Climate Change: A Debate Between Correct And Stupid

I love how they wait to show the conversational bomb dropped by Mr. Buggy Eyes at the conference. When someone calls science the result of a Marxist conspiracy and that "green is the new red," they are so blatantly out in left field as to make watching the rest of the show almost unnecessary.

Watch Climate of Doubt on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Disasters Change People's Minds

Captain, I think something is wrong.

A study has come out showing that those most affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill were highly likely to have their views on general environmental issues changed. Basically, if you were near the Gulf, you now think that environmental concerns are bigger, with global warming and oil as bad, and alternative energy as good.

First off, as with many situations such as this, the people who change their minds should be commended. It may have taken the worst oil spill in history to change their mind, but at least they did. In the face of mounds of evidence, there are many people out there who still refuse to alter their views. They remain steadfast against reason, logic, argument, and even elementary English, in their refusal to accept something that doesn't jibe with their dogma.

Second off, as with many situations such as this, the people who change their minds should be ridiculed. It took the worst oil spill in history to change their mind. They are still idiots. They've got at least another five years of making good decisions before I hand over their "Smart Club" card.

Gulf Coast residents say BP Oil Spill changed their environmental views, UNH research finds (EurekAlert)

Pale Blue Dot

The name of this blog is taken from a book by Carl Sagan. His wisdom cannot be understated.

Living Small

Yahoo! is running a series of uplifting love-thyself/Earth videos called Second Act where they profile a guy who is living super-small. Generally, this guy is harmless, and I find his dedication to his work and life to be impressive and honorable, but he's a limited case, for one thing, and for another, what he's doing isn't all that impressive. From an American perspective, it's amazing. Living in 100 square feet seems almost impossible.

The average American home is over 2,000 ft/sq. My rather modest home is still over 1,300, and he's living in 100. Incroyable! But this isn't really stunning in the grand scheme of global housing. Chinese workers live in not much more, and there are multiple people in those places. Japanese city-dwellers have whole families living in less than 1,000 ft/sq. Yes, he's pushing it to the limit, but only in America is his action truly remarkable.

And perhaps that's his point. America has so much space and so much money, we've lost our ability to properly put our lives into a larger perspective. Does the average family really need 2,500 ft/sq of living space. I can almost guarantee not. But when all of your neighbors have the same thing, we might sometimes think that we do.

Second, and perhaps most important, is that when he says "all he needs," he obviously doesn't need a lot. If he was an artist with one thousand pencils, brushes, and pens, would this still be all he needed? I doubt it. Would it still be all he needed if he wasn't single? Or would he have to double his space? What if he did audio production and needed speakers? Or if he was an aspiring chef? What was his job? A cashier. And what does he do, now? He apparently spends his time feeling self-important and, um, living. This is an incredibly low-energy style of living, both in input and output, and one that lends itself to a life spartan. I'd imagine that all of the people who are now big supporters of him and his work live similar, uneventful lives. Notice how one of them was a "sustainability teacher"... Right.

Still, setting aside the mockery of that last paragraph, I appreciate his work and what he's doing, I truly do. I find a lot wrong with it, and get more than a whiff of hippy self-righteousness, but the idea that he's espousing -you need less than you think- is a good one.

Hacked E-Mails.

So some e-mails between scientists have been hacked that has added fuel to the climate change-skeptic fire.

Obviously, if you view the things quoted in the e-mails from a, um, pro(?) climate change perspective, it just sounds like a bunch of scientists discussing the best, delicate path to walk in a public debate defined by idiots. But if you are one of those idiots, your paranoid belief that scientists are perpetuating a massive, global conspiracy to trick the world into believing that climate change is real. This is apparently because Al Gore hates Africans.

My vote, we just keep going. I'd much rather see all of the idiots just burn. Granted, lots of fun animals will die, but I'll survive. I'm at the point of not caring. You want to drive the bus into a wall? Fine. I'll put my helmet on and do my thing while you do that.

Population Bomb.

Scientists love talking about metaphorical bombs. They use the term to describe any state of affairs that may not seem too bad now, but will become noticeably bad in the future. Environmentalism is one of those bombs, but another, less frequently discussed bomb is the population bomb. I can only imagine that it doesn't get as much play as the climate because massive population problems aren't going to have a direct effect on the Western world. We are not overpopulated. Well, Los Angeles is, but the rest of us are fine.

I also take a slightly less humanist perspective on this whole thing. While the interconnectedness of the world vis-à-vis climate makes ignoring some aspects of human damage a world away hard to ignore, such as the rain forest, it's still their country. They can do whatever the hell they want to fuck up their area of the planet. I'm worried about my area of the planet.

Further from a humanist perspective is that I don't care how many poor farmers die in Brazil or Ethiopia. It's their problem. Not only should they just take care of it themselves, trying to force our help on them doesn't do anyone any good. They need to solve their own problems.

And we live in America! Most of our problems are comparatively so easy to solve it's a wonder we haven't done so already. Want to increase population density and stop urban sprawl? Subsidize large, urban, multi-unit complexes. Give tax breaks to eletrical firms willing to install solar and wind in urban areas. Give tax breaks to building owners who install solar, wind, or farms on roofs of buildings. Start growing locally in large, multi-story farm buildings.

For the next calculations, I'm going to rely on The Natural Way of Farming: The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy by Masanobu Fukuoka.

That's actually one of my favorite ideas. Large farm buildings, with a foot print of just half an acre, and 30 floors, that's 15 acres, or enough to feed between 100-500 people on vegetables alone. With the efficiencies allowed by constant illumination, robotic harvest, and nutrients flowing from floor to floor, that number could reasonably be doubled or tripled.

Now think even further. One floor is nothing but fish, and the water from the giant tanks is filtered up through the plants to feed them, back down into the fish tanks. These are not new ideas, but the wherewithal to get it done has not yet been found.

Many areas of the world are fucked. Let's face it, they are. There's nothing we can do unless we want to kill everyone there and just start over. They're fucked, their land is fucked, their cities are fucked. The best course of action for us is to pull inward as much as we can. I'm not talking isolationist nonsense, but a focus on our own abilities. We want to produce as much as we can, be as self-sufficient as possible.

They're going to fuck themselves, so we must actively try to to fuck ourselves as little as possible. Our only problem with our population is that it continues to grow outward in urban sprawl. If we can reduce that, and mate it with large scale development in renewable resources, be it food, energy, and materials, we can only better our position.

Norman Borlaug, who recently died, was famous for discussing population problems. His solution back in the 60's was to increase food production.

That's what Norman Borlaug and his colleagues achieved in the 1960s and 1970s with the Green Revolution that staved off famine for millions. Yet, "there can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort," Borlaug said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. "[Man] is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas.

Again, this is only a problem if we feel the need to force our help on other countries. The fact that India is choking under the weight of one billion people wallowing in ghettos is not our problem. It cannot be. There is no solution. I'm not heartless, I'm a realist. Trying to solve the massive problem is Sisyphean, and the endless aid to Africa all but proves that. Let them die. Our only concern is the possibility of a super-germ incubating in the population and making the trek over here. Other than that, we should not only not worry, but actively ignore. If they ask for help, do not give it to them. Their sinking boat has the potential to bring us down, too.

Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma (ScientificAmerican.com)

Go Go Gadget Conservation!

Hey! Not too shabby, Rhode Island. We made it on the international scene for our conservation efforts with some little-known beetle. A little recognition is nice, especially since one of our best efforts, the Save the Bay foundation, has received little attention outside of the state even though its success is the most salient. I can now walk down to the Chafee Reserve and see harbor seals. They're noisy. Still, the wildlife has returned in a big way, and that's a thrill.

R.I.’s burying beetles gain international renown (Projo.com)

Urban Sprawl

I recently purchased a book. Actually, that's a rather rare event for me. What with the infinite resource of the internet and a total disinterest in fiction, I spend almost no time in book stores anymore. Barnes & Noble has cheesecake to die for, though.

I picked up a book that I can safely say is worth the $20 it cost me. It's called A Field Guide to Sprawl. It is not directly anti-development, but it places images in front of you that can only lead to one conclusion; we're screwing up our planet in spectacular fashion.

The general point of the book is to define urban and rural developmental phenomena. They define well-known terms, like "Big Box Retailer" and a few less-known words, like "Boomburg" and "Starter Castle." You can guess what they mean, for the definitions make little difference to my point.

What the photos drive home is how devastating the current, unchecked, low-density expansion is to the planet and to the overall "nice" factor of our home. We go into an area, overpopulate it, destroy it, then the rich people leave, the poor people are left behind, we have a ghetto, and then we get the eventual sprawl of rich people ever outward, looking to get away from the horrid mess they left behind.

None of this is new. Conservationists and their ilk have been talking about this for the past 50 years. Pretty much since the dawn of Levittown, this has been seen. What I think is changing is that now, as opposed to even as little as twenty years ago, the effects of this sprawl are now very visible. The damage is real, as opposed to way off in the future.

I ranted and raved about yuppies and an earlier post. I hate them. Their unchecked expansion and total stupidity is, as I see it, the most destructive force in America. Materialism, the American Dream, and a population that's becoming ever more delineated economically all fuel the expansion of America outwardly. None of these things are inherently bad, it must be noted. Materialism is a totally valid way of life, drives the economy, and is the only reason 90% of the companies in existence, um, exist. The American dream is a great dream and should be striven for. And an economically delineated population is fine just so long as there is constant economic activity between the groups. But combined, along with the human penchant for thinking about "now" as opposed to "tomorrow," means that people will happily bulldoze trees, and Chem-Lawn the fuck out of their grass if it means being happy now.

We aren't there yet. The world is not coming to and end, but in 2007, the 300 millionth American was born, the 400 millionth will be born sometime mid century, and by 2100 we'll be well past half a billion. All this while household sizes are at record lows. The growth is logarithmic, the worse it gets, the worse the getting worse gets. Within just one lifetime, we'll more than double our population. The US can NOT survive with current demographic distribution and a population of 600 million, or perhaps 1 billion. Eventually, we'll have giant megalopoli covering the entire landmass of the US like some sickened pestilence. Then there will be nowhere left to which the yuppies can escape. No new, virgin land they can bulldoze. It will all be done, and then what?

As I said, the world is not ending. Things are, in reality, pretty good. But we must begin taking action now, or the damage in the future may be too great to repair. Especially now, taking action can be pretty cheap. The government can heavily restrict development on virgin land. In my opinion, there are many areas of the country where development on virgin land should be halted entirely. Then, give developers subsidies and tax breaks for building up instead of out.

Population growth is not bad. In fact, I think it's great. If we are to achieve the wondrous, interplanetary civilization that sci-fi has foretold we actually need more people. It's the unchecked outward, low-density growth that's bad. We spread like a bacteria when we should be building towards the heavens.

Global Warming vs. An Old Man

There's an excellent article/biography of Dyson Freeman, a scientist of whom I knew very little up till now. A super-genius and all that good stuff, and, importantly, a global warming skeptic.

I won't go into detail about what he has to say, I'll only go so far as to say that his points are very well made. I still disagree with him, but I actually have an out because the bulk of my views don't come into conflict with his, namely:

• I don't care about the Chinese. They can do whatever they want. I want change in my country and my country alone. Other countries are free to do anything at all.


• Whether we're causing global warming or not is irrelevant. We are a rich nation and can afford environmental advances that are good for reasons beyond their being green. As I've said before, the goal is not to be green, but to be efficient.


• Our course of action is dictated apart from the reality of global warming. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant and we must invest heavily into high-efficiency, green technology.
  

I also fully disagree with a few of his points.

• I disagree that there is no such thing as an ideal ecological system. The concept of ideal requires that certain parameters are set. I think that we can, in fact, set those parameters. Yes, in the grand scheme of things, whatever we do doesn't matter since the planet will just change and evolve. Yes, evolution is happening as we speak. Yes, life goes on. Too bad we live and exist on small scales and I would very much like to keep the world as is, if at all possible. I think it's very nice, now.


• Solar energy will be a viable form of energy in much shorter order than 50 years, and shifting focus away from that to coal is, I think, a terrible error.

Also, he considers himself a skeptic and that's cool. I love skeptics. But some of the best skeptics on Earth all support that theory that human action is having a significant impact on global warming. These are not easily-convinced people. James Randi, Michael Shermer, and the whole of the crew who produce Skeptic Magazine, all of them support the theory. I find this sort of weight hard to argue.

Waaaaall-e

I was in the Disney store the other day and was shocked to see Wall-E crap everywhere. Then it hit me, that Wall-E, especially from a company such as Disney, was a $180 million insult to the average Disney product buyer.

Think about that. Who is the average person you see wearing a t-shirt with Pooh on it? This doesn't apply to souvenirs from Disney World, only those shirts purchased at Target or Wal-Mart. That's right. Fat, stupid, trash. I'm not saying that all people who wear these shirts are fat, stupid, and trashy. I'm only saying that a higher than normal number of people who wear these shirts fulfill those three characteristics. Don't even get me started on people who wear stuff with Warner Bros. characters on them.

And I can only hope that Disney realizes the irony of walking into a Disney store and being able to buy disposable garbage that will likely end up in a dump within a few months with the fucking Buy n Large logo on them!

In fact, I'm sure they recognized that, which may account for the relative dearth of Wall-E products in comparison to other Disney movies. For example, on Amazon, a search for Wall-E and then toys results in 294 products, of which about half are actual Wall-e products. Monsters Inc. nets 305, with a little over a third being Disney products. Disney Cars lands an impressive 1,260, with about 75% being for the movie. 532 for The Incredibles. Disney Princess barfs up an amazing 2,585, with almost every item being a Disney product.

Chestnuts Roasting Over a Mushroom Cloud

I've made a reversal of opinion, recently. I am now all for a major expansion of nuclear power. I originally had worries about the waste, as most people do, but I'm now of the mind that the waste is a small and manageable price to pay for the benefits of nuclear power. I also think that the chance of a nuclear meltdown is so small as to be without concern.

Think about it. No other form of power generation is as efficient, results in as little waste, and can meet our needs. Obviously, forty years down the line, the threat of meltdown might be real, but we simply need to fit that into our regulations. Our government is pretty incompetent, but I would think that the threat of nuclear winter would be enough impetus for them to draft a quality bill.

Moreover, our overall power infrastructure is in dire need of repair, and we may as well integrate that into an overarching redesign of our entire power system. But if we could involve the nuclear companies, and give them the green light to build as many plants as they want as long as they help pay for the required overhaul of the transmission lines, the viability of the plan becomes undeniable.

I'm not saying that other forms of power should be ignored. I love wind power and solar, but they both have serious cost considerations and are intermittent. Tidal and geothermal are excellent sources of continual power, but their reach is limited to those near the water or thermal vents. For those there, excellent. For those not, what, tough shit?

Coal and natural gas power is untenable. Coal sucks in every way it can suck, and natural gas, while cleaner, still pollutes and is a limited resource. Nuclear power combined with wind, solar, and tidal is basically limitless.

I Thought We Were Done With This.

Well it's becoming pretty apparent that Sarah Palin is far stupider than first thought.

First off, I'd like to say that in contrast to news reports calling her little-known, I knew about Palin very well. I'm a frequent supporter of Defenders of Wildlife. One of the more level-headed environmental groups who spend most of their time just trying to stop people from killing animals. There are so many people out there who enjoy doing this apparently just for the hell of it that DoW never has a chance to go left-wing-batty and start saying that feeding Yellowstone bears sandwiches is tantamount to genocide.

Recently, DoW was on the losing side of a quest to get aerial hunting of wolves banned in Alaska. Apparently, those aforementioned, animal-killing wackjobs enjoy flying around blowing away wolves, bears, and just about anything that moves. They frequently don't go claim a trophy or anything, they just like shooting things. Guess which side of this debate Palin was on.

Yep. We lost the ballot and the ban never went through. Palin, the companies that supply the helicopters to the small-dicked men who engage in this activity, and a smattering of other groups managed to get the ban knocked down. I feel decent knowing that over 70,000 people supported the ban.

So yes. I was well aware of Palin, but even I had no idea what a terrible person she was. First off, she was a beauty queen. I have problems with anyone who was a beauty queen because it takes a special kind of vapid twit to pursue that. But NOW, if that wasn't bad enough, SHE'S A FUCKING CREATIONIST! What, we wouldn't take Huckabee, so they had to sneak a loonie as second fiddle?

Has John McCain totally abandoned all integrity? He's actually willing to throw his credibility, respect on the international stage (because if you think other countries won't mock a creationist, you're as wrong as they come), and common sense in a bid to get to office? He's willing to cater to the dumbest, most bigoted, horrid parts of our country, and that's sad. McCain was once a truly respectable politician who seemed generally unwilling to play games. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

UPDATE 9/4/2008: An interesting perspective on Palin. Seems to jive with everything else I know about Palin, so I see no reason to not trust it.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/9/2/12284/85430

Blow Me.

I mentioned in an earlier post my newfound love for oilman T. Boone Pickens.

Well, he's posted an entire website and begun a television campaign.

It looks like 35 years of lip-service by useless politicians will finally be set aside by someone from the very industry they loved to vilify.

Visit. Watch. Get involved. Remember, the technology to reduce your own energy usage is available now. You can buy solar and wind for your own house.

http://www.pickensplan.com/

The Answer is Still Blowing in the Wind

FINALLY, someone with money is making a bet on alternative power. And not these ridiculous, PR-bullshit bets like "hydrogen fuel cells." No, this is an actual bet. One intended to actually change things. And actually generate power. And not, actually, just keep the public distracted with dreams of the future while we continue to happily careen headlong into the days without oil. I never thought I'd be saying this about someone named T. Boone Pickens, but, brother, I love you.

AP
Maverick oilman Pickens puts $2B bet on wind power
Thursday May 15, 10:09 am ET
By Adam Schreck, AP Business Writer
Maverick oilman T. Boone Pickens places $2 billion bet on wind power in massive Texas project

NEW YORK (AP) -- Maverick oilman T. Boone Pickens has placed a $2 billion bet on wind power in just the first of a four-phase project to build the world's largest wind farm in Texas.

Pickens said the total cost of the deal will grow considerably after the initial investment in General Electric Co. turbine technology.

Pickens' Mesa Power said the Pampa Wind Project in the Texas Panhandle will eventually cover 400,000 acres and generate enough power for more than 1.3 million homes.

"We are making Pampa the wind capital of the world," Pickens said. "It's clear that landowners and local officials understand the economic benefits that this renewable energy can bring not only to landowners who are involved with the project, but also in revitalizing an area that has struggled in recent years."

Pickens, who was born in nearby Oklahoma and made the early part of his fortune hunting for oil and natural gas, said that developing alternative energy projects is critical for the nation's future.

"You find an oilfield, it peaks and starts declining, and you've got to find another one to replace it," Pickens said in a statement. "With wind, there's no decline curve."

Power from the project will begin coming on line in early 2011, he said.

GE is expected to deliver 667, 1.5-megawatt wind turbines in 2010 and 2011.

"As America's demand for energy escalates, it is clear that wind can and will play a bigger part in meeting that need," said Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE Chairman and CEO. "We're excited to partner with an energy visionary like T. Boone Pickens to bring our wind technology to the marketplace."

But the industry has relied on federal tax credits to survive, a point Pickens underscored Thursday.

"I believe that Congress will recognize that it is critical not only to this project, but to renewable energy in this country, that they enact a long-term extension of the Production Tax Credits," Pickens said.

Oil prices hit a trading record near $127 a barrel Tuesday.

Wind Farms

Wind farms are one of our best hopes for reliable, renewable power. They can go day or night, are easy to maintain, and are, importantly, comparatively cheap to set up. Still, a frequent criticism I hear is that they're eye sores. Now, I don't know if people are actually saying this or if it's just part of the campaign against anything that doesn't burn, but... what?

Eye sores? I just don't see it. I think they're tall, elegant towers of design. They are one of the few things that look like something out of a sci-fi from fifty years ago. They look cool! How the hell can you call them eye sores? Do these same people call houses eye sores? Or anything that people build? Are they just out of their fucking minds? Would you rather have a belching, coal-fired power plant?

They look like giant, man-made, moving flowers. Hell, we can even paint them pretty colors. I look at them and see a future of mankind living in a deeply connected, symbiotic relationship with nature. They represent a world where we can get everything we want and cause no damage at all. Well, except for a few birds. I think they're beautiful and anyone who thinks otherwise, though artistic merits are by their very nature subjective, is wrong. I don't think you could be any more wrong than if you called the Sistine Chapel amateurish.

Ding!

That is the sound of an idea. A recent issue, the March 24th, of Time Magazine was dedicated to them. They mention the term paradigm shift, referring to a fundamental change in perception, such as when people started to realize the Earth was not the center of the universe. Not only did I find the ten ideas listed to come nowhere near that benchmark for the term, most of them are already old-hat.

1: The Common Wealth- Yes. Wouldn't the world be nice if we were all rich and happy. Well drop this stupid, hippy idea and wake up to reality. This concept has been floating around for decades. There will always be amazingly rich people and amazingly poor people. It's the end result of an economic spectrum. Going global with this just means we'll have rich and poor countries. And, sorry to say, the world economy is far ahead of any humanitarians in thinking globally. Business is very worried about the environment, world peace, and all these other great ideals because problems in any area mean lost money. This article is almost superfluous because people already know these things.

Oh, and 100mpg cars in 2030? Try 2010. We'll have those running around in very short order with $10 gas.

2: The End of Customer Service- Apparently, those self-checkouts at Wal*Mart are a paradigm shift. "...the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing." Anyone who has interacted with those HAL-like nightmares knows that there is still a very big place for human interaction. Especially after waiting at a kiosk behind a 4,000 year-old woman as she tries to figure out which way to swipe this new-fangled credit card.

3: The Post-Movie-Star Era- The death of modern Hollywood has been predicted before. People have known that big name stars do not correlate well with move success for some times. They should have talked about the emergence of the 15-Minutes-of-Fame era, compliments of the internet and YouTube. Big name stars will continue to be a thing because their names mean little, only that a big name is attached, thus indicating a big movie. They mention Ratatouille, Alvin & The Chipmunks, and Transformers as bucking the system. No, idiots. The big names in those movies were the brands, themselves. You didn't need big stars to advertise that it was a big movie.

4: Reverse Radicalism- What? Ok, fine, studying terrorists. I'll support that. But a paradigm shift?

5: Kitchen Chemistry- Again, a paradigm shift? I think not. They set up a straw man in the opening paragraph by saying "you've been cooking like an idiot. You press on meat... to guess how rare it is; you trow spagetti at the wall to see if it's done; you add an amount of salt that looks pretty... If people made medicine this way, we'd all be dead." We are not changing the way we cook forever. Many people are very precise, analytical, and scientific about their food. We've been this way for centuries. Hell, 300 years ago, food was more scientific than it is now. This not new. People have been precise, anal, and analytical about food for a long time. Oh, and molecular gastronomy has been around for decades. It has not caught on because it's a niche product.

6: Geoengineering- This is a good idea, but certainly not a paradigm shift. These ideas have all been around for some time. In the early days in an effort to manipulate the weather for farming.

7: Synthetic Authenticity- Basically a business model. It's been around since at least the 60's and pretty much defines modern marketing. And seriously, there is not such thing as a paradigm shift in advertising.

8: The New Austerity- Yet another credit doomsayer. He lists all the previous doomsayers who were wrong in the first paragraph as though that gives this doomsaying credibility. The fact that I kind of agree with him notwithstanding, this isn't a paradigm shift.

9: Mandatory Health- Paradigm shift? New idea? Really? Go ask Milton Hershey who created Hershey, PA as a healthful haven for all employees. They could live there on the cheap... as long as they exercised, didn't do anything naughty, and were early to bed, early to rise, and all that rot.

10: Re-Judaising Jesus- There are so many fucking splinter groups of Christianity, they've given up the ability to have a paradigm shift. Every idea, EVER, has been posited and discussed. Nowadays, you have a paradigm shift by switching religion, which for many people, according to a recent study, happens once every few days.

Earth Hour... An Hour For Earth.

Remember to turn off everything you have for an hour at 8:00pm, whenever that comes for you. No, it won't do much, but if enough people in the US do it, it might let the rest of the world know that we're not all as dense as certain politicians. I feel the need to keep reminding them.

http://www.earthhourus.org/

It's Not Easy Being Green

In a recent post I said, in regards to a lack of innovation in design, "Housing and architecture is in such desperate need of it the world is now aware of it." While we have plenty of hot, edgey designers, the designs that actually make it into mass production are always sad, pale retreads of existing ideas and directions. We have not had a fundamental shift in general design trends, especially industrial design, in a long time. I attacked housing and architecture specifically because the world is cruising for an environmental bruising, and our houses are some of the worst culprits. As such, this article at SciAm was of special interest.

One thing pops into my head: regulation. The government has one tool, regulation, and when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. DO NOT REGULATE! ENCOURAGE! I have a hard time naming moments when laws actually helped a situation. Instead of simply trying to pass regulation, then, when it fails because it was a dumb fucking idea, blaming the populous who didn't want your plan, enact government funded encouragement. Subsidize environmental building. You can even come up with a cool name that you can make a logo for, like GreenHouse. Give tax breaks, hand out money, sponsor education and workshops. Make an actual difference as opposed to shooting your mouth off.

Green Buildings May Be Cheapest Way to Slow Global Warming (Scientific American)

America the Brave.

After writing my earlier post about America denying climate change, I seemingly by fate read a number of articles talking about how America is turning its mind around. I think that America deserves credit for casting aside propaganda and pre-set beliefs in barely a year to see different poll results. Bravo, I say. Bravo.

Growing Number of Americans See Warming as Leading Threat (Via Washington Post)

The Time is Gone.

I just saw the trailer for the upcoming enviro-documentary by Leonardo DiCaprio, Eleventh Hour. So many of these things, especially Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, tacked on a message of hope amidst all the dire prognostications. I personally think this is silly.

As I think any environmental scientist will tell you, the delay in cause and effect on global scales, save things such as volcanic eruptions, is large. Decades. If we are seeing the effects of our behavior now, that means these are the effects of causes back in the 1980's.

Basically, this means we're hosed. There is nothing we can do to stop things. We need to start preparing for a very different world in a very short time. I still think all the feel-good environmental stuff is good and important, but it's no longer the most important. That time was 1980, and it's long since past.