So the day we turned off our lights for an hour has come and gone. So what? Organizers are claiming Earth Hour to be a huge success, as power usage did drop dramatically in several places (5-8% in Toronto, over 10% in Sydney, 100% in the Phillipine city of Zamboanga, where an hour-long brownout was simply imposed by the power utility). The stats seem rosy indeed - the Sydney savings (1000MW) were equivalent to shutting off two large generating stations, or taking around 50,000 cars off the road. A few days ago, I had Earth Hour explained to me as something that would bridge the gap between awareness and action, letting people see the impact individuals are able to have. Accomplishing this is definately as necessary as it is difficult, so it’s hard for me to be too critical, but I really don’t feel that gimmicks like this are useful. All the stats, the visuals of graphs plummetting and cities going dark, seem wonderful, but it was only an hour.
Events like this are too good at letting people pat themselves on the back and move on, thinking they’ve done their part. What does it matter if lights were turned off for an hour if people don’t change the way they live? Maybe, MAYBE, some people will be more conscientious about turning their shit off for a few days or even weeks, but the long-term effects of a day like this are nonexistant. At best, a day like this could increase a bit of awareness (but really, you have to be living under a big fucking rock to not know about these problems). However, being told that we can fix our problems so simply may encourage complacency, or at worst, it may provide fuel for the climate-change burnout and backlash that can’t be too far ahead. As Toronto Hydro supervisor John Fletcher said about Earth Hour, when explaining the slow reduction in power usage over the hour combined with the sharp spike at 9p.m., “People will forget to put out the lights … but they won’t forget to put them back on.”
If you haven’t heard, a 415-square kilometer sheet of ice has just collapsed off Antarctica. What makes this one special is that someone spotted the warning signs of the collapse in a satellite photo, and scientists were able to do flyovers of the sheet to get some pretty rare footage of the event. Check out this stuff from National Geographic:
Scientists are saying that this will probably be the last big collapse for a few months, because the Antarctic winter is starting soon and the ice will have a chance to thicken a bit. I’m sure there will be more footage of this stuff coming next year though. Now, if only the goddamn La Nina would let up and let us experience some global warming action in the north…
This is really neat. Dean Li at the University of Utah has discovered a way to let blind mice, suffering from either macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy, fix themselves and regain complete vision. Let me try to explain. Both of these blindness-causing diseases are the result of uncontrolled blood vessel growth in the retina, leading to eyes filled with too many, leaky capillaries. Substances in the body called netrins stimulate the growth of these capillaries, and these netrins are essential for things such as injury repair or growth. Normally netrins are regulated by a gene, Robo4, which prevents their growth from getting out of hand. However, in animals with macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy, Robo4 gets turned off and blood vessels go wild. What Dr. Li was able to do was turn Robo4 back on in the eyes of blind mice using an enzyme mammals already produce, albeit elsewhere in their bodies. The reactivated Robo4 not only prevented further blood vessel growth, but actually caused the disassembly of excess blood vessels already present, allowing the mice to see normally. Dr. Li thinks human trials are possible within 5 years. I think he’s a kickass dude. And people unconditionally opposed to research on animals can suck my dick.
Everyone seems to want to live “green”, but then time and money constraints kick in and few actually change their habits. The one thing that seems to change this pattern of talk and no action is the use of financial incentives to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour. My favourite example of this is the implementation of deposit systems, which seem to work well almost everywhere. The Beer Store in Ontario reuses upwards of 96% of its bottles through a deposit system, and the year-old deposit system for liquor bottles is already achieving a 70% bring-back rate. And when I go to Michigan, hell ensues if I do so much as dent a pop can, because then the automated deposit return machines won’t recognize it.
Anyways, the City of Toronto is now thinking about starting up a deposit system for batteries, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and paint cans. Given that an average of 9% of these products are disposed of properly, I think this is a great idea. People are already complaining about the hassle returning these things will cause though. I say fuck them, do you?
That quote is from is a young Japanese exec, in a Newsweek story called “A Post Car Society,” and in a lot of ways, it neatly encapsulates my mentality on the subject (albeit without the trend-driven undertones). Barring radical breakthroughs in renewable power generation and storage, the age of cheap energy is over, and that requires re-inventing our contemporary culture that has been built almost entirely around the automobile. Everything about the way our cities are planned, our food is grown, our goods are produced - it all relies on gas (which is still cheaper than water, by the way).
I’m not sure whether it’s mostly reactionism against the suburbs where my generation was whelped, but I’m amazed by the extent to which young people are fueling the revitalization (and gentrification, admittedly) of real urbanity. I certainly can’t wait to live and work downtown, and I have no desire whatsoever to own a car. I get the impression that most people take owning a car for granted without internalizing the massive financial, cultural (I live in Rexdale, in the middle of nowhere - it sucks), and environmental burden it really represents for them. Nothing is for sure, obviously, but if I can continue to find work in urban areas, I might never own a car. It’s actually a pretty liberating feeling.
Then again, with 140 million new (cheap and smoggy) cars predicted to hit Chinese roads by 2020, we’re probably all doomed, anyway.
Before I get anyone’s hopes up, this post actually doesn’t have anything to do with porn. I did, however, just finish watching a documentary called A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (thanks, Erik). I didn’t necessarily learn much I didn’t know, but I also didn’t learn much from An Inconvenient Truth - there’s value in merely reiterating the significance of things you already know. But this post isn’t about peak oil, either.
What it is about, is the inherent problem in the way that most media is produced and marketed. I fear that the only people who are going to see obscure documentaries about peak oil, or anarcho-syndicalism are the people who are already educated about, or at least interested in the issues at hand. The other problem is, its nearly impossible to present the true scope of an issue like climate change or peak oil without sounding like an alarmist (even if that alarmism is probably necessary). The cumulative effect is the development of insular intellectual communities that produce self-reinforcing arguments, and the media that comes out of them tends to target that same community (intentional or not).
As a miniscule case-in-point, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most of people who read this site probably don’t have wildly differing views from me. Correct me if I’m wrong - this site could use some good arguments.
I’m not saying I have the slightest clue how to change this. Given the amount of controversy that a soft-spoken movie like An Inconvenient Truth generated, I can’t imagine something like A Crude Awakening seeing any sort of widespread circulation, essentially eliminating any opportunity for real discussion. In the mean time, the net effect just seems like masturbation. Or at best, a circle-jerk.
P.S. For those of you who actually are interested in peak oil, there is plenty of good material out there. The End of Suburbia is another worthwhile documentary. For an entertaining look at the history of oil politics, check out the comedic stylings of Robert Newman. Worth watching.
