climate change.  Obama’s environmental credibility has been destroyed for only a little bit of oil and more fossil fuels we don’t even need.  Political reality has set in for Obama — he wants Democrats re-elected and himself, too, and that supercedes everything.   He should have emphasized conservation and alternative fuels, and if Obama was a true leader he would have done that.   Even Steven Chu seems to be onboard.  Remember this version of Obama?

I don’t know where this Obama has gone. He’s been replaced by one that is difficult to trust and who breaks his campaign promises. Meanwhile, the EPA continues to expand its regulations of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Interestingly, this comes only a week after [...]

California Italian Studies

Volume 1
2009-2010
Issues 1-2

Claudio Fogu and Lucia Re, Editors
Regina Longo, Managing Editor

UCSB Italian Studies Professor Co-Edits New Online Scholarly Journal

March 15, 2010

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– California Italian Studies, a new peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal, has been published exclusively online by University of California’s e-Scholarship and the California Digital Library. The journal, which debuted on March 1, was co-edited by Claudio Fogu, associate professor of Italian Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and Lucia Re, professor of Italian and women’s studies at UCLA.

The 2009-10 inaugural volume contains two issues, and features more than 50 research articles, critical essays, translations, works-in-progress, and interviews, many of which appear in both English and Italian. In addition to text and images, the California Italian Studies journal also includes video clips and music. It can be found at http://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj. The journal will be published annually, with each volume addressing a different theme related to Italian studies, and with different co-editors choosing the content.

The first issue in Volume 1 provides a critical topography of the relationship between Italy and the Mediterranean across time –– from the Middle Ages to present day –– and across disciplinary traditions. It includes discussions of Italy’s multiple cultural interactions with Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Croatia; articles on Italian cinema; video interviews; and previews of works in progress.

The second issue contains critical essays on topics ranging from the Watts Towers in Los Angeles to futurist Italian artist Fortunato Depero’s years in New York City to domestic violence in early modern Italy. The second issue also contains the first English translation of novelist and poet Arrigo Boito’s complete collection of short stories, and some previously unknown documents regarding journalist and short story writer Italo Calvino’s father and the Italian police.

An interdisciplinary effort, the journal was launched by a group of UC scholars from each of the 10 campuses. Together, these scholars represent many of the world’s leading authorities on Italian culture, history, geography, and politics.

“The thematic model is a great way to intersect different perspectives around time and space,” said Fogu, who is also director of the Italian program at UCSB. “The choice of making access to the journal free and open to all is particularly important to us, for it highlights one of the important traditions in Italian studies –– the permeability between academic research and society at large.”

###

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I came across these lovely sketches of Depero’s work by artist Rachel Harris…

…and it reminded me of other works influenced by Depero like New Order’s 1981 Procession and Movement covers, which I was going to compare, but I’m glad someone beat me to it!

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L’ angoscia delle macchine e altre sintesi futuristiche

By Ruggero Vasari; with essay by Maria Elena Versari
Duepunti, 2009
p. 170
ISBN: 9788889987308

Ruggero Vasari futurista, Ruggero ruggente, l’altoparlante del futurismo, una delle personalità più eccentriche del movimento, dalla sua “centrale futurista” di Berlino, nei primi anni Venti, seppe intessere una fitta relazione con i maggiori esponenti delle avanguardie internazionali. Irrequieto e spesso in aperta critica con lo stesso Marinetti. Anticipando e forse ispirando il film Metropolis di Fritz Lang, Vasari, pioniere della fantascienza in Italia, nel suo Ciclo delle macchine propone un percorso di redenzione e di speranza per l’umano, che supera e talvolta sbeffeggia l’esaltata e incrollabile fede del futurismo nei confronti della macchina. Oggi, sulla strada indicata dal compianto Mario Verdone, viene poco per volta riportato alla luce Vasari e il suo grande contributo alla letteratura, alle arti e al teatro delle avanguardie del Novecento.

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New clean car emissions standards were announced on April 1st.  The take on it from The Natural Resources Defense Council –

“The Environmental Protection Agency finalized vehicle emission standards on April 1st that will make millions of new cars, SUVs, minivans and pick-up trucks use fuel more efficiently. These standards will reduce greenhouse gases, save consumers billions at the gas pump and reduce our national reliance on foreign oil, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.”

The NRDC calls these “landmark” standards, but in order for them to be truly landmark standards they would have to have doubled the value they decided on.  Even more landmark would be to get millions of new electric cars that run off real clean renewable energy on the road.

“These federal EPA emission standards, issued in conjunction with the Department of Transportation fuel economy standards, will bring the benefits of California’s landmark clean car standards to the entire nation. The California standards, set in 2004, were adopted by 13 other states and the District of Columbia. In an historic agreement announced in the Rose Garden in May 2009, President Obama brought the states, the auto makers, labor unions, and the environmental community together to extend the benefits of those standards nationwide and end a protracted legal battle.

The Natural Resources Defense Council played a key role in passing California’s clean car legislation, developing its standards, defending them in court, and working out the clean car agreement announced last May.

Grist says this is a “big deal” and will do more to fight emissions than anything else the Obama administration has done so far. (This is not saying terribly much).  They do a great job of showing us the numbers though.  Read more here. In summary:

The numbers:

Current standards: 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and 24 mpg for light trucks
Starting in 2012, fuel efficiency will rise more than 5 percent each year
New standards for 2016:  39 mpg for cars and 30 mpg for light trucks — an overall average of about 35.5 mpg

The environmental benefits:

Will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of the program
Will prevent 900 million metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions
Will be like taking 177 million of today’s cars off the road, or shutting down 194 coal-fired power plants

Back to the feel-good press release from NRDC.  We have to appreciate this as some good news anyway, given the frustrating announcement on March 31st of new offshore oil drilling.  We can’t just take a steady stream of disappointing news… like that phrase “clean coal technology” which Obama keeps repeating.  Even more good news about coal is coming up later today!  But first –

“NRDC estimates that the new standards will save consumers $65 billion at the pump in 2020 by cutting oil consumption by 1.3 million barrels [...]

EPA Formally Announces Phase-in of Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gases

(Unfortunately) the EPA also announced there will be no stationary source requirements until 2011. Still,  it’s a welcome announcement. We need more of the EPA exercizing their authority.

WASHINGTON – Under a final decision issued today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) no stationary sources will be required to get Clean Air Act permits that cover greenhouse gases (GHGs) before January 2011. EPA has pledged to take sensible steps to address the billions of tons of greenhouse gas pollution that threaten Americans’ health and welfare, and is providing time for large industrial facilities and state governments to put in place cost-effective, innovative technologies to control and reduce carbon pollution. [Yesterday's] announcement is the first step in EPA’s phased in approach to addressing GHG emissions laid out by Administrator Lisa P. Jackson earlier this month.

“This is a common sense plan for phasing in the protections of the Clean Air Act. It gives large facilities the time they need to innovate, governments the time to prepare to cut greenhouse gases and it ensures that we don’t push this problem off to our children and grandchildren,” said EPA Administrator Jackson.  “With a clear process in place, it’s now time for American innovators and entrepreneurs to go to work and lead us into the clean energy economy of the future.”

[This]  action determines that Clean Air Act construction and operating permit requirements for the largest emitting facilities will begin when the first national rule controlling GHGs takes effect. If finalized as proposed, the rule limiting GHG emissions for cars and light trucks would trigger these requirements in January 2011 – the earliest model year 2012 vehicles meeting the standards can be sold in the United States. The agency expects to issue final vehicle GHG standards shortly.

EPA has committed to focusing its GHG permitting requirements on the largest sources. The agency will make a decision later this spring on the amount of GHGs facilities can emit before having to include limits for these emissions in their permits.

Today’s action is the final step in EPA’s reconsideration of the December 18, 2008 memorandum entitled “EPA’s Interpretation of Regulations that Determine Pollutants Covered by Federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) Permit Program.”  The final action clarifies when GHGs and other pollutants are covered under Clean Air Act permitting programs.

For more information and the letter Administrator Jackson sent last month outlining this approach and timeline: http://www.epa.gov/nsr/guidance.html
Sound bites available here.

View all news releases related to air issues

This is good news. The EPA is going to go forward with regulations and Kerry and Lieberman can write whatever bad bills they want, the EPA needs to do this because it’s their job.

I hope President Obama does not push the Congress to supercede the EPA’s authority to do this.

(Come on Republicans, tell the American people you don’t care about climate change either. We already know you don’t [...]

art & cinema – futuristicherie

March 27, 2010
Museo Revotella (Venezia)

previously on ItalianFuturism

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CONVERSATION

Masterpieces of the 20th Century: Boccioni’s Materia

March 30, 2010, 5pm
San Micheletto – Lucca
Conversations curated by Chiara Toti and Federica Chezzi

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• Review of the Futurist exhibit in Argentina.

• New ‘fututist’ poem about chocolate wins prize.

• Ancora Campari on display in Milan’s train station.

• Version of opera ‘Tosca’ set in Fascist Rome features the creation of a Futurist Madonna:

The painter Cavaradossi (Jeffrey M. Hartman), Tosca’s lover, is not just painting a Madonna; he is painting a mural of an ostensibly Futurist Madonna. Thus, added to the crime of aiding an escaped political prisoner is the implicit charge of “subversive art” (despite the fact that the Futurists tried so hard to ingratiate themselves with the Fascists).

• Hotel in Capri names suites after Futurists.

• Famous Chef Mario Batali performed from the Futurist Cookbook in 2002. Who knew?

• Contemporary artist Alberto Di Fabio claims inspiration from Balla.

• Watch a discourse on the Wolfsoniana in Genoa on Rai Tre from March 27, 2010.

• Paola Sica and Luca Somigli discuss Women and Futurism in Toronto.

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Bill McKibben in Times Square, during the International Day of Climate Action last October, 2009.

If you are interested in climate change and the environment, the entire April issue of Scientific American is great.  The theme of most of the issue is managing Earth’s Future.  Get a copy of it, because only a little bit of it is online. There are some gorgeous paintings in it too, called the 8 Wonders of the Solar System. There are several articles on global warming and planetary boundaries. From Boundaries for a Healthy Planet,  “Scientists have set thresholds for key environmental processes that, if crossed, could threaten Earth’s habitability. Ominously, three have already been exceeded.”  Key points of the article are:

1) Although climate change gets ample attention, species loss and nitrogen pollution exceed safe limits by greater degrees. Other environmental processes are also headed toward dangerous levels.

2) Promptly switching to low-carbon energy sources, curtailing land clearing and revolutionizing agricultural practices are crucial to making human life on Earth more sustainable.

As the article states, human growth has expanded to the point where we have literally changed the planet.  Pollution used to be a local problem; now it’s global.  Resources drying up locally affect everyone, everywhere.  And population growth unchecked is a real problem.  (Watch out in discussing population to certain conservatives, by the way.  Glenn Beck and other right-wingers think Al Gore is in favor of Eugenics and forced sterilization.)   But there’s no doubt that simple family planning could help slow down climate change.

“The sudden acceleration of population growth, resource consumption and environmental damage has changed the planet.  We now live in a “full” world, with limited resources and a capacity to absorb waste.  The rules for living on such a world are different, too.  Most fundamentally, we must take steps to ensure that we function within the “safe operating space” of our environmental systems.  If we do not revise our ways, we will cause catastrophic changes that could have disastrous consequences for humankind.”

The article is written by a scientist from the University of Minnesota who stars in a video in a post below,  Jonathan Foley.

One of my favorite pieces is a book excerpt from Bill McKibben, activist, author and founder of 350.org. I like the new spelling to signify that we have a different earth we are living on– “Eaarth“.  Here is an excerpt from their interview with him about his new book:

In his new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, McKibben argues that humankind, because of its actions, now lives on a fundamentally different world, which he calls “Eaarth.” This celestial body can no longer support the economic growth model that has driven society for 200 years. To avoid our own collapse, we must instead seek to maintain wealth and resources, in large part by shifting to more durable, localized economies.

“SciAM:  You [...]

Events like Earth Hour do not need corporate partners. For what purpose? The whole point of the event is to turn lights off to get world-wide notice from those who make decisions on how to fight climate change and save the environment. Yet the main sponsor of Earth Hour, Wells Fargo Bank, as you can see from Earth Hour’s website where they were prominently advertised, did not even participate in Earth Hour. At least not in my city. (If there are reports out there anywhere that Wells Fargo participated in the event it was sponsoring, I’d like to see them.) With corporate sponsors like this, who needs deniers:

[Show as slideshow]

The whole point of Earth Hour was to turn off lights to generate awareness about global warming and how we waste energy, but its corporate sponsor couldn’t manage to do that. These photos were taken in central Minnesota at two Wells Fargo locations during Earth Hour. Yeah — the corporate sponsor of Earth Hour couldn’t even manage to shut down for one single hour.

Not everyone was enamored of the idea of turning off light bulbs only to Twitter like mad about the darkness.  If you used your phone to Twitter about Earth Hour, you still probably charged up its battery using electricity, often from coal plants, which are killing our environment.  Every little thing we do leaves a carbon footprint, which is a fact that Earth Hour tends to de-stress.   And by the way, let’s turn off Facebook and Twitter next year for an hour.  And let’s also ask people to turn their heat off for an hour and not drive around.   Next year, let’s shut down a coal plant during Earth Hour. That’ll get the media’s attention, and it would be a meaningful Earth Hour, for a change.

Someone not so turned on by turning off the lights:

One of many was Ben Ross.  He wrote:

“The past decade has ushered an unprecedented interest in environmentalism.   We now have hybrid cars, solar power heating, even eco-friendly picture frames.  Earth Hour aims to “symbolize” that “each of us can make a positive impact,” and symbolize is exactly what it does.  It is symbolic of the bumper-sticker environmentalism which has swept over the world, blinds us from the true causes of environmental degradation, and makes a farce out of the entire movement.”

I’m not totally sure of his sentiments about global warming, but I know that we need more than yearly feel-good stunts to “raise awareness”.

Two of my comments there were these:

“I didn’t boycott Earth Hour, but I did take photos of the two local Wells Fargo banks in my city and they were both ablaze with lights and open for business.  Why is that interesting?  Because Wells Fargo was an official partner/corporate sponsor of Earth Hour. And somehow they did it with all their lights on when the whole point of [...]

Below are a couple of articles on Ecosocialism for people who just want to read about it or are interested in it.  It’s a new model of solving the climate crisis with something besides capitalism, which is based on selling as many things as possible in order to make as high a profit as possible. Waste is built into capitalism to the point where it is seen as a plus.   Anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s movie called “Capitalism” knows this economic system is killing us, and you can’t solve climate change with the free market, while making lots of money.  See the video “The Story of Stuff” too,  for why it’s impossible to continue on with this model and still stop climate change.   We can either have growth and capitalism, many believe, or we can stop climate change, but we can’t do both.

There are many resources online for people interested in ecosocialism that explain why it should be the model of the future.  The current model of using our planet to make things that we throw away to make more and more things, using tons of energy in the process, shipping them all over the world — isn’t working anymore.

People should get back in touch with nature and appreciate our planet, basic as that may sound. President Obama agrees with that, and is creating a Conservation Summit. Great idea!   Naturally, anti-nature corporate types will ridicule the idea and call it “socialist”. The fact is that eco-socialism might be the best option for a new economic model as we attempt to stop and/or adapt to climate change.

Anti-capitalism and climate justice

by Esther Vivas

Today, climate change is an undeniable reality. The political, social and media impact of the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 was a good proof of this. A summit that showed the inability of the capitalist system to give a credible response to a crisis that it has itself created. Green capitalism offers a series of technological solutions (nuclear power, capture of carbon from the atmosphere to be stored, biofuels and so on) that will have a major social and environmental impact. These are false solutions to climate change that try to hide the structural causes that have led us to the current crisis situation and raise the contradiction between the short term calculations of capital and the long rhythms of ecological equilibrium.

In this context, a movement able to challenge the dominant discourse of green capitalism, recognising the impact and the responsibility of the current model of capitalist production, distribution and consumption and linking the global climate threat with everyday social problems is urgent. Copenhagen saw the increased expression of the movement for climate justice, precisely to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the mobilizations against the WTO [...]

Apparently. I will see it this week and report back…

Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere

Released in Italy May 20, 2009.

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Ceding US Offshore Oil to Foreign Firms OK Says Chu

US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu says he is not troubled by the prospect that potential sources of energy near US coastal waters may be tapped by foreign firms from China and Russia.

“The joke is on them,” Chu insisted. “They will remain hooked on oil with all its downsides. While they’re polluting their air burning gasoline and diesel we will be shifting to clean wind and solar power.”

Chu maintains that the prospect of oil shortages and higher prices for fuel will be  “positives for our nation’s future. We will learn to do with less, weaning ourselves from the materialism that has poisoned our culture. We will live more in tune with nature. When it is cold outside we will huddle together inside. When it is hot outside we will shed our clothing and allow our bodies to be cooled by evaporating perspiration. We will be forced to refrain from frivolous travel. I see no negatives from our decision to forego any claim on offshore deposits.”

Why did I laugh a little bit when I read this?   Because it’s a joke — It’s Semi-News — A Satirical Look at Recent News.

If this were true, though, he’d be  100% right.  I wish he had said it.  There is no downside to foregoing claims on offshore fossil fuels, but Republican gas and oil addicts want us to think there is. We can still get power from renewable sources in order to not work in buildings that are 120 degrees F, but sweating works too.

The Big Question: Is Earth Past the Tipping Point?

“For 10,000 years, our world seemed endless. The sky was the limit. But today’s world looks much smaller. We’ve cleared, consumed and polluted our way across the globe. The planet is shrinking. Have we pushed Earth past the tipping point? That’s a critical issue explored in this second Big Question video, from the University of MN, which draws on research from “Planetary Boundaries: A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” published this past fall in the journal Nature.

This video coincides with “Boundaries for a Healthy Planet,” IonE Director Jonathan Foley’s cover story in Scientific American magazine’s April 2010 issue.

This video is from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. The Wonk Room at Think Progress writes:

Last September, a team of 28 scientists identified “10 separate biophysical systems crucial to humanity’s flourishing” and then determined “safe operating boundaries” for those systems within which humanity must remain if we wish to maintain the conditions in which it developed civilization. Unfortunately, anthropogenic interference with the climate system, the nitrogen cycle, and biodiversity is already past safe thresholds, with ocean acidification, ozone depletion, and other resource consumption at the door.

This is a Wonk Room repost.

Planetary Boundaries

In a groundbreaking Nature article, 28 scientists including the IonE’s Jon Foley introduce a set of planetary boundaries.

including discussions on Futurism:

Against Fashion: Clothing as Art, 1850-1930
By Radu Stern
MIT Press 2005, (cloth 2003)
ISBN: 978-0-262-69329-5

Includes contributions to the new art form by various artistic movements of the avant-garde, including Futurism.

Prosthetic Gods
By Hal Foster
MIT Press, 2006
ISBN: 978-0-262-56281-2

Exploration of thesis through works and writings of key modernists.

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There was an old Star Trek episode years ago (NG) called “Who Watches the Watchers” and that episode come to mind when it comes to climate change geoengineering. Those planning to geoengineer our way out of climate change are making plans supposedly to “save the world” which is a noble cause, but who is saving us from them?   There are no current regulations against what they are doing and planning  (other than regular laws) and no one to stop these people from launching their private experiments that could irreparably change or harm our climate, sea, or land.  There was even a recent convention called The Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies in California, which just ended on Friday, March 26th. Have we had the convention yet where it’s decided whether geoengineering the climate is a good idea? The conference was sponsored by the admirable-sounding “Climate Response Fund“.

The UNFCCC and world government leaders are meeting on a regular basis to decide what to do about climate change and though they are not making any real apparent headway yet, that doesn’t mean a bunch of rogue scientists can plan to alter the atmosphere of the planet on their own, without oversight.  Climate Intervention News is reported on their site, and it’s very interesting that this is all going on under the radar of most of the media.  Does any of this make you nervous?  It should.*  Our first mission is to cut GHG emissions, not change the ecosystems of the planet.  From the Blue Marble: Bad Fixes.

“Tinkering with the Earth and its atmosphere in an attempt to fend off global warming—a.k.a. geoengineering—seems like the stuff of science fiction: Lacing the stratosphere with sulfur aerosols or whitening clouds over the ocean to reflect sunlight back into space. Fertilizing the oceans with iron to help them absorb more carbon dioxide. It’s big science on a comic-book scale, and as such, it carries no small dose of risk and controversy.

“Some of these technologies seem inappropriate,” Victor Menotti, director of the International Forum on Globalization, told MoJo at a press briefing Thursday. “There’s a sort of scientific arrogance that these experiments will be manageable. But before we get into talking about a Plan B, we want to get back to how we can cut emissions.”

“People think this is still science fiction, but it’s not,” added Silvia Ribeiro, program manager for ETC Group, an environmental advocacy organization. “Science [magazine] said this conference was like geoengineering coming out of the closet.”

She’s referring to the Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, where I’ve spent the past week schmoozing some of the field’s top researchers. ETC Group has circulated a letter—signed by dozens of like-minded organizations—questioning the entire conference and the motives of its attendees. (You can download the group’s report here.) Quoting the conference’s stated goal, Ribeiro [...]