Children’s Workshop to celebrate the birthday of Fortunato Depero

March 30, 2010
4-6pm
Casa d’Arte Futurista, Rovereto

Sulla soglia di questo museo, all’interno della corte del palazzo che lo ospita, la sezione didattica organizza un laboratorio all’aperto per festeggiare l’anniversario della nascita di Depero. L’attività si propone di coinvolgere i bambini e i loro accompagnatori adulti in una festa dai colori sgargianti, a cominciare dal brindisi futurista, a base di sciroppi di frutta che ognuno potrà mescolare a piacere. Nel corso dell’attività si sperimenterà la creazione di fiori fantastici, ispirati alla “flora magica” delle scenografie progettate da Depero per i Balletti Russi, per comporre un gigantesco mazzo di fiori in ricordo dell’artista. Inoltre, ogni partecipante potrà realizzare e indossare un panciotto futurista caratterizzato da vivaci tarsie in carta colorata.

Progetto didattico a cura di Annalisa Casagranda
Età consigliata: 4-12 anni

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This  beautiful video about oceans and the threat to them is from NRDC Flix.  “This groundbreaking NRDC documentary explores the startling phenomenon of ocean acidification, which may soon challenge marine life on a scale not seen for tens of millions of years.”

The oceans regulate climate and provide most of the oxygen for us to survive, but humans are destroying it with our CO2 emissions.  This week, an EPA spokeswoman said the agency “is interested in learning more about how to protect our ocean and coastal waters from acidification.”   That’s good, because the  EPA just settled a lawsuit that should lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions using the Clean Water Act.  An  article quoted below from Climatewire describes the lawsuit and the outcome.   In another updated story later, Climatewire** reported some updates to the story:

U.S. Clean Water Act settlement opening new path to GHG curbs

“U.S. EPA settled a lawsuit yesterday by agreeing to use the Clean Water Act to address ocean acidification, a move that some see as opening a side door to federal curbs on greenhouse gases that scientists link to problems in the marine environment. The settlement with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity directly addresses EPA’s failure to require Washington state to list its marine waters as impaired by rising acidity.

I don’t believe that the Obama EPA fought the Center’s lawsuit very hard, because this outcome is probably what they wanted to do anyway.  In any case, this settlement gives the EPA another legal backing for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Unfortunately, some politicians in Washington have an anti-environmental agenda.  We can only hope that all the members of Congress and the governors who seem to not value the environment (and apparently also hate our ability to survive on this planet) will be unsuccessful in their recent attempts to stop the EPA from regulating greehouse gases and protecting clean air and water.  Republican politicians are scrambling to beat each other in denouncing the EPA’s attempts to protect us from pollution and global warming.   In addition, Governors of several U.S. states also recently wrote a letter requesting that Congress to stop the EPA from regulating harmful pollution.  From the WSJ:

“The governors, led by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, made their request in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and their Republican counterparts. The letter was also signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican who has been cited as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential election.”

This request is a shameful act by people who don’t even seem to care if humanity survives climate change.  Politicians should be looking for as many ways to keep humanity from harm from global warming as they can, but instead, certain politicians are doing the opposite. In the case of MN governor Tim Pawlenty, this damaging and shameful request to stop the EPA is being done for purely political reasons, as he is attempting, badly, to garner national attention [...]

Futurismo. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, l’avanguardia giuliana e i rapporti internazionali

-and-

Gli Anni Trenta. Omaggio a Tullio Crali

Now until April 5, 2010

Concurrent exhibitions and events:

Dopo il Futurismo. Chersicla per l’avanguardia
February 26 – April 5, 2010
Palazzo Della Torre (Fondazione Carigo)

Futurismo-Moda-Design. La ricostruzione futurista dell’universo quotidiano
Musei provinciali di Borgo Castello
December 19 – May 1, 2010

Treno in corsa (Futurist Evening)
Friday, March 12 at 6pm

Serata Futurista
Friday, March 19 at 6pm

more info

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SCIENCE: Man’s climate fingerprints clear — U.K. Met Office (03/05/2010)

The possibility that human activity is not the prime cause of climate change is becoming “increasingly remote,” according to a major review of climate science released by Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office.

The study used computer models of different possible climate change drivers — including solar output, volcanic eruptions, El Niño and the release of greenhouse gases — matched against tangible climate changes over the past decades to air and sea temperature and Arctic sea ice. This technique, called “optimal detection,” showed clear fingerprints of man-caused warming, said Peter Stott, who led the project.

“This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors,” he said.

According to NASA, average atmospheric temperatures have risen by 0.8 degrees centigrade since 1880. But much of the recent warming trends have been found instead in the world’s oceans, Stott said.

“Over 80 percent of the heat that’s trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean, and we can see that happening,” Stott said.

One possibility frequently cited by critics of global warming is that warming could be driven by increased activity from the sun. However, if that was the case, the Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed more evenly and temperatures would have increased early in the 20th century, rather than later.

“There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years,” Stott said. “And solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen.”

The review was published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (Alok Jha, London Guardian, March 5). – PV

For anyone who still thinks renewable and clean energy is “too expensive” to implement, it might shock them to find out that ignoring climate change and the ensuing ice melt will be much, much more expensive.  And as the Arctic ice melts, it speeds up global warming. Less heat from the sun is reflected off the earth as the ice disappears, and more heat is retained by our climate and planet.  This will cause increasing heat waves, droughts, and unpredictable weather, not to mention flooding of coastlines from all that melting ice . . . yet we can still do something about it.  But time is running out.

The Arctic Ice is melting and it will cost trillions before it stops.

WASHINGTON – Reuters – Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.

“Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called “Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away.”

He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world’s great weather makers.

“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down,” he said.

The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.

Read the full report,  An Initial Estimate of the Cost of Lost Climate Regulation Services Due to Changes in the Arctic Cryosphere (PDF)

The losses could grow as a warmer Arctic unlocks vast stores of methane in the permafrost. The gas has about 21 times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.

Melting of Arctic sea ice is already triggering a feedback of more warming as dark water revealed by the receding ice absorbs more of the sun’s energy, he said. That could lead to more melting of glaciers on land and raise global sea levels.

While much of Europe and the United States has suffered heavy snowstorms and unusually low temperatures this winter, evidence has built that the Arctic is at risk from warming.

Greenhouse gases generated by tailpipes and smokestacks have pushed Arctic temperatures in the last decade to the highest levels in at least 2,000 years, reversing a natural cooling trend, an international team of researchers reported in the journal Science in September.

Arctic emissions of methane have jumped 30 percent in recent years, scientists said last month.

Thin ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a powerful ice-melt next summer, [...]

Daniele Lombardi – The bad boys of piano

March 11 – 14, 2010
Teatro Nazionale - Roma

link

Nuovo appuntamentocon la danza al Teatro Nazionale con il titolo “Daniele Lombardi – The bad boys of piano” I ragazzacci del pianoforte, titolo che si ispira all’autobiografia di George Antheil, The bad boy of music, spiritoso ed interessante spaccato di vita parigina degli anni Venti. Una escursione nella musica del “Futurismo” in forma di concerto pianistico, realizzazione scenica di balletto ed altre sorprese, un omaggio al movimento omonimo che prese il via dal Manifesto di Fondazione del Futurismo di Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, scritto cento anni or sono e che provocò in pochi anni una incredibile produzione in tutte le Arti in una apertura sulla modernità e la sperimentazione internazionale.

Spettacolo con l’Architettura scenica di Franco Purini, i costumi di Anna Biagiotti, la regia di Beppe Menegatti, la Consulenza musicale di Francesco Sodini, il Disegno luci di Patrizio Maggi. Interpreti dello spettacolo la danzatrice Carla Fracci, l’attrice Olimpia Carlisi, nel doppio ruolo di coreografa-interprete Ileana Citaristi nota per lo studio e la ricerca sui due stili di danza classica indiana, l’attore Italo Dall’Orto, Tadashi Endo anch’egli nel doppio ruolo di coreografo-interprete e noto per aver fuso le tradizioni teatrali di danza Orientali e Occidentali, e i danzatori Massimo Garon, ospite del Teatro, Gaia Straccamore, Guido Pistoni, Vito Mazzeo e Damiano Mongelli del Corpo di Ballo del Teatro dell’Opera. La prima rappresentazione giovedì 11 alle 20.30, le repliche venerdì 12 alle 11 per le scuole, sabato 13 alle 18 e domenica 14 alle 16.30.

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Today the EPA approved a permit for surface coal mining in Ohio.  This is a big blow to the environment, to future generations of Americans,  and to the natural resources of the United States.   This is our country, but it seems that Big Coal and other polluters feel they own it, and can ruin our country however they wish.

Read more about this ruling and listen to Lisa Jackson speak at the National Press Club at Climate Files Radio.

The press release for this decision is here.

EPA Approves Ohio Surface Coal Mine — “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded its review of a Clean Water Act permit application for Oxford Mining Company’s proposed Kaiser Mathias mine in Tuscarawas County, Ohio and has approved the project.”

This is the EPA not relying on science for its decisions.  This is the EPA stalling a real decision on surface coal mining, while global warming continues to escalate and the government officials spin their wheels in Washington.  Lisa Jackson claims the EPA cannot regulate coal mining.  That’s not ‘Yes We Can’, that’s a weak excuse to allow coal lobbyists to continue their choke-hold over the federal government.  They are selling out future generations for more coal profits.

It’s time we take our country — literally — back from the polluters.

“We need to acknowledge that there is nothing more important than
preserving the viability of planet Earth. Nothing.”

Photo: Regis Duvignau | An aerial view shows flooded houses and streets in L'aiguillon sur Mer, southwestern France, southwestern France, March 1, 2010, following a major storm named Xynthia.

The Earth has its own set of rules
Our view of nature is based on our human desire for more, and that economic model is broken.

March 02, 2010|By B.E. Mahall and F.H. Bormann

Early in our history it didn’t make any difference how we viewed our environment. We could change it, and if we didn’t like what we did to it, we could move and natural processes would soon obliterate whatever we had done. Over the years, models of our relationship to the environment have been based on religious views, with the world provided for us to dominate and subdue as described in Genesis, and philosophical views, seeing wisdom and virtue in nature as described by Thoreau.

But by far our most prevalent view of nature derives from a rudimentary human desire for more. This is the basis of the economic model that currently directs our relationships with one another and with our environment. It has produced stupendous human population growth and dramatic, deleterious effects on nature. Recognizing these effects, efforts have been marshaled to change the self-serving economic model with notions of Earth “stewardship,” eloquently advanced decades ago by then-Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, and, most recently, to infiltrate the economic model with “ecosystem services” by assigning monetary values to functions performed by the Earth that are beneficial to people.

All of these views are fundamentally and dangerously flawed, because all are anthropocentric. They begin and end with humans. This isn’t the way the Earth works.

The Earth has its own set of rules, solidly grounded in laws of physics and chemistry and emergent principles of geology and biology. Unlike our economic model, these are not artificial constructs. They are real, and they govern. Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, 100-year floods, massive wildfires and disease epidemics are dramatic examples of parts of nature, neither all service nor all harm, creating and destroying, and governed by rules that are indifferent to humans. Our anthropocentric economic model for interacting with the world ignores and is proving to be incompatible with Earth’s rules, and is therefore on a direct collision course with them.

To achieve a more accurate model of our relation to nature, we need to see ourselves as part of nature, governed by nature (not economics), beholden to nature for ecosystem services and subject to nature’s disturbances.

We need to view our existence in nature as dependent on numerous functions we are unable to perform ourselves, and without which we couldn’t survive. And we need to recognize that we now have the power and the reckless inclination, driven by shortsighted anthropocentrism, to disrupt these functions to [...]

Anti-government Republicans, lobbyists for Big Coal, Big Oil and others attack the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to keep our air safe and our water clean for everyone . . . . despite these attacks, the EPA’s Endangerment Finding Appears Safe for Now.   It is the EPA’s job to keep us safe from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, just like it’s the government’s job to keep us “safe from terrorism”.  Burning coal and forcing other pollution on us is terrorism.  Unregulated greenhouse gas emissions are weapons of mass destruction. It’s the government’s job to keep these things from killing us.

Article below is from Solve Climate.

“Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson faced questions today from senators about her agency’s fiscal year 2011 budget request. Although representing only a small portion of the $10 billion total request, the ongoing battles regarding the EPA’s aim to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from some sources took center stage.

The agency seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas regulation — House members seeking to overturn its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, senators calling for delays on regulation, states and industry groups attempting to sue. These maneuvers are drawing national attention and dividing Democrats in Congress. However, the chances of permanently preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases appear slim.

“It has been three years since the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA has a legal responsibility under the Clean Air Act to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said at the hearing.

She noted that some of her colleagues on Capitol Hill are now trying to subvert the authority of that court finding. “I think this is the wrong approach,” she said. “Legislation overturning the endangerment finding countermands the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.” As directed by that court decision, the EPA found last year that greenhouse gases do endanger public health, making them eligible for regulation under the Clean Air Act.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined the hearing late and repeated many of the same assertions she has made in recent months that greenhouse gas regulation would be better done by Congress than by an appointed agency.

Along with a number of co-sponsors, she introduced a resolution in January that invokes the Congressional Review Act in an attempt to block the EPA’s authority. Murkowski has the support of numerous oil and gas groups, as well as agricultural groups who fear the economic impact of EPA regulation.

Two House Democrats made a parallel move last week, with Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) sponsoring an identical resolution along with Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.).

Read more here When will these people learn?  This is the only planet we’ve got. If they are hiding evidence of another habitable planet for the human race to migrate to, once this one is trashed, I’d like to see it.  We should demand this “secret” info.  of another earth-like [...]

This never happens -- and why should it?

The United States educational system is in trouble.  When I read the story linked below, I thought of an old 1950’s  car bumping down a rocky hill and crashing into a boulder-strewn riverbed.  That’s  public school science policy in the U.S.  We are not just not making progress on climate change legislation and public awareness here in the U.S., we are going backwards fast.   It’s now been reported that the legislatures of 15 states have passed resolutions pushed together by the fossil fuel companies to deny climate change.  Lobbying is not limited to the U.S. Congress. These companies are pouring cash into local campaigns and using their new-found money power because of the recent Citizens  United  Supreme Court decision to buy or threaten state and municipal elected officials as well as federal officials.  (Info from the Thom Hartmann show.)

One of these states is South Dakota.   They have joined the states that want to pass laws to make it legal and even desirable to teach children propaganda against science, or a variation of religion,  rather than teaching real science in schools.   Of course, parents can already teach their children all the propaganda or lies or whatever they want at home on their own time, but the disturbing trend is for laws to be passed to make that alternate world-view mandatory in public schools, which are funded by taxpayers.  Regular people will now be paying for anti-science, political propaganda in these states.

It’s the conservative states pushing this, of course.  Their arguments against global warming are now being tied to abortion and religion for purely political reasons.  No, the Waxman-Markey bill is not great legislation, but it won’t lead to a rise in abortions or eugenics or end hetero marriage, as many people seem to think.  Here’s what happened, according to the New York Times:

In South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature this week.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

No, you did you not read that wrong. The pursuit of a contrary opinion, no matter what the topic, has spread to state law makers.  This boils down to the state legislature of South Dakota denying that science is more important than the unfounded feeling — hope, really  — that All is Well-.  It’s even worse than that; they outright deny established science in the resolution.  In part, the resolution reads:

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Calling for balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota.

WHEREAS, the earth has been cooling for the last eight years despite small increases in anthropogenic carbon dioxide; and
WHEREAS, there is no evidence of atmospheric warming in the troposphere where the majority of warming would be taking place; and
WHEREAS, historical climatological data shows without question the earth has gone through trends where the climate was much warmer than in our [...]

CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas to worry about.  According to Lisa Jackson of the EPA, the  ‘methane expo’  (that ended today) will help us mitigate climate change by finding ways to capture and use it.  A ‘methane partnership’ between  several countries has been in existence since 2004 and has already been capturing methane (according to the EPA) for years.

Methane comes from a lot of sources.  It’s coming up from the melting ocean beds, it’s emitted right now from the melting permafrost, mostly in Siberia and Canada, and global warming is going to make this situation worse. This excerpt is from the Atlantic, today:

“Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.

When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures.  A National Science Foundation study in today’s issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane.   Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year.”

That’s a lot of methane! It’s true that cows produce a lot of CO2 and methane (they emit both) and there is a fear that some day cows will become illegal to raise for food.  I doubt that will ever happen completely, but it’s true that if people stopped eating beef and other mammals the CO2 and methane levels would decrease a lot. There is no need at all for humans to eat other mammals, and mammals bred for meat are responsible for a surprising amount of greenhouse emissions.  Many of these emissions could be eliminated by eliminating these animals as a food source, which would decrease their populations, and decrease the pollution commercial animal farms produce too.

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that livestock accounted for 18% of greenhouse gases, making livestock emissions “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.” However recently, Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C. environmental think-tank, reported that livestock emissions actually account for 51% of greenhouse gases.  Source.

It’s very clear that we need less cattle in the world raised for food.   Also see this from today: Huge methane leak in Arctic Ocean. More on the methane expo after the break . . .

From the EPA:  Why is there so much concern about methane emissions?

Methane is [30-50] times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities. Methane now accounts for 16% of [...]

Theatre, Performance and the Historical Avant-Garde

By Günter Berghaus

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
ISBN (hardcover): 1-4039-6955-8 / (paperback) 0-230-61752-2
400 pages
35 b/w illus

This comprehensive study traces the origins of European modernism in nineteenth-century Paris, then branches out to examine four major movements of the theatrical avant-garde that sprung from this epicenter in the early twentieth-century: Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Constructivism.

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Fortunato Depero 50

February 19 – March 12, 2010
*Vernissage, February 26, 2010
*Closing Event, March 12, 2010
Italian Cultural Institute, Washington DC
Curated by Maurizio Scudiero

Check out this review of the opening by Susana

Review in the Washington Post

The exhibition represents the techniques employed by Depero for his graphic work and advertisements. It is an ensemble of Depero’s graphic design works spanning over the course of 35 years.

Curated by art critic Maurizio Scudiero, responsible for the Archivio Depero in Rovereto, and by the Studio 53 Arte (a futurism dedicated gallery), the exhibition illustrates 41 works and 10 vintage prints.

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How much of your city is concrete and parking lots?  It’s probably about 25% which is the ratio in many cities.  My city is no exception. There are so many parking lots that stand empty and vast expanses of pavement that it seems ridiculous.   The problem is that many cities were never actually planned — they were just cobbled together as populations grew, businesses sprouted up and zoning changed.  Business zoning means large parking lots.  Many of them are not landscaped with “greenery” in mind at all.

One major American city is taking on the parking lots and installing mini-parks or “parklets” for people to enjoy.  This adds trees and other carbon sinks to cities that badly need them,  and it puts some of the land back to use as nature intended.   It’s a true cliche that the earth was never intended to be paved over.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum like a huge parking lot.  (Just look at any crack in a parking lot and you will see weeds or grass trying to poke through and grow.)  Let’s take our cities back from the pavement lovers and re-introduce some nature with micro-parks,  like they are doing in San Francisco (and have done in parts of New York).  A greener city is a healthier city too.

Unpaving Paradise . . .

In San Francisco, a handful of parking spaces and public right-of-ways are being remade into mini parks and plazas. Some are lined with trees sprouting from old dumpsters, others are buffered from traffic with large, discarded pipes; inside the improvised borders, tables, small patches of grass and concrete slabs are arranged for seating.

These ‘parklets’ and plazas are part of San Francisco’s new Pavement to Parks initiative, an attempt to transfer some of San Francisco’s public space back to pedestrians.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s greening director Astrid Haryati recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, nearly 25 percent of San Francisco’s surface is pavement. The Pavement to Parks program aims to change how much of that area is devoted to cars.

This is a fascinating development in the evolution of thought around city streets and who gets to use them. In 2009, New York City took on a similar (yet larger) project — transforming Broadway to be far more pedestrian friendly. . . .

Read more here. I love this idea!

In a related futurism story, 350.org is excited about the future of renewable energy and future Breakthroughs.

You could also work from the other direction: making renewable energy so cheap that it supplants the dirty stuff almost automatically. The Breakthrough Institute and the Truman National Security Project earlier this month convened a collection of groups in Washington, USA to discuss how to build support for public funding for more aggressive research and development spending. The participants included, significantly, Google, perhaps the greatest innovation company on the planet (the 350 campaign anyway seems to run on Gmail, Googledocs, and GoogleEarth), which for [...]

My power went out this afternoon unexpectedly for several hours.  I know other people in some countries go through this or worse all the time, but it threw off my entire day.  I went to a nearby coffee shop to use my smartphone to at least read online,  but then discovered my phone was quickly running out of power too.  It made me realize how much we depend on our electricity and how easy it is to become completely disrupted when power is turned off for a few hours.

The coffee shop had free wi-fi and was packed with people working on laptops.  It got me to thinking that we need more reliable power than we have.  If this had been January, people would have been freezing in their homes.  The U.S. power grid is overtaxed and meant for an earlier era, not 2010 where so much is demanded of it.   It was meant for 50 or 100 million people, not 300 million, who are using it more than ever.  And we need uninterrupted power.  Anyone who thinks we could transition to living more simply, without electricity, without power, is dreaming.  Our brains and work habits are now wired for the internet and the increased use of it will take more power, not less.  That means that we will have a difficult time conserving energy in the future.  There are more appliances and heating systems in use in the United States by far than 20 years ago and it increases every year.  Add a few million electric cars to that and the amount of power needed will grow even more.

We don’t have to have a future of less power.  Why conserve solar power or wind power if there is an abundance of it.  If we start using renewable power all the time, conservation won’t be an issue.  The sun and wind and geothermal power are sources that are free and infinite (at least as far into the future as we can imagine). We need to jump start renewable power and a better more reliable way of transporting power to people.  If we don’t, power outages and brownouts will become common everywhere.

We need more power in the world — but not coal.   There is good news about the rebellion against the coal industry, from Ted Nace, originator of Coal Swarm.  He has a new book out called Climate Hope, and was recently interviewed by Alternet.

Discussing his books Gangs of America and Climate Hope, Coalswarm founder Ted Nace talks about the rise of corporations and Big Coal, the growing network of grassroots movements against coal, and why, despite the non-binding resolution coming out of Copenhagen, we should have hope.

Christine Shearer: Especially since in that 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, “corporate personhood” came not from the actual judicial decision but from the court reporter’s notes on the case.

Ted Nace: Yes, and that’s just the most well known of a long string of court decisions endowing corporations [...]

Climate change deniers and skeptics are still out there, but now there are great resources (besides the scientific organizations) such as Skeptical Science and the Climate Crock of the Week videos. One of the latest videos is above, but there are many more,  and you can see them all here.

Now you can win any skeptic or denier climate change debate with the 3 resources in this post.  Skeptical Science has put together an answer for the 242 skeptic claims it has amassed so far. It’s an amazing and impressive list and you can see the claims and the answers to all with links here. I included many of the arguments from scientists in a podcast on the climate science recently, and you can listen to it at  Climate Files Radio.

Collin Peterson -- See what this clueless Democrat is doing, below.

This is a positive development, if it’s true.  Cap and Trade was never going to get us to where we need to be on climate change.  If they can get something like this through the Congress it would be a better way forward than the cap and trade bills in discussion until recently.  But a “radical overhaul”?  I’ll believe that when I see it.

Senators to Propose Abandoning Cap-and-Trade. By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson, WashPost,  February 27, 2010. “Three key senators are engaged in a radical behind-the-scenes overhaul of climate legislation, preparing to jettison the broad ‘cap-and-trade’ approach that has defined the legislative debate for close to a decade. The sharp change of direction demonstrates the extent to which the cap-and-trade strategy — allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits in order to meet a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions — has become political poison. In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants,  In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, “Cap-and-trade is dead.”

Graham and Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) have worked for months to develop an alternative to cap-and-trade, which the House approved eight months ago. They plan to introduce legislation next month that would apply different carbon controls to individual sectors of the economy instead of setting a national target.

According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry.

Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector; and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and would provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.. . . .

“The Senate is understanding this is not a simple problem — it’s multiple problems, and it requires multiple solutions,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club.”

The Sierra Club is doing some good work of its own on coal and attempting to get rid of it.  They have a new program called “Beyond Coal” to try to influence people in power to give up on coal and instead create jobs with green, renewable energy.

And finally, this is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of: legally challenging the EPA’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions.  These dumb dolts in the Congress who don’t “believe” in climate change, (all of them old men who’ll be dead when climate change really hits the fan) need to [...]

Despite the inability of the U.S. Congress to get much done recently, Al Gore is still fighting for climate change legislation. What he is fighting for is what he feels is politically possible, but it’s probably not going to be adequate to stop our climate from changing.  Gore says there is a new bill being drafted and a  bipartisan group of senators is working on its content.  Just the fact that it’s bipartisan is bad news — Republicans tend to not believe that anything needs to be done about climate change, but they want jobs to result from some type of bill.

If this is the bill that contains allowing drilling for oil and lots of money for carbon capture and sequestration technology, it’s worthless.  Coal will never be clean. The use of it has to simply stop.  Oil will never be clean. We need to stop drilling for it and use instead some of the many kinds of clean and really renewable energies that are available to us today, right now. Our Congress seems to be unaware of the ramifications of climate change and even unaware of the importance of renewable energy, so I have little hope they will pass anything meaningful that addresses climate change.  For that reason, I’m not going to call my Congressman.  (What’s the point?)   Instead, I’m going to send an email to Al Gore (through his action fund) and tell him to use his influence to fight harder for a real climate bill, not one that includes the fallacy of “clean coal” and drilling for more oil.

Today Gore sent out this email:

Winston Churchill said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”

Now is that time.  Our elected officials must rise to face the challenge of the climate crisis. And we must demand that they do what is required before it is too late.

That’s what I wrote yesterday in the New York Times, and today I need your help to make sure our Senators pass a strong climate bill this year.  The good news is we could be very close. A bipartisan group of Senators is drafting a bill right now that could be introduced within weeks — and critical negotiations over its content are taking place right now.

So starting Tuesday, a broad coalition of climate groups is launching a massive calling campaign to build grassroots pressure for the strongest bill possible. Will you join us by pledging to call your Senator on Tuesday?  Clicking here will add your name to the thousands who have already pledged to call.  It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable climate calamity. But the overwhelming scientific consensus remains unchanged. Every day we dump 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere, as if it were an open sewer.

There is still a [...]

International Yearbook
of
Futurism Studies

Editor

Günter Berghaus

Editorial Board

Matteo D’Ambrosio
Marjorie Perloff
Irina Suboti?
Jorge Schwartz

The last twenty years has seen some major advances in the field of Futurism Studies. What in the first decades after WW II was frowned upon and regarded with political suspicion, has subsequently taken a remarkable development, both in academia and on the art/publication market. Futurism has now come to be regarded as Italy’s most important contribution to modern art and as having left a lasting mark on Italian literature. Consequently, in the 1980s and 90s, a pool of more than 500 artists and writers has been rediscovered, presented to the public by means of exhibitions and publications, and dozens of them promoted to an elevated status in the national pantheon. Every history of art and literature of the past twenty years has accorded Futurism a prominent position in the cultural history of the country.

Outside Italy, the development has been similar. Between 1945 and 1970, few publications were dedicated to the international branches of the Futurist movement, and even less to the leading figures in Italy. This situation changed remarkably after the epochal 1986 Palazzo Grassi exhibition, Futurismo e futurismi. A long series of international exhibitions throughout the Western world raised Futurism to a status on a par with Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism. Consequently, it entered the syllabus in academic institutions and became a standard topic, not only in courses of fine art, design and architecture, but also Italian Studies, Hispanic Studies, Slavonic Studies, Cultural Studies, Theatre History, Music History etc.

This trend has even been surpassed in Eastern and Central Europe. After the demise of the Communist régimes, the historical avant-garde could be thoroughly re-assessed and in many cases for the first time uncovered. A wealth of artistic creativity in the often short-lived democratic States of the 1910s and 20s has come to light, and the central position played by Futurism in it has now been firmly established. This has resulted in over 2,500 publications since the fall of the iron curtain in 1989.

The astounding development outlined above found a peak in the 2009 centenary of the foundation of Futurism. 300 exhibitions, 45 international conferences and an uncountable number of theatre and musical performances, radio and TV broadcasts have given Futurism an unprecedented prominence in the cultural calendar. Futurism Studies as an academic discipline is now firmly established and produces some 300-350 monographs annually (more than half of them outside Italy), tendency still rising. Yet, it is conspicuous that this discipline is strongly compartmentalized, not so much in terms of artistic media, but along national borders. Italian scholars rarely take note of the heaving research that is being carried out in the UK or US, not to mention Russia, Brazil or Germany; but also vice versa, Mexicans or Argentinians tend to be very knowledgeable about creacionismo, ultraismo and estridentismo, but publish few studies on Zenitizam, Zaum-poetry or Poetizmus.

One of the consequences that can be drawn from this situation – and it is one that I have presented, to considerable approbation, at numerous conferences in 2009 – is that the debate on Futurism must become more globalized and be less centred on Italy. Futurism had a world-wide impact and generated many international Futurisms. It made important contributions to numerous avant-garde movements, despite the fact that their agendas only partially overlapped with Marinetti’s aesthetic and political programme.

I have suggested at various academic gatherings in 2009 the founding of an International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, designed to act as a medium of communication amongst a world-wide community of scholars and a forum of debate on the manifold Futurist and para-Futurist phenomena in and outside of Italy. This idea has won widespread support, and half a dozen leading scholars have enthusiastically agreed to serve on the board of such a periodical. More colleagues will be approached in the next months to serve as contributing and consultant editors. Typically, they will be experts on the multifaceted influences of Futurism in their respective country, act as intermediaries to their academic community (especially of young scholars), solicit contributions for the Yearbook and act as referees for essays submitted.

Thus the Yearbook will facilitate contacts across national borders and academic disciplines and establish a global network of academics working in the field of Futurism Studies. The periodical will also act as a coordinating medium for bi-annual regional conferences (the first will take place on East and Central European Futurism, as part of the 2010 EAM conference at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznán/Poland, 9-11 September 2010; a second is planned on Latin-American Futurism for 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, a third on woman Futurists outside Italy for 2014 in Toronto).

The Yearbook will publish essays generated from those conferences, but also contributions focussed on other countries. It will have an interdisciplinary orientation and publish research concerned with literature, fine arts, music, theatre, dance, decorative arts, graphic design, fashion etc. Each volume will have some 250-300 pages and consist of the following sections:

1. Announcements of conferences, exhibitions, publication ventures (10-15 pp)
2. Essays related to world-wide Futurism (180-200 pp.)
3. Country surveys discussing recent work carried out on Futurism in individual countries (30-40 pp.)
4. Conference reports, reviews of books, performances, concerts, exhibitions (10-20 pp)
5. Bibliography of recent Futurism studies with a world-wide coverage, designed to serve as annual addenda to my Bibliographic Handbook of Futurism (15-20 pp)

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There is a new Climate Files podcast, with news headlines, information on the recent EPA Townhall meeting, and the energy-related portion of Obama’s business speech.   I asked a question at the EPA townhall but no one was willing to address the Enbridge oil sands pipeline in Minnesota that I asked about.   It’s currently under construction, and there have already been oil spills.  Even with the new publicly-declared willingness of the EPA to answer our questions, there are still uncomfortable things they would rather not discuss.

One of the stories mentioned in the podcast is about coal ash waste, something that plagues the U.S.  even more than nuclear waste because there’s so much more of it.  Thirty-one sites have been newly identified as being very dangerous to public health.   “Arsenic, a potent human carcinogen, has been found at 19 of 31 sites at extremely high levels.” Did you know the use of coal can cause cancer?  Coal plants and their toxic waste are more prevalent than nuclear plants in the U.S. too.

“Two environmental groups today identified 31 sites in 14 states contaminated with coal-ash waste containing arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium, and other toxic metals that can cause cancer and neurological damage to humans and poison fish and wildlife.

The report from the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice released today relies on facts compiled from monitoring data and other information in the files of state agencies. The groups say these facts demand immediate federal regulation of coal combustion waste disposal, which is currently unregulated.

The newly identified coal combustion waste sites are in addition to the 70 sites identified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the wake of the disastrous Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill at the Kingston power plant in December 2008 – bringing the total to 101.

“The 100 some damage cases that are now well documented are just the tip of the iceberg,” said J. Russell Boulding, principal, Boulding Soil-Water Consulting, Bloomington, Indiana, who contributed to the report.

“Our experience in compiling these damage cases is that if there are data available on surface and groundwater quality in the vicinity of a CCW disposal area, you will find contamination. How many hundreds more damaged sites are out there waiting to be identified?” Boulding asked.

The 31 sites are located in: Delaware (1); Florida (3); Illinois (1); Indiana (2); Maryland (1); Michigan (1); Montana (1); Nevada (1); New Mexico (1); North Carolina (6); Pennsylvania (6); South Carolina (3); Tennessee (2); and West Virginia (2).

Active coal combustion waste disposal is still occurring at 25 out of the 31 sites.

Read more here. Waste from coal plants should not be tolerated any more than nuclear waste is accepted, but it seems like it is.