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Ecology 
Thu Mar 24, 2011 at 10:00:00 AM EDT
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{ The 10th and final installment of Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity series }
Underequipment, overdevelopment, and mature technology
The combination of transportation and transit that constitutes traffic has provided us with an example of socially optimal per capita wattage and of the need for politically chosen limits on it. But traffic can also be viewed as but one model for the convergence of world-wide development goals, and as a criterion by which to distinguish those countries that are lamely underequipped from those that are destructively overindustrialized.
A country can be classified as underequipped if it cannot outfit each citizen with a bicycle or provide a five-speed transmission as a bonus for anyone who wants to pedal others around. It is underequipped if it cannot provide good roads for the cycle, or free motorized public transportation (though at bicycle speed!) for those who want to travel for more than a few hours in succession. No technical, economic, or ecological reason exists why such backwardness should be tolerated anywhere in 1975. It would be a scandal if the natural mobility of a people were forced to stagnate on a pre-bicycle level against its will.
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Thu Mar 24, 2011 at 08:30:00 AM EDT
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{ Installment 9 in Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity series. }
Dominant versus subsidiary motors
People are born almost equally mobile. Their natural ability speaks for the personal liberty of each one to go wherever he or she wants to go. Citizens of a society founded on the notion of equity will demand the protection of this right against any abridgment. It should be irrelevant to them by what means the exercise of personal mobility is denied, whether by imprisonment, bondage to an estate, revocation of a passport, or enclosure within an environment that encroaches on a person's native ability to move in order to make him a consumer of transport. This inalienable right of free movement does not lapse just because most of our contemporaries have strapped themselves into ideological seat belts. Man's natural capacity for transit emerges as the only yardstick by which to measure the contribution transport can make to traffic: there is only so much transport that traffic can bear. It remains to be outlined how we can distinguish those forms of transport that cripple the power to move from those that enhance it.
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Tue Mar 22, 2011 at 15:33:40 PM EDT
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{ Installment 8 of Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity series }
Degrees of self-powered mobility
A century ago, the ball-bearing was invented. It reduced the coefficient of friction by a factor of a thousand. By applying a well-calibrated ball-bearing between two Neolithic millstones, a man could now grind in a day what took his ancestors a week. The ball-bearing also made possible the bicycle, allowing the wheel-probably the last of the great Neolithic inventions-finally to become useful for self-powered mobility.
Man, unaided by any tool, gets around quite efficiently. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer in ten minutes by expending 0.75 calories. Man on his feet is thermodynamically more efficient than any motorized vehicle and most animals. For his weight, he performs more work in locomotion than rats or oxen, less than horses or sturgeon. At this rate of efficiency man settled the world and made its history. At this rate peasant societies spend less than 5 per cent and nomads less than 8 per cent of their respective social time budgets outside the home or the encampment.
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Fri Mar 18, 2011 at 15:01:14 PM EDT
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The following piece from Arun Gupta, a founding editor of The Indypendent newspaper, puts the disaster in Japan in context.
From Climate Solutions
By Arun Gupta
This century, barely out of the box, is already flush with mega-disasters: Hurricane Katrina, Haiti's earthquake, the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake, the BP oil spill, Cyclone Nargis and the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, and now Japan's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns.
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Wed Feb 09, 2011 at 19:40:52 PM EST
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My friend, Tom Blue Newell, Uncle Scam, Deacon Blue, Nostrildamus, a Harvard Square busker and street performer ( http://www.unclescam.org ), stopped by this morning. He's thinking about a new show, especially since he expects to be recuperating from an operation this season. He wants a "Rascal," a motorized wheelchair with solar power that might also serve as a puppet in his show. He already uses an amp for his performances and has a battery system mounted on his cargo trike. He even has a little bit of solar. He envisions a solar awning to charge the batteries that can run the wheelchair and power his audio and other equipment, too. He also needs a place to keep it in Harvard Square. He'd like something in the works within two weeks and a usable machine within two months.
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Thu Jan 20, 2011 at 22:15:07 PM EST
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(Great stuff, how 'bout DIO - Do It Ourselves? We badly need some collective action like this, on a grand scale. - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Since it seems that we can't expect too much out of the international or national policymakers for the next couple of years, I've been thinking that the next logical step for 350.org and the climate movement is to do it ourselves. That could take the form of an ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions where people who are working on projects can report their successes and failures, trade ideas on what works and what doesn't, and help us all climb the learning curve faster as well as replicate successes quickly and modify them appropriately for different local conditions.
There are a number of people already thinking and working along these lines (appropedia, globalswadeshi, the coalition of the willing, global system for sustainable development...*) but they are dispersed, not networked, and there is no central nexus you can point people to. This is something that needs to be done in order to make do it yourself climate change happen. If done right, it would eliminate a lot of unnecessary duplication around the world and could build a community of practitioners that could be brought to bear on specific areas and problems like an Emergency Rescue Squad or ecological SWAT team.
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Wed Dec 08, 2010 at 22:45:53 PM EST
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On 12/7/10 Zhengrong Shi, the founder and CEO of Suntech, one of the largest PV manufacturers in the world spoke at MIT, which has about 45 faculty now involved in solar research. The event was a joint presentation of the MIT China Energy and Environment Research Group, MIT Energy Initiative, and MIT Energy Club.
My telegraphic notes follow.
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Sat Nov 13, 2010 at 22:22:59 PM EST
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(too bad this conflicted with the Green-Rainbow Party state convention, but it looks like a really interesting event. would love to hear/read a report. - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Coalition Movement Camp II: Connecting the Dots
November 14, 2010, 2.00pm to 6pm EDT: http://movementcamp.org
The Coalition Movement Camp series brings new players and possibilities into view and allows us to connect the dots between them. Our goal is to consolidate our collective powers and prepare for a collaborative web development project unlike anything the world has seen.
The inaugural Coalition Movement Camp took place on October 10, 2010. Participants included representatives of Appropedia, OpenKollab, Metacurrency, 350, Dadamac, CoopAgora, JAK Bank, GreenTribe, and Gaia10. For eight hours, we brainstormed ideas towards a new generation of internet platforms and collaborative strategies for the climate crisis. Details of the 10/10/10 Coalition Movement Camp can be found on the Coalition blog ( http://cotw.me/invite101010, http://cotw.me/camp101010 ).
On November 14, 2010, the conversation continues.
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Wed Nov 10, 2010 at 14:51:19 PM EST
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{ Installment 4 of Ivan Illich's Energy and Equity series }
Net transfer of life-time
Unchecked speed is expensive, and progressively fewer can afford it. Each increment in the velocity of a vehicle results in an increase in the cost of propulsion and track construction and-most dramatically-in the space the vehicle devours while it is on the move. Past a certain threshold of energy consumption for the fastest passenger, a world-wide class structure of speed capitalists is created. The exchange-value of time becomes dominant, and this is reflected in language: time is spent, saved, invested, wasted, and employed. As societies put price tags on time, equity and vehicular speed correlate inversely.
High speed capitalizes a few people's time at an enormous rate but, paradoxically, it does this at a high cost in time for all. In Bombay, only a very few people own cars. They can reach a provincial capital in one morning and make the trip once a week. Two generations ago, this would have been a week-long trek once a year. They now spend more time on more trips. But these same few also disrupt, with their cars, the traffic flow of thousands of bicycles and pedicabs that move through downtown Bombay at a rate of effective locomotion that is still superior to that of downtown Paris, London, or New York. The compounded, transport-related time expenditure within a society grows much faster than the time economies made by a few people on their speedy excursions. Traffic grows indefinitely with the availability of high-speed transports. Beyond a critical threshold, the output of the industrial complex established to move people costs a society more time than it saves. The marginal utility of an increment in the speed of a small number of people has for its price the growing marginal disutility of this acceleration for the great majority.
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Wed Oct 13, 2010 at 08:00:00 AM EDT
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To the extent that I am part of the anti-war movement, I must admit that we are getting our asses kicked in a futile, futile effort to stop the gears of the machine. The killing, the advance of empire, the crass profiteering, and the worthlessness of our supposedly representative form of government in representing the people's will to end the nonsense continue as though no anti-war movement existed at all.
To the extent that I am part of the environmental movement or climate movement, I must admit that we are getting our asses kicked in a futile, futile effort to stop the gears of the machine. The greenhouse gas emissions by humans, the advance of earth-destroying industries and fossil-fuel insanity, the crass profiteering, and the worthlessness of our supposedly representative form of government in representing the people's desire for a cleaner, greener way continue as though no environmental or climate movement existed at all.
To the extent that I am part of an ecological electoral movement, I must admit that we are getting our asses kicked in a futile, futile effort to stop the gears of the duopoly. The private takeover of our government at every level and the advance of special interest money and for-profit ideology into nearly every inch of our politics continue as though no electoral alternative existed at all.
On all 3 fronts, I will happily and thankfully concede that there are some exceptions. And I consider myself part of other movements for social change. But across the board, each small step forwards is met by more and bigger steps backwards. We are losing. And I am tired of losing. I am ready to win.
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Mon Oct 11, 2010 at 15:19:47 PM EDT
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(Now is the time for creativity and vision. We must think outside the box, and this seems like a great way to help us get there. - promoted by eli_beckerman)
To members of the Climate CoLab community,
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Climate CoLab contest, as well as a major upgrade of our software platform.
The contest will address the question: What international climate agreements should the world community make?
The first round runs through October 31 and the final round through November 26.
In early December, the United Nations and U.S. Congress will be briefed on the winning entries.
We are raising funds in the hope of being able to pay travel expenses for one representative from each winning team to attend one or both of these briefings.
We invite you to form teams and enter the contest--learn more at http://climatecolab.org.
We also encourage you to fill out your profiles and add a picture, so that members of the community can get to know each other.
And please inform anyone you believe might be interested about the contest.
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Mon Oct 04, 2010 at 13:26:44 PM EDT
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From Maggie Zhou, MA delegate to GPUS, to the peace contingent gathering for the 10/2/10 One Nation Working Together march in Washington, D.C.
Brothers and Sisters,
We are here today because we are angry at the multitude of problems that our government is responsible for, the many ways the system has failed us, and we recognize the root causes of all these problems are the same, and therefore they require common solutions.
Many of us here are peace activists. For nine years, we have been trying to stop the ongoing US wars for oil and for the expansion of the military-industrial complex. In fact, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are epicenters of the larger war we're waging against Mother Earth & her children. It is where our death-dealing empire bombs the planet, drill her, bleed her for her oil, poison her with radioactivity, and rape her out of the life she had, the innocent lives of men, women and children, and the fertile soils that once was the food basket of the Middle East.
But, there are many other epicenters in this larger war against Mother Earth. A massive hemorrhage was just inflicted in the Gulf of Mexico by one of the worst perpetrators in this war. Mountain Top Removal coal mining has been denuding, defacing & poisoning the beautiful mountain ranges and streams of Appalachia and the entire coal country. Hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, for "natural gas" extraction, has been poisoning our groundwater, and consequently food production, anywhere it touched, and it's taking over America with a vengeance. Looking around the globe, the gazillion mines where we humans extract the insides of Mother Earth & poison her outside with it, the many shopping malls and pavements and parking lots we built in place of her life-giving forests and grasslands, the many dams we built that chokes the life out of her ecosystems, the diversion of her rivers & streams & precious groundwater reservoirs for monoculture, chemical-laiden farming operations, and now devastatingly, the crazed worldwide expansion of "energy crops" for biofuel, biomass & biochar production...
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Mon Aug 30, 2010 at 17:29:38 PM EDT
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Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
-- Victor Hugo
Last night I got to see Bill McKibben deliver a typically rousing and depressing speech in his hometown and the home of the American Revolution, Lexington, Massachusetts. McKibben is one of very few leading lights building a global climate movement up to the task of preventing an all-out climate catastrophe. I credit McKibben more than any other single person with pushing those concerned about climate change to take meaningful collective action. So I was a little nervous when I got to ask him a question from the audience about something I find troubling about his approach.
Early in his talk, McKibben pointed out that the number 350 -- equal to the maximum safe level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere -- was entirely non-ideological. He went on to suggest that we can build a movement that can shame and pressure our elected officials to act to price carbon high enough that we begin to phase out our devastating use of fossil fuels. Missing from this approach, however, is McKibben's own analysis that the paradigm of economic growth is an underlying cause of the climate crisis. While McKibben was clearly embracing the task at hand as a political one, he seemed excruciatingly timid about the fact that the political task at hand is an ideological one.
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Mon Aug 30, 2010 at 17:09:20 PM EDT
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{ Excerpt from a piece I wrote for Swans Commentary, June 2007 }
But before the fires from the "shock and awe" military onslaught were even extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America.
-Naomi Klein, Baghdad Year Zero
In a searing article in Harper's Magazine in September 2004, Naomi Klein laid out a theory of the Iraq War that shreds even today's conventional wisdom about the motivations for our invasion. Her theory was that the neocons saw Iraq as a potential test tube for their ideological utopia, and pursued a strategy of shock therapy, where the devastation of war would force Iraqis to rebuild their nation from scratch. Out of desperation (not to mention shock and awe), they would be receptive to U.S. economic policy unimaginable in any other country. The common refrain that Bush did not have a postwar plan is inaccurate. According to Klein, the neocons' plan started to backfire once the companies they were counting on to privatize the country hesitated to jump on board, and not for the reason you think. Yes, the security situation wasn't perfect. But more importantly, companies decided to wait for the creation of an Iraqi government because international law prohibited the United States as an occupying force from running the show.
Of course, there were other parts to the ideological impetus for this war, including but not limited to Iraq's tremendous oil reserves, the extension of US hegemony through the establishment of military bases, and the ever-present profit motives of the military-industrial complex. While Naomi Klein exposes the neoconservative drumbeat for war that we all love to hate, these other reasons hone in on a rift in the antiwar movement that must be overcome. That rift, my friends, is between those of us who hold out hope that the Democratic Party can be moved to spurn these deeper-rooted motivations for war, and those of us who know they cannot and will not.
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Tue Aug 03, 2010 at 15:05:03 PM EDT
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Spread the word!! Save the trees! Protect the biosphere!
Thursday, August 5,4pm. Protest the Biomess! (that rhymes) At the Biomess industry conference. Meet in front of the Westin Copley Place hotel at the corner of Dartmouth and St. James in Boston (near Copley Plaza) at 4pm.
Contact: stephaniesanch@gmail.com/ 203-536-2050 cell ph
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Mon Jul 26, 2010 at 21:05:09 PM EDT
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(Congrats on an important breakthrough for Massachusetts. Ah, if only economic development moneys were aimed at these types of local, cooperative endeavors, we'd be in a different place right now! - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Dear Co-op Power Members and Supporters,
Join us Tues., Aug 3rd, 11 am, for the Grand Groundbreaking for Northeast Biodiesel at our land in the Greenfield [MA] Industrial Park - Silvio Conte Drive (at the end of the road near the Coke plant).
After five years of development, everything has finally aligned so that we can build our recycled vegetable oil biodiesel plant and make a clean fuel alternative to diesel fuel that can be used in any diesel engine or oil heat system.
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Tue Jul 13, 2010 at 23:34:37 PM EDT
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On June 26, at the Cambridge, MA YWCA Emergency Family Shelter, about 30 people from Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET)
Reduced the leakiness of the building by 12% (reducing the air leakage by 1,500 cubic feet per minute as tested by a pre and post blower door test. Each 100 cfm reduction = 7 therms of gas savings. Thus saving $1,480 for them over the next decade in heating.)
Installed 20 cfls [compact fluorescent lights] (saving probably $11 per year on each one because of the high occupancy of the building)
Installed 3 incandescent exit signs with LED retrofit kits (saving 36 watts per bulb 24 hours a day all year long. Since there were 2 bulbs in each of the 3 signs this will save over $388 in total per year)
Installed 7 low flow showerheads (each saving $42 each in heating the water and $26 in water and sewer charges) $476
Installed 2 programmable thermostats which can save up to 10% on heating if used to turn the temperature down during the winter when no one is home or everyone is sleeping.
We did other work too, but we should save the shelter at least $14,260 in total in energy bills over the next decade.
Thanks for all your work.
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Tue Jun 15, 2010 at 23:37:45 PM EDT
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(seems a tad bit cleaner and more sustainable than oh, say, deepwater drilling - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Methane (CH4) is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane is also fuel, natural gas. Methane can be made from animal and human dung as well as other kinds of waste.
In Nepal, it is known as Gobar Gas:
"Gobar" is the Nepali word for cow dung. The "Gas" refers to biogas derived from the natural decay of dung, other waste products, and any biomass. In Nepal, villagers use buffalo, cow, human, and other waste products for biogas production. Pig and chicken dung are used in some places, as are raw kitchen wastes, including rotted vegetation....
The Nepalese government built nearly 200 small biogas plants in 1975/6, but decentralized methane digestion truly took off in 1992 when the Dutch group, SNV, launched a large program, including subsidy mechanisms and microfinance schemes, which led to the installation of approximately 204,000 units to date.
Michael Yon wonders if this could also work in Afghanistan.
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Wed Jun 09, 2010 at 21:58:19 PM EDT
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(growing homeless populations in the US might make these emergency homes pretty tenable here... - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Thomas Bjelkeman Pettersson on the global swadeshi ning is working on a "flat-pack emergency home" which includes most of what you need for a functional emergency (or camping) home.
We intend to actually put together a working demonstration and show that this can be done for under a couple of hundred dollars/euros.
The demonstration will most likely include the following:
Housing / shelter
Hexayurt - our favorite emergency shelter system
Water purification
Siphon filter - an in production unit, costs around $10, made in India.
Chlorination
Light and power
Nova S201 - solar light and mobile phone charger
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Tue Jun 08, 2010 at 14:26:41 PM EDT
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(more hands-on, energy-saving change-making. - promoted by eli_beckerman)
Sunday, Jun 13th, 12:30-5:00 pm
Last call, we still need at least 20 people!
Weatherization Barnraising at the Democracy Center
Right in Harvard Square
45 Mt. Auburn St.
(Leakiest site we've every seen! Over 18,000 cubic feet per minute as measured by the blower door.)
Home Energy Efficiency Team
http://www.heetma.com
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Green Mass Group is an online forum for Green thought and collective action in Massachusetts. It is a community forum for justice, sustainability, democracy and health in the Commonwealth and beyond.
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty--power is ever stealing from the many to the few... The hand entrusted with power becomes... the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
--Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, 1852
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Then and Now
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Then...
"Last year Evergreen, a Massachusetts company, agreed to establish their first-ever United States based manufacturing facility here in Massachusetts. They did so, or are doing so, at Devens. They have now agreed and chosen to triple their size at Devens. Their next phase of expansion, right here in Massachusetts, a signature company in a signature sector, and we congratulate all of the folks at Evergreen and look forward to continuing to work with you...
We made a personal commitment to Evergreen for the sake of Evergreen, but also because we wanted to show that there are ways in which state government, in working together with private industry and with the utility companies, could begin to create a different kind of environment, a different kind of business climate here, to grow that sector, and it is happening. It's happening. Evergreen is one of the most prominent examples, but there are a whole host of examples."
--Governor Deval Patrick, April 7, 2008, boasting about state investment in Evergreen.
and Now...
"Evergreen Solar Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, completing a stunning reversal of fortune for a high-flying alternative-energy company that once seemed to herald a new era for the Massachusetts economy... At its peak, Evergreen employed roughly 900 people locally and attracted more than $50 million in state support, as its stock price soared above $100 a share.
Yesterday, Evergreen's stock closed at 18 cents. The company shuttered its manufacturing plant in Devens earlier this year and now has only 85 employees left. Massachusetts is one of its top creditors, owed $1.5 million in rent."
--Erin Ailworth, Boston Globe, August 16, 2011
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