Una exposición que viaja sobre los sonidos y las canciones de la vida
by Ashley Braun.
The silent approach of the Prius’ hybrid-electric motor is legendary.
And by legendary, I mean it’s pretty incredible that a mundane fact about the Prius’ (lack of) noise has successfully managed to percolate pop culture.
Fans of the TV show The Office will, of course, realize that I’m talking about how this quietly creeping car was turned into the weapon of choice in modern TV duels.
“The Prius is silent if he keeps it under 5 mph. He deserves the win.”
But all this hilarity about the not-a-peep Prius will soon be drowned out by the news that, as of next week, Toyota will be adding an artificial engine noise to third-generation Prius sold in Japan. Toyota has promised to follow suit in the U.S. but didn’t say when.
The aim is to “alert but not annoy” pedestrians when fleets of oncoming Prius are bearing down on them (and possibly pinning them against hedges?). The noise will kick in automatically when the electric engine is running from zero to about 15 miles per hour and will simulate the roller-coaster pitch of an accelerating vehicle.
What this really means is that future duelers will have to find themselves another weapon.
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by Todd Woody.
With the campaign season revving up, even more money is starting to flow into the campaign to defeat Proposition 23.
Prop 23 is the California ballot initiative that would suspend the state’s landmark climate change law. Its opponents had been relying mostly on the largesse of a California coalition of environmental groups and Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists and tech elite to finance their No on 23 campaign. But now the No forces are tapping out-of-state donors.
On Thursday, they got $250,000 from New York investor Nicolas Berggruen. Berggruen is head of Berggruen Holdings, which has made investments in wind energy projects.
Also last week, Nancy Burnett of Lummi Island, Wash., deposited $100,000 in the anti-Prop 23 coffers. Burnett is a daughter of David Packard, co-founder of Silicon Valley tech giant Hewlett-Packard, and a supporter of Democratic candidates.
And this week, David Bonderman, a Texas investor with TPG Capital, donated $7,500.
Closer to home, Warren Hellman, the wealthy San Francisco investor, banjo player, and blue-grass aficionado, wrote a $75,000 check to the No campaign. The campaign’s supporters are fighting to preserve California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, popularly known as Assembly Bill 32. AB 32 requires the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and allows the creation of a cap-and-trade market to meet that mandate.
The bulk of the money financing the pro-Prop 23 campaign has come from two Texas-based oil companies, Tesoro and Valero, and other out-of-state fossil fuel interests. The most recent big donation came earlier this month when Valero gave $3 million to the effort.
Both sides expect the campaign spending to peak somewhere north of $100 million by the time Election Day rolls around in November, with huge amounts of cash rolling in when the traditional election season kicks off after Labor Day.
One person watching the Prop 23 battle closely is Lawrence Goldenhersh, chief executive of Enviance, a California firm that sells environmental compliance software and services—including those that track greenhouse gas emissions—to big industrial companies.
“If AB 32 is sustained by the voters of California, you will have the largest plebiscite in the history of the climate change debate cast by voters in the world’s seventh largest economy,” Goldenhersh told me Tuesday. “If AB 32 survives and Jerry Brown gets elected governor I think you’ll have cap-and-trade nationally by 2013.”
Enviance has clients on both sides of the Prop 23 fight—including Valero—and thus is not taking a position on the ballot measure, according to Goldenhersh. Still, he calls the election the “Normandy invasion of climate change.”
“If Prop 23 passes and AB 32 is suspended or killed then I think there will not be a lot of drive and political appetite to take on a piece of grand climate legislation in Congress,” he says. “People will say, ‘if it’s too expensive for California then it’s too expensive for a little state.’”
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Gloom alert: Fossil fuels and climate change still suck
by Randy Rieland.
Just what the Senate needs: another climate change denier. Joe Miller’s potential upset of Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska’s Republican primary could mean another diehard climate skeptic in the mix.
Not that Murkowski is a hero of enviros. She’s been doing her darnedest to stifle the EPA on the public health dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, hardly a surprise given the fact that Big Oil has sent almost $500,000 her way since she joined the Senate in 2002. But at least Murkowski acknowledges the human role in heating up the planet.
Miller, a Tea Partier backed by Sarah Palin, holds fast to the notion that it’s nature’s way:
I think it’s undeniable, that anyone who has looked at the natural record of the Earth can see significant cyclical changes well before the industrial age, so we know the temperature change is part of the process of our existence, and frankly, you’re probably aware in the ‘70s there were real concerns about global cooling.
Here’s more on his take.
Twist and doubt: At least Sen. John McCain won handily in Arizona’s Republican primary. Yes, this is good news. McCain did a world-class flip flop on cap-and-trade this past year. But his opponent J.D. Hayworth, another Tea Partier, proudly “rejects phony climate change data.” Expect more deniers in the fall campaigns. Susana Martinez, the Republican candidate for governor in New Mexico, says scientists still haven’t proven that climate change is manmade. All three Republican congressional candidates in the state agree with her. The same goes for every one of the six Republican Senate candidates in New Hampshire.
Meal of fortune: So it turns out that the Gulf of Mexico may be saved not by skimmers or dispersants or even Kevin Costner, but by oil-scarfing bacteria. A new study suggests that voracious microbes are chowing down on oil droplets, thus doing their part to shrink the giant petro plume under the sea. But other scientists caution that it will take awhile to see how all this microbial munching plays out. As Robert Lee Hotz writes in the Wall Street Journal:
The remaining oil from the spill, hidden at depths or driven far afield by currents, is a moving target, making follow-up studies difficult. It may be years before all the technical findings can be assembled into a coherent mosaic. “This is science on the fly,” said Ron Atlas, a microbiologist at the University of Louisville and a former president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Partners in slime: One group that can’t take any credit for protecting the Gulf is the federal agency charged with doing just that—the infamous Minerals Management Services, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy. Its twisted tale of bedding down in oh-so-many ways with Big Oil is well known, but Juliet Eilperin and Scott Higham, writing in the Washington Post, lay out the agency’s sad devolution from regulator to “partner”:
Top officials and front-line workers routinely referred to the companies under their watch as “clients,” “customers,” and especially “partners.” As the relationship became more intertwined, regulatory intensity subsided. MMS officials waived hundreds of environmental reviews and did not aggressively pursue companies for equipment failures. They also participated in studies financed and dominated by industry, more as collaborator than regulator.
Lords of the lies: It’s always a good idea to know the enemy, so meet the Koch brothers—Charles and David—whose wealth is reputed to rank behind only Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among America’s billionaires. The Koch bros bankroll the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the group that’s been a major force behind the Tea Party movement. They also have a long history of throwing millions of dollars into think tanks and foundations that rant against government regulation of business. They especially hate environmental regulations, which makes sense because their company, Koch Industries, has been named one of the top ten air polluters in the U.S. Jane Mayer, writing in the New Yorker, puts the secretive brothers in the spotlight. Here’s a taste:
Greenpeace issued a report identifying their company as “a kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change ...
Hell on wheels: China’s been getting some good press, including from Grist, for closing down polluting factories and investing hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy. Now it’s time for a trip to the dark side. It’s eased recently, but a monster traffic jam clogged a four-lane highway leading into Beijing for nine days—not miles, mind you, days. Road construction was partly to blame for the snarl. But the chief culprit was huge number of trucks hauling coal from mines in inner Mongolia to booming cities along the Chinese coast.
In China these days, there is no road less traveled.
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Whoop Dee Doo is a kid's show, run by about 20-30 volunteers in Kansas City. The show is filmed in the style of public access television shows of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, drawing heavy inspiration from the likes of The Carol Burnett Show, The Gong Show, Pee Wee's Playhouse, You Can't Do That on Television, Mr. Wizard, Soul Train, Double Dare, public access horror show hosts like Svengoolie, and the Chicago public access program Chica-go-go. The group has put together shows around the country and internationally, from the Smart Museum in Chicago, to a holiday party at Deitch Projects, and a collaboration with Loyal Gallery in Malmo, Sweden. In each new venue they draw on local communities of performers and artists to collaborate and contribute. Performers range from musical acts and performance artists to Civil War Re-enactors, Celtic Bagpipers, Christian Mimes, drag queens, drill teams and science teachers. Kids help build the sets and make props along with artists and volunteers, and they are a huge part of the show itself. Whoop Dee Doo is intended to showcase the diversity of artistic talent within the community, and to create an opportunity for these groups to work, and party, together. Unlike many kid's shows, Whoop Dee Doo is in no way dumbed down or infantilizing, and it forms an important part of the vibrant and creative Kansas City arts community.
The show is hosted by artists Matt Roche and Jaimie Warren. Matt plays a quiet, awkward werewolf, and Jaimie is generally wearing red spandex and covered in empty food packaging. I spoke with Jaimie about the art scene in Kansas City, about working with kids and technology, and about the philosophy of Whoop Dee Doo.
Jaimie Warren: We try to make the show a project that is truly inclusive. I have always wanted to create something that really involves the community in a way that is actually effective and meaningful, and that is something we are totally striving to do. We work with a lot of under-served youth groups like the Boys and Girls Club, so [we try to make it] a pretty memorable and unique experience for them. The kids are also a huge part in making the show – they help make props, costumes and sets, so you have 20- and 30-something artists making the look of the show alongside kids and community members, and it ends up looking pretty rad. Plus our workshops and shows are always free, so the kids who don’t have money are always able to attend.
Matt Roche acts as sort of the Art Director of the show, but it is a super collaborative process, and artists like Chris Beer, Roger Link, Erica Peterson, Rochelle Brickner, and our remarkable new gem named Lee Heinemann, who is a 17-year old genius, help set the stage for the way everything looks. And it looks AMAZING!!
I feel like all of the examples I have seen in the past of the art world infiltrating the community have always had this unavoidable cheese-y factor, like having the homeless make art and invite them into the gallery or something. We hope that Whoop Dee Doo can occupy a position that is highly respected as both community art and contemporary art, which is something I've always felt was very difficult to achieve. It sort of strips away the divisions between high art and low art, and it all blends together in a really successful way.
Jacob Gaboury: You recently acquired your own permanent space in Kansas City and had a grand opening this past July. What are your plans for the new space, and what changes will this mean for Whoop Dee Doo?
JW: Now that we have our own space, a huge goal for us is to not only highlight local talent, but to really collaborate with them and create unique and amazing work amongst the acts themselves. What if you got a punk band and an African dance troupe to practice and make a dance to one of the punk band’s songs? What does a set designed to be a supermarket look like when the Midwest Cloggers, drag queens, and a bunch of 8-year olds make it together? It is those sorts of combinations that can really make Whoop Dee Doo extraordinary and kind of crazy – but in the best way.
Before, when we were traveling, we would make these huge sets and have to tear them down right after the shows. Also when the show traveled, it didn’t feel as though the connections we made with the community were nearly as impactful as they could have been. With our own space, once we have our set complete, and once we have a history of shows where people continue to come and be a part of making it happen, we feel like a lot of changes can happen. Just having a storefront with regular hours where people can really come in and get to know us is great. They can start to trust us. The show is so wild that there is always a fear of people feeling exploited, which is not our intention at all. We want the community acts to feel engaged and a part of the show and open their minds up to some amazing things.
Another goal for the show is to sort of fill this gap between what parents are afraid of and what kids need to experience, and it also forms a sort of cross-generational dialogue, where anyone and everyone can be entertained and engaged in their own way. Plus, kid’s television is so weird and censored and dorky these days, it’s like they can’t take any risks because everything needs to be so insanely politically correct. Our only real “rules” for performers are no swearing and no nudity. But there is a lot of gray area there, which causes some definite controversy, but that’s sort of what makes the show so good. There are always these crazy moments during a show where the wildest combinations of people are having an absolute blast – like suburban moms and their cheerleader daughters screaming with cheer for a professional bodybuilder flexing his ten million muscles to the beat of Ricky Martin’s “Livin La Vida Loca” or a “death metal hugging contest” lead by a Swedish band named Pagan Rites, whom we had to refrain from pouring pints of pigs blood onto an audience filled with 12-year olds when we were in Malmo. We depend on our crew to create amazing performances that collaborate with the community and kids in unique ways, and artists like Leone Anne Reeves, who was a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Stuart Smith, who started as an intern, are a totally vital part of our show have held us together in the most stressful and insane moments with their ingenious performances. (They also make rad stuff as well.)
JG: That sounds amazing. With all these different places that you've put on Whoop Dee Doo, it still seems sort of indigenous to Kansas City. I first learned about the show through music videos for the Kansas City group SSION, which have a similar sort of aesthetic and attitude. How does Whoop Dee Doo fit in the arts scene in Kansas City? What do you see as the benefits of working in Kansas City, and how would you characterize the arts scene there?
JW: I think Whoop Dee Doo came to be because of Kansas City. It’s a really unique place to be, because I feel that it has a really strong arts scene for such a small city, and everyone is really looking for Kansas City to make a name for itself, so everyone is always helping each other with their projects, making it a super collaborative environment. I feel like everyone sees each other's successes as aiding in the growth of the arts scene here, so it is such a supportive place to be. It’s really the perfect place for a project like Whoop Dee Doo, because it not only allows people who are more shy about their work and getting themselves out there to really have a voice and find their niche in the project, but it also continues to push the way people are collaborating here and emphasizes that in a really unique way.
Whoop Dee Doo has also continued to utilize the artistic talents of some incredible artists that started out in Kansas City and have helped with shows when we have traveled, including artists Jon Peck and Sean Ward.
JG: Your own photography work is going to be displayed in the second show at the new Kathy Grayson gallery, the Hole, in New York City. Other artists include Cody Critcheloe - the lead singer of SSION - and fashion designer Peggy Noland, both of whom are from Kansas City. The show seems like a good example of the kind of collaborative Kansas City arts scene you're describing.
JW: The show at the Hole in NYC is a great example of this. The main exhibition is Cody’s movie BOY, which utilized the talents of a ton of Kansas City artists. I also have a photo show in one of the galleries, and Peggy Noland is doing a pop-up store in the third space. Just to give you an idea of the collaborative aspects of the show at the Hole – Both Peggy and I are actors in Cody’s film, several people from Whoop Dee Doo helped make the props and sets for the movie, Peggy makes the costumes for the SSION, the SSION is often on Whoop Dee Doo, Peggy’s character on Whoop Dee Doo is called “Fashion Witch,” I take photos of Peggy’s clothes, etc., etc. So in the show, you will see aspects of this – the SSION on Whoop Dee Doo will play along with the movie, Peggy and I have a presence in the movie, the clothes Peggy made for the movie will be in her pop-up store along with a new body of work, there are self portraits of me from the movie alongside newer work, etc.
JG: Are there any other groups or artists you collaborate with in the Kansas City area?
There are a lot of other great artists and collectives in Kansas City we collaborate with, such as Carnal Torpor and Ari Fish to give a couple of examples. And so much of what we do in Kansas City wouldn't be possible without the support of organizations like the Urban Culture Project and Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City. Everyone is really able to fit their skills in the right way to be involved in a lot of different projects, and really its almost like a bartering system in KC – where everyone works for free but either learns something, is a part of something, or gains something in some way. It’s such a great way to work! It’s a super DIY style of working, where not only do we always sort of “make our own fun” because there is not much entertainment here and because it’s sort of in the middle of nowhere. But also we are DIY in the sense that all of our projects always have little to no budget, so we are really used to making things work no matter what.
I think Whoop Dee Doo was also inspired by the weirdness of Kansas City - how the arts scene is so small that it sort of forces you to branch out and collaborate with a lot of other subcultures. For example, you will go to a party in a loft in the East Bottoms - this weird and deserted part of town that is only active during Halloween because the warehouses are made into a ton of giant 6-story haunted houses – and you get at the top of the stairs and there are punks, art kids, moms, bikers, drag queens, someone dressed like a banana, etc. It’s really weird and awesome and totally inspired the show.
JG: How do you see technology at work in the Whoop Dee Doo shows? A lot of the set pieces and costumes are clearly handmade, but it is also produced as a sort of live television show and your Internet presence is very polished. How do you engage technology and is it important to the work?
JW: Technology is totally important. Whoop Dee Doo would take 5 times longer to get where it is today without it. First off, we are hardcore Craigslist-ers. We always have pretty much zero budget, so beyond dumpster diving, we rely on the Craigslist free section for almost everything. Second, our acts! The Internet and Myspace and Facebook have made it so much easier to find talent here in Kansas City, but also especially when we travel to other cities. We booked 17 acts for free in Malmo, ranging from Bolivian and Palestinian dancers to nickelharpa players and an eight–year old Michael Jackson impersonator, without ever meeting them until the day of the show! Crazy! Plus, it’s so amazing when you dig and dig on the Internet – like go from link to link to link and you are in super-deep, you can sometimes find the absolute most amazing things. It’s how I found the Christian Mimes – they were African-American ladies wearing floor-length silver sparkle robes with white gloves and white-painted faces. After finding them in Kansas City, I started finding them in every city we went to, so apparently this is a popular thing – Mimes for Jesus – but I would have never known about this or so many other incredible things going on without the Internet.
Natalie Myers is our phenomenal editor and Director of Photography (and an incredible artist) and Megan Mantia helps manage the show and incessantly documents every move we make. She does this for the SSION as well and she is unbelievable. Whoop Dee Doo would not survive without either of them.
JG: Yes! I think our readers will be very familiar with the pleasures of surfing, but I love that you find these groups and communities online not to point them out ironically or as a joke, but make them a part of Whoop Dee Doo and incorporate them into a collaborative community performance made up of all kinds of people and aesthetics. It feels local and inclusive, but has been sort of turned back around and been made into something much larger.
JW: Well, having our episodes edited and put online makes for an international audience able to see them all for free (and an international audience that was able to get us our first international show). And editing and creating our animations and visual identity, website, DVDs, etc, is something that several amazingly talented people have been able to help us create. It’s a truly collaborative show in every aspect. I think the look of our project is a mix between DIY, community theater, public access horror shows, a disgusting nightclub, and (hopefully) amazing contemporary art.
One day we hope to reach a huge audience and really have the funding and backing to have shows that are truly our wildest dreams. Another huge goal is to one day really take away the pedestal from people – like, have there be no hierarchy between amateur and professional, you know? Like, I feel if people get into this show enough, we can have Marilyn Manson be followed up by a 5-year old baton twirler, or Bill Murray will collaborate with a local science teacher and perform weird experiments on kids, or Roseanne Barr will co-host a dating show with me, or John Waters casts local kids for a mini-movie on our show, or Flavor Flav makes a rap video about Kansas City bar-b-que and all the kids are dressed in 7-foot spare ribs costumes, etc.
JG: What made you want to work with kids? A lot of artists that use the aesthetics of children's programming do so in a way that's intended to make fun of it or produce content that would not be appropriate for kids, but Whoop Dee Doo seems to involve a lot of children's programming for actual children without being silly or infantilizing. Is there a reason you chose to work with kids?
JW: I actually feel like working with kids is what makes the show better. The challenges that we face with a kids show actually seem to make the show weirder and more awkward, and I think that is the amazing part about it. You don’t know how many times things happen that totally push the limits of what a kids show can be, where all of the Whoop Dee Doo crew is cringing and covering their faces in fear because of the conservative-looking audience members we are standing with, and then we realize that it happens, and it’s totally okay! Or at least, acceptable! Which is often pretty shocking.
It makes you really look at the “gray area” on what is okay and focus on really pushing your limits without being outwardly offensive. I think it’s actually a lot easier to go crazy conservative or crazy controversial, so with the in-between that we are working with, there is a lot of uncovered territory (at least that we are aware of) that we are experimenting with constantly. There are definitely a lot of adult references that go over the kids’ heads, and we also deal with issues like race and gender and LGBT culture and violence and politics, and try to always figure out a way to do it that both adults AND kids can appreciate. A funny example is a Whoop Dee Doo member, Josh Gately, dressed in a hand-made cartoon-y-ish costume of “Buffalo Bill” from Silence of the Lambs. You know the famous scene where he is dancing in the basement to Q Lazzarus’ “Goodbye Horses”, and he is starting to put on the “skin suit”? Josh re-enacted this scene while all the kids danced with him to the song. The kids loved it, and the adults were shocked, but still totally into it. And they danced, too! Or a 60 year old librarian having a “gross food-eating contest” where she makes food like “Bat droppings” out of banana pudding and tuna, and her actual goal is to get these 12-year old girls to vomit! Not joking! It was her idea – and she’s been doing it for years! Or the civil war re-enactors who sawed off fake limbs made out of summer sausage and an old man vomited! So weird...yet so perfect. I mean, can your 4-year old dance on stage with a 7-foot drag queen in lingerie? It just depends on what type of parent you are. It’s also rad to expose kids to lots of different types of people, and sort of view the parents struggle to decide as to whether or not it’s okay. They almost always go with it, which is pretty amazing.
JG: It seems like a great example of the way that making something for children allows you to experiment in ways you wouldn't otherwise be able, and to do things that may seem "silly" and out of place in a museum, but which can be some of the most engaging and enjoyable contemporary art out there. Thank you so much for this discussion Jaimie!
Images by Megan Mantia
by Jonathan Hiskes.
The New Jersey-New York-Philadelphia Amtrak mess that left commuters stranded this week just goes to show you that widespread passenger rails will never be a viable competitor to America’s highway system. Transit just isn’t as reliable. People prefer to drive.
Except not. Roadways didn’t automatically sprout up everywhere. Driving isn’t more convenient by nature. We chose to make it that way, thanks in no small part to the automobile and sprawl lobbies. When you look at federal capital investment in highways versus transit over the last half century, the difference is staggering:
Cumulative spending (everything since 1956, when the Federal-Aid Highway Act was passed) is even more nutso:
Governments at all levels have invested nine times more capital funds in highways than in transit since 1956, according to a report from the Federation of State Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG).
Imagine how much better our rail system could be if we started evening out that funding. That’s what Ray LaHood‘s Transportation Department is, gradually, doing.
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by Lester Brown.
As fossil fuel prices rise, as oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about climate change cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new energy economy is emerging. The old energy economy, fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced by one powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. Despite the global economic crisis, this energy transition is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even two years ago. And it is a worldwide phenomenon.
Consider Texas. Long the leading U.S. oil-producing state, it is now also the leading generator of electricity from wind, having overtaken California in 2006. Texas now has 9,700 megawatts of wind generating capacity online, 370 more in the construction stage, and a huge amount in the development stage. When all of these wind farms are completed, Texas will have 53,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity—the equivalent of 53 coal-fired power plants. This will more than satisfy the residential needs of the state’s 25 million people, enabling Texas to export electricity, just as it has long exported oil.
Texas is not alone. In South Dakota, a wind-rich, sparsely populated state, development has begun on a vast 5,050-megawatt wind farm (1 megawatt of wind capacity supplies 300 U.S. homes) that when completed will produce nearly five times as much electricity as the 810,000 people living in the state need. Altogether, some 10 states in the United States, most of them in the Greatt Plains, and several Canadian provinces are planning to export wind energy.
Across the Atlantic, the government of Scotland is negotiating with two sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East to invest $7 billion in a grid in the North Sea off its eastern coast. This grid will enable Scotland to develop nearly 60,000 megawatts of off-shore wind generating capacity, close to the 85,000 megawatts of current electrical generating capacity for the United Kingdom.
We are witnessing an embrace of renewable energy on a scale we’ve never seen for fossil fuels or nuclear power. And not only in industrial countries. Algeria, which knows it will not be exporting oil forever, is planning to build 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal generating capacity for export to Europe via undersea cable. The Algerians note that they have enough harnessable solar energy in their vast desert to power the entire world economy. This is not a mathematical error. A similarly remarkable fact is that the sunlight striking the earth in just one hour is enough to power the world economy for one year.
Turkey, which now has 41,000 megawatts of total electrical generating capacity, issued a request for proposals in 2007 to build wind farms. It received bids from both domestic and international wind development firms to build a staggering 78,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity. Having selected some 7,000 megawatts of the most promising proposals, the government is now issuing construction permits.
In mid-2008, Indonesia—a country with 128 active volcanoes and therefore rich in geothermal energy—announced that it would develop 6,900 megawatts of geothermal generating capacity, with Pertamina, the state oil company, responsible for developing the lion’s share. Indonesia’s oil production has been declining for the last decade, and in each of the last five years the country has been an oil importer. As Pertamina shifts resources from oil into the development of geothermal energy, it could become the first oil company—state-owned or independent—to make the transition from oil to renewable energy.
These are only a few of the visionary initiatives to tap the earth’s renewable energy. The resources are vast. In the United States, three states—North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas—have enough harnessable wind energy to run the entire economy. In China, wind will likely become the dominant power source. Indonesia could one day get all its power from geothermal energy alone. Europe will be powered largely by wind farms in the North Sea and solar thermal power plants in the North African desert.
The goals for developing renewable sources of energy by 2020 that are laid out in my book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, are based not on what is conventionally believed to be politically feasible but on what I think is needed. This is not Plan A, business as usual. This is Plan B—a wartime mobilization, an all-out response that is designed to avoid destabilizing economic and political stresses that will come with unmanageable climate change.
Implementing Plan B entails cutting net carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 80 percent by 2020. This would keep atmospheric CO2 levels from exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm), up only modestly from 387 ppm in 2009, thus limiting the future rise in temperature. To make this ambitious cut, the first priority is to replace all coal- and oil-fired electricity generation with renewable sources. Whereas the twentieth century was marked by the globalization of the world energy economy as countries everywhere turned to oil, much of it coming from the Middle East, this century will see the localization of energy production as the world turns to wind, solar, and geothermal energy.
This century will also see the electrification of the economy. The transport sector will shift from gasoline-powered automobiles to plug-in gas-electric hybrids, all-electric cars, light rail transit, and high-speed intercity rail. And for long-distance freight, the shift will be from diesel-powered trucks to electrically powered rail freight systems. The movement of people and goods will be powered largely by electricity. In this new energy economy, buildings will rely on renewable electricity almost exclusively for heating, cooling, and lighting.
Can we expand renewable energy use fast enough? I think so. Recent trends in the adoption of mobile phones and personal computers give a sense of how quickly new technologies can spread. Once cumulative mobile phone sales reached 1 million units in 1986, the stage was set for explosive growth, and the number of cell phone subscribers doubled in each of the next three years. Over the next 12 years the number doubled every two years. By 2001 there were 961 million cell phones—nearly a 1,000-fold increase in just 15 years. And now there are more than 4 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide.
Sales of personal computers followed a similar trajectory. In 1980 roughly a million were sold, but by 2008 the figure was an estimated 270 million—a 270-fold jump in 28 years. We are now seeing similar growth figures for renewable energy technologies. Installations of solar cells are doubling every two years, and the annual growth in wind generating capacity is not far behind. Just as the communications and information economies have changed beyond recognition over the past two decades, so too will the energy economy over the next decade.
There is one outstanding difference. Whereas the restructuring of the information economy was shaped only by advancing technology and market forces, the restructuring of the energy economy will be driven also by the realization that the fate of civilization may depend not only on doing so, but on doing it at wartime speed.
Adapted from Chapter 5, “Stabilizing Climate: Shifting to Renewable Energy,” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
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Gloom alert: Fossil fuels and climate change still suck
by Randy Rieland.
Let’s review. We just lived through the worst accidental oil leak in history. And we’re at the tail end of a summer of cataclysmic weather that top climate scientists tell us is a taste of the globally-warmed future. Yet the United States Senate failed even to pass a climate bill so tepid that it qualified as what a Republican (South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham) once would have described as ”half-assed.”
How does this happen? The Center for Responsive Politics offers a whopper of a clue. It reports that during the first six months of this year alone, Big Oil spent $75 million lobbying Congress. The report also points out that last year, when green groups retaliated and spent a record $22.4 million on their own lobbying, they still were outspent 7 to 1 by fossil fuel lobbies. The Center’s Open Secrets Blog has all the dirty details as part of a weeklong series on how Big Oil fuels Washington.
Target practice: For BP, the Gulf oil leak has been the gift that keeps on giving—and not in a good way. At yesterday’s hearing in Houston on the Deepwater Horizon explosion, federal investigators nailed the oil giant for not addressing hundreds of maintenance problems on the rig. BP’s erstwhile partners pointed one finger after another at their beleaguered colleague. Even Brad Pitt unloaded on BP, saying:
I was never for the death penalty before; I am willing to look at it again.
Dirty business: If you think clean coal is an oxymoron you’ve got plenty of company. Turns out a lot of utility companies don’t buy the concept either. According to AP reporter Matthew Brown, 30 old-fashioned dirty coal plants have been built since 2008, or are under construction:
The expansion, the industry’s largest in two decades, represents an acknowledgment that highly touted “clean coal” technology is still a long way from becoming a reality and underscores a renewed confidence among utilities that proposals to regulate carbon emissions will fail.
Waiting to inhale: And while we’re on the subject of the air we’d rather not breathe, the EPA is postponing the announcement of tougher smog regulations at least until late October. More likely the agency will stay mum on smog until after the November elections, because any announcement would provide ammo for Republicans who have been accusing the federal government of running amok. Even November would be way too soon for some on Capitol Hill. Why rush asked a group of seven senators in a written complaint to EPA chief Lisa Jackson earlier this month? New smog regulations can wait until 2013.
We take it all back: Feels like you could use a little positive spin right about now, so how’s this? Bob Marshall, in the New Orleans Times Picayune, reports that some enviros think the BP gusher in the Gulf may actually save more Louisiana wetlands than it destroyed:
... three months of daily newscasts have dramatically increased national awareness of the state’s real coastal disaster, and the billions in fines BP is expected to pay could bankroll critical projects Congress had refused to fund.
Whine and punishment: And here’s another little pick-you-up. During a visit to a remote research base in the Russian Arctic, Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, suggested that too much has been made of man’s role in global warming, pointing out that climate change helped kill off woolly mammoths long before the age of human industrialization. German scientist Inken Preuss set him straight:
Climate change has never happened like now and man is making a huge impact.
He got told.
Related Links:
Remember that massive clean-energy bill Obama signed?
New Report Reveals Widespread Toxic Coal Ash Contamination
Does anyone take science seriously?
by Grist.
Extreme weather has been grabbing headlines this summer. A major heat wave and wildfires in Russia and flooding in Pakistan have had devastating effects. The United Nations estimates that 6 million Pakistanis are in need of emergency aid.
Alison Stewart of PBS’s Need to Know speaks with Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. He explains the meteorological dynamics at work and speaks about the human cost of climate change.
Related Links:
Food prices soar in Russia after drought
Wonder why climate bills stall in the Senate? Follow the money
Gloom alert: Fossil fuels and climate change still suck
by Randy Rieland.
Oil and water don’t mix. But oil, climate change, and politics? You just can’t tease those three apart.
The investigation into the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon well continues today with a hearing in Houston amidst a swirl of bad energy. There’s sniping between Transocean, the owner of the ill-fated rig, and BP. Government scientists are saying they never signed off on the government’s lowball estimate of the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf. And it turns out the Obama administration knew that its deepwater drilling moratorium could mean the loss of 23,000 jobs, at least temporarily anyway. Speaking of, there’s no sign the controversial moratorium will be lifted any time soon. Ken Salazar himself, head of the Interior Department, defended the moratorium in the Houston Chronicle yesterday:
We are requiring companies that want to drill to prove they are prepared to deal with catastrophic blowouts and oil spills like the Deepwater Horizon. BP’s failed attempts to contain its blowout—from the “containment dome” to the “top hat”—exposed its lack of preparedness for a disaster. The previous administration exempted operators from addressing worst-case scenarios in their exploration plans, but we have closed that loophole. The oil and gas industry’s inadequate preparedness is also one of the reasons the current deepwater drilling pause is so important: We need to put effective strategies in place for containing blowouts and responding to major spills.
Suck it up: At the end of a summer whose brutal weather put climate change back on the front burner comes still more disturbing climate news. Two University of Montana scientists find that since the turn of this century, plants are sucking up less of the planet’s CO2. Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running had actually expected to find just the opposite; that because global warming has extended growing seasons, plants would be absorbing even more carbon dioxide. Instead, they’re absorbing less. Zhao and Running blame droughts and the general dessication of the southern hemisphere. Said Zhao:
We don’t know what will happen in the future. But many models estimate that ... droughts will become more frequent. So based on that, we expect the future will be gloomy.
Coal ... the other black teat: Don’t expect any climate relief either, according to Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies. Writing in The Guardian, Gros says our jonesin’ for coal will make climate change a done deal:
The U.S. experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain that no commitment will be forthcoming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the U.S. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.
It’s the economy, stupid: Aside from its negative effects on global agriculture and health, how bad is climate change for business? Well, Russia’s saying its summer of heat waves and fires could end up costing the country $15 billion. Pakistan’s economy was sinking even before flood water covered 20 percent of the country, but the recent deluge sure doesn’t help. It says something that the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission now requires companies to disclose any potential risks from global warming to investors. Rebecca Lefton and Richard Caperton, go deeper on the subject at the Center for American Progress website.
They hunt witches, don’t they? Not that any of this climate change fallout matters to Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, who’s still doing all he can to keep Climategate alive. His vendetta against climate scientist Michael Mann was on full display in a Virginia courtroom Friday. A Cuccinelli minion repeated his boss’s claim that Mann manipulated data while he was a University of Virginia professor—and state employee—and that this behavior amounted to fraud. Cuccinelli wants the university to hand over every climate-related email Mann wrote during his tenure there. University lawyers pointed out that not one, but several investigations have cleared Mann of any wrongdoing. They also brought up the little matter of academic freedom. The judge said he’d rule by the end of the month.
California schemin’: It’s going to start getting really ugly in the battle to save California Assembly Bill 32, the state’s cutting-edge law limiting greenhouse gases. We already know that two of the state’s biggest polluters, Texas-based Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., have been bankrolling the campaign for Proposition 23, which would put the emissions law on ice. Now Lee Fang, writing in the Wonk Room, says the mother of all climate change deniers—Koch Industries—is working with Prop 23 proponents behind the scenes. A coalition of clean energy investors and environmentalists is firing back with its own TV ads. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Chediak and Simon Lomax, the clean tech opposition has a war chest of $5.5 million, with more on the way.
You vote with that mouth? No surprise then that Nichol Allen, writing in The Atlantic, picked the California governor’s race as one of five campaigns this fall where climate change could actually make a difference. Democrat Jerry Brown rails against Proposition 23 almost every chance he gets; Republican Meg Whitman says she’ll suspend the cap-and-trade component of the greenhouse gas law her first day in office. Allen also suggests watching the Senate race in Pennsylvania between Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey. Sestak is one of those unlucky Democrats who’s getting beaten up for supporting the House’s cap-and-trade bill last year. Another potential cap-and-trade victim is Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher (D), a buddy of Big Coal who nevertheless voted for cap-and-trade as a way to keep the EPA from setting emission standards. In fact, cap-and-trade is now such a dirty word that even some House Democrats are following the Republican lead and calling it “Nancy Pelosi’s energy tax.”
A clean break: Remember when Obama was committing $150 billion in federal money for clean energy R&D? Those were the days, eh? Jesse Jenkins, of the Breakthrough Institute, noticed last week that all mention of that pledge is gone from the White House website. Seeing that the money was supposed to come from revenue generated through a nonexistent cap-and-trade system, no reason to keep that big ol’ empty promise hanging out there. But now comes a report on the uptick in renewable energy use in Europe—up more than 8 percent last year, while coal use dropped 9 percent—and word that the Japanese government is working on a major stimulus package built around clean energy technologies.
Welcome to the rear view mirror.
Related Links:
The Climate Post: Primaries move GOP to the right (on climate)
Does anyone take science seriously?
Eco-amnesia costs the U.S. $20 billion a year
by Umbra Fisk.
Send your question to Umbra!
Q. Dear Umbra,
My school orchestra, choir, and band do a lot of fundraising for trips and things like that, but the only really successful one was one-dollar chocolate bars. Do you know of any other fundraising options that are fairly cheap, eco-friendly, and that kids would want to buy? (Sorry that I have to be so specific.) Thanks!
Nora L.
Ithaca, NY
A. Dearest Nora,
Chocolate bars are often a golden ticket for school fundraising. But your quest to find more sustainable (and healthy) sources of revenue is music to my ears.
One of the greenest ways to make green is to provide a service or experience. Trumpet-o-grams, anyone? Your musically inclined students could be in the business of providing orchestral or choral birthday greetings for a few dollars? Or perhaps you could take up busking on campus—that is, playing in public for money. Imagine the bills people would gladly part with as your orchestra plays Lady Gaga on the quad ...
Have you thought about a bake sale? Your orchestra could make some dough selling something tasty like these DIY organic Twinkies!
On another note, it is that time of year when people are in search of cool school supplies. You and your fellow musicians could be the purveyors of fine, eco-friendlier items that every student can use—like greener pencils and pens, and recycled notebooks. You could even fundraise (or shall I say, “Fun-raise!”) by producing school supplies like these notebooks made from free and used photocopy and printer paper. They’re easy to make and they make a statement too.
If none of these ideas sounds as money-making as your chocolate bars, consider selling only the organic, fair trade chocolate variety.
Have fun and be creative, Nora. And get out there and shake your melodious moneymakers!
Band-tastically,
Umbra
Q. Dear Umbra,
I wonder what sustainable tips you might have for a college student living in a 7x14 dorm room. It sometimes seems impossible to live a green life on a college campus. Beer cans and liquor bottles littered on the quad … Composting is nearly impossible because it isn’t regularly available in dining halls. Eating natural and local food on a college budget is next to impossible. HELP ME! I do believe it will be my generation that will be the first to fully move the green movement, but not without proper instruction, of course.
Conor M.
Rochester, NY
A. Dearest Conor,
One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that your generation is going to take sustainability into the stratosphere. And does the world ever need it! It’s great that you’re thinking about all these big green ideas and I want to help give you the tools you need to get there.
The fact is, Conor, you’ve already got what it takes. Your letter to such a wizened advice columnist shows that you care and are resourceful, two of the most important traits for sustainable success.
Now let’s look at other resources for you to tap into. Is there a sustainability organization on campus? If not, perhaps you’re just the person to start one. An organization can bring people together and create momentum. As a group, you can have goals and get things done.
Here are a few ideas for projects you and your sustainability group may want to tackle.
With beer bottles strewn about your school, it sounds like a Recycling Incentives Program (RIP) is in order. That way, students can get ripped and RIP’d. Does your campus recycle? If not, that’s a bigger conversation to have with a dean of students. If your campus does recycle, consider working with the maintenance staff at your campus to create ample receptacles, put them everywhere so that recycling is convenient, and then make it fun. How? Well, what do you kids do for fun these days? Maybe name a dance move after the winning recycling team? Reward devoted recyclers with a keg of organic beer? Maybe lower their tuition?
As for composting, you say it’s not regularly available in dining halls. Does that mean it’s occasionally available? If so, can they expand the demand? If not, let’s think about parts of campus that could use some black gold. Ah, yes! Your friends in campus maintenance come to mind once again. What could be better for the giant shrub cut in the shape of your campus mascot than some campus-made compost? All it takes is creativity, communication, and a compost master to get something like this going.
Eating local food is good for your brain. It’s such a smart idea, your college may want to make it a part of the curriculum and partner with a local farm to serve healthy, sustainable food on campus. If you’re cooking in your dorm, check to see if there’s a farmer’s market near you. I’ve often found fresh veggies can be less expensive than processed, “cheap” foods. (Though, truth be told, nothing remains cheaper than the college cuisine classic: 14 cent Ramen noodles. So full of sodium. So delicious.)
Is the energy-intensive hum of mini fridges keeping you up at night, Conor? The sustainability squad at College of the Atlantic went as far as doing campus-wide energy audits to find out how efficient campus buildings are and how to make theirs more so. These students installed energy-saving compact fluorescent lighting, programmable thermostats, and even insulation. The point is, the sustainability sky is the limit, Conor. Check out this video from the COA campus for inspiration and to see what your compatriots on another campuses are up to.
In summary of this sustainability 101 course: It’s going to take people like you to speak up and convince university administrators to take sustainability seriously. And I say that while wearing a sweater with elbow patches.
If you try all these things and find you still aren’t getting enough green in your education, you may want to consider transferring ... to a Top 20 green college.
Strive for excellence, Conor. You’ll make the grade.
Higher learningly,
Umbra
Related Links:
Food fight: Do locavores really need math lessons?
Jamie Oliver wins Emmy for ‘Food Revolution’
New York City food pantries linking those in need with local farm-fresh produce
by David Roberts.
I’ve written about Blitzen Trapper before, but their new album is so good they warrant a repeat appearance.
Their excellent 2007 breakthrough, Wild Mountain Nation, perfectly balanced psychedelic art skronk and tuneful Americana. The follow-up, Furr, was also excellent, though at points it drifted a bit toward self-indulgence.
Destroyer of the Void is both a restoration of balance and an ambitious leap forward. The band has crafted a sound that’s packed with allusions to other genres and bands but remains entirely unique.
This song—“Sadie,” the last track —is probably the most conventional on the album. It’s just a nice piece of classic rock.
Related Links:
Friday music blogging: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti
Crawfisher Drew Landry sings the ‘BP Blues’ to president’s Gulf spill commission
Not even the Beatles can stop the oil spill [VIDEO]
