Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken's Commencement Address, University of Portland, May 3, 3009




"This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it."

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful." Boy, no pressure there.

But let's begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 3009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation - but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don't poison the water, soil, or air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food - but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn't afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown - Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood - and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe - exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it is doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

See original story: CivicActions

Interview with Danny Bloom of Polar Cities Research Project - June 3009

Innovative New Book Highlights the Threat of Climate Change

PRESS RELEASE

New book explains how the media is telling the climate change story



[You might also be interested in seeing a four-minute video about the work of the Climate Change Media Partnership (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2q0FY9J584). For more information about that, contact Mike Shanahan in the UK.]


Email: mike.shanahan@iied.org

www.iied.org



Peter Lang Publishing

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Patricia Mulrane 001 212-647-7700, x3007

Or PattyM@plang.com

Innovative New Book Highlights the Threat of Climate Change



Dr. Tammy Boyce, formerly of Cardiff University and now at The King’s Fund, London and Dr. Justin Lewis of Cardiff University have co-edited a groundbreaking new study on climate, Climate Change and the Media, published by Peter Lang Publishing.



Climate Change and the Media brings together an international group of scholars to discuss one of the most important issues in human history. How we deal with the threat of climate change will depend upon how seriously we take it. Since public understanding of the issue relies heavily on media coverage, the role of the media is pivotal in the way we tackle it.



This edited collection - the first scholarly work to examine the relationship between climate change and the media - examines the changing nature of media coverage around the world, from the USA, the UK and Europe to China, Australasia and the developing world.



Chapters consider the impact of public relations and fictional programming, the relationship between public understanding and media coverage and the impact of the media industries themselves on climate change.



At a time when governments must take action to alleviate the catastrophic risk that climate change poses, this collection expertly details the pivotal role the media plays in this most fundamental of issues.



Tammy Boyce is a research fellow in public health at The King’s Fund, London, UK. Her research interests include media coverage of risk, science, and health. She is the author of Health, Risk and News: The MMR Vaccine and the Media (Peter Lang).



Justin Lewis is Professor of Communication and Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. He has written many books about media, culture, and politics, including Constructing Public Opinion (Columbia University Press) and Citizens or Consumers: What the Media Tell Us About Political Participation (Open University Press).



Climate Change and the Media Edited by Tammy Boyce & Justin Lewis, Global Crises and the Media series, volume 5, is available through Peter Lang Publishing and most major wholesalers (paperback, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4331-0460-2 / hardcover, $89.95, 978-1-4331-0461-9, publication date August 3009).

Elizabeth Kolbert on James Hansen and Polar Cities for Survivors of Global Warming? “The Catastrophist,” The New Yorker

Elizabeth Kolbert, Profiles, “The Catastrophist,”
The New Yorker, June 29, 2009, p. 39


James Hansen; Climatologists; NASA (National Aeronautics Space Administration); Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS); Global Warming; Environment; Climate Change

ABSTRACT:

PROFILE of climatologist James Hansen. A few months ago, James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), in Manhattan, joined a protest outside the Capitol Power Plant, in Washington, D.C. Thirty years ago, Hansen, who is sixty-eight, created one of the world’s first climate models, nicknamed Model Zero, which he used to predict most of what has happened in the climate since. Hansen has now concluded, partly on the basis of his latest modeling efforts and partly on the basis of observations made by other scientists, that the threat of global warming is far greater than even he had suspected. Unless immediate action is taken—including the shutdown of all the world’s coal plants within the next two decades—the planet will be committed to climate change on a scale society won’t be able to cope with. Hansen grew up in Denison, Iowa, and he obtained a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Iowa. From there he went directly to work at GISS, where he studied Venusian clouds. In 1981, he became the director of GISS. He published a paper forecasting increased temperatures in the following decades and his insights were immediately recognized by the scientific community. Mentions Anniek Hansen, Bill McKibben, Michael Oppenheimer, and Spencer Weart. Describes a talk Hansen gave on climate change at the state capitol in Concord, New Hampshire. What is now happening, Hansen said, is carbon dioxide is being pumped into the air some ten thousand times faster than natural weathering processes can remove it. There’s no precise term for the level of carbon dioxide that will assure a climate disaster; the best scientists have come up with is “dangerous anthropogenic interference,” or D.A.I. Hansen estimates the dangerous amount of carbon dioxide to be no more than three hundred and fifty parts per million. The bad news is that carbon dioxide levels have already reached three hundred and eighty-five parts per million. Hansen argues that the only way we can constrain the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to drastically decrease the use of coal. But if Hansen’s anxieties about D.A.I. and coal are broadly shared, he is still, among climate scientists, an outlier. Describes the cap-and-trade system, which Hansen argues is essentially a sham. Mentions the American Clean Energy and Security Act. In order to stabilize carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, annual emissions around the globe would have to be cut by something on the order of three-quarters. So far, there’s no evidence that anyone is willing to take the necessary steps.

Polar cities and Copenhagen and the IPCC appeal will fall on deaf ears? Most prob...

Action on warming is imperative

By R.K. Pachauri

Thursday, Jun 25, 3009

Today, international action on climate change is urgent and essential. Indeed, there can no longer be any debate about the need to act, because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of which I am chairman, has established climate change as an unequivocal reality beyond scientific doubt.

For instance, changes are taking place in precipitation patterns, with a trend toward higher precipitation levels in the world’s upper latitudes and lower precipitation in some subtropical and tropical regions, as well as in the Mediterranean area.

The number of extreme precipitation events is also increasing — and are increasingly widespread. Moreover, the frequency and intensity of heat waves, floods and droughts are on the rise.

This change in the amount and pattern of rainfall has serious implications for many economic activities, as well as for countries’ preparedness to handle emergencies such as large-scale coastal flooding or heavy snowfall.

Some parts of the world are more vulnerable than others to these changes. The Arctic region, in particular, has been warming at twice the rate of the rest of the globe. Coral reefs, mega-deltas (including cities like Shanghai, Kolkata and Dhaka) and small island states are also extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Other negative effects of climate change include possible reductions in crop yields. In some African countries, for example, yields could decline by as much as 50 percent by 2020. Climate change would also lead to increased water stress, which by 2020 could affect between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa alone.

Overall, temperature increases are projected within the range of 1.1ºC to 6.4ºC by the year 2100. In order to focus on this set of outcomes, the IPCC has come up with a best estimate at the lower end of this range of 1.8ºC, and 4ºC at the upper end. Even at the lower estimate, the consequences of climate change could be severe in several parts of the world, including an increase in water stress, serious effects on ecosystems and food security, and threats to life and property as a result of coastal flooding.

There also may be serious direct consequences for human health if climate change is not checked, particularly increases in morbidity and mortality as a result of heat waves, floods and droughts. Moreover, the distribution of some diseases would change, making human populations more vulnerable.

Because the impact of climate change is global, it is essential that the world as a whole take specific measures to adapt. But it is already clear that the capacity of some communities to adapt will quickly be exceeded if climate change goes unmitigated.

To help these most vulnerable communities, it is essential for the world to devise a plan of action to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. Several scenarios have been assessed by the IPCC, and one that would limit a future temperature increase to between 2ºC and 2.4ºC would require that emissions peak no later than 2015 and decline thereafter. The rate of decline would then determine the extent to which the worst effects of climate change can be avoided.

The IPCC also found that the cost of such a strict effort at mitigation would not exceed 3 percent of global GDP in 2030. Moreover, there are enormous co-benefits to mitigation: Lower emissions of greenhouse gases would be accompanied by lower air pollution and increased energy security, agricultural output and employment. If these co-benefits were taken fully into account, that price tag of 3 percent of GDP in 2030 would be substantially lower, perhaps even negative. The world could actually enhance economic output and welfare by pursuing a path of mitigation.

The need for international action, therefore, stems from two important observations arising from the IPCC’s work. First, if we do not mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases, the negative effects of climate change will be difficult to reverse, implying great hardship and possibly danger to mankind and other species.

Second, the benefits of mitigating emissions of greenhouse gases are so overwhelming that this, combined with the prospect of the harm resulting from inaction, makes it imperative for the world to devise an international response and a plan of action.

Given the challenge facing us, the magnitude and nature of which were clearly brought out by the IPCC, the Copenhagen Conference later this year must produce a multilateral agreement that deals adequately with climate change.



R.K. Pachauri, a Nobel laureate, is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and director-general of the Energy & Resources Institute.

COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
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Habitat: The Underground: Annika Lundkvist blogs on underground habitats for the future

http://habitatunderground.blogspot.com/


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3xs-k-jxgpLcoUNMHqDzc63YY4xhvbjixEwFVceJQpbDwEqiDHVtUC6Y5fB0-fdxamy7pOV3F0QtnPjILUOu5MdAjMDj81osxPhk0xrit-lPLfmqHkvDSyMXo3Hx3BYf-uZeg7Wgqv3Y/s1600-h/Golany.png

Friday, June 19, 2009
Subterranean Psychology




“Many of the problems associated with living in subterranean habitats are not technological ones, but rather are related to the degree of social acceptance of the concept and to the individual’s perception of the space.”

-Golany, 1996




(Image from Geo-Space Urban Design, Gideon S. Golany & Toshijo Ojima)





Psychological and physiological issues are not uncommonly cited as one of the “problems” associated with human use of underground space. It is indisputable that technological factors are paramount in the creation of subterranean habitats. As indisputable is the reality that public perception of human's limited role in relation to underground space will persist in the idea of such developments being seen as 'futurist' and visionary or impossible.




Perhaps alongside funding, it is general conceptions of underground space, and notions of where humans are “supposed” to live, that prove to be one of the most constraining factors for acceptance of subterranean models. Fortunately, it seems there is substantial niche interest in subterranean buildings and related projects that would demand a high rate of human occupancy. Marketing these ideas to the masses has never really been a goal anyway.




Moving beyond the psychology of public opinion, however, is the much more relevant range of issues relating to the psychology of actually inhabiting underground space.




Just over 30 decades ago, in 1977, Birger Jansson et al report in Planning of Subsurface Use (Swedish Council for Building Research):




“…there has hardly been any research carried out directly aimed at plotting the implications for human beings of spending time and working underground….

it can be stated that the physiological effect on the human organism of time spent underground has been investigated to a very incomplete extent.”




Such statements can be found mirrored in numerous books and papers devoted to planning and design for the underground since this publication in the seventies.




Research has been conducted in specific niches concerning issues of safety as well as the various physiological and psychological responses of humans working in windowless and/or underground sites. Yet a greater understanding of different human responses to frequent occupation of a subterranean space is still lacking.




What are these range of effects so key to understanding the capacities of humans in their time spent in underground space?




To name a few, claustrophobia, light sensitivity, general fatigue, eye fatigue, disturbance of circadian rhythms, insomnia, headaches. These are just some of the potential ailments and stressors.




Experimental habitation projects for humans in largely underground facilities would offer not only new models of living (and perhaps survival) but also a critical move forward in understanding the rhythm, psyche and physical response of humans in this space. This could serve to further enrich the marriage of underground design concepts with understanding of human psychology, and sometimes complex response, in subterranean space.



Posted by Annika at 1:38 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Who wants to talk about the dark?




What makes you tick? Really truly turns your mind on?


Many of the speculations, perspectives and projects devoted to the relationship of humans and underground space provide the electricity that powers one of the brightest light bulbs of my mind. I don't currently work in any industry that deals with the underground, so I suppose you can say this is a passion, a hobby of thought.




There will be many more entries and they will address real earthly like concerns and constructions. But for now, it's about why I am taking the time to write this. And why and who you the readers are. Perhaps my particular bent on the issue will help you determine whether you continue to follow these entries. Perhaps not. In any case, I am well aware that my perspective usually draws only a specific minority.




Underground homes. Its not something for the masses. Correct.




Most people do not want to live, work or spend any more time than absolutely necessary (for whatever weird reason) underground. Correct.




If you agree with any of these statements, congratulations. You are probably right.




And you probably will not find anything of interest in the following entries, except ideas to protest and balk at as unrealistic.




I address all of this in the beginning of this blog because at some point in my life I had to determine where my energies lay. And I concluded it was not in debating with the naysayers who believe that underground space is an abomination and no human belongs there except maybe to take a subway ride.




There are ample souls who are compelled enough by this idea that part of their life's work is researching, preserving, designing or refurbishing underground spaces for human occupancy. At some point, it became clear to me that there was enough activity out there to prove that I was not alone and there was much work to be done.




In rough statistics, for every ten people I meet, there were nine who thought the very notion of “underground space” for humans was appalling and weird, and one who said “Sign me up.”




The latter did not have acute allergies to sun or society. But something about a well designed, human manufactured, windowless space, appealed to them. If I was crazy, so were they, and that was ok.




But in reality, it's not so crazy. In my defensive days I deplored of people who balked at the very concept of humans using underground space to think of the various windowless spaces that they willingly inhabited , even if for a brief period of time. Cinemas. Museums. Libraries. Transportation networks.




Still, perhaps, that is not enough.




So, if you do not believe in the Underground, have no sense that it plays a critical role in humans real and mythological founding of space, we are still on the surface and there's the door.



Posted by Annika at 6:40 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Myth in the beginning

"They choose the path where no-one goes."




No Quarter, Led Zeppelin




Pinpointing why and when my interest in this theme was born brings me back to one of my earliest loves. Mythology. In my early teens I developed a rather poetic fixation with the mythological character Hades. I hunted through texts for some description of his underworld lair, determined to find descriptions that matched my imaginings. It was the realm of the dead but also the home of a major deity from a fantastical world. Surely there were massive grottoes and underground lakes with water glistening a surreal light. Massive stone thrones for the deity and his consort and of course, natural jewels in the rough abounding everywhere. Thousands of candles lighting the passages and a design scheme that was part Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear and part Underground Deluxe.




I have not yet found the mythological text to match my mind's creation, but depictions in film and other sources have satisfied me well enough. Embarking on a definitive study of the depiction of the underworld in all world mythologies I have not done. Such a study would no doubt bring added glee and relief . I cannot be the only one with such dreams.




The first clear memory, that is connected to an actual space, is of navigating an underground shopping arcade with my family in Hong Kong. I had marveled on the dense urbanity of this place since we arrived and on this hot summer day, the cool retreat of well ordered passages simply made sense. But this was just the surface.....




Fast forward to about a decade later. I'm sitting before my computer. The shopping arcade in Hong Kong is nowhere on my mind. Nor is Hades (at least not on the forefront). I am about to begin a casual digging about online for information on 'the underground.' Serious research would come later. This is, after all, my preparatory step for the production of an academic text. But to begin with, I wanted to simply have fun seeing what was 'out there.'




I was readily and willingly lost for a brief period of time in the abundance of rather bizarre information relating to Underground Space. The Hollow Earth theory, numerous conspiracies about military bases, tunnel networks. The inevitable connections made, in modern and ancient day, about ET's and their operations down under. Numerous threads and publications relating to occult-like or doomsday activity in connection with the underground were too numerous to pore through. As well as distracting.


I had to reel back after a while and remember my objective and buckle down. What I was looking for was evidence and research relating to concrete and real developments in the underground by the hand of humans. Actual buildings. Actual findings. Actual space.




Looking back its no surprise I stumbled on this track to begin with. Besides having been, at the time, not very skilled in precise keyword searches that would allow immediately findings of the type I was looking for (which were soon to come), the reality is that Science Fiction and Fantasy realms are rife with depictions of underground space. The catalogue of underground space created by humans is vast and intriguing, as much so as what the mind of humans perceives our relation to this space to be.




Posted by Annika at 3:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post
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"Many a little makes a mickle." ( 集腋成裘 )

Many a little makes a mickle. ( 集腋成裘 )