Peace, I'm Out

It's been great. I'll see you in the future.

I was blowing up an inflatable kiddie pool and listening to Eli, a hacker from the group MOD who was featured on This American Life for breaking into dozens of high profile organizations, when I decided to write this post. 

(Also, he could be one of the most interesting men in the world to listen to; if you’re interested in breath of fresh life click on this link and skip to minute 38 of the podcast. If you can find out the name of the classical song playing in this podcast, I’ll give you $10. This is arguably the best song ever made, maybe even better than Claire de Lune.)

Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve last posted. I haven’t really been less environmental, perhaps, I’ve even been more into the movement that I’ve ever been before. Yet, I have no new insight to really share with you. If you want to save the planet all you have to do is expend around 6,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent each year. This will make your emissions fit within the Kyoto Protocol targets. If you’re interested in learning how to do that, I’m just a middle man, the good shiza comes from  reading “How Bad Are Bananas?,” by Mike Berners-Lee.

I wish all of you glorious luck on whatever endeavors you may have to live life well. I’m going to take a break for awhile to think about what my next endeavor on the blogosphere should entail. I recognize that I’m too much of a virtual extrovert to hang up sharing what I deem to be valuable insight for long. But now that I know how I, as an individual, and you, as an individual can save the world, I feel a new mission is in the making.

If any of you loyal blog readers have any specific revelations worth speaking of or can tangibly grasp any areas of injustice that you think are worth bringing up, please share. I’d be delighted. See I was born into a family where my father and his brothers always fixed things, and they did so wonderfully. It’s in my DNA to want to fix this government, this world, this GDP first way of life. And now that the biggest puzzle piece, for me, of how to live in a manner in which I coexist with my planet is extant, I say “Peace, I’m out.” I look forward to your prospective readership in other travels for the grand pursuit of happiness.  

Beef pulls boy into tasty vortex

Erin Lee, thanks for being good company and for taking this!

If you're going to fail, you might as fail epically. This is one of two double bacon cheeseburgers eaten at Bob and Edith's Diner. There is absolutely no local sourcing involved here. 

Have you ever wanted to go rogue? Or better yet, have you ever had the urge to spectacularly bomb – to fail in a way that rails against the very skills and instincts that have chiseled out your craft? 

It’s more than a drive for failure, it’s a desire to tank so magnificently that you rip yourself free from yourself. 

Let me tell you about this relationship that I have with bacon cheeseburgers. I know they’re outrageously immoral. Eating one cheeseburger alone equates to roughly the same carbon emissions as drinking a two-month’s supply of tap water.¹ But they’re sooooooooo damned irresistible. I try my best not to eat them. I don’t eat them…don’t eat them…don’t eat them…and then…my world explodes! I don’t just have a bite or a taste, because that would be sheepish. I rebel with a magnitude so violent it sends ecosystem shock-waves all the way to the Sahel. 

Yesterday, I engulfed the carbon equivalent of a ten-or-eleven-month’s supply of drinking water by eating two double bacon cheeseburgers at Bob and Edith’s. Though every bite launched me further from my convictions, it brought me closer and closer to the truth, the madness, and despair.  I love the carnage. The hilarious joke of it all – environmental stewardship is so impossible in the present day. I could recycle for a year and destroy my entire effort by eating a few week’s worth of double cheeseburgers. I could offset my entire drinking water usage for four years in one road trip to Richmond.² Only in today’s world can such beautiful chaos go so vastly unnoticed. 

The devil is a double bacon cheeseburger.

Mike Berners-Lee in his book, “How Bad Are Bananas?” has come up with a figure for determining about how much carbon emissions lead to a death somewhere around the world. It turns out that an individual could wipe out a family by taking 30 round-trip international flights this year.³  

I love the carnage. It’s truly American. When we fail, we fail epically. We send ripple effects that tear down the world. Our financial crisis ripped apart Europe and stoked the fire for the Arab Spring. Our carbon footprint is submerging Maldives, the Netherlands, the Southwest Pacific, New York, and San Francisco.  

Yesterday, I lost to my impulses, but I loved it as it was happening. I thought, "Fuck it. Let’s destroy something beautiful.” I knew about the maladies of the beef industry – the hormone injections, the genetically modified cow feed, the methane volcanoes, the illegal immigrant labor force, the pink slime offshoots, the total and utter moral depravity that is systematically perpetuated by one small sliver of the American lifestyle. But I ordered the beef anyway. Twice. Sometimes, I choose to be evil. Death in Morocco tastes like paradise along Columbia Pike. 

1 Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. A burger releases the equivalent of 2.5kg of carbon. A year’s supply of tap water for a U.S citizen releases the equivalent of about 23kg of carbon. 

2 Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. A year’s supply of water for one person is the same as a 27-mile drive in an average car. 

3 Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Eleven round-trip, first class flights from L.A. to Barcelona has a climate change impact that equates to the death of one individual.

Ecologically clothes-minded

Above is $32 worth of second-hand glory.

There’s a system of bike paths that cuts through Northern Virginia, connecting the outlying burrows of DC to its city center. This time of year the path is draped with dramatic bursts of color, popping from the Magnolia trees, Cherry Blossoms, and other varieties of splendor I have yet identify. Without getting too Tolkien on you with the landscape, suffice it to say rain really brings out the color. If you’ve ever read the Celestine Prophecy, then you’ll understand how the colors of Northern Virginia’s landscape emanate beyond their spatial parameters.

Anyhow, I went shopping in Crystal City today after a four mile longboard in the rain with Ileana and her best friend Lydia. Shopping and I are pretty much incompatible. If I do go, it's about twice a year in a “let’s get in and get the hell out” time of mindset. But today was a special occasion. I shopped consignment and the proceeds went to the Junior League of Washington. 

If you’re ever contemplating shopping for clothes, I highly recommend consignment.  It’s a thrill to think about how much money you’ve saved – I got two pairs of casual pants, three dressy shirts, a pair of socks, and two kitchen towels for $32. But even better than the money, and the charity, was the environmental perk of it all. Because I bought used clothes, greenhouse gasses weren't emitted in the production of new clothes, carbon expended in the clothes' transport was minimal (items were donated by individuals of the charity hosting the event, so transportation merely involved getting those items to the event) and I didn’t add to the conversion of natural resources into consumer goods. 

According to a BBC article, “it takes ten times more energy to make a tonne of textiles than it does a tonne of glass, and when you throw wool and cotton clothes into landfill, they produce methane.” Methane is estimated to have a warming effect about 25 times as great as CO₂, according to the article.

Climate change: here to stay?

  

On Friday March 9, during a record day of warmth, Ileana takes in the scent of a blooming Magnolia by the Washington D.C. Smithsonian Castle.

It’s here guys. Global warming is no longer intangible. Throughout the United States, over six thousand heat records have been set this March. In the past few decades, extreme weather events like heat wave, storm surge, sea level rise and flooding having become have become more prevalent and with higher intensities. Between global population rise, standard of living increases, static economic infrastructure, and political malaise, humans have emitted more carbon dioxide in the last 50 years than throughout our entire existence and are having great difficulty stopping the trend.  

Some of these things you’ve heard, you know, and like me are searching for the answers or waiting for realistic measures to reverse climate change. The environmental world is now pushing something called adaptation, to circumvent the politics and overall taboo issue of climate change. Adaptation recognizes that our climate is constantly changing and that strategic responses to these changes are necessary to preserve the earth’s life systems. Yet, less psychologically damaging than climate change, which is embedded with the difficult truth that human life systems are causing the Earth’s climate to change, adaptation is value neutral and doesn't fault humans.

It notes that our climate is changing and will continue to change, and that the impacts of climate change are affecting our earth’s systems and these effects are predictable within certain intervals. In other words, there is no way to ascertain exactly what will happen to our earth’s systems, but there is enough of an understanding to plan for a probability of events, take action, and then continue to adapt a coherent strategy for a given earth system. 

I have great hope for our species, but less hope for our federal governing apparatus. Environmental strides, such carbon accounting, local and statewide greenhouse gas compacts, and robust environmental networks, have emerged despite climate change censorship in the Bush regime, and increased oil drilling during the Obama administration. Meanwhile non-profits are fueling an environmental awareness that’s spreading like wildfire among consumers, and some of the corporate world is responding to the fervor by supplying sustainable products, gridlock in Washington is preventing much needed and eagerly awaited environmental legislation to incentivize the rest of the business world and the major utilities to bring us to the energy future we’ve been envisioning for the last half century. 

Check out this podcast on adaptation.

 This is just on feel, but once China surpasses the United States in renewable energy supplied per capita (I’m thinking 2020-2025) and signs the Kyoto Protocol or an equivalent, the federal government will get its act together.

From the trenches

Photo taken by GMU Associate Professor Todd La Porte

 

Embracing Jetson-like technology, our class- conferenced with UC Berkley PhD Student Esther Conrad about climate adaptation strategies for watersheds.

Loyal blog readers, I promised a post from the trenches. Grad school is basically one enormous bowl of Pho. You can see that there’s good stuff in it, but it requires so much effort getting through the boiling brothy stuff that when your finally there you say “fuck it, just give me some ice cream.” 

Alright, let’s start this post over, because grad school has nothing to do with Vietnamese soup.

I’ve learned a lot, and it may take a couple of posts, but I want to disperse some pearls of knowledge, for your benefit. 

The first thing is, though the U.S. government sucks fuck at being able stave off any sort of environmental problems, state and local governments are kicking ass and taking names in the environmental arena. “To date more than 700 American local governments and nearly all state governments have engaged in some form of climate change policy making” (U.S. Conference of Mayors). 

And get this, states are working toward the big picture, capping carbon emissions. “Twenty-one states are actively involved in establishing regional zones for capping and trading carbon emissions from electrical utilities” (Rabe 2008b; Pew Center on Global Climate Change 2007).

There are some big ideas at work. Though a backlog of info is required to qualify this next statement, it gets at the general trend of dealing with environmental issues. The federal government is at an impasse when it comes to climate change, any sort of overarching legislation that the government could pass won’t happen (A) because its political suicide to have your name attached to anything containing the phrase “climate change” (I’ve got to thank our Fox “News” viewers for that one) and (B) because at this point anything the government actually did pass could actually hinder the environmental movement. This is because it would probably be too soft. Any bill that actually makes it through Congress comes out on the other side so badly hacked up and altered that it lacks any substance and bears little resemblance its original form. I wouldn’t want a federal “dud” to restrict the eco-fury of the glory states like Oregon or California, which set the agenda for the rest of the degenerate states out there.

  ***Read following paragaph for an example, or skip following paragraph if you have Steve Bert ADHD***

(I’m thinking of what happened under California’s lead, when fourteen states banded together to win a U.S. Supreme Court case designed to force the federal government to allow states the discretion to establish the world’s first carbon dioxide emissions standard for vehicles. Bush originally rejected California’s waver before the successful collective effort put him in his place. If the federal government has any role besides getting overturned it would likely err on the side of being too soft to have any meaningful ecological impact. For those of you environmentalists who think Obama is on our side, please realize he operates under the guidelines of economic primacy and has already showed his hand many times with his eagerness to drill.) 

With state and local governments circumventing our sham Congress and our president who is caught in the web economic primacy, we’ve got the stage set for our current framework for understanding and dealing with environmental issues: climate adaptation. 

This post has been a long one so we’ll get to that goodie soon. 

Ciao and farewell for now, 

Steve

Call me lazy, but why should I work another day in my life?

 I want to live in a world where Rosie Jetson does the chores. (Image provided from google images.)

Is anyone else out there pissed off about the lack of coordination in overall technological advancement? Technology should be leading us to working less, not working more. 

If we had an awesome socialist government like Sweden, we could be directing our businesses to innovate for social benefit.  Robots could handle all the menial crap that we have to do each day and in the meantime we could live life well. 

So I know a lot of people have this ingrained notion that hard work is part of the American spirit. It’s this unspoken right-of-passage; without putting our noses to the grindstone we’re somehow not being patriotic. But why not work smarter? If we spent less time laboring over things that we could essentially write-off through new software and hardware applications, we could develop to our full capacities. 

Back in Shakespeare’s day, people learned and shared knowledge through the application of all sorts of mnemonic devices. They had to memorize large quantities of info to share with others, because books, pamphlets, and shared knowledge through writing was expensive and not readily available. 

Then came the printing press, and not only did people no longer have to sit and copy texts by hand, they didn’t have to devote large volumes of time memorizing mnemonic devices to share stories that could now readily be shared through written word. 

Yesterday we were on the verge of that next printing press. Software could’ve been the text directing machines to carry out the processes unnecessary today, much like memorizing mnemonic devices was replaced by the Gutenberg Press in the past. 

But our system is so locked into personal wealth creation that we miss out on personal fulfillment. I want to live in a country where it is a good thing when automation takes away someone’s job, where teleconferencing takes away the need to go to work, and people can have robots hold up their “Cash for Gold” signs. 

The world is never at a dearth of frontiers to be breached. If we had universal unemployment we could beautify the landscape, make awesome board games like Co-opoly, build treetop villages like those on Endor, clean up our rivers and lakes to the point where we could actually drink from them, or even learn how to play the piano or tuba. 

Anyhow, thanks loyal blog readers for keeping it real. I can’t wait for the future, when writing  a software program will be as easy  as writing a blog post.

Visions of an Oneironaut: ‘Go forth and be scrappy’

This was borrowed from a dream exploration image search.

Dreams are so telling, yet as circumstantial as the snapshots our minds glom onto when we rouse from them. Earlier this week I dreamt that I had been slipped LSD in a beverage. I got to see my world go Technicolor and I felt like I could pick apart the essence of the world around me. In yesterday’s adventure, I was in coven of business students tucked away in a secret library in a prestigious university’s basement. Before class, I’d studied the background of my professor and found a pattern correlating his pay increases as a professor to jobs switches he’d made after teaching for a bit of time. 

(He’d teach for a while then get a corporate job. Teach somewhere else for higher pay and then work somewhere else for higher pay, and then get an even higher paying teaching job after that.) I realized after I woke up, that he was gaming the market to earn faster pay bumps.

How is this relevant? Hold on…I promise.

In my dream of being in this class, most of the other students in class were asking the professor for his connections to life in the fast-line, but I wasn’t. The instructor asked me why I was there. Another student chimed in, “he’s an environmentalist and wants to…” So I cut her off and said, “That’s right. I am. I want the environmental movement to have the scale and intensity of the best of anything.” He looked at me quizzically, and I clarified jokingly. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that I’m an environmentalist, because now you won’t take me seriously. Just pretend I didn’t tell you. In order to be effective at this it’s best if no one knows.”

So anyhow, what I realized about this dream was that, one, yes it’s entirely true. In order to change the world you have to keep it hidden. No one wants the gravity, the mess, the comparative analysis to how they’re actively living their lives. This is why the professor was actively switching from instructing to working in the corporate world. He’d loved the prestige of teaching, but couldn’t get access to teaching at elite institutions or make the wage he desired without climbing the ladder through corporate “experience.” (He had to work in the corporate world to build the currency to teach in the elite world.)

So, for those of you that buckled your seatbelts and hung on for the ride. Here’s my point and the point of the dream. If you really want to do something – you have to think about all of the avenues to get there. This professor of mine in my dream, could have stayed at his first college, doing what he loved, teaching. But he never would have professed to the student group he’d hope to reach, nor earned the wage he was fit for earning. He had to game the system to get there. The same is true for the environmental movement. Though I love efficiency, wind turbines and solar panels, geothermal installations, bikes, and public transportation, the rate at which these items are creating an infrastructure is not fast enough to counteract our current construct. Population, deadweight loss of our global society (inmates, refugees, etc) and our brand of employment are the real items to adjust. 

Anyhow, I know this is a long post and not necessarily in the style that I take traditionally, but I wanted to treat you loyal blog readers with that message from the dream world. Alas, go forth and dream big, but be scrappy. If you want to invent a new spaceship you may have to grow bamboo and sell furniture. After a decade you may have sold enough furniture to buy the necessary materials for your spaceship.

Drill Obama Drill

Watch Obama's State of the Union Address by clicking on the video above.

I came back from my first day of class at George Mason feeling pretty excited. Our political climate has been more conducive to justice and the everyday Schmendrick has been getting their fair shake. Europe has pledged to stop using Iran as its source of oil and the embargo will begin fully in six months, effectively cutting Iran’s oil sales by 20 percent. (Assuming Latin America and China don’t fill the void).

Anyhow, with the Keystone XL Pipeline permit being denied, catch limits on fish being carved out, and NOAA being put into the Department of Interior as it should have been in the 1970s, I thought that things were looking pretty good for us environmentalists out there. Then I read the State of the Union. (I wanted to watch it, but it turns out if you miss the State of the Union and there’s damn punditry going on afterwards, all the online sources stream to the damn punditry.)

So it turns out that Obama’s energy plan is to open up 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. He also wants to keep launching into using natural gas. Apparently the US is endowed with a 100 year supply of natural gas. (By the way we possess two percent of the world’s oil reserves.) Anyhow, I can understand why it makes sense to drill here, and though I am an environmentalist, I get the pinch we’re facing right now for oil and the problems that arise from funding oil despots overseas. However, I think Obama is a coward for not even mentioning the responsibility we face for climate change. Re-election’s got him backed into a corner and whimpering. 

If I were him, and I had no reasonable alternative but to open up our offshore oil wells, at least I would make a trade of some sort. I’d also bring home the fact that this measure is dire and only being done as a short term concession for a global crisis and offer up a trade.  He could have used this moment to start the first stages of a cap-and-trade system, where carbon emissions are traded as a commodity and their revenue goes toward funding a renewable energy system. He threw an ace card away. 

In his defense, Obama is pushing to expand clean energy. He aims to double US investment in clean energy (which isn’t much comparatively) and provide enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 3 million homes.

Ahhh, I want to love the guy, but he just lost a lot of momentum that he recently accumulated. It didn’t have to be that way. 

I highly recommend reading the State of the Union Address.

Poltical swagger, environmental victory

  Porpoises rejoice in a celebratory game of "walabanlubber," a marine game with its closest equivalent being the North American game of "bash paw." Porpoises attempt to be the first to strike each others' dorsal fins. If you're interested in something of relevance please read below.

Obama has been on a roll lately outwitting the Republican Congress. It started with the recess appointment of Richard Cordray and culminated yesterday when he denied TransCanada the permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline.  Where once, Obama seemed caught in the web of Congressional stagnation, he has really come into his own, not only showing that he is capable of sidelining an ineffective Congress, but also showing that he can take a punch and roll with it. 

The Republicans had high ground only three months ago when the State Department was left in a bind determining whether or not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The Pipeline would create somewhere in the ballpark of 6,000 jobs according to the consultant, Cardno Entrix, which performed the cost-benefit analysis and the environmental review for the State Department.  Basically the State Department, with Obama’s final approval, had to determine what was more important 6,000 new jobs or the environmental health of our nation. 

Environmentalists saw the pipeline for what it would be, game over for fight to abate climate change. Tar sands extraction is extremely detrimental to any vegetation at ground level, and the refining process itself is extremely energy and carbon intensive. Carbon emissions from tar sands are 20% more concentrated than traditional petroleum emissions. So not only were environmentalists enraged about the choice of adding another fossil fuel to our nation’s energy portfolio, we were livid as hell about the added concentration of carbon from tar sands. 

Anyhow, three months ago, our nation’s credo was jobs, jobs, jobs at all cost. It still very much is so. But, because of a bonehead political power play by Boehner and his bunch, Obama got let off the hook.  When the Republicans wanted to ex the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, Obama was in trouble. The Republicans stalled and almost killed the extension by first voting against it. But eight days before the tax cut ran out, Boehner called the Republicans back into session and voted for the two-month extension - with a few strings. 

One of the strings attached was that Obama had to make a decision about the Keystone XL pipeline before the upcoming presidential election. Here’s the stroke of genius in it all. Because the Republicans gave an arbitrary deadline on making a pipeline decision, Obama didn’t have sufficient time to make the required environmental review. Though he initially was open for suggestion from those for and against the pipeline, he now had no choice but deny the permit because he couldn’t perform an adequate review. 

If any of you watch the West Wing, what’s unfolding today is a textbook example of one side of the political spectrum getting too cocky and impatient. Instead of strangling the Democrats with grace, the Republicans just shot themselves in the foot with a huge tactical blunder. 

I love it. Finally we have a ballgame for America, not just a stymied Congress and a disenchanted citizenry.

Carbon, carbonara, a dance of destiny

One day, Ileana Vink and I will become off-the-hook Lindy Hoppers like the ones in this video. But until then I will be happy being a swing enthusiast. See how swing relates to this post by reading below.

 

I live my life building for moments too immense to fade, too stark to be blurred by recollection. But even as I do everything in my power to build up to these moments, it’s all too often the extemporaneous ones that pull me in and infuse me with their providence. 

I opened the mail on January 14, to find a card from one of my best friends. Hector, an enigmatic blend of financial pragmatism and glorious romanticism, had given me an Amazon Gift card to purchase “Switch: how to change things when change is hard.” This book takes our “Predictably Irrational” habits and offers constructive outlets to counter their bad influences. (This gem is going to rock my world and right in the heart of resolution season!) But it gets better, along with the Amazon card, Hector wrote the following, “…and you can take solace in your green way because I’m gifting you .89 metric tons of CO₂ emissions. After some shoddy math, I determined .89 was enough for the production of the book and transport to your home.” Hector you’re wonderful, and well studied! The carbon offset certificate came from carbonfund.org. (If you need any financial or economic advice email Hector at 1hector.marquez@gmail.com. He’s going to be wildly rich and perhaps one day he will be the chairman of the Fed.)

This was just the beginning of the sentiment. I also got Janelle Monáe’s cd from my long-lost Swedish friend Dan. Okay, he’s not really long-lost, nor Swedish, but we took a couple of Swedish classes together, shared a bond of wanderlust, and if all goes well Dan will be in Japan by 2013. Anyhow, he used to live in DC with me and now he’s back in Chicago, hence the long-lost. If you want to learn perfect French, intermediate German and Swedish, or meet my vote for “most likely to create a viral youtube series,” email Dan at dkillack@gmail.com. 

“Where’s the providence?” you ask. I’m getting there.  

On Saturday, January 14, I was sitting at my desk reading “Beijing Jeep,” trying to get a head-start for my Culture, Organization, and Technology class when I get a call from Ileana. “…I’m picking you up at 7:15! Wear clothes that you can move in…but make sure they’re kind of nice.” 

At 8:05 pm I was staring at two concentric rows of people in a large auditorium with wooden floors. A guy in a blue parka was in the middle of the concentric circles sharing jokes with dance instruction.  My  beautiful woman took me out for some swing dancing. In case you don’t know this about me, I find swing to be the nuclear energy of dancing. It’s the end-all, be-all, gateway into glory. From swing comes jitterbug and LINDY HOP. It’s fun as all getup, and one day Ileana and I will be pulling out back flips on the dance floor.

The thing about swing dance and carbon credits, is that they are the absolute resonation of true life. Simply put, they make life better for everyone involved. Ten years ago, in the United States, the environmental movement was on the fringe. The impacts of our everyday decisions were hardly thought about and broad measures of sustainability were hardly viable. Now our environmental consciousness has grown so widespread that carbon credits are up for purchase, new public buildings have to be LEED certified, and food is sought to be local or organic. Everyday people are becoming everyday heroes, and our nation is getting closer to threshold of sustainability. 

On the weekend of January 14 and 15, I celebrated my birthday, but more than that, I got a chance to celebrate true life and happiness. In addition to the dancing, Ileana made me a bacon feast with locally sourced meat. I know I’m being braggy here, but holy shit it was incredible and guilt free. She’s the kind of cook that makes carrots seem exotic and comes up with never-made-before-deserts during rush hour traffic. Hands off gentlemen, she’s mine! Anyhow, I won’t be able to give the bacon feast its proper acclaim. See what she has to say about it. 

In summary, when the people in your life make an effort to make your life wonderful it makes living take a new form – think voracious, bodacious, elations. The people in my life not only held me in their thoughts, they helped aid me on my quest to true life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Thank you for those of you who held me in your thoughts on my birthday. May sustainability rush to the fore. 

Also, a quick shout out to my Mom and Dad, who have been with me every step of the way to enrolling in Public Policy at George Mason. Because of them, I have a chance to one day make broad environmental brush strokes in the spirit of a Teddy Roosevelt, James Lovelock, or John Muir.

Beating Scandinavia for once!

Image borrowed from Dave Granlund. Thanks Dave!

 Though this comic pokes fun at NOAA, I poke them with laud, praise, and merry sentiment. Data collected by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration made an unprecedented move to preserve fisheries possible.

Hello America I’ve been dreaming of!!! Did anyone catch the headlines in the Environmental section of the Washington Post Monday??? Okay probably not, since most of you loyal readers hail from Chicago, but here goes:

An unprecedented move to preserve U.S. fisheries

“In an effort to sustain commercial and recreational fishing for the next several decades, the United States this year will become the first country to impose catch limits for every species it manages, from Alaskan pollock to Caribbean queen conch.”

 ...I’m staring at my Swedish flag in a glorious disbelief, because the U.S. is poised to do something more environmentally responsible than the Scandinavian contingent. Could this be the start of a new era? And get this…the policy hails from Dubya’s tenure and was finalized with Obama’s backing. I’m talking at Republicratic glory here. To read more click here (then zoom in).

So with this bit of scrumptious happening in the wake of Obama’s recess appointments and on the same day of Obama’s chief-of-staff announcing his sign-off, I’m starting to get all excited about election season. 

Only last month I would have argued with my every that going to the polls was a waste of time, and worse yet, a waste of your carbon footprint. However, I rescind that belief now. Obama’s declared war on Congress! His cabinet is repositioning to handle the upcoming debate over how to pay for the payroll tax cut. It’s crazy exciting. And by the way, to hell with Congress! I saw enough filibustering from the Red Seats during my first summer here in D.C. to last two lifetimes. I’m stoked that Obama is unleashing a bit of executive command from the oval office. 

Anyhow, go U.S. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for providing data on catch limits and enacting sound policy. 

Happy Tuesday, World.

Ripples of intrigue

Space elevator graphic provided by wikipedia.

My suspicion is that we all dream to do great things. Some of us aspire to build marvelous structures that send ripples of intrigue through our fellow citizens. Some of us dream to conquer the unknown and live life on whim, tasting Gaia’s offerings without being held in check by a daily grind or compromised by a stifling economic situation. 

My suspicion is that our current technological grasp could create a near boundless world. We could solve climate change with two giant strokes: a nuclear energy infrastructure paired with a space elevator. What about Japan? A Space Elevator; that’s entirely impractical. Every great puzzle has incredible resistance and challenges, though with enough willpower our nation and world could do anything. 

Sanctions are working on Iran, Obama bested Congress with his recess appointments, 1.2 million jobs have been created since the bottom of the great recession. Things are starting to turn around right here in the United States. 

It’s not that far of a stretch to foresee an electric fleet of cars fueled by nuclear energy in the future. It’s not that far of a stretch to see a massive population stabilization. Brazil and most of Latin America have had their number of children shrink from 6.0 to 2.3 from the 1960's to the present. We could be trending well!

People live at this moment in history with the necessity to work. Our livelihoods depend on a wage that loosely correlates to our time being put into some form of work. That could cease to be the case in the future. Technology could be manipulated in such a way that our subsistence functions in society are met, and our purpose could transform from finding a career to finding happiness.   

I will be attending classes again soon. Come January 24, I will be enrolled in George Mason University’s Climate Change Policy and Governance course and it’s Culture, Organization and Technology course. I will keep you updated on any insights gained from these courses. If all goes well I will get my master’s in transportation, policy, operations and logistics, keep my soul intact, and get working on shaping a world where we can strive for happiness. 

Loyal blog readers take care, and may your New Year’s wishes start coming into fruition.

Jeff Zeiss drew the phenomenal picture that denotes the onset of the Badassazoic Era.

Happy New Year loyal blog readers! This is the year where anything is possible. In fact, we may all go extinct at the end of 2012. (I actually have $50 bet going that I will collect in 2013 as long as “life doesn’t change as we know it.”)

Anyhow, this year also brings in a little over a year of blogging! I’ve taken one walk around the sun in the shoes of an eco-reformer. Though my carbon footprint has gotten bigger, and I’ve eaten more meat this year than last, I’m actually progressing. (I’ll get into that.)

Thank you loyal blog readers for your support. Today’s post is about the 11 environmental strides of 2011 that I found to be most significant in my quest for true life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s also about the goals for the New Year. I wish you the best for 2012.

Below is a long mess of text. It may get shopping list-ish quick. In a nutshell if you want to feel really good about life, join the Kyoto Protocol as an individual, fight detrimental energy sourcing, and embark upon an homage to your personal Mecca.

2011’s Eleven:

1)      “SIGNING” THE KYOTO PROTOCOL: Instead of waiting for our government to get its act together, I decided that as an individual it was time for me to sign the Kyoto Protocol. By taking last year’s global population of 6.48 billion individuals and dividing it into 20 billion tonnes, the acceptable level of carbon emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, I found that each individual could emit around 6,424 pounds of carbon last year. (As the global population grows that number shrinks.)

2)      TRACKING TRANSPORTATION:  By tracking my driving and flight miles, I was able to tangibly grasp how much carbon dioxide I emitted into the atmosphere this year through transportation. I emitted 4,268.48 pounds of carbon driving and about 2,069 pounds of carbon flying. I now have a transportation baseline to best in 2012! 

3)      PROTESTING THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE: Joining 12,000 nationwide protestors, I became one of the links in the human chain around the White House, November 6, to stand in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline’s proposed route has been suspended and is in the process of being rerouted because of Nebraska’s vehement opposition to the pipeline crossing over an important aquifer. Expect another huge protest soon. As a concession to Republicans for railroading through the payroll tax cut, Obama will have to make a decisionregarding the pipeline before the 2013 election. 

4)      GETTING INTO GEORGE MASON’S SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY: I’ve been looking to make some serious advances in the environmental movement, and George Mason’s master’s program could be the start. I’m taking courses in transportation policy with a smart growth bent. In 2008 our transportation sector was responsible for around 33 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation policy is an area where I could potentially kick ass and take names. 

5)      TAKING TRIPS INTO GAIA’S VAST BEAUTY: I’ve discovered a happiness bubble, found true life in the myriad of stars above Idaho’s Thompson Pass, and walked where some of the world’s greatest minds got lost in the beauty along the Appalachian Trail. The pristine world is so immensely glorious. I could get lost in her majesty. I love that even our concrete urbanscapes are now trending toward artistic bio-infusions.  

6)      HONING IN ON ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: With the launch of Envirowire, I’ve been proactively working to grasp our world’s environmental trends and make them accessible to you, loyal blog readers. Knowledge is power, and information is the arsenal. In 2012 I’m looking to catalogue this information in a more user friendly format.

7)      BIKING OR BOARDING TO WORK: “You take your car to work, I’ll take my board…” Weezer hit the nail right on the Schlobodan.  I’ve found my life so much less stressful and have also stayed in much better shape by biking or taking my longboard to work. I’ve done well at sticking to this every day of the work week except for Tuesdays, where I must pick up Food bank supplies for our site. This has saved up to 112 miles and 90 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. 

8)      BECOMING A GREEN ENERGY PURCHASER:  I opted into Dominion’s Green Power program. The program costs one cent more per kilowatt hour, but it puts the extra revenue generated into renewable energy projects that will soon connect to its power grid. 

9)      BECOMING FOOD CONSCIOUS: Watching and reading Food Inc. was a great start for understanding the widespread atrocities of agribusiness and factory farming. For a moment in time I tried to dumpster dive to remove food from the waste stream, but I soon found I was stealing from local charities and stopped. At work, when we get unpopular foods from the Food Bank, I try to send them home with the kids, but if they won’t take the foodstuffs I eat them, so they don’t get landfilled. I started going to a farmer’s market last summer that accepted foodstamps and I look to continue to do the same this year. 

10)   ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION: As part of an AmeriCorps service project about 30 of us (Americorps members, Greenbrier Learning Center staff, kids, and their family members) took part in an environmental beautification project, in other words a trash pickup, at Barcroft and Glencarlyn parks in Arlington, Virginia. The kids at the Virginia Gardens site learned about the water cycle and the Potomac Watershed. During Greenbrier’s summer program the kids took part in some experiential learning with Longbranch Nature Center, as a Master Naturalist showed how insects fit into their habitats. 

11)   VOWING TO MAKE THIS DECADE THE BADASSAZOIC: When I returned to Chicago for my first winter break, with stories of Ileana adventures and life out east, I sat down with my friend Jeff and under the oath of supreme friendship vowed to make this decade the best decade of our lifetimes. He shortly thereafter quit his fulltime job, and I ramped up PlanetWisely. Next year will be year two in the Badassazoic. To living life well.

Now that you’re all ready to die because of the length of this post, I promise that it will end soon. But as the end of the year is a time of reflection, the onset of a new year is the time for anticipation. If you have any environmental subjects you think that I should explore please let me know. Here are my goals for 2012.

o   Post a “route to influence policy” map which shows the most effective route to improve the US’s domestic energy policy

o   Learn about the carbon impact of the following and convert it into CO₂ pounds emitted:

§  Water usage

§  Breathing

§  Recycling

§  Garbage collection

o   Meet the Kyoto Protocol – 5,900 pounds of CO₂ emitted during the year

o   Learn about the ratio of oxygen created vs. carbon released in the life cycle of plants and trees

o   See 10 new natural places

o   Learn the top five ways to cut back greenhouse gas emissions our transportation sector

o   Make my content more applicable to the everyday lives of all the good people out there