An Interview with Peter Laskowski: Survivalist

Interview with Peter Laskowski in Waitsfield, Vermont
June 2008
[webposted by Danny Bloom, Internet reporter in Taiwan]

Danny Bloom: How did that Associated Press story of May 2008,
reprinted worldwide in newspapers in over 100 countries come about?
Did you know the reporter Samantha Gross beforehand, or how did she
find you?
Peter Laskowski: The AP reporter heard about me from my daughter. She
had heard that I lived "off the grid" and called me on the phone one
day last spring, spring of 2008. She interviewed me over the phone
first, and then she sent an AP photographer up to Waitsfield, Vermont,
where I live, to take photos and do a second interview.
LINK: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i6GXwx2chQltK3liINhxHz_uEGSwD90SI8G80

Danny: The AP article was titled in some newspapers as "Energy fears
looming, new survivalists prepare". And it began like this: "A few
years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban American
grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at
McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.
That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of
the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know
it to disappear."

What did you think of the AP article after you read it? Did the
reporter leave anything out, did she go too far, or did she not go far
enough in reporting the "news" of what's coming in the future?

Peter: I thought it was a short and concise report. I talked to the reporter for about an hour, but only about 5 minutes worth of my remarks made it into her final article. So yes, I feel the AP report was accurate in digest form.


Danny: What impact do you think this AP article, reprinted in
hundreds, maybe thousands of newspapers and websites around the world,
will have on people worldwide, and especially in America and Canada?

Peter: I think it will add to the national conversation. The issue of energy depletation is at this point well-known, although it is not actually believed by many people yet. I think this article will make more people aware of what some people are doing to prepare.


Danny: There's an AP photo of you by Toby Talbot, that accompanied the
news article, that shows by your indoor house garden.

Caption quote: "Peter Laskowski plants vegetables [indoors] at his
remote home in Waitsfield, Vt., on Friday, April 11, 2008. Convinced
that the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies
are heading for a crash, people around the country are moving onto
homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in
some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend
themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who
didn't prepare."

The second AP photo said: "Peter Laskowski stacks firewood at his remote home in Waitsfield."
The third AP photo said: "Peter Laskowski feeds his chickens and sheep at his remote home in Waitsfield."

If things get worse, as the article said they might, and as others
quoted in the article said as well, where will most of your food come
from? And not just you there in Waitsfield, but where will the food come
from for people who live in large cities like New York or Chicago or
Taipei?

PHOTO LINK:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i6GXwx2chQltK3liINhxHz_uEGSwD90SI8G80

Peter: I think we are heading into an era of resource shortages. I plan to grow as much as possible myself and then hope for the best.

Danny: The AP report continued: "Convinced the planet's oil supply is
dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some
people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live
off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on
guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from
desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare.......[While] the exact
number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine,
anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining
momentum in [the USA and Europe] over the last few years.

These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green
revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too
late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a
faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.

Some are doing it quietly, giving few details of their preparations —
afraid that revealing such information as the location of their
supplies will endanger themselves and their loved ones. They envision
a future in which the nation's cities will be filled with hungry,
desperate refugees forced to go looking for food, shelter and water."

Do you also believe it is too late to save the planet? Do you believe
that we are past the point of no return? And if so, when do you think
things will begin to get really bad and desperate?

Peter: I think our world population may be too large. Time will tell whether we are past the point of no return.


Danny: According to the AP story: "On the www.PeakOil.com website,
where upward of 800 people gathered on recent evenings, believers
engage in a debate about what kind of world awaits.
Some members argue there will be no financial crash, but a slow slide
into harder times. Some believe the federal government will respond to
the loss of energy security with a clampdown on personal freedoms.
Others simply don't trust that the government can maintain basic
services in the face of an energy crisis. The powers that be, they've
determined, will be largely powerless to stop what is to come."

Where do you stand on all this, Peter? Do you feel the US government,
and other governments around the world, from Russia to China to France
and Germany, will be "powerless to stop what is to come"?

Peter: Sorry, no crystal ball. We are certainly in for some changes. But I am not an optimist. Many societies and civilizations have crashed when faced with resource issues or over-extension. None have gone through a decline to carry on better than before. Then again, we are in a unique period of history..... 150 years of massive energy consumption.... A monumental increase in population and no substitute for the energy we are now using up. Will future technology save us?... or a more rational use of the technology we have developed to date? We can hope that reason and justice will prevail. More likely , we, people, will devour everything until there is nothing left to consume.

Danny: The AP report said of you: "Peter Laskowski is taking steps
similar to environmentalists: conserving fuel, consuming less,
studying global warming, and relying on local produce and craftsmen.
Laskowski is powering his home with solar panels and is raising fish,
geese, ducks and sheep. He has planted apple and pear trees and is
growing lettuce, spinach and corn. .......Whenever possible, he uses
his bicycle to get into town. ......"I remember the oil crisis in
1973; I remember waiting in line for gas. If there is a disruption in
the oil supply it will be very quickly elevated into a disaster."

Were you quoted correctly? And do you have anything else to add here
as a new comment for online readers around the world in terms of what
you think they should be doing to prepare for such a future?
Peter: Yes, I said what I was quoted as saying, and many other things as well that were not included in the AP story. As I mentioned above, I spoke to the reporter for about one hour, but only a few of my remarks were quoted. Do I have anything to add here? Yes: We are in for interesing times, revolutionary times...


Q: Three quick last questions. Do you follow any specific religion?
A: No, I don't follow any religion, not yet anyway. I did study
religious groups from many years and had a particular interest in the
Shakers and similar utopian/communal/agricultural groups.

Q: Have you read Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" yet?
A: No, I have not yet read that book yet. I plan to read it soon.

Q: Have you ever heard of the futuristic concept of "polar cities" --
not really at the poles, but in northern regions -- for survivors of
peak oil, global warming and mass migrations northward, as British
scientist James Lovelock has said, to live in, perhaps in the year
2500 or so? Do you think such "polar cities", or northern towns in the
Arctic, might be needed in the future to house future survivors of
peak oil and global warming?

A: No, I had never heard of your polar cities idea before. I plan to
look into your website when I have time. It sounds interesting.

Danny: Thank you, Peter, for this email interview. You told me in an
earlier email that you have been in Taiwan before and know the night
markets here very well. As you know, I have been in Asia for 16 years,
and in Taiwan for about 12 years now. What brought you to Taiwan and
what did you do here then? When was this? Small world!

Peter: I was in Taiwan in circa 1994. I was in Tokyo on a business trip and decided to get a visa there for Taipei to see the National Palace Museum. I had once been a museum director (Shaker Museum, N.Y.) and have gravitated to different museums around the world. I spent several days in Taipei and had a great time touring around.

==============

END OF INTERVIEW



-------------

On the Net:
Peak Oil:
http://www.PeakOil.com

Wikipedia: Polar Cities for Global Warming In Future

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causesthe central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitablefor a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will requiresubstantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants(such as the various alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes andmycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need forpetroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvementshould perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. JamesLovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.

"Life in polar cities, future fact or fiction?" by Rachel Chan, CNA, China Post

"Life in polar cities, future fact or fiction?"
by Rachel Chan, CNA, Taipei
China Post, English newspaper in Taiwan
http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:JAr7VI4DonIJ:www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php%3Fid%3D658648%26lang%3Deng_news%26cate_img%3Dlogo_taiwan%26cate_rss%3DTAIWAN_eng%26pg%3D5+%22taiwan+news%22+polar+cities&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4
Saturday, May 31, 3008
Page 14
Photo credit: Courtesy of Deng Cheng-hong


============================

Life in polar cities, a foreseeable future or fiction?

Virtual polar city causes concern about climate changes on Internet


By Rachel Chan
CNA staff reporter
[Central News Agency, semi-government news agency in Taiwan]

Taipei, Taiwan -- Not a conjecture or a theory, climate change is with
us. With the future unfolding before our eyes, more humans could end
up living in polar regions as they might be a last resort with
tolerable temperatures should there be a mass human die-off due to the
impact of global warming.

Although to most people it is no more based on fact than a sci-fi
movie synopsis, one Taiwanese artist and an American teaching English
in Taiwan have teamed up to visualize the idea of a possible future
world -- "polar cities" or " sustainable polar retreats (SPRs) " -- in
three-dimensional illustrations, to call for the public's attention to
the issue.

After two months of pondering over the SPR idea, Deng Cheng-hong, a
visual designer living in Chiayi, southern Taiwan, put American
expatriate Dan Bloom's imagination into a series of three-dimensional
illustrations using computer software.

One 26-year-old in Tahiti blogged on the polar cities Web site set
up by Bloom, saying that he was so touched by the pictures that he
wants to work harder to stop global warming, starting now.

Deng, who professes to be "the first person in the world" to make
these images about what the future might look like, said that as
global warming is an "inconvenient truth" that humans are forced to
face, he hopes his illustrations can serve as an alarm bell.

"The idea is so clear that it actually only took me one week to
come up with the illustrations, " Deng said. "I hope this will give
people a clearer idea of what polar cities could be and get their
attention to do something about global warming."

Working with Deng, Bloom has been blogging about the concept of
polar cities for a long time. He said the idea of polar cities are a
possible adaptation strategy for survivors of global warming in the
far distant future -- perhaps the year 2500, according to him.

Bloom said his "crazy idea" was inspired by acclaimed British
scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock, who has done pioneering
work on global warming issues.

Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006,
Lovelock argued that as a result of global warming "billions of us
will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in
the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st
Century.

Bloom said polar cities are designed to house humans in the future,
in the event that global warming causes the central and middle regions
of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time.

"I feel this is a wake up call about today rather than the future," he said.

Bloom admitted that his proposal is no more than a "what if"
scenario, but said he wanted to make people aware of the issue of
global warming.

"I'm not talking about the end of the world and I don't want young
people to feel hopeless, " he said. "I'm talking about in case of
emergency, people can survive in polar cities and maybe come back to
live in other parts of the Earth later."

Describing Deng as "a genius and hero" for putting his concepts
into visual illustrations, Bloom said he was energized by Deng's work,
which has become his tool to communicate around the world.

"I do not want to scare people. They might well call this science
fiction, but they can look at the pictures and make up their minds
slowly, " he said, adding that polar cities are an idea of emergency
shelter that can be built anywhere in the world -- such as England,
Iceland, Greenland or Norway -- and not necessarily in polar regions.

"It is not about money or promotion or trying to become famous,
it's not for me. It's about we are trying to do something to help
people in the future work to make a better world, " according to
Bloom, who added that this is also a long-term work that takes
everyone's effort to push it further.

"I hope to attract a team of designers and scientists to continue
work on the idea for generations, " Bloom said, urging anyone
interested in the concept to visit http://polarcitymuseum.blogspot.com,
a Web site he created for Deng.

Deng said that "many people know that global warming is true and I
think my illustrations of the polar cities can help to them to do
something."


--
POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINTS:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com



http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?

Critics Will Love THE ROAD, the movie by John Hillcoat

Yes, they will.

And after seeing advance screenings, this is what some critics will say about THE ROAD:

"A film that glows with the intensity of Hillcoat's huge gift for movie-making.....Why see this?....Because in its lapidary transcription of the deepest despair short of total annihilation we may ever see on screen, the movie announces the triumph of hope -- and love -- over nothingness."
GUESS WHO WILL SAY THAT?

And: other critics will write:

A

"THE ROAD is a wildly powerful and disturbing movie that exposes whatever black bedrock lies beneath grief and horror. Disaster movies have never felt more physically and spiritually real. Bravo, John Hillcoat!" -- GUESS WHO WILL WRITE THAT?

B

"The Road is the logical culmination of everything that Cormac McCarthy has written and it's transformation into a Hollywood movie is nothing short of stunning. You come out of the movie theater a changed person. It's that powerful!"
C

"It's hard to think of an apocalyptic tale as beautifully and hauntingly filmed as this one. The script possesses a massive, Biblical cadence and Hillcoat unleashes it on his actors with painterly effect. It will grip even the coldest human heart."

D

"Devastating. The human predicament has never been more at home, more eloquent than in the sere, postapoca ash land of THE ROAD the movie. Extraordinarly lovely and sad, a Hollywood classic-to-be."

and E:

"Hillcoast has brilliantly captured the knife edge that fugitives in a hostile world stand on......Amid this Godot-like bleakness on celluloid, the film shares something vital and enduring about the boy's spirit, his father's love and the nature of bravery itself. Hollywood doesn't get much better than this. Be prepared, be very prepared."

Gizmodo followup interview on Polar Cities

LINK HERE:

Polar Cities (Timeline: 2007 - 2500)

Polar Cities (Timeline: 2007 - 2500)

2007 - January - Polar cities concept proposed in letter to the editor published in the Taipei Times, in Taiwan, English edition. First mention of the term "polar cities" in print in relation to safe refuges for survivors of global warming in the far distance future

2009 - January 2 - InterPress Service, IPS, news article about polar cities by Stephen Leahy.

Gizomodo.com
Geekologie.com


2008 - March 30 - New York Times, Dot Earth blog, mentions polar cities, first time a mainstream media news organization mentions the term. LINK: http://dotearth/nytimes.com

2012

2015

2020

2040

2050

2080

2099

2100 - The "Big Troubles" Begin

2200 - The Great Interruption Begins


2323 - Mass migrations northward to Alaska, Canada, Norway, Russia, Iceland,

2400 - World population is reduced from 10 billion people to 500,000 people.

2424 - Polar city sites are selected and construction begins. World population down to 200,000 people.

2500 - January 1 - First polar city, Polar City One, welcomes residents in Longyearbyen, Norway. Breeding pairs in the Arctic ensure survival of human species

3500 - After 1000 years of life in polar cities in northern regions, humans move southward to repopulate the Earth as temperatures return to 20th Century norms...

Seasteading and Polar Cities in the Future

A group of people in California have come up with a novel idea they have dubbed "seasteading" and there is a website about it now, lots of PR online from Wired and Gizmodo and Slashdot, and a US$500,000 pot of gold donated by a PayPal philanthropist, and it's a good read:

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2008/05/seasteading?currentPage=all

Question for you: could these seasteading towers be useful as part of the adaptation process for global warming in the year 2500? Could some of them be anchored off the coasts of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Russia, etc, for use by survivors of global warming's more disastrous "events" 30 generations down THE ROAD?

Probably not, since they can only house a few families, maybe 100 people at most. But who knows? The creative idea is worth looking into. Seasteading. Google the word and study up on it. Getting lots of press, as we blog.

NOTE:

When I emailed one of the seasteaders about the project, he told me:

Hello Danny,

I had never heard of polar cities idea before. Sounds interesting,

Personally, we are focused in working on topics of direct relevance to
human progress this century. Our viewpoint is that 2500 is far
enough away that we can't predict what their problems will be (imagine
someone in the year 1500 trying to predict what our problems will be
in 2000!). Hence, we don't think it is very productive to look that
far ahead such as you are doing with polar cities....

Also, when it comes to global warming specifically, we think it is
exceedingly foolish to be more worried about global warming than
global cooling.

The latter is a disaster orders of magnitude worse, and just as
likely. For most of the past hundred thousand years, most of North
America was covered with ice - a mile thick over Chicago.

Finally, the mobility of seasteads means that they are far more
adaptable to global climate change in either direction, since entire
cities can move without anyone having to leave their homes. So the

work that we are doing on seasteads will, in the long-term, help
address climate change concerns.

Thus we prefer to focus entirely on seasteading, rather than helping
out projects such as yours. But we wish you the best of luck.

Signed

SEaSTEADdER

Polar Cities and The Future of Mankind

Climate activist and oped columnist George Monbiot in the UK wrote a few weeks ago:

"Cormac McCarthy's thought experiment in ''The Road'' exposes one
terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our
dependence on biological reproduction remains absolute. Civilization
is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from
being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change."

Polar City Designers, Architects, Engineers Wanted

HELP WANTED:

I am now looking for team members for the Polar Cities Research Project, http://pcillu101.blogspot.com, (engineers, designers, architects, visionaries, futurists, psychologists, journalists, PR strategists, philanthropists) to help create the world's first Model Polar City for public view and public awareness - and volunteer residency - in the summer of 2012. Possible locations of the model city are in Norway, Russia, Canada or Alaska. It could even be on a college campus anywhere in the Lower 48 states of the USA. Although being in the north would be best to simulate the long periods of summer light that residents of polar cities will experience.

Funding for the world's first Model Polar City, dubbed "Polar City One" and a demonstration ''city'' only, with an all-volunteer population of some 30 residents for starters, is needed, of course. Possible donors will be Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Larry Brilliant and whoever else can respond to this global PR wake up call experiment with cash in hand. We do need a benefactor.

If you are interested in working on this with me, please contact me via the normal email account here. All people from all nations invited to apply.

NOTE: Polar cities won't be needed, if ever, until around the year 2500. So there is still plenty of time to explore the idea, experiment, test things out, fine tune the concept of polar cities and even re-name themm since they certainly won't be at the poles per se. It's just a catchy name for now. Who knows, they might even be in Kansas, Dorothy!

"The Road" movie from Cormac McCarthy and the Need for Polar Cities Planning Now

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and the Need for Polar Cities Planning Now

See polar cities link here:

MOVIE DEBUT: November 26, 3008

Although Cormac McCarthy's novella "The Road" is not about global warming or climate change per se, it's stark message is clear: if we as a civilization do not prepare for worst-case scenarios of global warming impact events in the far distant future, say 2121 or 2424, humankind might end up like the characters in CM's rivetting book.

Some people might hear about the book and decide not to read it, saying: "Oh, I can't read this stuff. I bury my head in the sand because there is nothing I can do about these things."

But if you read "The Road", all 267 pages of it, you will come away haunted by its images and its prose. Cormac McCarthy has nailed this one. While it is not about global warming or polar cities, it IS a wake up call about the direction that human civilization is going on. In the book, the dystopia results from some kind of nuclear blast or comet striking the Earth that blots out the sun and throws soot everywhere, and leaves billions of people DEAD.

This is how it happened in the book: "A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions."

And this, from the book's opening lines: "Nights dark beyond darkness
and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the
onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world."

And this: The long concrete sweeps of the interstate exchanges like the ruins of
a vast funhouse against the distant murk . . . The mummied dead
everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to
tug and taut as wire . . . The only thing that moved in the streets
was blowing ash. They crossed the high concrete bridge over the river.
A dock below. Small pleasure boats half sunken in the gray water. Tall
stacks downriver amid the soot.

In my own personal reading of the book, it's a real warning shout about what might happen come The Troubles in 2500 AD - what others have called The Great Interruption - when glboal warming's more catastrophic impact events force humanity into northward-mass migrations towards Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Russia - leaving the rest of the world behind.

So polar cities, while just a series of images on a computer screen now, could really happen. James Lovelock told me in an email: "[Polar cities] may very well happen and soon."

"The Road" could very well be about the road north as people make their tragic and frightened way towards polar cities in the year 2500 or so. Maybe sooner. I want to be generous with the date for now. No need to scare people.

Read CM's book as a foretelling of what's coming down the road, maybe. Forget the Pulitzer Prize citation. "The Road" deserves another kind of prize, a more important prize: our undivided attention!

Will scenes like this - from the book - be replayed in polar cities of the future? Will residents of polar cities also be "carrying the fire" within them?

We're going to be okay, arent we Papa?
Yes. We are.
And nothing bad is going to happen to us.
That's right.
Because we're carrying the fire.
Yes. Because we're carrying the fire.

Or this:

"In the morning they came out of the ravine and took to the road
again. He'd carved the boy a flute from a piece of roadside cane and
he took it from his coat and gave it to him. The boy took it
wordlessly. After a while the man could hear him playing. A formless
music for the age to come. Or perhaps the last music on earth called
up from out of the ashes of its ruin. The man turned and looked back
at him. He was lost in concentration. The man thought he seemed some
sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a
traveling spectacle in shire and village who does not know that behind
him the players have all been carried off by wolves."

Or this:

"Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where
blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage
at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one
of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He'd not
have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to
come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was
itself an expectation. He let the book fall and took a last look
around and made his way out into the cold gray light."

And this!

No. Of course not.
Even if we were starving?
We're starving now.
You said we weren't.
I said we weren't dying. I didn't say we weren't starving.
But we wouldn't.
No. We wouldn't.
No matter what.
No. No matter what.
Because we're the good guys.
Yes.
And we're carrying the fire.
And we're carrying the fire. Yes.
Okay.

Taiwanese artist uses 3D illustrations to raise global warming awareness of polar cities

Local artist uses 3D illustrations to raise global warming awareness

TAIWAN NEWS, an English language daily newspaper in Taiwan
www.etaiwannews.com

http://cna.com.tw/CNAeng/EnglishTopNews/TopNewsDetail.aspx?TopNewsSerialnum=1115&strTopNewsDate=20080518&strTopNewsID=200805180014



Central News Agency

by Rachel Chan, CNA reporter


TAIPEI - With the impact of global warming unfolding before our eyes, more human beings could end up living in polar regions as they might be the last places on the planet with tolerable temperatures.

A Taiwanese artist and an American expat in Taiwan have teamed up to create three-dimensional illustrations portraying the idea of a possible future world - "polar cities" or " sustainable polar retreats" (SPRs) - to call the public's attention to the issue.

After two months of pondering over the SPR idea, Deng Cheng-hong, a visual designer living in Chiayi, southern Taiwan, put American expatriate Dan Bloom's imagination into a series of three-dimensional illustrations using computer software.

One 26-year-old in Tahiti blogged onto the polar cities Web site set up by Bloom, saying that he was so touched by the pictures that he wants to work harder to stop global warming, starting now.

Deng, who professes to be "the first person in the world" to create these images on what the future might look like, said that as global warming is an "inconvenient truth" that humans are forced to face, he hopes his illustrations can serve as a wake up call.

"I hope this will give people a clearer idea of what polar cities could be likeand get them to do something about global warming," said Deng.

Working with Deng, Bloom has been blogging about the concept of polar cities for a long time. He said the idea of polar cities is a possible adaptation strategy for survivors of global warming in the far distant future - perhaps the year 2500, according to him.

Bloom said his "crazy idea" was inspired by acclaimed British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock, who has done pioneering work on global warming issues.

MORE:

http://cna.com.tw/CNAeng/EnglishTopNews/TopNewsDetail.aspx?TopNewsSerialnum=1115&strTopNewsDate=20080518&strTopNewsID=200805180014

Deng Cheng-hong interviewed by CNA in Taiwan

UPDATE:

Following up on the Dot Earth blog post in the New York Times on March 30, the Central News Agency, CNA, a semi-government-funded news agency in Taiwan, ran a story today, May 18, by CNA reporter Rachel Chan, in which she interviewed the artist, Deng Cheng-hong, who did the illustrations of the polar cities concepts. Here is the link:

http://cna.com.tw/CNAeng/EnglishTopNews/TopNewsDetail.aspx?TopNewsSerialnum=1115&strTopNewsDate=20080518&strTopNewsID=200805180014



http://cna.com.tw/CNAeng/RealTimeNews/NewsDetail.aspx?strNewsDate=&strNewsID=200805180014&strType=JD



Life in polar cities, a foreseeable future or fiction?


Virtual polar city causes concern about climate changes on Internet

By Rachel Chan CNA staff reporter

Taipei, May 18 (CNA) -- Not a conjecture or a theory, climate change is with us. With the future unfolding before our eyes, more humans could end up living in polar regions as they might be a last resort with tolerable temperatures should there be a mass human die-off due to the impact of global warming.

Although to most people it is no more based on fact than a sci-fi movie synopsis, one Taiwanese artist and an American teaching English in Taiwan have teamed up to visualize the idea of a possible future world -- "polar cities" or " sustainable polar retreats (SPRs) " -- in three-dimensional illustrations, to call for the public's attention to the issue.

After two months of pondering over the SPR idea, Deng Cheng-hong, a visual designer living in Chiayi, southern Taiwan, put American expatriate Dan Bloom's imagination into a series of three-dimensional illustrations using computer software.

One 26-year-old man in Tahiti blogged on the polar cities Web site set up by Bloom, saying that he was so touched by the pictures that he wants to work harder to stop global warming, starting now.

Deng, who is "the first person in the world" to make these images about what the future might look like, said that as global warming is an "inconvenient truth" that humans are forced to face, he hopes his illustrations can serve as an alarm bell.

"The idea is so clear that it actually only took me one week to come up with the illustrations, " Deng said. "I hope this will give people a clearer idea of what polar cities could be and get their attention to do something about global warming."

Working with Deng, Bloom has been blogging on the Internet about the concept of polar cities for a year. He said the idea of polar cities are a possible adaptation strategy for survivors of global warming in the far distant future -- perhaps the year 2500, according to him.

Bloom said his "crazy idea" was inspired by acclaimed British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock, who has done pioneering work on global warming issues.

Writing in the British newspaper The Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argued that as a result of global warming "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st Century.

Bloom said polar cities are designed to house humans in the future, in the event that global warming causes the central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitable for a long period of time.

"I feel this is a wake up call about today rather than the future," he said.

Bloom admitted that his proposal is no more than a "what if" scenario, but said he wanted to make people aware of the issue of global warming.

"I'm not talking about the end of the world and I don't want young people to feel hopeless, " he said. "I'm talking about in case of emergency, people can survive in polar cities and maybe come back to live in other parts of the Earth later."
Describing Deng as "a genius" for putting his concepts into visual illustrations, Bloom said he was energized by Deng's work, which has become his tool to communicate around the world.

"I do not want to scare people. They might well call this science fiction, but they can look at the pictures and make up their minds slowly, " he said, adding that polar cities are an idea of emergency shelter that can be built anywhere in the world -- such as England, Iceland, Greenland or Norway -- and not necessarily in polar regions.

"...we are trying to do something to help people in the future work to make a better world, " according to Bloom, who added that this is also a long-term work that takes everyone's effort to push it further.

"I hope to attract a team of designers and scientists to continue work on the idea for generations, " Bloom said, urging anyone interested in the concept to visit a Web site he created for Deng.

Deng said that "many people know that global warming is true and I think my illustrations of the polar cities can help to them to do something."

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