it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism

In his The Disorder of Things, philosopher Fredric Jameson made the above observation with the public beaten down by endless rhetoric that there is no alternative to liberal market economies and that green movements are unrealistic.
Now that the US Senate has cynically (and in a cringe-worthy fashion—sh*tposting the chamber with a deliberate, aggressively ironic provocation of minimal effort that derailed any possibility of meaningful debate) rejected moving forward on comprehensive climate legislation, we globally are lurched a step closer to experiencing both scenarios. Such squabbling minimises the urgency for radical action and leaves us with less time to affect change before time runs out.

co2-bilanz

Via Slashdot, we discover that a Leuven-based research team have managed to modify solar cells to decompose water into its component parts and produce hydrogen in situ.
The system harvests moisture from the air while generating photovoltaic power and the dual-application really reveals itself as complete, self-sustaining (if it can be scaled up) and self-sufficient as trials suggest that a small array of panels can procure enough power to light and heat a smallish living space without adding to the household’s carbon footprint. Demonstration projects are already underway in the UK and Belgium that keep homes warm using hydrogen instead of natural gas and can use the alternate fuel with existing pipes and infrastructure with relatively little retrofitting required. If the hydrogen does not need to be pumped in from outside, the process becomes even more efficient.

6x6

♫: the Keaton typewriter of musical notation

cryogenics: a covertly filmed movie on the urban legend of Walt Disney’s preserved head shot on location

klimatförändring: environmental activist Greta Thunberg nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

jungbauern: a deep dive into the socio-economics and ethnography captured in this 1914 August Sander’s photograph

hecho en méxico: Candida Höfer turns her lens towards the façades and interiors of the country

clapping music: a performance by Steve Reich that challenges you to keep in sync 

wort des jahres

The Zeitgeist and the jury of the Association for the German Language (GfdS—Gesellschaft für deustche Sprache) in Wiesbaden has picked Heißzeit—a neologism that sounds like its opposite Eiszeit, Ice Age—as the Word of the Year for 2018 (DE/EN).
In deference to extreme heat and the drought conditions in Europe and across the globe this summer and acknowledged urgency in addressing climate change, Heißzeit beat out other contenders like Funklochrepublic for spotty, quality cellular network coverage, Pflegeroboter for automated nursing services for the old and infirm, Handelskrieg for trade war and Brexit-Chaos, needing no translation.

cop24

Whilst the international community is struggling to make meaningful progress that might avert the destruction and consummation of civilisation as we know it by committing to being less garbage tenets of this planet, the United States has not just backed out of global compacts that nudge in the right direction but has now assumed the mantle of profligate troll by counter-messaging the United Nations sponsored conference in Katowice (coat of arms pictured, the region known historically for its industry and coal reserves) with a pavilion extolling fossil fuels.
The US, despite the fact that antiquated oil barons can curry favour with the Trump administration and embarrassingly promote dirty fuel as a means to curb climate change, is certainly not alone in not upholding their end of the bargain and affecting real and saving change will require dramatic transitions away from not only traditional means of powering society but the ways in which society consumes resources itself. Activists chanting “keep in the ground” disrupted the start of the event with the remaining audience looking noticeably thinner after the protest.

der once-ler

Recognising that (beyond the intrinsic value of trees and woodlands in themselves) afforestation and reforestation efforts are as important as reducing emissions and that every little bit helps, Berlin-based search engine Ecosia (previously) the Guardian reports has offered the energy company that owns the land that the remnant of Hambacher Forest a million euros to purchase the parcel and preserve it in perpetuity.  Ecosia’s search machine is in an browser overlay that is non-intrusive and generates revenue through advertisements which are used to support tree-planting and other conservation campaigns and one can learn more at the links above and get updates at the organisation’s own blog here.

corallivorous predator

Underwritten in part by Google, we learn via Slashdot that those working to preserve Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have gotten a new, powerful ally in the form of Rangerbot, an autonomous aquatic drone that is designed to detect and administer a lethal injection to a very specific type of starfish plaguing the reef.
The crown-of-thorns starfish feeds exclusively on coral polyps—which makes it seem already like the most rubbish, laziest hunter in the animal kingdom already—and while not an invasive species, overfishing and climate change have made those creatures who’d help keep the starfish’s numbers in check are few and few and the starfish is free to munch on the coral unchecked. Scuba divers have been culling this poisonous pest responsible for coral bleaching and nearly as much harm as fertiliser run-off, overfishing and warming oceans for years themselves, but this drone will patrol the reef day and night, programmed not to give its poisoned injection if there is any doubt about the identity and guilt of the target, as well as gathering a wealth of data on the health and well-being of the ecosystem. What do you think? It strikes me as a preferable alternative than swallowing a spider to catch the fly but deputising a drone with license to kill seems (especially in the light of a New Zealand island debating the outlawing of cats for similar reasons) problematic.

exergy

Late-stage capitalism with its cloying, insatiate greed is lurching towards its final days, according to research carried out at the behest of the United Nations, we learn via Slashdot, the economics of exploitation no longer sustainable or alluring. Climate change, leveraged indebtedness and the growing gulf of inequality are now being understood as convergent factors and the course of depletion rather than enrichment has been complicit in making the planet a more inhospitable and impoverished place.
We cannot just turn off the compulsion for growth and acquisition—the world’s poor deserve the lifestyle of the well-off just as much as we do—but we can reframe it in a transformative way if government policy supports directing energies to sequestering carbon with as much zeal and abandon as was given to extracting it in the first place, we might not only survive but also thrive going forward. The notion that capitalism always seeks the cheaper alternative over social good is not exactly a false dichotomy but plotted over the landscape of the immediate returns and the fiscal year myopic, mundane short-term thinking rules the moment and casts a seductive net that portrays ruthless cheating and bilking as business acumen.

anthropocene

Via Nag on the Lake, we are invited to ruminate over the indelible mark that humans are leaving on the planet through insatiable greed and a feeling of entitlement to exploit Nature, which will result in a future world inimical and inhospitable to human life through anthropogenic climate change and destruction of vital ecosystems. This is not something that we can look away from and pretend is not happening.  Learn more about the filmmakers and their trilogy of documentaries here.

heat map

The European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency maintains its Copernicus Emergency Management Service to track and model disasters world wide—both natural and manmade to include global flood awareness systems, displaced populations, a drought observatory and a global wildfire information system which monitors for threats in near-real time and provides an on-demand charting provision to aid in risk assessment, response and recovery operations. Above is a snapshot of the present situation, mapping fire risk. With conditions exacerbated by climate change and parts of the world becoming increasingly uninhabitable for life of all sorts, we are all stakeholders.

water column

Oceanographers in Queensland for the first time have produced a comprehensive, global map charting out the pristine, untouched areas of oceanic wilderness, which sadly reveals that there is only a small percentage not already befouled by mankind.
Researchers admit that they were expecting to find much broader expanses of unspoilt waters and ecosystems but these contrary results, testament to the endless assault that people are waging with careless pollution, climate change heating up waters and disrupting currents, over-fishing, sand-mining (the chief component of all the concrete and glass that goes into new construction) and intensive shipping, demonstrate the degree of negative, disruptive impact that humans have had above and below the waves.

privatising profits, socialising losses

Much as there is dishonesty at the root of the gangster Trump’s specious argument of “national security” to justify the tariffs on steel and aluminium on US allies and significant trade partners, Boing Boing is reporting that the Department of Energy will invoke antiquated emergency powers in order to subsidise unprofitable and polluting coal and expensive and resource-intense nuclear power and turn away from more innovative and agile sources.
Not only will delays in the scheduled retirement of facilities continue to do damage to the environment for all of us—though there’s no emissions at the end-stage of atomic reactors, mining of fissile materials is still a dirty business—and threaten to undermine innovation, US tax payers are buoying up these literal and figurative dinosaurs at a fairly high premium.

hot air

Coming to terms with how damaging that plastic debris is for the environment and considering how helium is becoming a scarce resource, we were surprised to learn that there’s a powerful balloon lobby, as Super Punch informs, that has successful blocked legislation in forty-nine of fifty states that would outlaw outdoor balloon releases that punctuate political victories, weddings and other celebrations. While the industry council, whose managed to buy off politicians of all ilks, does not actively encourage balloon releases, it fears that codifying a ban would stigmatise consumers and hurt small businesses.

de la démocratie en amérique

Yesterday, before a joint session of Congress, the US legislature and executive got the address that it needs to heed but probably didn’t deserve in the parting words of French President Emmanuel Macron, who laid bare a world-view in sharp contrast to what the disengaged, raging nationalist policies of the Trump regime, bromance aside.
There being no “Planet B,” Macron urged America to rejoin the Paris Accords and not to withdraw from the Iran nuclear settlement. The spread of fake news (fausses nouvelles) and the atmosphere of distrust it sews is also getting to be a bit much.  Macron’s speech happened to fall of the same day in 1960 when Général Charles de Gaulle had the opportunity to convey the same message of friendship and unity to the same audience, and of course follows quite a long tradition of French thinkers mediating on democracy in America—beginning with Alexis de Tocqueville’s travels in the newly-minted republic.

neap tide

Though perhaps only a cold comfort and little consolation to imagine how the same cadre that benefit for the present from these regulatory changes are also the ones who are behind the policies that contribute to global warming and sea-level rise and their ocean-front properties will be soon conquered by the waters, the state of Florida has enacted legislation that could potentially severely curtail public access to state-controlled beaches.
A seemingly innocuous change in wording that extends the property-rights boundary out a bit caught only by the fact that the bill contained a rider prohibiting municipalities from passing legislation to countermand state law will give hoteliers and other land owners greater power to control who trods over private holdings to reach what the wealthy cannot yet own outright. Despite the governor’s exuberance and confidence that the landed-gentry won’t abuse this gift and deny people egress, many mayors have protested that such a move will destroy the state’s tourism industry, tossing favour to only a few establishments catering to a particular clientele.

yes, I am the lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are introduced to a Berlin-based internet search engine called Ecosia whose simple and transparent business model based on advertisement revenue (if they’re going to profile you, invade your brain and vie for your attention anyway, then let it be at least for a good cause) has so far managed to underwrite the planting of approaching twenty four million trees—with a goal of a billion more trees by 2020.
We’ve grown keenly aware  of the contribution of forests to ecological balance, biodiversity and climate stabilization but we’ve got a long way to go to make up for our thoughtless past behavior. Join the team at Ecosia on their journey to achieve this good turn for the planet.

yearbook

Though perhaps not the finest, challenging or most emotionally-wrenching moments of the past year, we did appreciate this curated gallery of photographs from the Atlantic that truly lives up to the label of the most 2017 images ever. There’s been a lot this year we could really do with less of in the next. There are certainly some iconic—rather unforgettable moments and movements captured here. What else would you include? If you we making a time-capsule to explain this time to future generations, what says 2017 like nothing else?

sequestration

Soberingly, we are reminded via Slashdot of another dirty little secret underlying climate change and those compacts meant to stave off the sort of run-away changes that would render the Earth a very inhospitable place compared to what we’ve grown accustomed to insofar as the targets and pledges are not only calling for a severe curtailment in carbon emissions but are also contingent on taking that surplus carbon-dioxide out of the atmosphere.
It’s not an impossible feat and we can rise to the occasion (despite ourselves, and maybe cleaning up the past is in some ways easier than the paradigm shift needed for going forward) but the amount to sequester from the environment represents something on par with the industrial output of the past two decades and the technologies to accomplish this feat are only just emerging. The fact that the Paris Agreement was negotiated knowing this rather grim calculus only makes me more hopefully for the audacity of ingenuity.

over a barrel

Arguably emboldened by Dear Leader’s strange and strained whistle-stop tour of the centres of faith of the Abrahamic religions that unanimously positioned US policy and patronage squarely behind regimes that he didn’t come to lecture—code for not wanting to address the hypocrisies of diplomacy based solely on business interest and drag down negotiations with more rarefied talk, Saudi Arabia led others in the region in suspending relations and closing borders with Qatar.
The top US diplomat and former swaggering oil-man himself, despite the fact Qatar is host to the largest US military installation in the Middle East, assesses that this action will have little to no impact on the global war on terror. Tensions already existed between the Saudis and the Qataris over their allegiance with rebellious elements and Iran, whose oil reserves are seen as a match for the kingdom’s, but the timing seems pretty suspect after Dear Leader stomped all over a sectarian hornets’ nest—praising those Sunni majority nations willing to be franchisees of his brand and condemning Shi’a countries, though most perpetrators of terror to include the Cosplay Caliphate have had Saudi associations and have been of the Sunni persuasion—and the simultaneous decision to sell stock to Western investors in the kingdom’s national oil-drilling operation for the first time. Though Dear Leader’s attempt to discredit the world’s commitment to not destroy itself is a fitting failure, one wonders if that too wasn’t decided in concert somehow—in his mind only, as conspirators are not dolts, with a bit of insider-knowledge, which has now been elevated to a crime against humanity.

an inconvenient alternative

Due to revelations that you may have heard tell of, Al Gore’s sequel to his sobering, Academy Award-winning environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth will be treated to a quick recut.
While the feature is being updated ahead of its postponed, late summer box-office release date to reflect Dear Leader’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, audiences in select cities across the US will be treated to free screenings of the current version of An Inconvenient Sequel. The brutish wrongheadedness of his woefully unpopular stance is reflective of a hypocritical, insincere romancing of the Rust Belt and jobs that cannot and will not be brought back (advanced, clean technologies are surely offering better paying careers and would have been more sustainable for communities had Dear Leader not forfeited that opportunity), even if the regime were genuine in its concern over them.