1. Futurism

Category Archives: Futurism

Amazing Pollution in China

Posted on by

Chemical waste from Jiangsu Taixing Chemical Industrial District dumped on top of the Yangtze River bank. May 15, 2009 Photo by Lu Guang

Overall, China is now the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gas that leads to global warming. Per capita, the United States is still far and away the leader on that, but our emissions are on track to start falling soon, mainly because of the economy and the EPA is beginning to more aggressively regulate clean air and water. It’s also possible that we will get some type of climate change legislation soon; and many other factors such as new technologies and a clean energy and jobs focus. We really don’t know what the future holds, but it looks as though the Bush years of inaction on climate change really are over. We can still be optimistic on this, even if the start on emissions reductions is slow. Due to worsening climate events across the world, that may finally change.

We may not be sure what China is doing to solve climate change, but they are not ending their use of coal.  As far as toxic pollution goes, China still has a huge problem.

This group of photos is part of a photo essay on China’s pollution.  All photos are by Chinese freelance photographer, Lu Guang.

We can’t be sure what other countries are planning to do on climate change, despite their public pronouncements and despite what they said at Copenhagen.  It’s possible that they don’t mean to reduce emissions as much as they tell reporters and their own public.  We will only know by what they eventually do.

Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC thinks the grouping at Copenhagen of India, China, Brazil and South Africa (BASIC) will make that group stronger and more relevant.  Hopefully it will not remain  a group that stalls and refuses to make binding agreements,  as it seemed to do in Copenhagen.  India admitted it and the other BASIC countries were the reason that a binding agreement was blocked:

In November, the BASIC countries forged a united front in Beijing to put pressure on developed countries in Copenhagen.  India said the BASIC countries were successful in thwarting global pressure to agree to a legally-binding emissions cut.

Interestingly, The Guardian is not taking the side of those who say the U.S. skewered the climate talks, but are reporting that China was the country that contributed the most to that.

It’s interesting that India and China might be the main reasons we didn’t get a binding agreement in Copenhagen, given the attacks on the performance there of the United States by so many.  Even usually fair alternative U.S. media seemed to (without any proof of any kind) blame Obama for what they called the “failure” of Copenhagen.  Yet according to the Guardian:

“The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? [...]

Getting Back to Work on Climate Change with a New Approach

Posted on by

Photo: Rupak De Chowdhuri/ A Greenpeace activist carries a model of the earth during a mock funeral procession in New Delhi December 21, 2009.

Some groups and activists are in danger of inspiring people to do nothing about climate change due to disappointment over Copenhagen.  This would be exactly the wrong thing to do!    Extended criticism and finding blame is not helpful and it threatens action of all kinds on global warming, and could even lead to people giving up.  That’s the danger of dwelling on it.  Let’s move on. Forget Copenhagen, and in addition, maybe the world should stop looking to the UN to solve problems.  It’s obviously a waste of time, considering the years spent on these meetings already, and a failure called the Kyoto Protocol and fighting about money and resources the main things to come out of those years.

We need to spread the word that activists need to double their efforts instead and approach this global problem from another direction: individual countries should try to top each other in leading the charge to fight climate change and develop clean energy and technology. Let’s inspire a global warming technology/clean energy race, like the moon race of the 1960s.  Competition between countries on solving climate change might do it.  We need to pressure our governments to fund clean energy and technology. Thomas Friedman understood this when he wrote:

Maybe the best thing President Obama could have done here in Copenhagen was to make clear that America intends to win that race. All he needed to do in his speech was to look China’s prime minister in the eye and say: “I am going to get our Senate to pass an energy bill with a price on carbon so we can clean your clock in clean-tech. This is my moon shot. Game on.”

Because once we get America racing China, China racing Europe, Europe racing Japan, Japan racing Brazil, we can quickly move down the innovation-manufacturing curve and shrink the cost of electric cars, batteries, solar and wind so these are no longer luxury products for the wealthy nations but commodity items the third world can use and even produce.”

Queen Elizabeth gets the idea too, as she urged people to keep searching for solutions in her annual Christmas address. Leadership on climate change in one country will inspire it in others.

One thing that won’t inspire action on climate change is disappointment with world leaders and blaming them for not doing what we wanted.  And climate scientist James Hansen probably had it right when he expected nothing great to come from Copenhagen in the first place.  He’s right when he wants this failure to open new ways for us to solve the enormous challenges of climate change.  A recent interview with him is below.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen never expected the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to amount to much. He told the British Guardian newspaper that it would be better if Copenhagen failed. That’s [...]

New Publication: ‘Roman Jakobson e il futurismo italiano’

Posted on by

Roman Jakobson e il futurismo italiano

Matteo D’Ambrosio
Liguori Editore, 2009
ISBN: 978-88-207-4581-3

Also available as an e-book!

Roman Jakobson, uno dei maggiori linguisti e teorici della letteratura, in gioventù fu poeta futurista e incontrò Marinetti. Nei suoi primi scritti mise più volte a confronto il Futurismo italiano con le esperienze dell’avanguardia russa, del Cubismo e del Dadaismo. In questo volume sono analizzati in particolare l’articolo del 1919 sul Futurismo (ispirato dal formalismo e dalla teoria della relatività einsteiniana) e alcune pagine del saggio del 1921 su Chlebnikov e la nuova poesia russa, in cui Jakobson privilegia la riflessione sulla materialità acustica del segno e sull’autonomia della parola poetica, esamina alcuni manifesti marinettiani ed elabora proposte metodologiche alla base della teoria e della critica letteraria del Novecento. In allegato una loro prima traduzione italiana integrale.

Capitoli

  1. Croce e Jakobson uniti contro la prima avanguardia
  2. L’attività giovanile e l’incontro con Marinetti
  3. L’articolo sul Futurismo (1919)
  4. Futurismo e Formalismo
  5. Il Futurismo italiano nel saggio su Chlebnikov e la nuova poesia russa
  6. Lettera da Reval
  7. Il Futurismo italiano nell’articolo sul Dadaismo
  8. Conclusioni
  9. Allegato 1:: R. Jakobson, da Nuova poesia russa, 1921
  10. Indice delle illustrazioni
  11. Indice dei nomi

Share/Bookmark

Climate Scientist — Change Occurring Faster

Posted on by

This is not the “change” we wanted to believe in. This is the kind we could live without.

Earth Focus Interview:  Michael McCracken

Michael McCracken is chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute.  He discusses important new findings of the recent UN Environmental Program (UNEP) report, which illustrates how climate change is occurring faster and on a larger scale than predicted by the IPCC in 2007.

The most dramatic example is how sea ice is melting much more rapidly than initially projected.  The report suggests that sea levels will rise an additional three feet due to melt from Greenland and Antarctica.

On another front, MacCracken claims that China has been successful in cleaning the quality of their air.  I don’t believe it. due to a recent photo essay I’ll post tomorrow.

Read More at LinkTV

Alaskan Coastal Erosion Speeding Up

Posted on by

ANCHORAGE, – A portion of Alaska’s North Slope coastline is eroding at a rate of up to 45 feet a year, posing a threat to oil operations and wildlife in the area, according to a new report issued by scientists at the University of Colorado.

Warmer ocean water has thawed the base of frozen bluffs and destroyed natural ice barriers protecting the coast, causing large earth chunks to fall each summer, the scientists said.

“What we are seeing now is a triple whammy effect,” study co-author Robert Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s Department of Geological Sciences, said. “Since the summer Arctic sea ice cover continues to decline and Arctic air and sea temperatures continue to rise, we really don’t see any prospect for this process ending.”

The scientists studied coastline midway between Point Barrow, the nation’s northernmost spot, and Prudhoe Bay, site of the nation’s biggest oil fields. The erosion, if it continues, could ultimately be a problem for energy companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp and BP Plc.

“The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a “triple whammy” of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, according to new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.”

See more on the story here from the University of Colorado.

Findings were presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. They backed up other studies of erosion along Alaska’s Beaufort Sea coastline.

A study by U.S. Geological Survey scientists published in February found that erosion along a stretch of Alaska coastline during 2002 to 2007 was twice as fast as in the period from 1955 to 1979. That USGS study also found erosion occurring at a rate of 13.6 meters (44.6 feet) annually from 2002 to 2007.

The three-year University of Colorado study aimed to examine how erosion is occurring, said co-author Irina Overeem, a scientist at the University’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

The scientists employed time-lapse photography, global positioning systems, meteorological monitoring, and analysis of sediment and sea-ice distribution.

Photographic images snapped every six hours during the around-the-clock sunlight of summer were particularly dramatic, Overeem told Reuters.

“There’s a notching effect that just notches, notches, notches and then topples over,” she said. “The cliffs are more than half ice — they’re basically dirty icebergs — so warm water, stronger waves and higher wave action quickly carves them away,” she said.

Read more here.

 

(Editing by Bill Rigby, Gary Hill)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

States Can Be Energy Self-Sufficient

Posted on by

Many people are disappointed that we did not get a firm climate treaty from Copenhagen. However, we have to think about climate change responsibility differently. Countries should not wait for a treaty to come out of the UN. If something needs to be done, people should pressure their governments to do it with or without a global agreement. In addition, the Kyoto Protocol is in effect until 2012, so countries should still be operating under that, at least. The U.S. can operate under that at any time it chooses, but it has not chosen to do so. A new binding treaty might be treated the same way. Also, many countries, including the United States, break treaties and act in their own interests instead, with no punishment from anyone. So a “binding” treaty is not necessarily binding, or needed. If mitigating climate change and cutting emissions is the right thing to do, there is no need to wait until a binding agreement is signed through the UN. Countries need to get active cutting emissions right away and we have to pressure our governments to do that.

Why wait for federal governments to do the right thing?  States can get started now.

A report from the New Rules Project says that 31 states have the renewable resources to be “energy self-reliant”

A new report from the New Rules Project finds that over 60% of all U.S. states have the renewable energy resources to be “energy self-reliant.” (“Energy self-reliance,” as defined in the report, is a measure of how self-sufficient in energy generation a state could be if it relied entirely on its own renewable resources). The New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, released its findings last week.

The report, “Energy Self-Reliant States: Second and Expanded Edition” describes how 31 states have the capacity to independently meet their states’ electricity demands by using wholly renewable energy sources, already at their disposal. Several states, the report notes, could use their renewable energy resources to produce electricity that meets over ten times their statewide demands. An additional ten states could generate enough electricity to meet well over half of their annual demands—again, solely from renewable sources.

Read more at Climate Progress

Counterfeit Futurist Works found in Slovakia!

Posted on by

Thank goodness for Google Translate! Original here.

Forged Futurist Work

National Interpol Bratislava unit has recently adopted the Italian request for urgent legal aid prosecutors in Genoa, which is investigating the suspected forgery of works of Italian Futurism. It was well-known works by the Italian futurists, for example Giacomo Balla, Tullio Crali and Fortunato Depero, which were to be displayed in the gallery in Bratislava. The exhibition was due to 8.12.2009 and Slovakia should be transferred to Portugal.

The exhibition was installed in the gallery in Bratislava city center. The Gallery presented an exhibition entitled “Futurism”.  According to information published on the Internet it was from private collections.

“The International Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office in cooperation with the Bratislava I District Directorate secure 78 paintings, which were exposed and not subjected to a few images, which also belonged to the exhibition,” hurried to notify the Police Presidium spokeswoman Andrea Pola?iková. Secured images are already in Italy.

In connection with the fake paintings by the Italian authorities investigating two Italians, who were giving false works into circulation, to offer them for shows and exhibitions as genuine. It should draw up a false declaration to circulate counterfeit professional expertise with their certificate of authenticity. Prompted a police investigation in Italy was an action brought by the Italian professor, art historian and also one of the most respected experts on the period of Futurism. Examined exhibited paintings and concluded that several of the exhibited works are forgeries. In Italy, suspects in the execution of such search, and different materials have been seized, including counterfeit stamps professionals.

more
even more
and more

Share/Bookmark

Futurist Tree Alights Milan

Posted on by

Albero di Luce

December 18, 2009 – January 18, 2010
Milan (between Cairoli and the Castello Sforzesco)
Curated by Stefania Morici and Federico Poletti

L’assessore alla Cultura, Finazzer Flory, ha dichiarato: “Con l’Albero di Luce lo spazio antistante il Castello Sforzesco, uno dei luoghi simboli di Milano, prende vita per accogliere un omaggio fatto di luce rivolto ai milanesi e ai turisti in visita in città. L’installazione, interpretando il principio della simultaneità futurista, esprime le potenzialità di un intrigante binomio fra tecnologia e arte con la volontà di costruire un ponte ideale verso il 2015, l’anno dell’Expo, per allestire una nuova e vivace scena urbana capace di dialogare a livello internazionale con le altre realtà metropolitane”. link

more info

Share/Bookmark

‘Futurismi Futuristi’ in Torino

Posted on by

Futurismi Futuristi

December 18, 2009 – January 28, 2010
Padaglione Lavanderia – Ex ospedale psichiatrico - Collegno (Torino)
Curated by Silvia Mira

L’esposizione vuole mettere in evidenza la creatività che il movimento futurista, a cento anni dalla fondazione, è ancora capace di generare nel mondo dell’arte, coinvolgendo non solo la pittura e la grafica ma anche, con risultati di particolare rilievo, le arti applicate, l’arredamento e la moda.

info

Share/Bookmark

Hysterical Negativism about Copenhagen

Posted on by

No, I didn’t love the outcome in Copenhagen.  However — to all who blame the United States and President Obama and the other developed countries for the lack of a binding deal in Copenhagen, here is the person who actually worked hard to get something accepted in the final hours of COP15.

“The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, today accuses China, Sudan, Bolivia and other leftwing Latin American countries of trying to hijack the UN climate summit and “hold the world to ransom” to prevent a deal being reached.

In an article in the Guardian, Miliband says the UK will make clear to those countries holding out against a binding legal treaty that “we will not allow them to block global progress“.

“We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way,” he writes in the aftermath of the UN summit in Copenhagen, which climaxed with what was widely seen as a weak accord, with no binding emissions targets, despite an unprecedented meeting of leaders.

Miliband said there must be “major reform” of the UN body overseeing the talks – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and on the way negotiations are conducted. He is said to be outraged that UN procedure allowed a few countries to nearly block a deal.”

DemocracyNow, a highly respected alternative news outlet, and some very influential climate and environmental groups have bent over backwards to be as negative and hysterical as possible in blaming the U.S. for the Copenhagen “failure”.   They have gone out of their way to call the entire summit a mess, a sham, and worse.  And they blame the U.S. instead of the countries that almost nearly hijacked the entire summit.

These groups and DN need to take a deep breath and do some studying of the situation before they continue to make accusations.  Democracy Now was even factually incorrect in their Monday show and that’s probably the case with some other groups that have been as publicly shaming as possible about the role of the U.S. in Copenhagen.  They need to look to the East for some more answers as to why the summit didn’t give them the outcome they wanted.

George Monbiot was interviewed on Democracy Now on Monday and he was so negative I thought he was going to declare the World’s End on the spot.   He said Obama actually ruined the entire summit.  That is absolutely untrue.   Read more at The Guardian.

Work of Carmelich on display in Trieste (Dec. 22)

Posted on by

Giorgio Carmelich
Futuristicherie
Viaggi d’arte fra Trieste, Roma e Praga

December 23, 2009 – April 5, 2010
*vernissage, Tuesday December 22, 6pm
Civico Museo Revoltella – Galleria d’arte moderna

-1Martedì 22 dicembre 2009 alle 18.00 avrà luogo presso il Civico Museo Revoltella – Galleria d’arte moderna l’inaugurazione della mostra Giorgio Carmelich. Futuristicherie. Viaggi d’arte fra Trieste, Roma e Praga, che rimarrà aperta sino al 5 aprile 2010.

La celebrazione di Giorgio Carmelich (1907-1929), genio prematuramente scomparso all’età di ventidue anni, si situa a cavallo tra il 2009, anno del centenario del manifesto futurista di Marinetti, e il 2010, anno in cui, il 12 gennaio, si festeggerà il centenario dalla prima e memorabile serata futurista al Politeama Rossetti di Trieste.

L’avventura artistica di Carmelich parte, infatti, dall’iniziale infatuazione per il futurismo, per poi attraversare le suggestioni provenienti dall’avanguardia non solo italiana ma anche europea. Il giovane Carmelich si abbevera febbrilmente ad ogni fonte da cui possa trarre stimoli per la sua produzione artistico-editoriale: legge con avidità tutte le nuove pubblicazioni sull’arte contemporanea, interessandosi specialmente all’avanguardia e alla scenografia russa, frequenta assiduamente cinema e teatri e viaggia da una città all’altra, stringendo numerosi e importanti contatti, tra cui fondamentali, sul versante italiano, sono gli incontri con i futuristi italiani, in primis Enrico Prampolini e Fortunato Depero, che influenzano in maniera netta il suo fare artistico. Successivamente entra in contatto con il mondo dell’avanguardia ceca, attraverso Artus Cernik, direttore della rivista Pásmo di Brno, e Karel Teige, che conosce a Praga nel 1929.

La vita, l’opera e i gusti di Carmelich possono essere tracciati attraverso le sue fresche lettere, indirizzate all’amico e sodale Emilio Mario Dolfi e spesso ornate da spiritosi disegni, che costituiscono il Leitmotiv della mostra. Accanto a queste, più di 130 sono le opere presentate nella presente esposizione triestina, tra dipinti, collages, disegni, incisioni, periodici e monografie, tra cui le “edizioni” manoscritte o dattiloscritte de “La bottega di Epeo”, le creazioni più sorprendenti della coppia Carmelich-Dolfi. Da Il sindaco di Cork e il cane inglese, preziosa edizione manoscritta e decorata a mano del 1920, a due plaquettes del 1923 di Dolfi con illustrazioni di Carmelich: Ridolini e altri corridori, celebrante il mito inebriante della velocità futurista, e Il parco delle attrazioni.

Tra le numerose pubblicazioni periodiche futuriste spiccano in mostra Epeo, la rivista dattiloscritta e illustrata a mano, realizzata da Carmelich e Dolfi e uscita tra il 1922 e il 1923 in pochissimi esemplari, e L’Aurora (1923-1924), organo del futurismo giuliano, cui Carmelich partecipò con contributi critici e splendide incisioni.

Per quanto riguarda la produzione figurativa di Carmelich si va dai disegni a matite colorate o a china del 1923, ai collages del 1924, passando attraverso la parentesi costruttivista, culminata nella realizzazione, assieme a Avgust Cernigoj, Edvard Stepancic e Giuseppe Vlah, della Sala costruttivista, allestita nel 1927 all’interno della I Esposizione del sindacato delle belle arti di Trieste, sino all’ultima fase, quella magica e chagalliana dell’ultimo periodo praghese.

Per contestualizzare l’opera di Carmelich all’interno di un più vasto panorama artistico, saranno esposte inoltre 11 opere di Fortunato Depero e 5 di Enrico Prampolini, suoi maestri spirituali soprattutto per quanto riguarda la scenografia e l’arte del manifesto, e punti di riferimento principali nell’elaborazione di un suo linguaggio futurista, mentre una sezione speciale sarà dedicata ad altri futuristi giuliani, Sofronio Pocarini, Bruno Cossar e Luigi Spazzapan (che lo fu per un periodo brevissimo ma intenso) e ai seguaci del costruttivismo, Avgust Cernigoj ed Edvard Stepancic.

L’allestimento della mostra, corredato da diversi interventi multimediali. mira a creare un ambiente di forte impatto, che permetta al visitatore di immergersi completamente nel linguaggio delle avanguardie degli anni Venti, in cui Carmelich visse, in un lampo, la sua breve parabola esistenziale ed artistica.

Ufficio stampa: Studio ESSECI – Sergio Campagnolo. Tel. 049 663499; email info@studioesseci.net; sito: http://www.studioesseci.net

Share/Bookmark

NASA and Google to Keep an Eye on Emissions

Posted on by

In this publicly distributed handout image provided by NASA an artist's conception of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite that splashed into the ocean near Antarctica in February 2009 is shown.

NASA and Google are now teaming up to track global carbon emissions.

Beyond watching everything that goes on on earth, NASA is combining with Google to build a satellite tracking system to see  how much carbon countries emit to elimate “cheating”.  The world is aware that NASA is part of the U.S. government.  Here comes America again as the world’s self-appointed cops.   When did our Congress vote to fund this?  It seems premature since we don’t even have a global climate deal that is binding.  Some countries might not appreciate their carbon being monitored by the U.S. and Google.

Cutting carbon emissions is not going to be verifiable anyway because there can be no realistic “repercussions” for cheating with emissions that a lot of money changing hands won’t fix.  Cutting carbon emissions will have to be on the “honor system” and in that regard, it makes sense for every country to start cutting carbon drastically now, despite (or because of) the lack of anything definitive coming out of the COP15 summit.  The satellite system will also monitor deforestation.  We already know that’s happening, too, and where.  In fact, U.S. trade agreements are partially to blame for some deforestation in South America.

Google is also involved in the smart grid  with its PowerMeter and is already tracking peoples’ energy usage in parts of the U.S.   It doesn’t make me terribly comfortable knowing that Google is involved in everything from tracking all my websites to tracking where people are, to tracking energy usage in homes to tracking carbon emissions to tracking photos of every single place on earth . . . Google is becoming either Big Brother or Skynet.

COPENHAGEN – The question is a potential deal-killer: If nations ever agree to slash greenhouse gas emissions, how will the world know if they live up to their pledges?

The answer is in space, experts say — both outer space and cyberspace.

NASA, the wonder agency of the 1960s, and Google, the go-to company of the early 21st century, are trying to give the world the ability to monitor both the carbon dioxide pollution and the levels of forest destruction that contribute to global warming.

For NASA, this is both an opportunity and an embarrassment. NASA had a science satellite, Orbiting Carbon Observatory, that as a side benefit would be able to see where carbon dioxide was being spewed. But a February launch of the $280 million satellite failed, sending the satellite into the cold Antarctic waters.

If given some money, NASA could have a $330 million “carbon copy,” of the downed-and-drowned satellite up flying around Earth in less than three years, NASA Earth sciences chief Michael Freilich said.

“Just having the thing flying around there imaging would just about make [...]

Marathon in Copenhagen — Accord Not Adopted

Posted on by

The “Copenhagen Accord”, the final document on international climate change mitigation, has been finalized, but not approved with a consensus, so technically, it has not passed.  At least, that seems to be the case.  It’s hard to tell exactly, because they are still, as of 12:30 CET Denmark time and 5:30 am CST in the U.S., arguing and debating the process and final document.   They can’t adopt it formally because there is no consensus.  Many delegates have left already.  And no, Obama didn’t save the day, but he did work hard at negotiations.

Many delegates and negotiators did stay despite contentiousness, accusations of sneakiness and people making agreements without everyone being aware of the meetings; even accusations of people being shut out of discussions.

But after many propositions and suggestions from people who had not slept since last Wednesday it was/is kind of hard to make sense of what did or did not happen at the end.  There is no consensus accord, that is clear, so no official agreement.  It’s really too early to tell whether the conference was a failure though.  Discussions are still ongoing right now (1:00 pm Copenhagen time).  Some of the people discussing this have not slept for over 2 days.  Many people wanted the bill to be blocked from passage, and it more or less was, by Sudan and some other developing countries such as Tuvalu.

What will they tell people when they go back home, that they have no accord that is binding?  Or that we have, as American media calls it, a “political agreement” that is non-binding.

The talks were a  major disappointment in some respects, and there is (as yet) no deal, but we knew there would be disagreements that would be tough to overcome. A huge sticking point (that they are still discussing as I write this) is a 2C rise versus what the small island nations and some others want, a 1.5C rise.   There was quite a bit of talk of individual countries doing things on their own.   As Yvo de Boer just said, there were mistakes that were made:

–  The procedure and administrative mistake where a COP decsion was adopted in the wrong setting.  So the record has to be corrected because no agreement was made.

– The confusion over the exact language which was adopted from the podium.  He didn’t even know the correct language himself.

– How to parties associate themselves with the deal when so many secret and extra meetings and negotiating sessions were going on?

Sudan, which threw a wrench into the proceedings at the very end, just said they are very pleased at the outcome.

Websites where you can read the latest:

The Guardian, which thinks it’s all over –Low targets, goals dropped

Copenhagen Deal — Activists React. The deal (click here to read the document released to the media, or read the AP’s summary) as described by Obama reflects some progress helping poor nations cope with climate change and getting [...]

Futurism on Film series in Rome (Dec. 21-23)

Posted on by

FILM

Cinema Trevi: Un mondo agitato: il Futurismo al cinema

December 21-23, 2009
Rome

Curated by Sergio Toffetti and the Cineteca Nazionale wiof Ivrea, Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino, Cineteca di Bologna, Cineteca del Friuli, Cinecittà Luce, Rai Teche, Ripley’s Film.

Series highlights:

  • Il cinema: antigrazioso, deformatore, impressionista, sintetico, dinamico, parolibero
  • Serata cinefuturista
  • Guerra sola igiene del mondo…
  • Milano tradizionale e avanguardista
  • Un mondo agitato
  • Il paesaggio e l’estetica futurista della macchina
  • Marinetti, De Amicis e Majakovskij
  • Documentari sul Futurismo
  • Futurismo e Fascismo
  • I due Bragaglia
  • La civiltà delle macchine
  • Creature meccaniche e bambole elettriche

For full schedule check here

Share/Bookmark

Closing Statement from Copenhagen — No Legally Binding Agreement

Posted on by

The climate change talks at Copenhagen, despite last-ditch efforts by President Obama and many others, went on through the night, into the morning and then into the early afternoon.  In the end, no legal agreement, though they do have a “Copenhagen Accord” with a maximum temperature agreement, financial support, deforestation agreements, and lots more that will be analyzed for months. If you have heard that Obama accomplished a lot in Copenhagen, that depends on what you mean by “a lot”.    You can download the accord and read it: Copenhagen Accord (182 kB)

Here is the final statement from Yvo de Boer. You can read all the documents and see archived video on the UNFCCC site.

“Briefing the press at the end of the two-week conference, Yvo de Boer said an accord has been reached that has significant elements, but that is not legally binding.

He described the accord as “politically important,” demonstrating a willingness to move forward. It brings together a diversity of countries that have put in place a letter of intent with the ingredients of an architecture for a response to climate change.

The key points of the accord include the objective to keep the maximum temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius; the commitment to list developed country emission reduction targets and mitigation action by developing countries for 2020; USD 30 billion short-term funding for immediate action till 2012 and USD 100 billion annually by 2020 in long-term financing, as well as mechanisms to support technology transfer and forestry.

The challenge now is to turn what is agreed into something that is legally binding in Mexico one year from now.”

The accord is a political agreement only, not  binding, and it’s primarily to reduce emissions on a voluntary basis without legal oversight.  The accord is called operational. That means the money pledged by countries to help poorer countries adapt and develop will be available to them.  Yvo  de Boer calls it “politically significant” but without legally binding requirements I don’t see how the U.S. and China and India will do what needs to be done in reducing emissions.   I do believe that most people in the U.S. government want to do what is necessary but there is strong political opposition from some anti-science right-wing Congressmen who are  most concerned with protecting their own state interests.

What would have helped get a legally binding document?  For one, stronger reliance on the science, and a strong climate change bill (as opposed to a cap and trade, or a jobs and energy bil) passing through the U.S. congress before this conference.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has made a big deal recently of focusing on climate change from the perspective that it’s all about “jobs, jobs and jobs”.   No it’s not, it’s about science, the climate, the forces of nature that we will soon be unable to turn around,  and the future of humanity on the planet.  But such is the intelligence [...]


  1. Futurism