Xark!

An energy plan we can believe in

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment.

“Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans – in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen.”

Well. There's a simple, visionary plan from a guy whose life has earned him the credibility and stature to propose it: Reverse the trend in carbon emissions, end our dependency on foreign oil (thereby changing our relationship to the Middle East) and kick start our economy with new industries, new products, new services, new public works projects.

We rallied around Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon in 10 years and to do other grand things, "because they are hard." Well, we've got a better reason to do this: Because it's going to save our sorry asses.

Sure, we'll have the usual people telling us this is just more stupid libtard stuff. And to put it bluntly, screw 'em. They've had their time, and they blew it.

Anyway, I've just started a group at MyBarackObama.com to encourage the explicit adoption of this challenge. I'll post the URL as soon as it gets processed.

Meme 2008: "Control doesn't scale"

Three words of infinite simplicity and value (via Dave Weinberger):

"Control doesn't scale."

Want to understand the convulsion that lies ahead of us? The transitions in economics, technology, management, politics, media and art that must be made if we're to benefit from the new tools? The divisions that animate our "culture war" bullshit sessions? 

Three words: "Control doesn't scale."

Think that's a recipe for anarchy? Think again. Think it's unprecedented? It isn't. Think distributed control is a geektopian pipedream? I disagree.

Human beings have been giving up control in exchange for the expanding wisdom and benefits of freedom for as long as we've been a species, so there's plenty of historical precedent to instruct us on what course to follow. The unprecedented part is actually the rate of change, which means that the challenge in the scaling issue really lies in the feedback loops we imagine. We can't wait around and expect the old culture to vet new ideas for us. We'll have to invent the "new normal" on the fly, and  we'll certainly screw that up a few times.

But this is the central issue. And the other thing history teaches is that the people who have control generally don't like giving it up. So that's our short-term future in a nutshell.

The Mysterious Anti-Recycling Movement

I’m skipping the introductory remarks to this post and cutting right to the action:  Why is it that, regardless of how smart the people who populate a building might be, regardless of how many instruction signs they read, groups of individuals cannot fill recycling bins correctly?  Why is it that when a bin says, “Glass Only,” you will find it filled with paper and plastic coke bottles within a 24 hour period, even if there are plastic and paper bins nearby?  Even if there is a trash can right next to the recycling bin?
 

When there is no trash car nearby, I understand it—I don’t do it, but I understand it.  When the labels are missing, I get it.  Outside of that, what gives?  Is it possible that there are people who for part of a bizarre “anti-recycling” movement?  Has “recycling” somehow become so articulated with the left that one shows one’s right wing credentials by disrupting the recycling bin hegemony? Would someone please explain before I have a complete meltdown?

It's do-able, but it ain't gonna be purdy

Here's the centerpiece rant from Ray McKinnon's 2001 short The Accountant:

It's brilliant, actually. One world, one culture, one corporation, whatever you call it.

First they take way the little man's ability to produce his own food, by devising a system by which he has easy access to credit on easy terms. Once they get him hooked, then they change the rules. Suddenly they want their money and they want it yesterday.

So the farmer works harder, plants more crops, adds more hogs. But then like magic the price drops -- supply and demand, they say. He's offered a hundred an acre for what cost him two hundred to grow! The greater his yield the further he goes into debt with them banking corporations 'til he's drowned by it.

That's when a farming corporation comes in and takes this fella's land, leaving him with no choice but to go into town to work for some manufacturing corporation. Or retail.

But they aint' done with him. 'Cause see boy, this farmer still has his culture, and that scares 'em. His roots, based in independence, even rebelliousness, his country-ness, if you will.

So what do they do about that? Well that's where them multimedia corporations step in. They begin to bombard their new company man with caricatures and stereotypes of hisself. Gomer Pyle, Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hillbillies, Hee-Haw, so on and so forth until finally he can't trust his own reality. He don't know what it is. He starts acting country instead of being country! One day he'll be like Scottsman who puts on his kilt once a year to celebrate his Scottishness!

Until finally this man, this farmer, who once worked on the land and with the land, can be controlled. So he won't question his purpose in making rivets, or sitting in front of a computer screen from 9 to 5 five days a week for 40 years until he gets downsized and dies.

Or worse. Takes his severance pay and retires to Branson, Missouri.

And here's the last line:

If a man builds a machine and that machine conspires with another machine built by another man, are those men conspiring?

This 38-minute film can be had at BuyIndies.com.

Bruce Sterling: Dot-Green

Via William Gibson, here's Bruce Sterling writing in The WaPo on green economics for our "stricken world that bypassed the time for action":

In 1998, I had it figured that the dot-com boom would become a dot-green boom. It took a while for others to get it. Some still don't. They think I'm joking. They are still used to thinking of greenness as being "counter" and "alternative" -- they don't understand that 21st-century green is and must be about everything -- the works. Sustainability is comprehensive. That which is not sustainable doesn't go on. Glamorous green. I preached that stuff for years. I don't have to preach it anymore, because it couldn't be any louder. Green will never get any sexier than it is in 2007. Because, after this, brown will start going away.

Could I return to my first paragraph for a second? That part about me and the crowd of Serbian radicals? Serbia may be the world's single-greatest locale for a professional futurist. Awful things happen there faster than awful things happen anywhere else. The Balkans is a tragic region that denied stark reality, broke its economy, started multiple unnecessary wars, and basically finger-pointed and squabbled its way into a comprehensive train wreck. It suffered all kinds of pig-headed mayhem, all unnecessary.

That's just how the world behaved with the climate crisis, too. The time for action isn't now. The time for action was 40 years ago. Today we live in a stricken world that bypassed its time for action. We have wreaked science-fiction levels of havoc on the unresisting carcass of Mother Nature. The real trouble is ahead of us.

So what's the good part? They never gave up around here. On the contrary: There's a certain vivid liveliness in the way they're scrambling and clawing their way out of yawning abyss. The food is great, the women dress to kill, and sometimes they even laugh and dance.

You don't have to predict the future when you live in it.

Oh, and FYI -- this is what's on Gibson's mind at the moment...

Of course, Gibson says this wasn't the vision he had. "Interstitial. Gotta be interstitial."