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.

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.

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.

dark triad or but our princess is in another castle

Informed by the trope of the paid professional protester that supposedly presents a threat to America’s infrastructure and energy-security rather than the real agents provocateur that have infiltrated the highest offices of government in fact, the state of Oklahoma—whose antagonistic attorney general was recently elevated to agency secretary responsible for environmental protection—is introducing further legislation that could potentially bankrupt not only protestors that cross the fragile and thin-skinned lines of civil disobedience by causing material harm to properties appertaining to said energy-security or businesses working in support of it but would also hold conspirators financial accountable—by ten-fold.
This is a pretty broad-brush in favour of the petroleum industry that’s already managed to health, safety and environmental regulations that have been obstacles to greater profit, and now along with other anti-protest laws defacing equipment with a protest slogan or being kettled into trespassing could carry a fine of one hundred thousand dollars. The dark triad of the title refers to the three universal personality traits that typify intimidation, bullying and toxic leadership: narcissism, Machiavellianism (being duplicitous in statecraft and business dealings and without ethical standards) and sociopathy. This disdain that corporations have for the environment and individuals did not begin with this regime but certainly benefits from it and will spread if allowed to continue unchecked.

shooting-gallery or swords into ploughshares

The always engrossing BLDGBlog informs that the US Department of Defence, who’ve committed to dozens of projects to protect the environment and encourage sustainable practises, is entertaining a proposal by the Small Business Administration that would have the armed forces at least train with ammunition whose bullet shells are biodegradable.
They would contain a small amount of seeds to be released as the casing is broken down, in order to sow the tactile grounds and ranges with native brush and wild flowers. The DoD is seeking out companies with the material expertise to make this a reality and urges people to come forward. Geoff Manaugh goes on to ponder how this initiative—which sounds potentially quite the opposite to the notion of salting the fields of one’s enemies, reminds him of a tree bombing-raid campaign he blogged about over a decade ago that might result in mass-reforestation after wildfires or allow woodlands to reclaim fallow pastures.

mmxvi: annus horribilis, annus mirabilis

december: Pioneering US astronaut John Glenn passed away, as did America’s TV Dad, Alan Thicke. Doctor Henry Heimlich also left us, as did Zsa Zsa Gabor. Over a billion user accounts are compromised by a once pioneering search engine. Carnage and destruction continue in Aleppo as Syria, all the global powers’ proxy-war, is poised to fall to the entrenched government.  A truck ploughed through a crowded Christmas Market in Berlin.  Sadly, singer George Michael passed away as well as icon Carrie Fisher with her mother, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, joining her the next day.

november: Donald J Trump defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton as the forty-fifth presumptive to the office of President of the United States of America. We had to say farewell to America’s TV Mom, Florence Henderson. Janet Reno died, and we had to say good-bye to Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers. Retro funk and soul performer Sharon Jones passed away as did Leon Russell though not of precisely the same genre. Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen left us. Fidel Castro expired aged ninety, on Black Friday and cause of death was declared as America’s return to greatness.

october: It was announced that Bob Dylan will be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. Hopefully prematurely, obituaries for the Great Barrier Reef circulated, the cause of its demise being coral-bleaching.  A craze of dressing as scary clowns and frightening people has spread globally.

september: Meaningful global climate accords held in Paris are put into force, although later in the month carbon dioxide levels surpass anything experienced in the course of human events. NASA launches a probe to study and return with samples from an asteroid with a high potential to impact the Earth—in the twenty-third century, possibly either nudging it closer or pushing it further out of bounds.

august: Gene Wilder left us. Brazil hosted the Olympic Games. The actor that portrayed R2-D2 Kenny Baker sadly departed, as did host and political discussion moderator John McLaughlin. Costa Rica powered itself with renewable energy for one hundred days and hopes to wean itself off of fossil fuels completely.

july: A wholly solar-powered aircraft becomes the first to circumnavigate the globe. We had to say good-bye to Elie Wiesel. During Bastille Day celebrations, an atrocious terror attack occurred on promenade of Nice, setting off a summer of terror across Europe. An abortive coup d’état rocked Turkey and a political purge followed, exacerbating an already tense situation. The African Union’s fifty-four member nations issue a single passport that allows holders to travel visa-free within the bloc.

june: After two decades of construction, the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps in opened. The UK voted to leave the European Union. The promising actor Anton Yelchin who played the new Chekov was struck down far too early. Boxer Muhammad Ali departed.

may: Presidential elections in Austria are too close to call, and the contenders a member of the Green party and a far-right candidate will hold a run-off later in the year. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the world. Super Tuesday’s delegates are awarded to Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.

april: The pop megastar Prince passed on. Der Süddeutsche Zeitung along with a consortium of other news outlets publish millions of leaked documents implicating many heads of state and prominent figures in the Panama Papers scandal. For the first time in history, capital punishment is outlawed by more than half the countries in the world.

march: Coordinated bomb attacks take over a hundred lives in Lahore and Brussels, and ISIS claims responsibility. Sadly, comedian and show-master Garry Shandling passed away. World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid also left us. Myanmar sworn in its first democratically elected president in half a century.

february: For the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches met and committed to an Ecumenical Declaration. Writers Umberto Eco and Harper Lee passed away on the same day. Heretofore theoretical gravitational waves were observed for the first time.  A huge swath of Canadian temperate rain-forest will be protected forever and called Spirit Bear. Bolivia and Peru also reached a deal to protect Lake Titicaca.

january: Davie Bowie tragically passed away, as did musicians Glenn Frey and Natalie Cole. There’s an outbreak of the Zika virus, causing panic in the sub-tropics and prompting many couples to postpone having children, due to the risk of birth-defects. Brutal and powerful Mexican drug-trafficker Joaquín Guzmán is re-captured after his escape from a high-security detention facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran has complied and dismantled its nuclear weapons programme and instructed the UN to lift sanctions. 

icebreaker and impasse

The somewhat ironically named Crystal Serenity is the first leviathan of a cruise-liner to haul holiday-makers through the once fabled Northwest Passage (only navigable year around since 2009 due to the arctic pack ice) and recently completed its maiden voyage, as Jalopnik reports.
Not only were guests a bit disappointed to not see majestic icebergs parting before them or penguins and polar bears accompanying them, it seems they also failed to appreciate the infamy of being the first “explorers” here. Aside from stark environmental concerns, as the sea-lanes widen and traffic inevitably increases, it also poses a vexing problem for Canada since the waters are part of the country’s internal territory but the rest of the maritime world has already decided (without conferring first with Canada) that there should be free and unhindered transit for all. Depending on how negotiations go forward, Canada might maintain its fishing and environmental regulations but not the power to bar any vessel entry—saddled with the responsibility for combatting piracy, smuggling and clean-up operations when a spill or a wreck does occur.

white-collar or unfortunate incarceration

The duo of guerrilla artists and activities that previously erected a bust of the fugitive intelligence agency whistle-blower contracted a slew of talented prison inmates to create portraits of the biggest international corporate chief executive officers who are above the law—despite their crimes against humanity and the environment, and are more deserving to be behind bars. The pictures of these scoff-laws will be auctioned off with proceeds going to the reformist US presidential candidate, whose platform might erode some of their immunity to prosecution.

marchons or rearranging the deck chairs

Icelandic artist and activity Ólafur Eliasson working with geologist Minik Rosing have salvaged tonnes of icy obelisks, already doomed to their consummation, from the breaking front of Greenland’s glacial ice sheet and transported to them to central Paris, where delegates attending the crucial COP21 climate conference can witness them melt.
This is a pretty powerful statement and it’s highly recommended you visit the link and see more of Eliasson’s projects, but none to my mind was as stirring as the subdued Paris en Marche, when after the public rally was cancelled due to heightened security concerns and gatherings were banned, thousands brought pair by pair shoes to stand in for the absented protesters.

stadials and glacials

Listening to a really engrossing panel discussion of geologic ice ages and the usual state of affairs of the planet Earth—how the drama has gone on for æons without of intervention or influence and what level of detail can be teased from the rock and sediment of how the inaccessible past looked, I felt a little sad that although those taking part in the discussion saw no need for some moralising postscript because it still felt rather grubby and contrarian to be talking about the topic, though strictly in the framework of billions of years and the science of geology, without addressing the weather—and made one feel like a climate-change denier. People tend to shy away from taking about vaccines, evolution or the politics of race, irrespective of the setting, to avoid controversy and being tagged with such a label and science suffers, as does the way such things are debated and understood in the public sphere.
The language of academics seems almost more relaxed than the choice words of journalists and pundits, and I was delighted to be instructed. For the past fifty million years or so to the present day, the Earth has been experiencing an ice age, by the definition that there is permanent ice at one or both poles, and the Earth has been making the transition from Icehouse to Greenhouse conditions for all its history. Though the intensity of the cycles have varied and have gotten somewhat less extreme out of consideration for the living organisms there to witness these shifts (and the Earth has been mostly a hot-house—with only some fifteen percent of the geological record attesting to a colder climate), researchers believe that it’s the cusps of these changes that drive evolutionary development, the emergence of the creatures that would become us corresponds with switch that began about fifty million. The imbalance of climatic change—or the reason there are such variations in the first place, has to do with geography driven by tectonic shift: without a landmass near or at the top or the bottom of the world there is no polar ice and oceanic currents also play a big role, like the blockage of the Isthmus of Panama or the massive southern sea that encircles Antarctica that keeps warmer water at bay. Whereas Icehouse Earth has presented in the distant itself more like icy Europa and Greenhouse Earth has been a far more watery and steamy place, the carbon-dioxide that human industry and occupation has released into the shrinking wilds has pushed our greenhouse gases beyond the levels that Nature can tolerate in an Ice Age—as my sanctimonious coda. I wonder how the New North will fare?

time-lapse or moraines and drumlins

I thought that this demonstration of mining images on the internet for photographic documentation of climate change was rather clever and compelling—and all the more poignant as the time-lapse featured was a place that H and I visited ourselves, back in July of 2012. I wonder if any of the pictures we took on our hike through the Briksdalen towards the Briksdalbreen there icy blue in the distance made the cut.