A traveling exhibition about the sounds and songs of life
First things first: “The absence of an actual bill” is one impediment to the Senate taking up climate legislation, The Hill reported earlier this week. The climate leadership troika of Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) continue to work behind the scenes to steer the many interests toward a common framework. Key business leaders and allied politicians are reportedly encouraged by movement away from the comprehensive approach that passed the House of Representatives last summer. The oil industry, which found the House bill rather expensive, is listening cautiously to a policy that would require them to pay a “carbon fee” rather than buy into an economy-wide fix. President Barack Obama met with 14 senators for more than an hour Tuesday to talk about their shared goals for viable climate legislation, despite a lack of agreement on details or White House demands.
Graham has threatened to walk away from climate (and immigration) legislation if the Democratic majority passes health care reform through a process called “reconciliation,” which circumambulates typical Senate procedure [CongressDaily, sub. req.].
Two “actual bills” would slow or kill the Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Two West Virginia Democrats, Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick Rahall, have co-authored a bill that would freeze the agency’s move for at least two years. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced a bill that would undo the EPA’s ruling that greenhouse gas emissions pose public harm.
The international negotiation process stumbles forward, toward its year-end COP-16 meeting in cheery Cancun, Mexico. Please do check out the, uh, planned agenda, participants, and guiding documents, here. India and China this week formally signed up for the Copenhagen Accord, the non-binding, vague document to emerge from the Copenhagen COP-15 meeting in December. The developing giants agreed to be “listed” among the Accord countries, rather than “associated” with them, a lesser affiliation reflecting the current difficulties and confusion.
Not dead yet: If there’s an enduring legislative metaphor from 20th century cinema, it’s the classic moment from the absurd comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when a man wheels his cart through a Plague-stricken town, telling residents to “Bring out your dead!” The newest body on the cart suddenly exclaims, “I’m not dead yet,” to which he’s told, “You’ll be stone dead in a moment.” The farce ends when the near-deceased is knocked over the head with a club.
In a hyper-partisan atmosphere, with an election approaching, with health care reform absorbing the Senate, and financial and immigration reform not far behind, conventional wisdom holds that climate legislation in the Senate this year is analogously “not dead yet.” (Disclaimer: The conventional wisdom says a lot of things.) The Chicago Tribune documents the rise of climate-science skepticism in the GOP. Read the story from the bottom-up, and you’ll learn that Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) recently chatted with his new colleagues Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) about their climate bill, which would limit national emissions, compel big polluters to purchase credits for each ton they’re allowed to emit, and dispatch all the proceeds back to consumers.
The Nicholas Institute this week released a modeling study of Cantwell and Snow’s CLEAR Act. Senior Research Economist Eric Williams compares results to the Energy Information Administration’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House of Representatives last summer. The synopsis: The Cantwell bill’s cost to emit a ton of carbon grows from $21 in 2012 to $55 in 2030, a 5.5 percent annual rise. Market demand for carbon credits pushes the price to the maximum allowed under the legislation—called a “price ceiling”—in every year of the program. Net greenhouse gas emissions, including a companion greenhouse gas-reduction program, might result by 2030 in a 16 percent to 19 percent drop below 2005 levels, far short of Cantwell’s target. That’s compared to EIA’s prediction of a 34 percent net drop under the (now politically dead) House climate bill.
We have met the emitter, and he is us: Everything about climate change is hard. This week’s reminder came from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which published an analysis of national responsibility for emissions based on trade, rather than emissions within borders. Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science conclude that goods and services traded internationally account for nearly a quarter of industrial carbon emissions. Given the amount of manufacturing in and exporting from China, it’s no surprise that its trade partners are “responsible” for nearly as high a percentage of emissions from the world’s largest national polluter.
Oh, scientific community… We know you’re trying: Never underestimate the incompatibility of traditional media and scientific discourse. The Washington Post this morning ran a slim article on an inside page that deserves full quotation by headline and lede:
Is it fair to introduce the readers an ambitious new oversight project by saying what it will not do? Isn’t that a little bit like headlining the article, “Scientists Too Dim to Focus Review on What You and I Know the IPCC’s Problem Is”? It’s not that this is a particularly egregious article—it’s not like it’s the post-Murdoch-takeover Wall Street Journal’s news page—but what would be so terrible if conventional journalists added in more explanation into their stories? Regular Post readers are likelier to know that the Himalayas will still be there in 2036 than they are to know just how well-understood the basics of climate change are. If you posit the latter, this headline and lede are less than coherent.
The Green Grok files this typically perspicacious account.
Scientists and science writers have begun to fight back against the misinformation and disinformation campaigns against them. But they’re still bleeding. A new Gallop poll shows that half of Americans think climate change is overblown—48 percent, up from 41 percent last year. Recent work by the authors of last year’s “Six Americas” study, shows that the number of respondents who are “dismissive” of climate change is has jumped from 7 percent to 16 percent since 2008.
Adaptation, already in progress: From Malawi comes this horrifying story of how extreme meteorological patterns can take individual lives. Unusually heavy rain on a house of unbaked mud brick caused a roof collapse that killed a mother, father, and two children in Lilongwe. A Malawi government report to the UN documented that in the last 20 years there have been enough droughts and floods to “clearly show that there are large temporal and spatial variables in the occurrence of climate-related disasters and calamities.”
In Hampton Roads, Virginia, a planning director has the difficult political task of corralling 16 cities and counties into a discussion of adaptation to rising sea levels, when many constituents posit that climate change risk assessments are wrong, made-up, or overblown.
Problem solved!: The Boston Globe takes up the “competitive conundrum” of clean energy technologies. That’s a snazzy way of saying that new technologies are more expensive than infrastructure from the last century, such as coal, oil, gas, and nuclear. Without a cost breakthrough—either in the form of a scalable energy invention or a functioning government policy—the 21st century energy economy can’t get started.
I can’t help but wonder if the wrong companies are on the case. Shouldn’t Starbucks (which more than doubled the price of coffee), Apple (whose iPod delivers a tenth the sound quality of analog music at four times the cost), and AT&T (more dropped calls) get to work on making expensive-but-clean tech a style-driven phenomenon?
Related Links:
Senators negotiate green economy bill with polluters who deny threat of global warming
Retooling green jobs for the next generation
American Petroleum tells lawmakers it supports carbon fee because it’s easier to demonize
On Wednesday, bipartisan groups of legislators from both houses of Congress joined together to support a bill: the Rural Energy Savings Program, which would make low-interest loans available to rural homeowners to fund efficiency retrofits. The loans would come with no upfront cost and would be paid off with a small surcharge on utility bills (so-called “on-bill financing”). The policy is a win-win-win: it would offer financial relief to a demographic that’s hurting badly, create thousands of jobs, and reduce CO2 emissions. The bill is fantastic in its own right, but unless I’m suffering from a bout of wishful thinking (possible!), it also seems indicative of some promising developments in today’s energy politics.
First off, federal legislators are finally beginning to grasp the fact that efficiency can be a winner in every single congressional district. It is a bipartisan, or perhaps nonpartisan, opportunity. This realization has been delayed by years of partisan squabbling over more contentious climate/energy issues like carbon pricing and oil subsidies; lawmakers have become accustomed to energy being just as divisive as health care reform, yet another clash of well-worn, deeply entrenched positions. But if efficiency can be pulled out of that, unburdened of those other controversies, and looked at on its own merits, it becomes clear that it’s a no-brainer. Every district has inefficient buildings and every district could benefit from local jobs.
The Senate Energy Committee held a hearing on energy efficiency on Wednesday to consider four bills that together would “enhance the standards program by establishing or updating efficiency standards for major energy consuming products such as air conditioners, furnaces, and outdoor lighting, as well as several smaller product classes.” (One of the bills is co-sponsored by committee co-chairs Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Today they’re having another hearing to consider the Home Star program (“cash for caulkers”), which has been talked up by the president himself, and Building Star, the recently developed complement focused on commercial buildings. Both programs are expected to come to the floor as part of a jobs bill in the next couple of months.
Small wins like these bills and the rural energy program build political capital in the fight for clean energy. No matter what happens with the big Senate climate bill, Dems should start thinking about putting forward—and publicizing!—more more of these small-bore measures. Each one cracks the door a little wider and broadens the constituency for smart energy policy.
Secondly, I think that the current political climate is ripe for these kinds of small, smart bills. The Senate is under two opposing pressures. From one side, Obama (and the public) are pushing them to address climate and energy. Obama had a bipartisan group of senators to the White House the other day to talk about it. (Direct presidential intervention in negotiations like this is a huge deal.) And of course every poll under the sun shows that the public, including independents and voters in swing states, wants Washington to act.
From the other side, the right wing and its teabagger vanguard have succeeded in completely demonizing cap-and-trade, which has been at the center of climate policy advocacy for years. Whatever senators do, they can’t touch that.
So what do you get if you combine pressure to enact policy with an effective prohibition on enacting the main policy that’s been on the table? Answer: lots of interest in other climate/energy policies. You can see it in the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal, which splits cap-and-trade up into multiple carbon pricing systems (which aren’t cap-and-trade, and don’t you dare call them that!). More interestingly, you can see it in the profusion of free-standing proposals like the efficiency bills discussed above and things like Bernie Sanders’ 10 Million Solar Roofs bill.
Again, maybe I’m wishful thinking, but I hold out hope that this could lead to good things. I do think eventually the political system will have to choke down cap-and-trade (whatever it ends up being called), if for no other reason than to harmonize the regional C&T systems and hook up with the EU system as part of an international treaty.
But as Gar Lipow has been arguing, carbon pricing isn’t the only, or even the most important, climate/energy policy. And it’s the least popular! If the short-term impetus to escape cap-and-trade drives legislators into the arms of these complementary policies—efficiency standards, renewable initiatives, an infrastructure bank, increased R&D funding, whatever—it could do good things for the climate and build popular support and momentum for more action.
The question, of course, is how to keep these freestanding proposals from falling into the same partisan sausage grinder that’s afflicting the big climate bill. Right now, they have a shot at being the rare patch of common ground. But never underestimate the teabaggers’ will to divide. A delicate political dance lies ahead. Should be fun to watch!
Related Links:
Democrats toughen up on finance reform. Could it work for clean energy?
How many Venezuelan soldiers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Testament is a series of collective self-portraits made up of fragments from online video diaries, or “vlogs”. The project consisted of a series of chapters, each of which focuses on a collectively told vignette, story, proclamation, or meditation on topics such as identity, the economy, illness, politics, the war, or work. Testament explores the formal and conceptual consequences of online video viewing and sharing, while analyzing contemporary expressions of self, and the stories we are currently telling online about our lives and our circumstances. Clips are edited and sequenced like streams and patterns of self-revelation and narrative that flow and dissipate over space and time. As in a Greek chorus, a choir, or a musical symphony, individuals echo, respond to, contradict, add refrains, iterations, and variations, join in, and complete solo narrations. The series reflects on the peculiar blend of intimacy and anonymity, of simultaneous connectivity and isolation that characterizes online social relations.
-- FROM THE ARTIST'S STATEMENTIt is almost three months after the Copenhagen Accord was hammered out by 28 of the world’s key countries that represent over 80 percent of the world’s global warming pollution and some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (as I discussed here). Given the state of the Accord just after Copenhagen with some calling it a failure, some outlining the foundations in the Accord for international efforts (as my colleague discussed here), and others ... well not quite sure what to make of it, where do things stand on international efforts to address global warming?
If you just picked up the paper, watched TV, listened to the radio, or read blogs you might think that things aren’t really moving as there is very little coverage of international global warming discussions (especially compared to last year when every 5 seconds some news story or analysis emerged). But that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening on the international front. In fact, despite the lack of regular coverage, things are moving forward—albeit tentatively, behind the scenes, and without a big splash.
Here are four things that are occurring that are worth following:
Over 108 countries have “associated with” the Copenhagen Accord (as summarized here).* These countries account for over 80 percent of the emissions and 77 percent of the population of the world. The last two major pieces fell into place when China and India formally “associated with the Accord” in the last 2 days (as my colleagues discussed here and as covered by the New York Times). Basically these countries are saying: “we agree to international action on global warming and on the basis of the outlines agreed in the Accord.” Of course many of these countries have urged for deeper action than outlined in the Accord, but by Associating with the Accord they are signaling that they want to proceed internationally to address global warming.
60 countries representing over 80 percent of the world’s emissions have formally recorded actions to reduce their global warming pollution (as I discussed here). Many of these countries aren’t simply waiting for some future international meeting or for the final international agreement to implement specific policies and programs to reduce their pollution. For example, as my colleagues have discussed, China and India have adopted new domestic policies since Copenhagen that will reduce their global warming pollution. Brazil signed a bilateral agreement with the U.S. (available here) and there are expectations that the U.S. will sign another one with Indonesia when President Obama goes there March 20-22 (hopefully with concrete near term actions).
Key countries will begin to coordinate efforts to address deforestation emissions. Over 15 percent of the world’s global warming pollution comes from deforestation and forest degradation, so the Copenhagen Accord agreed: “on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions [that reduce deforestation and forest degradation].” Key countries including the U.S., Australia, Germany, and France agreed to contribute $3.5 billion over 3 years to “prompt start” efforts to reduce deforestation emissions. It is critical to ensure that the flow of this early money goes to effective actions that reduce deforestation as every second a football field size of rainforest is lost (and it won’t return). So instead of waiting for the next international negotiating session or greater clarity on how things proceed (and more loss of the tropical forests), a group of key developed countries and deforesting countries are meeting as we speak to begin efforts to better coordinate global efforts to combat deforestation.
High-level and influential set of policymakers will be discussing ways to generate sizeable funding to assist developing countries in deploying clean energy, reducing deforestation emissions, and adapting to the impacts of climate change. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has created a High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing to be chaired by U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, with representatives including George Soros, Nick Stern, and Lawrence Summers. The group is tentatively scheduled to meet March 29 and will provide an initial report to the May/June climate negotiating session and a final report to the climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico in December. Let’s hope some politically possible and specific proposals emerge that can be adopted by key countries.
That is the positive momentum that has occurred post-Copenhagen. But of course not everything is all good news. The World Bank is still funding things that are taking us in the wrong direction by proposing to finance a coal plant in South Africa that isn’t capturing its carbon (and doesn’t put in place a real plan to capture it’s carbon in the future), and is barely investing in renewables and doesn’t have a real energy efficiency investment as a part of this proposal. Indonesia is proposing to classify its palm forests as “forests” in order to access money that is supposed to be set aside for deforestation reduction efforts—not exactly the aim of that funding as it is supposed to support things that are slowing deforestation, not actions that deforested rainforests in the first place. Critical actions by the U.S. gained a little momentum when President Obama met with key Senators and made clear his support for a comprehensive climate and energy bill this year, but uncertainty about U.S. action still clouds international prospects (let alone holding back the needed investments in job creation, energy independence, and clean energy technology leadership).
——————
So there is some uncertainty about how things proceed. In many respects that is only natural as the Summit in Copenhagen wasn’t your normal climate negotiations and the process after the Summit was left unclear. So the world spent a couple of months sorting out what was achieved, how the Copenhagen Accord was to proceed, and what are the next steps for the U.N. climate negotiations. But while that “sorting” was occurring, things proceeded and countries moved forward with actions to reduce their emissions (with some hiccups along the way).
The expectations for the climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico this December appear to be focused not on agreeing to the final treaty (as the European Commission just outlined is likely), but rather to making concrete progress to implement the actions that countries committed to reduce their emissions, the finance that is to be deployed in the near- and medium-term, the rules for the “transparency” provisions agreed in the Accord, and the guidelines for efforts to solve the loss of tropical rainforests. Those actions are critical and countries have made it clear that they want those things to proceed, even while they sort out exactly how things will progress this year.
Now is not the time to sit in a holding pattern and wait for exact clarity on how things proceed. We must plug ahead and implement key actions that will put the world closer to solving this critical challenge.
—————-
* This includes countries that have formally sent letters to the UNFCCC signaling their desire to be “associated with the Accord” and those that have submitted emissions reduction actions but may not have not clarified in their submission that they want to be “associated.” All values based upon data from the World Resources Institute Climate Analysis Indicator Tool. Emissions from 2005 and include deforestation; population data from 2006.
Related Links:
On rooftops worldwide, a solar water heating revolution
India backs Copenhagen climate deal
Why are women being left out of climate decision-making?
BOSTON--Economic bubbles are now famous, and the collapse of the dot-com business a decade ago made the bursting of bubbles infamous. A panel of experts here at the Going Green East conference yesterday ended up in a lively, entertaining and, at times, contentious debate over whether the growth of so-called clean tech--renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies--has entered the bubble stage, if that bubble is bursting...or if a bubble has ever existed.
Lucky for anyone reading these words, the conference organizers at Always On videotaped the panel and have already posted it online for viewing. (Use this link then scroll two thirds down the page to the embedded session title "The Cleantech Bubble?".) The first 10 minutes have some of the best fireworks from two pioneers of major technology ramp-ups, including Bob Metcalfe , who invented the Ethernet and drove the vast growth of the Internet, and George Gilder , whose prognostications about hot telecomm technologies and the darling companies behind them greatly pumped up the dot-com bubble. If you listen even longer you'll hear all four panelists ultimately bash subsidies for technology of all kinds, itself worth the price of admission--which in this case, is free.
[More]2010, Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari’s Whitney Biennial, is essentially a Whitney Biennial calibrated for the times: small at 55 artists and altogether humble. This humility, and the fact that one needn’t contend with an overwrought curatorial concept, allows viewers a more cogent experience than past, sprawling, thesis-driven Biennials could offer. Several works, rooms and motifs make good impressions. Not many are impressive enough to make an indelible impact—but a few are. Judging by the past couple decades, the task of this biennial of American art seems insurmountable, and there is no urgency to fault this edition for hitting the target and missing the bulls-eye. While the levelness here is exciting as an indicator of a playing field for post-boom artistic production, the devil’s advocate wonders, perhaps unfairly, if there isn’t something ultimately more exciting about a splashy Biennial that fails stupendously.
In the absence of an overarching conceit, why not start with a premise that did precede itself a bit: the third floor as a dedicated space for film and video. Considering the continued expansion of film and video practices throughout the art world, the idea seemed gimmicky at best—easily the curators could fill a floor, but why ghettoize? Then, come February 25, visitors stepping off the elevator and onto floor three were greeted by a tapestry by Pae White, freezing a frame of interlaced wisps of smoke in a vast expanse of fabric. Mercifully this is not a plain LCD screen (as it turns out, the floor showcases a variety of mediums), but as a piece that meditates on materiality, medium and time, it serves as an excellent banner to welcome visitors to the area of the exhibition that is most concentrated on media. The projects therein attending to these matters soar.
Among them is Erika Vogt’s Secret Traveler Navigator, a small dark room featuring a 16mm projector and two abstract, figurative drawings reminiscent of the images that manifest in the film. Onscreen, silhouetted players gesture with ambiguous instruments both blunt (wands and other prostheses) and delicate (a drawing compass). They are recorded, projected and re-recorded, back and forth between video and film. Other simple deviations—for instance, a mirror held before the camera during a joint recording/playback session, thus reflecting projected light onto the shadow cast by the mirror—collapse layers of ritualized mark-making and physical processing into the finished film, which imparts a heavy, hollow feeling of magic.
Kerry Tribe, H.M., 2009Another standout work is Kerry Tribe’s H.M., a double-projection of a single film about a man whose memory was truncated to 20 seconds after an experimental 1950s brain surgery. The two loops run 20 seconds out of sync, mimicking the patient’s synaptic handicap. Tribe masters this rhythm and finds in it the generative potential to blur the lines of perception and memory.
Other works misappropriate qualities of moving image mediums via their simplicity, to ends that are not subversive but dull. Kate Gilmore’s bird’s-eye-view video of the artist busting into and then through, up and out of a drywall column lacks contemporary relevance and formal excitement (the retrograde feminist interpretation provided in the wall text adds insult to injury). To make his videos, Rashaad Newsome removes vogue dancers from their rich, cultural contexts, choreographs and records them voguing in an empty, silent room. While the attempt is to isolate and abstract the dancers’ motions, perhaps strip them down to a new level of intimacy, the videos do not dodge feeling flat and, plucked from the club and dropped into the museum, benignly ethnographic. Though more considered, Kelly Nipper’s video is another performance-for-camera piece following a minimal aesthetic that also feels underwhelming. While these works don’t give enough, some on the second floor give way too much. Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher’s Gordian film installation with sliding walls, projections of painted slides, and the holographic head of JFK—all wrapped in a paintjob of appropriated, polemical text—resists any intuitive reception. Nearby, Marianne Vitale’s vituperative tape, a supposed parody of authoritarian rhetoric, is the exhibition’s nadir of gravitas.
High above in the firmament of social, political and marketing ideals, Barack Obama is the chief figure of the curators’ text. The essay characterizes the last two years of American art-making as aligned with the renewed interest in collective action ushered in by his campaign, and the corresponding politic of community-building that begins with an individual. (He also appears on the cover of the catalog in a cowboy hat.) One artist, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, incorporated Obama’s image in her work, plastering her childhood couch in Obama newspaper clippings to create a monument to public and personal histories.
Daniel McDonald, The Crossing: Passengers Must Pay Toll In Order To Disembark (Michael Jackson, Charon & Uncle Sam), 2009Two artists invoke the likeness of another African American icon, whose cultural significance similarly is both pivotal to and transcendent of race: the recently departed Michael Jackson. Lorraine O’Grady’s four diptychs pairing Jackson with Charles Baudelaire, The First and Last of the Modernists, depict both poets at defining moments in their lives, from their halcyon days through to their epic declines. The very first work encountered in the museum’s lobby is Daniel McDonald’s The Crossing: Passengers Must Pay Toll in Order to Disembark (Michael Jackson, Charon and Uncle Sam), in which the eponymous scene is staged with carefully arranged action figures, the Jackson figure struggling to hoist a colossal, shiny penny before Charon; Uncle Sam meanwhile is broke and passed out. A number of variations on the American economy and economic crisis can be read into this allegorical tableaux, which also alludes, obliquely, to an economy (and crisis?) of contemporary art materials and meanings, with these plastic figurines accentuated by kitschy smoke and resting upon a mirrored, white plinth.
Between the extremes of the President of the United States and the King of Pop, other figurations of America occur throughout the exhibition. Perhaps the most prevalent is not human but architectural—houses figure into many works, from Maureen Gallace’s spare, oneiric paintings of coastal New England residences; to Robert Williams’ watercolor subtitled “astrophysically modified real estate,” showing quaint homes being sucked into a vortex of spiraling sky; and James Casabere’s large scale, aerial photographs of miniature suburban sets, rendered in an Easter egg palette and gloomed by a haunting chiaroscuro.
The Casabere pictures are the face of the floor two lobby and they couple poignantly with the Ari Marcopoulos video in the screening room immediately to their right. Titled Detroit, it is a recording of less than ten minutes spent in the vibrant playroom of two little boys who mix feedback signals, sirens and other assorted electronic noise into a cacophony of decay and alarm emblematic of their gritty, crumbled city—and yet the video conveys an air of inner peace as a portrait of their rambunctious, imaginative inner worlds. While Casabere presents a pretty image bestowing a sense of dread, Marcopoulos’s dissonance produces calm. This reversal underlines the American maxim: never judge a book by its cover—and its subsequent: maybe do judge, then invert your determinations, as taught by the nerd who becomes a hunk in any teen movie.
Josephine Meckseper, Mall of America, 2009The German, New York-based artist Josephine Meckseper contributes a video that is part stirring critique of consumerism, part dispassionate gaming of its loopy, anguished appearances. The artist edits documentary footage shot at The Mall of America—from sale signs, to native American moccasins, a flight simulator, and glances of Lake Wobegon U.S.A, the Garrison Keillor store—into a highly subjectivized and menacing account evocative of madness (Perfumania!), desperation (40% off entire store!) and commodified violence.
Perhaps the work that most overtly takes America as its subject is The Bruce High Quality Foundation’s melancholic memoir of her dilution, projected from within a vintage, white hearse-cum-ambulance onto its windshield. Titled We Like American and America Likes Us, a pluralized riff on Beuys, it is a popular exhibit with prime placement just to the left of the fourth floor lobby (where probably many are compelled to flee Piortr Uklanski’s room-sized opus of burlap and bloody lacquer). Like the collective, the project is undeniably clever, and a bit mercurial, luring high-minded audiences to plop down and watch TV, in the headlights of an oncoming car.
Viewers watch mash-ups of found sound and image pulled from West Side Story, Taps, Ghostbusters, Radiohead, WWF, the morph sequence of Michael Jackson’s Black or White, and more flippant, questionable combinations such as the Rodney King beating scored by the theme song to America’s Funniest Home Videos. The video casts America as the nostalgic archetypes of the aloof father, the picked-on kid, the one that got away… and is narrated by a pensive, wistful female voice in the spirit of a Wonder Years eulogy—that is, with a distinct recognition of the entertainment value of pathos, particularly of that which is rooted in pop cultural tropes. As usual, the group’s work is described here by the curators as a “critique” of the art world. It more clearly resembles the knowing, jaded complacency of a high concept ad campaign. It’s possible to connect the dots between the two, but only time will tell.
Nina Berman, Ty With Gun, 2008 (From Marine Wedding, 2006/2008.)The inclusion of the work of two photojournalists, Nina Berman and Stephanie Sinclair, sets the bar awfully high for more abstract critiques of America. Berman’s portraits show a young Marine sergeant, critically disfigured while serving in Iraq, with his fiancé in the weeks leading up to their wedding. Sinclair’s photos document women in Afghanistan whose absolute despair led them to inflict fire upon their own bodies. Both series are disturbing, enthralling and painful to see. It is to the curators credit that they do not feel tokenized in the greater context of the exhibition; in fact, they are contextual touchstones that remind viewers of the roles identity, figuration and performance play in the real and everyday traumas of the world.
As Biennial artist Hannah Greely explains in the catalog, in reference to her installation’s modern day integration of a pay phone, “When an object is no longer useful in an obvious way, it becomes something closer to art.” A general success of this biennial is the refusal of a thesis that would demand the art works to assume an intellectual support function; to serve such an obvious use might, by extension of Greely’s comment, distance the works from their status as art. Still, so much of the art in 2010 can’t escape serving a purpose, even if it is one that is interchangeably tacit and manifest: they represent American art, and by extension America. Accordingly, one would hope for each work to be so uniquely exceptional as to be unable to stand for a broader constituency. That may be asking too much, but it’s the desire that fuels perennial interest in shows like this.
Kevin McGarry is a writer and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a co-director of Migrating Forms, an annual festival of new experimental film and video, whose 2010 edition will run May 14-23 at Anthology Film Archives.
Photos: Jason Houston
To say that I love coffee is
a big, fat lie. I need coffee in a chemically dependent way. Its effect upon
me is essentially the reverse of those faces-of-meth photos.
There are two things that can
really screw up a good coffee buzz (OK, three if you count skim milk). First
is the fact that conventionally grown coffee is an environmental bummer. To
quote Umbra Fisk,
“Conventional coffee production involves chemicals, deforestation, and
mistreated workers and dead birds.”
So to avoid songbird blood on your
hands first thing in the morning, buy coffee with organic, fair trade, and shade-grown certifications.
(Super-extra bonus points for triple-cert!) You’ll pay a premium for this
coffee, but it’s worth it.
But just because a coffee is
principled doesn’t mean it tastes heavenly. The second thing that can ruin a
good cup of coffee? Bad taste. I don’t know about you, but bad coffee makes me
feel like this. In order to
spare you such an experience (AHHAIAHH! So many coffees! Why is there no good
coffee? I want good coffee!), I assembled a panel of four other coffee lovers
and headed to my neighborhood roaster, Barrington Coffee. There, founders Barth
Anderson and Gregg Charbonneau hosted—but, in the interests of strict
neutrality, did not participate in—my tasting in their chic “cupping room.”
This blind tasting provided a
“sensorial analysis” of five organic French roasts. Under Gregg and Barth’s
careful tutelage, we evaluated the dry grounds for appearance and aroma. Then,
after hot water was poured over each, we waited two minutes and then noted an
aromatic impression at “crust break”—you break up surface grounds with spoon
and sniff “dangerously close.” Next, Gregg skimmed the floating grounds, and we
tasted by aspirating a spoonful over the palate: a procedure that allows
grownups to make the very fun, loud slurping sound we’re always telling our
kids to stop making. Lastly, we let the coffee cool down and tasted it again.
(More slurping.)
And now, the results ...
Full Circle French Roast
Price: $7.49 per pound
Eco cred: USDA Organic and Fair Trade certified. A portion of every
sale is donated to Coffee Kids.
Feedback: Despite the slogan for Price Chopper’s in-store brand of
French roast—“Deep, Dark, A Perfect Ending”— this joe was described as “mellow” by one taster and “thin”
by a few. One said it was like “truck stop coffee that’s been sitting for an
hour.” (Had this taster, who was stylishly dressed and sporting pearl earrings,
ever been to a truck stop? We’ll never know.) One comment could be have been
construed as both praise or criticism: “It’s like Starbucks.” Kindest comment:
“I could almost drink this without
cream.”
Jim’s Organic Coffee French Roast
Price: $11.95 per pound, purchased in bulk
Eco cred: Certified Organic by Quality Assurance International.
Feedback: The Web marketing copy describes this coffee as “Big,
full flavor with slightly carbonized taste.” OK, I know “carbonized” means
scorched, but the Internet also defines it as a “Swedish avant garde death
metal band.” I like “Swedish death metal band taste” much better!
One taster particularly liked
the chocolaty smell of this coffee, which he also described as “winy.”
Unfortunately, no one liked the taste. “It’s sweet but not a good sweet”
scowled one lady, while another noted its “synthetic flavor.” If you like your
French roasts real smoky, this coffee might be the one for you. One taster,
struggling for words, sipped and mused, “If you take a flip-flop and put it in
the fire ... ” The damning comments continued: “Reminds me of robusta!”—straight to a coffee snob’s heart. And, even worse: “Like instant.”
Newman’s Own Organics French
Roast
Price: $7.99 for 10 oz
Eco cred: This coffee is sourced and roasted by Green Mountain Coffee,
a Vermont roaster with a corporate ethic that includes fighting climate change,
which is good because some coffee growers are going to get hosed by it. It
is also USDA & QAI Organic and Fair Trade certified; while it’s not
certified bird friendly, it “typically is grown under a shade
canopy,” emailed a spokesperson.
Feedback: It seems wrong to speak critically of the dead, especially when the late Mr.
Newman has given $250 million to charities worldwide. But technically, only the
dead’s coffee got dissed badly. The kindest comment for this java—billed as
“a dignified dark roast with a passionate French undercurrent”—came at the
cool-down: “It gets worse with time, but this one would be OK by me.” Disparate
comments: “sourish” ... “funny tongue-feel”
... “dirty.” The most damning comment was from a cranky taster who skipped her
morning coffee in order to participate in the tasting: “I wouldn’t even drink
this after a hangover. It’s bitter and shitty.”
Sun Coffee Roasters Organic
French Roast
Price: $5.99 per 10 oz (on sale! regularly $7.49)
Eco cred: USDA Organic, Fair Trade certified, and Bird Friendly,
which is good considering that the term “sun coffee” means coffee that is the
opposite of shade-grown. For those of us in southwestern Massachusetts, this is
regional coffee roasted in nearby Connecticut, 55 miles away.
Feedback: “It has chocolate in the nose! I’d drink it!” exclaimed
one participant, who said this coffee was the “richest.” The cranky taster (see
“shitty” comment, above) said, “It’s the only one I’d drink.” Another said,
“Nice chocolaty flavor.” But its noirish-ness may have been too much for one
detractor, who said it “desperately needs cream.”
Equal Exchange
Price: $9.19 per 10 oz
Eco cred: Organic certification by Oregon Tilth and
Fair Trade certified. Not shade grown,
but Web FAQ says the company is “currently exploring the range of
options for shade-grown certification that are now available to us.”
Feedback: This coffee, according to a wine-loving taster, “had more
structure.” Another concurred that it had “some depth.” More than one panelist
described it as “rich,” and its smell offended no one. Cranky lady pronounced it “ashy.”
Strangest comment of the day: “Skunky smell, but in a really good way!”
The bottom line
After the tasting the above
coffees, we tried Barrington Coffee’s in-house
organic French roast, which had been roasted the prior day. The
results were quite shocking: The panel unanimously found it to be delicious.
And it wasn’t because Barth and
Gregg were our gracious hosts. (Trust me—this group had Tourette’s-like
honesty.) This fresh stuff was straight-to-your-brainstem yummy: smooth, rich,
chocolaty.
The point worth remembering here is that coffee is perishable;
freshly roasted stuff is best. So, if you are able and lucky, find yourself a
small, local roaster. The coffee will not only be fresher, but your direct
relationship with them will allow to you ask questions to determine whether or
not its production is sustainable. Some smaller roasters such as Barrington may
source their beans from small growers who lack certifications, but whose
practices are nonetheless praiseworthy.
Short of that, reach for Equal
Exchange, which our panel ranked the highest. (Although, strangely enough, the
comments toward Sun were kinder. So, gas up your morning tank with that one, too.) And despite the
grumpiness of this panel, it should be noted that the ranked coffees were more
alike than different—so much so that one taster gave up and essentially
dropped out of the tasting, declaring “I can’t make heads or tails of any of
these, and I’m wearing gay* coffee shoes.”
But really, no matter what your
taste, you’re off to great start by choosing environmentally principled coffee.
*This
comment was in no way meant to offend the gay community. Trust me; I
pinkie-swear that this particular Massachusetts panel fully supports gay
marriage. And while we’re at it, we’re all really sorry about Scott Brown. And apropos
of nothing but the spirit of fending off potentially pissy comments: This
tasting was vegan. We didn’t oppress a cow by taking her cream.
Related Links:
Banana briefs are growing on us
Ask Umbra on down comforters, soapy gray water, and canned tomatoes
Coffee hit by global warming, growers say
If you’ve ever wondered how Grist’s famous (and mysterious) pun machine works, wonder a little less. We present you with a glimpse into its inner workings: a list of rejected punny headlines scooped up from the last week’s digital cutting room floor. Please, enjoy the witticisms and groan at the miss-icisms.
Story: James Cameron: I’m the greenest director of all time!
Rejects:
Titanic balls
Titanic ego
Winner: Opening Pandora’s box office
Story: Common weed killer chemically castrates frogs, study finds
Rejects:
Ampheminist revolution
No balls in his court
Weed whack her
You’ve got (no) male
My chemical romance
Chemical attraction
Winner: The wrong kind of chemistry
Story: The latest musical trend is annoying the Senate into climate action
Rejects:
It’s the E.N.D. of the world as we know it
Tonight’s gonna be a good fight
I’ve gotta feeling
Face the music
Winner: Democra-peas
Story: British scientist in climate controversy admits emails were ‘awful’
Rejects:
Hit unsend
Discard draft
But not (unl)awful?
Electronic disappointment
Winner: Electric slide into infamy
Story: Garden Girl TV: indoor gardening, part three
Rejects:
Hour of power tools
Start your power tool engines
Tool time
Winner: Drill baby drill
Story: Fifteen states have polluter-driven resolutions to deny climate threat
Rejects:
Dirty state of affairs
State of change
Legis-hate
Winner: Legis-hating change
Story: Peepoo bags help the developing world take off a load
Rejects:
A quick and feces solution
Feces to fix
Dropping off the kids at the Peepool
A load of crap
Unloading excess baggage
Making the biodegrade
Peepoo de toilet
Winner: Fecal matters
Story: Tech startup’s pollution detector aids enviro justice group
Rejects:
Drive by methane
Drive by polluting
Drive by justice
Track test
Action tracked
Breathe analyzer
Google fracks
Breath analyzer
Winner: Frackin’ busted
Story: Is ‘Birdemic’ the best/worst apocalyptic thriller of all time?
Rejects:
There is no cure
Birds on the brain
Bird brained
Terror in the flight
Flock you
Birds of a feather flock things up
Winner: Flocked up
Related Links:
A treat for your Valentine: grass-fed steak in red-wine sauce
Welcome Grist Friends with Benefits
Last week, I documented that the public supports trains and auto efficiency standards and renewable requirements, along with other policies sometimes slandered as “command & control” over emissions pricing. This week: some historical perspective on why the public is right, and mainstream environmental groups are wrong.
Historically U.S. infrastructure, the basis on which this nation developed, was never some magical response to supply and demand.
The Erie Canal would not have been built without rights of way given away to the builders. Land given to homesteaders and farmers made us one of the world’s great farming nations. Railroads were built because the great railway companies were granted land a mile out from their tracks to compensate for construction costs. Or think of the telegraph, one of the first types of public infrastructure to receive not only grants of rights of way, but massive direct public cash subsidies. And it is worth remembering that none of this was built on empty land; American Indians were slaughtered or driven away for every one of these things. Much of the work on that stolen land was done by slaves. I can’t imagine a “green tax” that could have compensated for that.
And that is not something that ended in the 19th century. Airports and water ports are mostly built with public funds and mostly built on public land and water. Utilities use public rights of way. Water pipes and sewer pipes, electricity lines, gas lines, old school phone lines, broad band fiber optic lines, television, radio, cell phone, and other wireless spectra all use public resources and are often built with public money. Any transport more advanced than a deer path also depends on right of way grants. Not just trains, but automobiles, bikes. Even walking paths need some construction and maintenance.
Any society that needs infrastructure more complicated than that built by hunter-gatherers will need public involvement, whatever “public” means in that particular society. And there is no way for such public infrastructure to be technologically neutral. Let’s take the automobile as an example.
Modern zoning requirements pretty much forbid housing and retail and government services to mix together in the right ratios to a community truly walkable. Further, the requirement that housing developments supply a certain amount of parking, along with the requirement of setbacks from the streets, make it even more difficult to design communities that are really suitable to live in for people who don’t want to drive. A lot of the so-called new urbanism is simply relaxing some of the restrictions that forbid creating walkable developments. And all the rules about parking and setbacks and so on are also huge subsidies to automobiles. I’ve heard figures that various parking regulation provide subsidies in the form of free parking of about $5,000 per automobile per year. And that is just parking. I wonder how much developer built roads, and city built streets funded from property taxes add to this, not to mention street maintenance also funded from property taxes.
If you ever wonder why new urban neighborhoods are so seldom real neighborhoods, it is because that is not allowed. If you wonder whatever happened to small town main street, the answer is: they outlawed it.
If any right wing libertarians have made it this far, they probably are shouting “yes, yes, oh god yes, get big gubmint out of the way and everything will be fine!” Unfortunately it is not that simple.
Yes there have been some really bad choices in these regulations, but that does not mean we can leave development unregulated. Hate zoning? OK, but do you want to allow a toxic waste dump next door to your house? Would you be OK with an all night strip club, with loud music keeping you awake, and drunks who stagger out to vomit on your porch? And you’d probably prefer that any home you rent or own meet fire safety standards, have climate control and ventilation that works. I personally prefer the earthquake codes that saved lives in Chile to the lack of such regulations that killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti. And when it comes to appearance, if you have a block filled with lovely 19th century homes, you probably don’t want a glass pyramid plopped in the middle of them.
We can’t do without regulations. We can’t make such regulation “neutral”. The best we can do is explicitly choose what we want regulation and public investment to accomplish, and focus our rules and our public investments on those goals. The minimal state is not an option and never has been. Adam Smith, the inventor of the term “the invisible hand” favored fire regulations, free public education, building safety codes, and (in emergencies) wage and price controls. As someone concerned with supporting an infant capitalism, and overthrowing the remnants of feudalism, he would have laughed at the idea of capitalism without a strong state. And yes, Adam Smith was overoptimistic about the ability of such regulation to contain the dark side of capitalism. But, given when he wrote, he may be excused his errors, especially since even then he was a far clearer thinker than the fuzzy headed right wing libertarians who consider themselves his true heirs today.
I think he did invent (or at least promote) a fundamental error that explains why the role price can play in replacing other forms of regulation is often overlooked. He thought of price as reflecting a balance between supply and demand. To some extent price does reflect those things. But price also reflects power. In Adam Smith’s time, price often reflected the ability to kill people, seize their land by force, and then work that land with slaves. Today the price of a pound of rice reflects in part the Haitian market for that rice developed by applying financial pressure to a series of Haitian governments, and forcing them to destroy their domestic capacity to produce their own rice. The price of sugar in the United States reflects in part the embargo against Cuban competition. (Protecting the American sugar industry is not the only reason for that embargo. But it would be naïve to think that is not a serious motivation in U.S. Cuba policy.)
That is why we have to see “getting prices right”, whether through a carbon fee or other means as marginal in making change. It is not useless, is even necessary. But “getting prices right” can never be the main driver of change. It can never be of equal importance with other types of policy.
I know that in today’s world people often find historical arguments unconvincing. “Why you talking about old stuff?” So the next post will contain contemporary data showing that right now, at this very moment, price is a weak driver of change.
Related Links:
On rooftops worldwide, a solar water heating revolution
A messy but practical strategy for phasing out the U.S. coal fleet
Challenging conventional wisdom on renewable energy’s limits
Last week, I documented that the public supports trains and auto efficiency standards and renewable requirements, along with other policies sometimes slandered as “command & control” over emissions pricing. This week: some historical perspective on why the public is right, and mainstream environmental groups are wrong.
Historically U.S. infrastructure, the basis on which this nation developed, was never some magical response to supply and demand.
The Erie Canal would not have been built without rights of way given away to the builders. Land given to homesteaders and farmers made us one of the world’s great farming nations. Railroads were built because the great railway companies were granted land a mile out from their tracks to compensate for construction costs. Or think of the telegraph, one of the first types of public infrastructure to receive not only grants of rights of way, but massive direct public cash subsidies. And it is worth remembering that none of this was built on empty land; American Indians were slaughtered or driven away for every one of these things. Much of the work on that stolen land was done by slaves. I can’t imagine a “green tax” that could have compensated for that.
And that is not something that ended in the 19th century. Airports and water ports are mostly built with public funds and mostly built on public land and water. Utilities use public rights of way. Water pipes and sewer pipes, electricity lines, gas lines, old school phone lines, broad band fiber optic lines, television, radio, cell phone, and other wireless spectra all use public resources and are often built with public money. Any transport more advanced than a deer path also depends on right of way grants. Not just trains, but automobiles, bikes. Even walking paths need some construction and maintenance.
Any society that needs infrastructure more complicated than that built by hunter-gatherers will need public involvement, whatever “public” means in that particular society. And there is no way for such public infrastructure to be technologically neutral. Let’s take the automobile as an example.
Modern zoning requirements pretty much forbid housing and retail and government services to mix together in the right ratios to a community truly walkable. Further, the requirement that housing developments supply a certain amount of parking, along with the requirement of setbacks from the streets, make it even more difficult to design communities that are really suitable to live in for people who don’t want to drive. A lot of the so-called new urbanism is simply relaxing some of the restrictions that forbid creating walkable developments. And all the rules about parking and setbacks and so on are also huge subsidies to automobiles. I’ve heard figures that various parking regulation provide subsidies in the form of free parking of about $5,000 per automobile per year. And that is just parking. I wonder how much developer built roads, and city built streets funded from property taxes add to this, not to mention street maintenance also funded from property taxes.
If you ever wonder why new urban neighborhoods are so seldom real neighborhoods, it is because that is not allowed. If you wonder whatever happened to small town main street, the answer is: they outlawed it.
If any right wing libertarians have made it this far, they probably are shouting “yes, yes, oh god yes, get big gubmint out of the way and everything will be fine!” Unfortunately it is not that simple.
Yes there have been some really bad choices in these regulations, but that does not mean we can leave development unregulated. Hate zoning? OK, but do you want to allow a toxic waste dump next door to your house? Would you be OK with an all night strip club, with loud music keeping you awake, and drunks who stagger out to vomit on your porch? And you’d probably prefer that any home you rent or own meet fire safety standards, have climate control and ventilation that works. I personally prefer the earthquake codes that saved lives in Chile to the lack of such regulations that killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti. And when it comes to appearance, if you have a block filled with lovely 19th century homes, you probably don’t want a glass pyramid plopped in the middle of them.
We can’t do without regulations. We can’t make such regulation “neutral”. The best we can do is explicitly choose what we want regulation and public investment to accomplish, and focus our rules and our public investments on those goals. The minimal state is not an option and never has been. Adam Smith, the inventor of the term “the invisible hand” favored fire regulations, free public education, building safety codes, and (in emergencies) wage and price controls. As someone concerned with supporting an infant capitalism, and overthrowing the remnants of feudalism, he would have laughed at the idea of capitalism without a strong state. And yes, Adam Smith was overoptimistic about the ability of such regulation to contain the dark side of capitalism. But, given when he wrote, he may be excused his errors, especially since even then he was a far clearer thinker than the fuzzy headed right wing libertarians who consider themselves his true heirs today.
I think he did invent (or at least promote) a fundamental error that explains why the role price can play in replacing other forms of regulation is often overlooked. He thought of price as reflecting a balance between supply and demand. To some extent price does reflect those things. But price also reflects power. In Adam Smith’s time, price often reflected the ability to kill people, seize their land by force, and then work that land with slaves. Today the price of a pound of rice reflects in part the Haitian market for that rice developed by applying financial pressure to a series of Haitian governments, and forcing them to destroy their domestic capacity to produce their own rice. The price of sugar in the United States reflects in part the embargo against Cuban competition. (Protecting the American sugar industry is not the only reason for that embargo. But it would be naïve to think that is not a serious motivation in U.S. Cuba policy.)
That is why we have to see “getting prices right”, whether through a carbon fee or other means as marginal in making change. It is not useless, is even necessary. But “getting prices right” can never be the main driver of change. It can never be of equal importance with other types of policy.
I know that in today’s world people often find historical arguments unconvincing. “Why you talking about old stuff?” So the next post will contain contemporary data showing that right now, at this very moment, price is a weak driver of change.
Related Links:
What’s the Proper Role of Individuals and Institutions in Addressing Climate Change?
Price cannot steer emission reductions properly
