I don’t know how this can be explained purely by the neo-Darwinian idea that the purpose of life is to propagate one’s genes. (Could such architecture be programmed within the genes of a single ant???) And I don’t know how this can be explained without some notion of supra-organism intelligence or mind. Watch and wonder at our world –
– and consider the supra-human mind of which we must be a part. Might there be a dimension to Life with a capital ‘L’ that we forget in our ‘own’, individual lives?
California, as part of its effort to curtail global warming, could allow companies to pay for projects that preserve Brazilian and Indonesian rain forests, according to Bloomberg. The agreement was described as “pioneering” and goes a long way toward tackling the “other” cause of carbon emissions (other than burning fossil fuels) – destroying forests. Indonesia and Brazil are among the world’s top carbon polluters (No. 3 and No. 4, respectively, behind China and the United States) largely because their forests are disappearing so quickly. This agreement could help stop the 20% of global carbon emissions that come from deforestation.
Indonesia, meanwhile, plans to plant 100 million trees in 2009, according to Reuters. Indonesia has already lost 70% of its original forests, and loses enough forest every year to cover Connecticut and Rhode Island (and then some), but it still retains a forest about the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined.
2. Britain Goes All In
Britain became the first nation in the world to set binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that match U.N. targets. The law requires the government to slash emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, according to Agence-France Presse. Under the law, Britain will have to meet new carbon-reduction targets every five years.
3. Coal Is on the Defensive
For years, the norm in environmental litigation has been something like this:
– i. Polluting industry proposes polluting
– ii. Government agencies agree
– iii. Environmental groups sue
– iv. Courts side with environmentalists
Well, there’s a new chapter. In Kansas, where the Democratic Gov. (and one-time purported vice presidential possibility for Obama) Kathleen Sebelius stopped the construction of a coal plant because of the greenhouse gas emissions it would pump into the atmosphere, Sunflower Electric is taking her and her environmental agency to court. The company’s complaint? That its civil rights were violated by the governor’s decision.
4. The U.S. Can Cut Energy Use 20%
A new report lays out a framework for U.S. states to dramatically cut energy use — 20% by 2025. The proposed investments in energy efficiency would save $500 billion over 20 years, cut the need for new energy sources by 50% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically.
So who produced this report? Some radical left-wing conspiracy of economy-killing tree huggers? Nope. Try Bush Administration. The Department of Energy and The Environmental Protection Agency released the report, National Action Plan Vision for 2025: A Framework for Change.
“Change” … Now where have we heard that word recently …?
5. Obama
In a speech delivered via video to a bipartisan climate summit in California, Obama pledged to take strong action to combat global warming. Here’s what he had to say:
– those reasons from 19th November ’08. There’s also the news from 20th November that an environmentally-progressive US Congressman has upended the formerly oil- and Detroit-friendly leadership of the influential Energy Committee. Which is good for Obama’s agenda, and better for the wider world. Even if it does foster the end of the car-manufacturing machine as we know it. Too bad. So long and thanks for all the (dead) fish.
That $3.82 value for poor old McCain is almost exactly the same as the percentage that the polling meister, Nate Silver, gives today for a McCain victory. What to say?
And there was this front page, on yesterday’s Independent, about Obama’s commitment to greening the US economy and spurring job creation via ‘green-collar’ jobs – news that is backed up by Joe Klein from his interview. Klein wrote how Obama has become convinced of the need for a green ‘Apollo project’, stimulating renewable energy development and energy efficiency. You know when someone ‘gets’ the importance and meaning of sustainability when they begin seeing connections between various human activities. The indications are that Obama does, or is in the process of getting it; for example, he recently cited Michael Pollan on how the fossil fuel economy pervades agriculture, and what some of the implications are –
There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy.
With a lump in the throat, what to say, indeed? Assuming he becomes president, then… the change we need is coming, folks. The change we need is coming.
– that from a new blog, Margaret and Helen, set up by two octogenarian friends living in different parts of the USA so they could stay in touch. (The pipeline referred to is a $40 billion, Alaskan natural-gas pipeline – about which, surprise surprise, Sarah Palin has been less than economical with the truth.) The language may be a bit blue – and I may be a bit British for saying so. But this, Helen’s polite request, comes with feeling:
Please take your ridiculous hair, your over lipstick-smacking mouth, your Lenscrafter look smarter glasses and your poorly fitted designer jackets back to Alaska. And when you get there, shove a piece of the pipeline up your considerable ass. I’ll be damned if we’ll put our children’s future in your hands.
Helen was taught how to blog by her grandson, and met her friend Margaret sixty years ago in college. That would have been 1948 – the year President Truman authorised the post-WWII Marshall Plan, the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War began, and the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sarah.
is rising. Between 2006 to 2008, it’s increased in the atmosphere from approximately 1200 to 5400 tonnes. The cause?
[It] is one of several gases used during the manufacture of liquid crystal flat-panel displays
– that’s computer and tv screens to you and me. Even more disconcerting is that it’s also used in the manufacture of ‘thin-film photovoltaic cells’, i.e. solar panels. Harrumph.
Sumptuous World 