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A building industry newsletter, Building Design and Construction, has come out with another white paper in its excellent series on sustainability in construction and development.
Prefacing the introduction to the water issue, the statement is made that "the U.S. will be adding another 100 million to its population over the next three decades, adding further to water stress". This kind of single-line projection is not substantiated or connected to public policy which will likely change with respect to immigration, the single biggest factor in US population change. Like California's RHNA numbers, these assumptions are generated by paid consultants based upon a pro-growth scenario which is unsustainable in the face of the directly related impact of the carbon dumped into the environment at this scale. This is what happens when financial equities are generated by construction growth for profit rather than need or actual integration within the allowable natural scale of the environment; the disconnect happens both financially and ecologically. That ubiquitous yardstick of profit, GDP growth, relies on the production of more and more "stuff" regardless of the systemic risks that approach creates.
Having said that, here are the Principal Findings of the Water Performance White Paper:
1. Virtually every region of the U.S. and parts of most states likely will experience water shortages in the next 10 years. Some are already feeling the effects of water scarcity.
2. More water is consumed outside buildings and homes—for landscape irrigation and cooling towers—than is used inside for toilets, faucets, showers, and the like.
3. Somewhere between 15% and 20% of the nation’s water never makes it from the filtration plant to the property line, thanks to our decaying infrastructure.
4. Manufacturers have significantly improved the efficiency of plumbing, irrigation, and water reuse technologies in recent years, but long-term conservation also depends heavily on how people use these products.
5. There may be limits to water efficiency. In some cases, saving water can lead to “unintended consequences,” such as pipeline drainage problems, health and safety concerns, and negative impacts on the environment.
6. Improvements in water performance can have a bonus: reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
7. The reuse of water may be “the next big thing” in water conservation, efficiency, and performance.
The direction the building industry is taking at the moment is to capitalize on conservation and infrastructure reconstruction. As it stands right now, it's still a brute-force engineering approach that focuses on existing practices rather than taking a long view of watershed management and incorporation, the means of obtaining the water sources in each state, and the potential for the design of projects that create more energy and water than they consume.
I think if we were able put a man on the moon forty years ago within eight years of making the commitment, we can design urban environments that don't consume natural resources the old way. Industrial society needs to give way to a synergistic approach that includes population management and far more return of resources to the natural environment. That presupposition that the human race has a right to devour everything in sight will necessarily need to be reversed, since that only leads to a dead end.
Literally.
The global system that we define as "ecology" is a complex web that is fragile due to its complexity, since a more interdependent system - or web - is less able to withstand external shocks than simple systems. This kind of systems view used in mathematical ecology is the basis of analysis that has gone on for several decades, and shows that systems have tremendous feed back sensitivities as they become more complex. Thus a grassland or savannah is more robust than a tropical rainforest, which collapses more easily under external stress, human impact, increased temperature gradients, and so forth. This is why forests - a highly complex and evolved system of life - turn into deserts.
A good discussion of mathematical ecosystems is here under "Science of Everyday Things: Ecosystems". It includes a discussion of Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs, and Steel as an accessible narrative of how complex systems produce more varied and responsive opportunites for diverse evolutionary strategies and production of new advantages that can dominate the ecologies of simpler systems which are their precursors. At the same time, these more complex systems are not as stable as the simpler ones that they have emerged from.
An included excerpt on this page is from the Encyclopedia of Public Health: Ecosystems talks about systems stress:
Stress from human activity is a major factor in transforming healthy ecosystems to sick ecosystems. Chronic stress from human activity differs from natural disturbances. Natural disturbances (fires, floods, periodic insect infestations) are part of the dynamics of most ecosystems. These processes help to "reset" ecosystems by recycling nutrients and clearing space for recolonization by biota that may be better adapted to changing environments. Thus, natural perturbations help keep ecosystems healthy. In contrast, chronic and acute stress on ecosystems resulting from human activity (e.g., construction of large dams, release of nutrients and toxic substances into the air, water, and land) generally results in long-term ecological dysfunction. Five major sources of human-induced (anthropogenic) stresses have been identified by D. J. Rapport and A. M. Friend (1979): physical restructuring, overharvesting, waste residuals, introduction of exotic species, and global change.
A short review of Systems Ecology on Wikipedia outlines the nature of the study of ecological systems and how humanity is part of this living system and must work within the framework of its laws.
An example of simple and evolving ecologies is famously the Galapagos, which requires a pristine environment to maintain its balance. It's a fundamentally simple system that can't support the demands of mamillian or human life on the islands, but yet has a highly interactive marine and rocky shore which provided Darwin with his clearest resource for his argument for evolution. Most of the third world countries have populations that subsist within a very narrow range their local ecology, and subsequently are more balanced within the system, but not living anywhere near Western standards. In India, this is true of much of the rural subcontinent, with some very interesting eco-village developments being established that do not demand more resources for human habitation than the environment is capable of balancing. More on that in a later post.
Meantime, further resources on environmental monitoring and mathematical ecology are here.
Here in the United States we celebrate this holiday to be thankful to God, in principle, for the freedom and safe passage in the New World of the original Virginia colonists.
Here's what Wikipedia has to offer: Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Day, presently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. It did not become a federal holiday until 1941. Thanksgiving was historically a religious observation to give thanks to God, but is now primarily identified as a secular holiday.
The First Thanksgiving was celebrated to give thanks to God for helping the pilgrims survive the brutal winter. The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days providing enough food for 53 pilgrims and 90 Indians. The feast consisted of fowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. However, the traditional Thanksgiving menu often features turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie.
And so we feast. But more interestingly, what meanings remain extant within nature, God and our current habitation of this country? The connection between man, nature, and contemporary spirituality informs our built cities, our commerce, our view of what the world should be and our role in shaping it. Or in effecting its disintegration. A paired article in the Wall Street Journal poses the question in the form of "Man vs. God", very intelligently argued by Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong.
But I think our world view is moving beyond this dialectical thinking and into an understanding of how the entire web of life and its critical biodiversity is linked, and informed with grace, leaving us with the large responsibilities of stewardship. Ironically, science and database analysis, the arts and religion are beginning to converge on a view of our lands and seas as things to be nurtured and worked with, not conquered. We're just beginning to see, and comprehend.
Such hubris.
Flying back via Dubai from India recently over the polar route gave me an excellent chance to see the icebergs and glaciers from 40,000 feet. Emirates provides a great service and a bearable 16-hour flight which most folks use as a "sleeping car". But I had to follow the flight plan on the monitor and shoot a few glaciers and icebergs, the topic of some discussion on the change in the ice sheet in the polar region, particularly Greenland.
It's a marvel to see the world from this perspective, and hope that this will not be sacrificed to human encroachment. New studies and findings about the changes here present a real concern about the impact this will have on the global warming process. Ilulissat Icefjord, in northern Greenland, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is the focus of studies on the impact of climate change in the arctic. President Obama has just decided to address the Copenhagen summit on Dec. 9, and provide US commitments to the climate change discussions, with the hope that this will spur global discussions and commitments to lowering carbon output immediately.
The monitor shot shows where the photos were taken, after a flyover of Iceland, approaching the eastern coastline of Greenland.
The Copenhagen meeting on global warming and carbon reduction is fast approaching in December, and the prospects grow dimmer for a deal. The world's top three carbon polluters — the United States, China and India — have not indicated whether their leaders will attend the meeting, and that could have a big impact on its chances of reaching a consensus on action, as this article warns.
This, in the face of documentation that this phenomenon has occurred three times faster than predicted, much worse than anticipated back during Kyoto which the Bush administration refused to attend. In fact, it's deteriorated so rapidly that some scientists are taking the position that it's now unstoppable.
Because these negotiations are driven for the need to protect economies and cash flows, they are not able to focus on the real issue of simply taking large-scale, effective action which would reverse our human environmental impact in time. If the global leadership is in denial, then the whole ship goes down with the captain when the inevitable takes place.
I wouldn't have wished this for the world, but now things will play out in a way that must necessarily restore these unbalanced systems.
Our predilection in US cities for spreading asphalt and concrete everywhere is taking its toll. The New York Times talks today about how the decrease in unpaved surfaces - due to development - has led to dangerous sewage overflows during rainy periods.
" But New York’s system — like those in hundreds of others cities — combines rainwater runoff with sewage. Over the last three decades, as thousands of acres of trees, bushes and other vegetation in New York have been paved over, the land’s ability to absorb rain has declined significantly. When treatment plants are swamped, the excess spills from 490 overflow pipes throughout the city’s five boroughs."
What this means for many older urban areas is a massive rebuild and configuration of existing infrastructure, transportation and public areas that is most likely beyond the budget capabilities of the old-fashioned industrial model of development.
This would then leave it to a new model of development that uses the arcology concept to build a completely self-sufficient project that incorporates its own waste processing and water conservation and reuse, and including landscape and natural terrain restoration. This keeps the load off of an aging municipal system and restores the ability of the natural systems to respond to weather and provide oxygen. This is beyond "Zero Carbon" models and part of the "Energy plus" model that is appropriate for large projects and development.
Urban reforestation and watershed restoration that brings the natural environment back into existing cities, such as UNpave, is another path that can balance human needs with the carrying capacity of the planet. For example in the picture above, the brick paving is perforated in several places with round green 'pockets', planted with pine trees and seasonal flowers. The trees, which can stand the extreme temperatures of Moscow, are reminiscent of its surrounding birch-pine forest. The designer, West 8, is based out of Netherlands, and is an urban design & landscape architecture firm established since 1987.
Glorious shot of Everest in the ancient Himalayas, clear and warm weather showing the pristine flanks of the peaks. Except - take a look closer. Down in the trekking and climbing trails, lots of refuse: discarded plastic bottles, sleeping mats, foil packets, the usual human refuse which marks the eons-old habits of instant disposal that informs many an archeological dig. Unfortunately this refuse is made of plastic and nondegradable materials that should be carried out under a policy of zero tolerance for refuse and waste, much as is done in the USA's Grand Canyon in order to preserve what natural properties remain of the ecosystem.
The roads and trails of Nepal and India are littered with refuse, particularly since the products of Western societies have invaded a continent that is not prepared for the onslaught of non-biodegradable or burnable materials. The enzymes and the micro organisms responsible for breaking down organic materials that occur naturally such as plants, dead animals, rocks and minerals, don’t recognise plastics and polymers. What formerly broke down quickly now lasts for hundreds of years, eventually breaking down into polymers that contaminate the biosphere by introducing hormone-disrupting compounds into the environment.
In a society where refuse (and corpses!) are burned out in the open, this creates serious problems of not just pollution, but a cycle of disruption of the food chain, ultimately concentrating at the top of it, where the predators (human, mammal and fish) concentrate these chemical disruptors and experience the effects on the endocrine system that create systemic disorders. With the understanding that cultural shifts are not desirable throughout the globe, and that local cultures should be presereved, it's imperative to respect the indigenous practices and not contaminate their environment with oil-based polymers. This plastic pollution eventually ends up in the Pacific oceanic landfills known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches; huge accumulations of plastic that ultimately end up on the shores of many countries and destroys life in the ocean and on the ocean floor. Banning the worldwide production of plastic bags and containers would be a very constructive first step.
One hopeful development is the production of biodegradable packages and products, using corn, soy, and possibly hemp-based materials so that these materials break down quickly and are beneficial to recycle or burn in the traditional fashion. Implementing a recycling system into a culture that is still living very rurally without any infrastructure is not a viable solution, so it becomes the responsiblity of the global manufacturers and the government to make certain that this problem doesn't continue.
It's disheartening to see this beautiful country begin to resemble the dirty highways full of trash that are endemic to Western culture, and to see that its environment is becoming irreversibly contaminated.
So what is climate change about? I'm taking this opportunity on Blog Action Day to join up with more than 13,000 other keypad-enabled folks all over the globe to pitch in my 2 centavos. We're ramping up to the UN Climate Change Conference in December, in Copenhagen, where the international community will agree on some essentials, if things go well.
Getting the arms around this issue (and I don't mean the military ones) involves quantified information as well as a means of calculating carbon footprint, which is the crux of this whole issue. Having done that, the strategy involves solving the problem by changing lifestyles and behavior.
But what does this mean, really, to humanity on this earth? To me, sitting here in the USA which is famously a first-world power with incredible global reach and also historically the biggest producer of CO2 and pollution on earth by far, it means asking the question, "When is enough plenty?"
We just hoover it in and spit it out. More, more more. UBS, AIG, Goldman. While planetary life dies from this. The greed of it is rapacious and unending, the piles of money and stuff that matters to no one at the end of a lifetime yet leaves a legacy of waste. We've lost the quality of immersion in life, the ability to honor the simple and sacred, for the sake of speed and superficiality. Where is the real? I think it will find us in a way that we don't want.
Unless we change the climate of our minds.
The best laid plans - in this case, no plans are laid at all. Peter Gleick poses excellent musings on the realities of population versus diminishing resources, and the inability of local governments to foresee the impacts of their policies and decisions. Megaregion planning is something that is emerging in some of the more dense clusters, but the limits to growth are not being examined. America 2050 tries to project into the future for some of the larger trends.
Data on infrastructure and planning is on our State government website, along with an admission that decisions are being made in a disjointed fashion, and asks for a consolidated planning organization. Which apparently SCAG is gunning for, but with a completely wrong old-boy agenda. The presented example of a good plan is the SANDAG diagram. It's strictly logistical and growth-oriented.
This site lays the groundwork for land use and transportation to guide all planning, but does not include any consideration of natural capital or social capital, which are crucial elements of the entire picture. So it's very one-dimensional and isn't supportable, and fosters destructive bubbles like we've seen with banking and real estate in the last year. What's happening is that this view only sees government and commerce, with the underground economy and its impacts in the shadows. So of course its solutions are incomplete and ultimately don't work.
A regenerative approach is necessary, as I've laid out before, and will involve the processes of a values-driven culture and a recognition of the larger aspects of the impact of human habitation.
Here's the rest of the 1414 Fair Oaks Building story. In 1982, a very swingin' bash was put on by Whit, Wayne and Bob to say farewell to all that had transpired in the 24 years of its history. Herb designed the invitation. Whit played sax in a barbershop quartet - so he WAS the entertainment - and we all showed up for a last party there. The facility was sold, and underwent some modifications. Subsequently it had a close call with the wrecking ball, but it was rescued from that fate (tip of the hat to Ray Girvigian, FAIA, who also had an office here) and later purchased by a private buyer for professional office use.
So there was another party and reunion in June of 2005, with South Pasadena Heritage attending, along with the new owners who continue to use the structure today. The community was very pleased with the outcome, and the Chamber staged their own gathering of luminaries here to set this structure off on its new course. As of today, the immediately adjacent lot is being cleared for new construction, but this hallmark of an era and the imprint of uniquely influential design practice in the City of South Pasadena remains!
Whitney Smith, FAIA, was a prolific architect of the postwar period. I went to work for him after Smith and Williams relocated out of 1414 Fair Oaks to Culver City in 1982, and worked on some of the Westridge School campus projects. Here's a little doodle he did of himself. Whit passed away in 2002 after moving up to Oregon.
Three significant buildings on the Westridge Quad were designed by Whit: the Seeley G. Mudd Science Building, with three fully-equipped Upper School laboratories and a computer technology center, the Laurie and Susan Frank Art Studio and the Hoffman Gymnasium. An earlier structure, Ranney House, and parking lot expansion was completed in 1985.
His work spanned the entire spectrum from whimsical work to serious industrial facilities, to theme parks and fairs, campuses, commercial buildings, and medical office structures. He and Wayne worked with Julius Shulman who photographed, among other things, the Mobil Gas Station. His work was unique, always took a different view of a building's program and gave it a special twist that changed its standard typology to something special.
The Neighborhood Church campus is still partially intact, the Sanctuary has been remodeled somewhat - the wistaria trellis is gone - and some outbuildings were demolished for a large structure. But the original vision of the campus as a totemic and austere wooded grove remains, reflecting the essence of Emerson and Thoreau that grounds the church philosophy. It still retains the original Cole House by Greene and Greene at the heart of the campus, at the minister's request; that's an interesting story.
His most radical work remains unbuilt, with A. Quincy Jones in 1945 for the Case Study homes: unbuilt Case Study #5 and unbuilt Case Study #12. As an example of the principle that no good deed goes unpunished, his Crestwood Hills home design was destroyed in 2007 to make room for paving. This nearly happened to the 1414 Fair Oaks Office Building, before the community and our Smith and Williams "alumni group" intervened.
Obie Bowman has done a very interesting interview with Whit in 1992, download it here.
Postscript 10/15/09: Look what just turned up. Here's a picture of Whit and Lee Hershberger back in their salad days. Taken in 1961.
Wayne Williams FAIA passed away in November of 2007, a uniquely creative and engaging person who had a major impact on regional design and architecture here in South Pasadena, centered in the 1414 Fair Oaks complex that was the nexus of a very accomplished group, as well as many others of us who worked there over the years. His philosophy was a highly collaborative, process-oriented design approach grounded in science and an integration of the environment that mirrored asian sensibilities.
Wayne's career is particularly highlighted by his interest in and accomplishment in the areas of city planning and recreation, which is evidenced in his 1963 nomination to the Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects:
“…it is in the wider aspects of city planning and the coordination of buildings, non-buildings and open spaces into a human scaled, unified entity that Mr. Williams deserves special attention.”
Mr. Williams was instrumental in forming ‘Community Facilities Planners,’ an association of consultants which makes possible professional collaboration on complex planning projects.
Mr. William’s special interest is recreation, not only in its usual sense and definition, but in an attitude toward life, which might very well fuse our work and play together so that they are indistinguishable.”
The aesthetic environment that Wayne Williams, Whit Smith, and Garrett Eckbo created out of steel, stucco, wood, glass, plants and water in 1958 at 1414 Fair Oaks in South Pasadena became a creative crucible for interdisciplinary approaches to community design and planning. The chief designer was Bob Thorguson and the project director was Shig Eddow. The garden court office building was a virtual creative cloister for architects, engineers, city planners and interior, landscape and graphic designers. The building was considered a very progressive and important example of contemporary Modern design and collected an impressive array of awards.
Projects developed by the firm of Smith & Williams also include the 1965 Friend Paper Co. on Green Street in Pasadena, a mid-century modern building recently adapted for mixed use, and their 1956 Mobil gas station on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim. Community Master Plan designs were a key component of their practice, such as suburban layouts for Mission Bay Park in San Diego and California City in Kern County.
In retrospect, Williams noted: “ The…idea was to surround ourselves with the best and the brightest from other disciplines that we could learn from and enjoy working with: Garrett Eckbo, Simon Eisner, John Kariotis, Edgardo Contini, A. Quincy Jones and many others. Some moved in, while others continued to collaborate while maintaining offices elsewhere.”
The Los Angeles Times noted last week that the more recent architecture and designs of the "Early Modern" period are now eligible for historic designation, as are most of the boomers that lived that era. Many of them are the Case Study homes built from designs by Buff and Hensman, Smith and Williams, Cal Straub, Richard Neutra, Pierre Konig and A.Quincy Jones, mostly fellas from the USC architecture school who practiced in the post-war era. These were documented by Esther McCoy in her tome, "Blueprints for Modern Living" Others from the USC group include Lyman Ennis and James Pulliam. They were a very integrated group that worked in concert with each other on many occasions, sharing a value system of streamlined international interpretation at the small scale. For example, Whitney Smith worked for Harwell Hamilton Harris, and later teamed up with Wayne Williams, a student of his at USC, for a productive career in residential, industrial and small commercial projects. Their design archives are here in Wonderland.
A subgenre of early modern in Los Angeles is Googie architecture, a wonderfully "flip" commercial design style that borders on cheap flash. Nothing reserved about this style! This was famously used in family restaurants and coffee shops, and of course the Theme Building at LAX. It was a slightly later period that is now hitting the 50-year mark to the delight of Jetson fans all over the country, since these buildings are now eligible for the historic designation that brings tax breaks and renovation crews. This style was a celebration of the loopy, modern spaceship meme that permeated the advertising slant of this kind of design; a very animated and out-of-the-box public display of 60's optimism, along with those big car fins and Schwinn Radio Flyer bikes.
With the preservation and adaptive reuse of the best of these structures, there's a hope of retaining the vitality, character and scale of the urban fabric established during this era.
The “dead peasant insurance” recently exposed in Michael Moore's movie has been around for decades, in a different form, known as COLI. In 2006, it was supposedly amended to require knowledge and consent of the insured. To quote:
Notice and Consent Requirements. The Employee must :
1. Be notified in writing that the employer intends to insure the employee’s life and the maximum face amount for which the employee could be insured at the time the contract is issued.
2. Provide written consent to be insured under the contract during and after active employment.
3. Be informed in writing that the employer will be the beneficiary of any death benefits.
What we're seeing now is Wall Street's move to collateralize and make a profit on COLI bundled policies, the exact same fiscal nuclear waste typology that created the mortgage meltdown in this country and abroad. In order to feed it, same thing, the companies are vastly increasing their use of this to all levels of employees, no longer just in the executive suite. So investors are waiting for workers to die, which apparently the health insurance industry doesn't seem to mind facilitating through their withdrawals, denials and their recission policies.
Given that our entire financial system is being run by folks who've hit the jackpot and use all means to continue to scale the great wealth divide, it's time to fully hold corporations accountable in their acts against not only most of the citizens of this country and the globe, but also force accountability for the environmental impacts of their behavior. The abuse of a small "privileged" group of the far larger population has led to disastrous events of chaos throughout history, and it's now leading to the unraveling of natural systems and processes as well. No pulling up the drawbridge on this issue, there's no place to run.
So guess what the revolution's going to be about.
Causes of the French Revolution include the following (substitute "environmentalism" for "Enlightenment Ideals")
A poor economic situation and an unmanageable national debt were both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation, the massive spending of Louis XVI and the many wars of the 18th century;
A resentment of royal absolutism;
An aspiration for liberty and republicanism;
A resentment of manorialism (seigneurialism) by peasants, wage-earners, and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie;
The rise of Enlightenment ideals;
Food scarcity in the months immediately before the revolution;
High unemployment and high bread prices resulting in the inability to purchase food;
A resentment of noble privilege and dominance in public life by the ambitious professional classes;
A resentment of religious intolerance;
The failure of Louis XVI to deal effectively with these problems.
You remember ship in a bottle? Well, the pickle jar will do for trains and subways. Particularly the old rails and subways that used to run in Los Angeles before the Federal Highway Program of 1956 decimated the local rail system developed by Henry Huntington and his partners, and thus begat sprawl. Huell Howser recently re-visited the Subway Terminal Building in Los Angeles, which was the nexus of the Red Car Tunnels in downtown LA, subsequently abandoned and is being filled in for condo development. It's now an LA City Cultural and Historic monument.
The picture above is the Belmont Tunnel substation, near the tunnel entrance, which was originally a mile-long commuter route between Westlake and downtown. During the Cold War it was used to store emergency rations in case of nuclear war. The last segment of it was demolished for a condo development, which converted the Subway Terminal Building into Metro 417 and Pacific Electric Lofts.
The KCET program, Subway Terminal Update, California's Gold, from Huell Howser, revisits the Red Car Tunnels under Los Angeles and the tunnel entrance at Belmont Station. It expands on his earlier episode of exploring the tunnel and subterranean infrastructure. It's a fascinating exploration of the old tunnels, boarding platforms and back room subterranean equipment and storage areas. However, some public criticism of his showcasing of historic neighborhoods on public television has raised controversy. On the one hand, he's provided KCET with some very prominent historic examination of the old Los Angeles neighborhoods, called Interactive LA.
But now this: Huell Howser, enemy of historic preservation:
One would think that Huell Howser, the renowned public-television host of "California Gold," would be an advocate for preserving the state's historic treasures. Unfortunately, in agreeing to do a 14-part PR series for government redevelopment agencies, Howser is supporting those who actively bulldoze California's history.
Public Television Program Shills for Redevelopment Agencies:
August 2, 2009 – The LA Times reports how “The California Redevelopment Assn. and its partners have put up $320,000 to help Howser produce 14 episodes highlighting the achievements of redevelopment projects around the state, part of an attempt to convince Californians that they should care about this little-understood arm of government that receives and spends more than $5 billion a year in property taxes.” The article truly exposes how public television can be exploited to shape public opinion. Unfortunately, reporter Huell Howser did not profile the countless examples of redevelopment projects that involve demolishing people’s homes and small businesses (livelihoods), only for developers to walk away from the projects.
Jes' strummin' on the old banjo...
The climate controversy continues. More emerging disputations of data and research on the methodologies used in determining the impact, if any, on human habitation on the environment. These are coming out all over the press and the media.
From Marc Sheppard:
For years, claims that UN climate reports represent the consensus of the majority of international scientists have been mindlessly accepted and regurgitated by left-leaning policy makers and the media at large. But in the past week or so, it’s become more apparent than ever that those who’ve accused the international organization of politicizing science and manipulating data have been right all along. This latest disclosure again concerns what has become the favorite propaganda propagation tool of climate activists -- the infamous “Hockey Stick Graph.” The familiar reconstruction, which deceitfully depicts last millennium’s global temperatures as flat prior to a dramatic upturn last century, has been displayed and touted ad nauseum as irrefutable proof of unprecedented and, therefore, anthropogenic, global warming (AGW).
From Ross McKitrick, Financial Post. Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, and coauthor of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming:
Beginning in 2003, I worked with Stephen McIntyre to replicate a famous result in paleoclimatology known as the Hockey Stick graph. Developed by a U.S. climatologist named Michael Mann, it was a statistical compilation of tree ring data supposedly proving that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century.
In this article, he goes on to add:
The IPCC review process, of which I was a member last time, is nothing at all like what the public has been told: Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion.
The controversy centers on the profits that a cap-and-trade system would bring to entities running this kind of a brokerage. Not to mention the protectionism, gambling and profiteering that would skew the benefits of carbon reduction, which has already happened in the early forms of cap-and-trade. And the benchmarks themselves, being tied to one dimension of an ecosystem - temperature variability recorded in the fossil records - are arguably manipulated through data wars.
There's an entire confluence of ecological impacts that are created by human habitation, all of which result in the depletion of natural resources and systems. Drying watersheds, melting ice caps, disintegrating ecosystems, acidic oceans, terminally polluted water sources, accumulations of toxins, plastics and endocrine disruptors throughout the food chain, changes in atmospheric structures (Hadley Cells) that create and enlarge deserts, and on and on. The cumulative effects are clear, even as the arguments mount over how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Industry itself is pushing for change.
So, clearly, our human society needs to work within natural cycles and their variability by reducing our footprint and allowing the diversity of nature to flourish, rather than clogging the works with waste material and waste heat. If we could only figure out how to profit from the other half of the industrial cycle which returns elements to their natural state and pulls our habitats and industrial interventions back into a balanced existence with wild creatures and terrain. A carbon tax, applied to all production and used to pay for better, more effective technologies, would accelerate the change needed to accomplish the neutralization of our human impact as we learn how to complete the circle.
An example of a regulatory mechanism that relies on a factual basis for making judgements is San Francisco's Precautionary Principle, used to evaluate environmental impacts by assessing possible harm, not direct causation. The Hippocratic Oath...
The epithets thrown at Obama at this time for being "socialist" is classic baiting by a far right fringe in an attempt to undermine public dialogue on sustainable practices and governance from the center. The same problem exists with the issues that experience a tension between old-line capitalists and the newly Gore-invigorated environmental movement. Polarizing the public dialogue is poisoning the ability of the public to participate in a rational discussion; there's a huge political spectrum that's excluded from the table, to the detriment of fresh ideas and real consensus in solving the massive problems we're facing. These discussions require a creative, progressive approach done in a collaborative fashion. That's being cat-called from the far right, which needs to preserve the status quo, fearing change.
A (very long) article in DSP (in Australia) provides a discussion of the roots of the history of environmental politics and traces its evolution as a political philosophy:
In principle, of course, all agree that "the polluter pays", but if ever there was a principle more honoured in the breach than the observance, this surely is it. For instance, in 1993 the then-new Clinton administration, with Al Gore (author of the "visionary" Earth in the Balance) as vice-president, tried to pass a very mild tax on non-renewable forms of energy, only to be smashed into line by the fossil-fuel lobby. And as Saul Landau comments on another flagrant example: We punish sinners like Exxon, whose oiler [the Exxon Valdez] did not have proper safety equipment, by making it pay for the cleanup and fining it. But modern corporations have delay experts, called corporate lawyers, who find loopholes to forestall both the cleanup and the penalty procedures. Indeed, Exxon has barely felt the cruel lash of justice as it offers $80 billion to buy oil giant Mobil.
Where do these "green" policies fall today? We could map it like Paulitics does, taking all aspects of its ideology and plotting it somewhere onto the social liberal and economic left quadrant, probably to the right of the Dali Lama, since green has become mainstream economics, of late. It has to, in order to be acceptable to industry and commerce and lay the groundwork for a new approach to economics and profit in a sustainable way.
Politically, we have an interesting moment of "rapprochement" coming up in February of 2010. Sponsored by Westfield - a major commercial developer - former Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush are slated to appear together at the American Jewish University Series, tickets available here. These former Presidents, each of whom faced attacks from the other party's extreme fringe, are going to calmly discuss a loaded topic like the policies of Israel? On a platform provided by a Jewish University?
The pro-zionists have found some strange bedfellows, indeed. Stay tuned.
This is important.
In a world where tweeting and blogs are replacing hard news reporting, and the big media echo chamber controls the spin, It's harder and harder to spot "the real". The corporations buy politicians and votes and can afford to put out commercials that spin "Green" to their advantage, for example. Today, we have astroturf, which is artificial grassroots representation, bought and paid for. Talk about cynical. Talk about old techniques that have moved into the internet.
As an example, take agribusiness and water in California's central valley, specifically Fresno. An Alternet article about the recent Fresno killing rampage examines a reaction to the repressive agribusiness war with the water industry. The political leverage created by the manipulation that produced this sequence of events is astroturfing by a PR company paid by industry to create a divide between those "liberal environmentalists" and "honest labor", a classic divide-and-conquer strategy:
"Taking astroturfing to a new and darker level, in April, agribusiness interests gang-pressed a couple thousand migrant Latino farmworkers into "marching" 50 miles over four days in the scorching Central Valley sun, calling for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act and for taking out the taxpayer credit card to finance and subsidize more cheap water."
"The New York Times reported that marchers were paid by their employers, something I haven't seen since Russian Vladimir Putin's PR goons would bus in thousands of workers and students for rallies that either were bribed into attending, or told they better attend."
Nothing new. I've worked for companies in more than one state that informed employees that they must donate to certain politicians (sometimes reimbursed) or programs out of their measly salary. I've also run public hearings where folks are bussed in, pretending to be residents objecting to a business coming to town that doesn't pose a problem to anyone except a local business with connections.
This is insane politics protecting old-economy process and methods that can't adapt to the new realities. It's moving into dangerous territory, as is portrayed so well by Michael Moore in his Goldman-Sachs funded movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story", where the backlash against corporate suffocation of the middle class and the environmental destruction bullwhips workers into a sit-down revolt reminiscent of those in 1937 that created the UAW. So it would seem that Moore can astroturf with the best of them, to the profit of Goldman and the political benefit of letting off steam by watching a movie instead of taking popular action. Goldman's court jester perhaps? An interesting interview with Moore is here at Crooks and Liars with a discussion of FDR's "Second Bill of Economic Rights" included in the film.
This just in from International Rivers with respect to a better way to manage water flow than building expensive dams that seriously degrade rivers and downstream ecologies. Click on picture above to go to the CHRC site: California’s rivers are seriously threatened. Today, more than two thirds of the state’s native fish species are extinct, endangered, or declining and almost every river in California has been dammed or otherwise diverted.
Following up on my previous post, the dialogue in Sacramento around the water management issues is politically dysfunctional, becoming a threat to the state itself, and requires an ecologically-based solution to water use and supply in this state. Lori Pottinger has written an excellent article at Huffpo, with great links, to explain how the solutions to our drought and water crisis need to move from the old plumbing model to practices in environmental flows. This kind of methodology uses natural features, watersheds, gravity and geological structures to manage water supplies for human and ecological needs. A parody on the dysfunction tactics is here from Jon Stewart.
Of note: this little case history of a watershed shows its progression on maps from a viable ecological system to a nearly nonfunctional swath of industrialized real estate due to site drainage and pollution. It's a typical example of conditions all over California as a result of development and sprawl. It's also necessary to point out that this progression results from increasing wealth as well as population. Think of McMansions...
Alternative energy and "green power" are labels for less destructive methods of producing the energy our country needs to keep things running. Yet even solar and photovoltaic energy harnessing have a downside in the water equation. Consumption of water resources, particularly including electrical power generation systems currently in use, is a huge factor in establishing the feasibility of, and the true environmental cost of, producing energy. Nuclear power has major issues with water consumption and the heat generation dumped into the environment.
Some problems associated with nuclear power are much discussed – such as its connection to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Less well known is the fact that nuclear power is the most water-hungry of all energy sources, with a single reactor consuming 35-65 million litres of water each day. A map of reactor sites is maintained here by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it shows that the western US is not reliant on nuclear sources in the same way that the eastern US has been, probably because water is only abundant on the coasts (note reactor locations there).
Of further interest on energy sources in the US is a map and charts I generated on "Many Eyes" from a database from the US Dept. of energy. It shows the many different kinds of power generation across the US, and it's interesting that coal and nuclear are prevalent in the east,. The newer sources in the west rely on gas and geothermal, which are cleaner, but there's a substantial reliance on oil. This points to a possible strategy in converting power generation to cleaner methods being the most effective on the east coast, with changes in the use of oil in the western US being the biggest potential for "greening" power sources. Bottom line - U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in their latest (2007) energy generation report, lists costs for: - coal and nuclear - 4.5 cents per kWh
- geothermal - 6.5 cents per kWh
- natural gas - 7 cents per kWh
- petroleum - 10 cents per kWh
- solar - 18 cents per kWh
A web mag blog that discusses the impact of Nuclear Synfuel proposes an interesting scenario for using the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere to address some of these issues. This is "future science", but presents some interesting possibilities. I keep reminding myself that all energy transformations - heat, power, chemical structure - impact the closed system that's our environment, which has a limited constraint of energy balance. Continual, growing processes that dump heat in all its forms that exceed the system's ability to absorb it will simply push it to failure.
The towering pyrocumulus cloud from the superheated Station Fire over Los Angeles subsided and the flames have largely died down after containment, but now the work of renewal begins with the sequence that follows fire in this region. This fire in the Angeles National Forest was a very destructive, hot burn, and has created some extraordinarily difficult conditions that require some human response to assist the natural recovery process.
The extent of the burn is shown clearly in photos from NASA's Terra Satellite. The steps that need to be taken at this point should be careful ones, with the community in concert with State and Federal agency resources. As Pieter Severynen points out, there are field assessment practices in place, and critical points should be identified and stabilized with appropriate restoration strategies. Many community volunteers will be needed - plan to pitch in, support these efforts and become educated about the value of the forests in our local ecology. Preservation of natural topography and containment of urban encroachment are key approaches. This is in addition to the County's infrastructure repair program, which is basically a clean-up and urban property protection response. Mudslides pose a serious danger this winter, as well, greater than earlier threats to this area.
I feel that it would be appropriate to use this opportunity to make decisions on a regional level about reducing urban encroachment into the forests, and establish better management policies in these areas, such as we see in flood plains, to keep the structures in that area small and temporary. It's the only sane response to the cyclical natural processes that are becoming more volatile as our climate shifts. A Federal court ruling agrees with this position.
Alaska's incredible public parks didn't happen by accident, they happened because of the commitment of the US government and the public to the preservation of wild lands and native cultures. Right now a PBS special by Ken Burns is highlighting Denali National Park as well as the other parks established in this state. Alaska has the most acreage of the US Park System, and Denali is the largest, which includes Mt. McKinley and its immense snowfields and cloud covers, home to wolves and the caribou who survive on lichen and other plant forage, at least for now. I went on a charter flight that operates out of the local airfield and takes 5-6 people on a "bush pilot eye view" of the terrain and lakes. Chased a bear on the way back.
The ecosystem preservation is critically important, but the global climate change is heavily influential in this area, particularly in the sensitive north latitudes. Hence, public awareness and participation beyond a superficial impression is key to the solution to this problem. The Alaskan native culture and wilderness extends all the way down through Canada to the Pacific Northwest, and is very prevalent in the Seattle historic parks and cultural galleries. They embody a way of life that adapted to the natural ecology, and was able to exist within it.These influences can be seen in the Alaskan native architecture that adapted to the climate and terrain thousands of years ago, which has been preserved most fully in the wilderness park areas. Some of the areas of Alaska that have not yet been built out still have the rough-and-tumble quality of the old logging, hunting and canning operations that were carried out in the region hundreds of years ago. These resources are in the process of being further built over and drilled out, and it's imperative that the public commitment to these wilderness lands be reinforced. Viable ecosystems are critical to human civilization.
This shot is from the Seward Highway south of Anchorage. Kenai Lake is fed by melting glaciers and does not have the silt that many of the lakes and streams have, which results in an emerald color. It's a good fishing spot, and this lake feeds into Ressurection Bay at Seward. At Seward, the Fijord cruises depart around the Kenai Peninsula, and we spotted otters, steller sea lions, harbor seals, humpback and grey whales, puffins, eagles, and gulls. On the Kenai Peninsula, along the steep banks of the Fijords, it's not hard to spot bears and mountain goats.
It's still possible to see some of the sunken forest beds and displaced landscape (by about two feet) resulting from the Good Friday earthquake of 1964 that created a tsunami (tidal wave) that essentially destroyed Seward. The harbor was rebuilt afterwards, and is currently undergoing a change of character as the fishing industry declines and the tourist industry increases.
How cities grow like brains; an article from Science Daily. Interconnectedness is just as important to cities as it is to brains, according to researchers who've just released a study about the organizational similarities between cities and brains. Cities grow in an organic fashion, and increase the availability of knowledge, resources, commerce and trade. In other words, it increases the sheer number of potential interconnections that people and businesses thrive on . This can be traced through infrastructure networks, such as roads and highways, power, phone and internet. These opportunities increase exponentially for structural and organizational strategies that are effective for its residents and workers. Universities, colleges, convention centers and business incubators (biotech, etc.) represent key urban area draws for this reason, since their connection networks foster innovation, commercial production and knowledge-sharing throughout a region.
This quality of cities has been recognized for centuries as human civilization expanded out of Mesopotamia and urban centers took root along trade routes and grew into major centers of exchange. The evolutionary aspect of this built form has been investigated by Soleri in his arcology studies at Arcosanti, based upon the concept that the noosphere's growth in dense living configurations fosters human evolution.
A building industry newsletter, Building Design and Construction, has come out with another white paper in its excellent series on sustainability in construction and development.
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