Majora Carter explains some things about how civic planning can effect a community, how sustainability can mean something to average people, and hints at how the U.S. of A’s race and poverty problems have been manufactured, plus how she and many others have worked to combat that manufacturing:
Janine Benyus talks about her ways of loving all children of all species for all time:
Right now, the Earth and almost every plant, animal, and fungus living on it (aside from humans) have no rights. Even among humans universal rights are a new idea, an idea which is still not put to practice for the numeric majority of the world’s population. I believe that the lack of what i’ll call terrestrial rights (those things on earth that are not us), are just as important, though probably more important than our own rights.
William Mcdonough would like us to do something which might sound a little (or a lot) “hippy-dippy” to many of you, but not to me: “love all the children, of all species, for all time.” This is a quote i relate to a relatively recent quote by the Dalai Llama: “[We do] not need more Buddhists, the world should not practice Buddhism, it should practice compassion.”
I’ll get back to this in force later on, but for now: Jane Goodall:
and her organization: Roots and Shoots
MorePartyAnimals is a loose organization promoting the idea that “more choice leads to better results,” and working to inspire people into questioning the status quo, taking part in positive action, and do-it-yourself politics. They come off as a little naïve, but definitely propose a charming alternative to what many consider the abrasive actions of Ralph Nader, surprisingly: toward the same goals.
It is in this time of the presidential cycle when i am forced to remember the debate debacle of the year 2000 and the problems Nader endured, which are characteristic of the fine system our united states employs as a part of being one of the most free places on earth, though, unfortunately still far from fully functional. I remember problems that are characteristic of this duopoly, the corporatocracy that we generously call a democracy:
Leading up to the debates for president in the election of 2000, Ralph was told by the Commission on Presidential Debates (the CPD, a private organization) effectively that because he was independent, that the voting public shouldn’t be allowed to hear what he had to say; that the most influential commercial available to a candidate struggling to get the hundreds of millions of dollars now necessary to compete in our democratic process was not an available option. Specifically, he was told by the CPD that he could not participate in the debate because he was not a consequential candidate (which they explained by saying that his voting contingent was not large enough to warrant his inclusion, he wouldn’t make a difference in the election (how curiously the popular opinion changed just 2 months later)).
Days before the debate would occur (October 3, 2000), a college student chose to give his debate viewing ticket to Ralph so that he could at least be present. With his valid ticket, he attempted to enter an auxiliary viewing room, planning to later give and interview he had been granted with Fox News, “but he was met at the university campus by the CPD’s security consultant and state police and forced to leave the event under threat of arrest. The CPD had instructed the consultant that Mr. Nader could not attend the debate, but Nader was attempting to attend a separate viewing event that was sponsored by the University of Massachusetts, not the CPD presidential debate. Others allowed on campus without any ticket were invited to attend the university event.” 1
For some further history:
The Commission on Presidential Debates was formed in 1987 to replace the non-partisan League of Women Voters, which included independent candidate John Anderson in the first 1980 presidential debate and prohibited the major party candidates from selecting the debate panelists in 1984. Frank Fahrenkopf, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and now the leading lobbyist for the gambling industry, and Paul Kirk, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee and now a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry, created The Commission on Presidential Debates.
Financed by Anheuser-Busch, Philip Morris and other multinational corporations, the Commission on Presidential Debates has excluded popular third-party candidates, most of whom are critical of the Big Business agenda. Although he received $29 million in public funds, captured 19 percent of the popular vote in the previous 1992 election, and 76 percent of eligible voters wanted him included, Ross Perot was excluded by the two parties from the 1996 presidential debates. Both Pat Buchanan, who collected over $12 million in federal matching funds, and Ralph Nader, who attracted the largest paid audiences during his campaign appearances, were excluded from the 2000 presidential debates, although in a national poll, 64 percent of eligible voters wanted them included.
Feel free to regurgitate whatever media skewed references to Nader and his impact on the 2000 elections you might like, his treatment is nonetheless antithetical to the freedoms we supposedly hold so dear, and for which we are supposedly hated by select leaders in other parts of the world who manipulate elections in only slightly different ways.3, 4 It is unfortunate at best that we have had similar events involving the fine people at Democracy Now! at this year’s conventions.
Democracy Now!, Ralph Nader and the people at morepartyanimals.com believe that greater voter awareness and involvement in government is necessary (curiously, so did our “founding fathers”):
Working to get people to the vote, the AIGA3 recently had a contest for posters promoting the vote and it’s importance, the best results of which can be seen here.
See also Video the Vote, “a national initiative to protect voting rights by monitoring the electoral process,” Rock the Vote, and the Daily Show’s Indecision campaigns.
2
“Americans are asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’ They hate what we see right here in this chamber: a democratically-elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”
~President George W. Bush, during an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people, United States Capitol, Washington, DC, September 20, 2001.
3 whose acronym used to be actively espoused as the American Institute of Graphic Artists, but in recent years has been dropped in favor of a catchphrase “a professional association for design,” to more broadly describe the now very broad scope of the group with “22,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by 62 chapters and 240 student groups.”
4 for another more drastic account of the U.S. of A’s involvement in the democratic process, this time of another nation, read here for the history, and here for some updates.
At present, the education system in the united states is as so many things are: an exercise not in being good, but in being less bad, an exercise in bandaging wounds. It is yet another example in our world-wide parade of attempts at being efficient, rather than effective (an outcome not only of the “businessing” of schools in the early 90’s, but also of the facts of the basic generation of our education system, as it happened during the industrial revolution).
Rather than ask the question: “how can we create a place where young people will want to come, learn, engage, and give back in the form of student directed community activities of progress and creation” many of our educators ask simply, dismally: “how can we make students do what we want them to?”
Where competition in the times of the Romans (the inventors of the word) meant “to seek together,” or to “work together,” it has come through time to mean almost the exact opposite. This happened by virtue of accidental mixture with puritanically reformed Christianity (and the superfluous vestiges of predestination) as well as an embedded misunderstanding of Darwinism. Now the word many times means: to work against one another, to fight. Sometimes this manifests in what’s called a zero-sum situation: where either I win or you lose, mutual exclusivity as a violent resource grab, that is: competition as war. In schools the situation is less drastic, but the grading system of standardized and simplified ratings (tied to status) generates another unhealthy form of competition, which (often paired with various other form of stigmatization) can have demonstrably unhealthy psychological effects, self esteem issues, depression, lethargy.
As test scores and funding drop together with the rise of drop-outs, “No Child Left Behind,” addresses the wrong (small subset of) problems for our nation’s children, and in the wrong way.
Although the subject of Dave Egger’s 826 mission (see video below) is focused on the same somewhat narrow portion of learning as NCLB (reading / writing), the difference in approach has made all the difference. Rather than doling out money to schools based near meaningless test scores that are often manipulated for the rewards of more funding to misuse, 826 Valencia—and other partner organizations in major and minor cities throughout the world—works as a barely funded volunteer base that work one on one with children to empower and honor their creativity and ability (and finish some home work in the process).
These organizations work additionally to engage the surrounding school system, and enliven both the school district and it’s parents into activity toward the bettering of their children. When school no longer has recess or the arts, and is punitive and suspicious toward the students, it’s no wonder the children will flock to something better, or lacking anything better: get themselves into new and exciting kinds of trouble, or, perhaps worse, do nothing at all, and spend their lives playing video games.
Dave Eggers explains how his plan has worked so far, and what he thinks will help next:
Good magazine has responded to Egger’s TED wish with it’s own Project no. 12: brainstorming for school; go submit an idea, and help others get inspired. For that matter, look into Good magazine, they have interesting well written articles, and 100% of your subscription dollars go to charity.
And not only that, but news you can probably put a lot of faith in: two new* magazines have come out recently (as offshoots of highly regarded science and culture magazines) that discuss all the topics of this blog in great detail and with breaking news.
The Green Guide
comes compiled and edited by the fine staff over at National Geographic, and provides interested parties with good information and choices of currently / newly available products. The current issue (fall08) has good information on a variety of topics from tuna fishing practices to chemical leaching from plastic food containers and safe school supplies.
It’s not preachy, but adherence to it’s advice does presuppose a certain affluence, as eating tuna fished responsibly, low in mercury, high in omega-3 fatty acids (that is, healthy for you and (relatively so) for the planet) can be up to 4 times as expensive as Safeway’s 50 cent deals. And although it doesn’t spell it out, so many of the “consumer concerns” the magazine tackles reference just that kind of hidden cost in our cheap-product culture: you can have tuna for cheap but it’ll be unhealthy for you, disastrous for our oceans, and borderline genocidal for our fish species. (Alright, now I’m getting preachy.)
Earth 3.0
is compiled and edited by staff of Scientific American, and tackles more broad and (in some cases) theoretic science issues, such as: “Energy versus Water: Solving Both Crises Together,” or “Eco-Cities: Urban Planning for the Future.”
Both seem to me to be excellent sources for either people who want to learn more about the issues, but don’t necessarily want to read volumes on the subjects, and/or people who want more up to date info pertaining to the issues.
A peak can generally be defined as a high point, as of a mountain; in scientific graphing, you usually find the term used to represent the highest (of perhaps many) point(s).
Peak Oil is a theory, now generally considered fact, which was first put forth by Marion King Hubbert in 1956. Hubbert was a geologist, and worked as many geologists do: for a petroleum company, in a pragmatic fashion, with the primary goal of finding more oil to make more money. The petroleum company in question was Shell Oil, and his post was in Shell’s research lab in Houston, Texas. When Hubbert was asked to make a global survey and estimate of available petroleum within the earth, he issued a highly controversial paper. In it he explains the ideas of what he called a Hubbert’s Curve, and a Hubbert’s Peak, which describe oil production over time. He projected with these that oil production in the U.S. of A would peak at around 1970, and while the prediction was greeted by his superiors at Shell (and peers throughout the world) with derision, in 1970, it came true. In 1974 he further predicted that worldwide oil production would peak at around 1995.1
More specifically, what this Hubbert’s peak describes is that as extraction of oil continues, the efficiencies of extraction rise as the cost of extraction drops (in the standard industrial model of efficiency), and more can be produced each year until the peak. After the peak, not only does it become more difficult to extract the resource, and more expensive, but the quality of that petroleum decreases, thus requiring more refinement, and more cost. This increased cost is only exacerbated by the increase in cost due to increase in demand (proportional to increase in population), and the cost per barrel of crude oil increases exponentially until it is no longer available.
The global effects of this unparalleled disaster could possibly be ever so slightly offset with some politically characteristic bandages, but the main effect of these efforts would be to the bank accounts of the few, not the lifestyles of the many. Even if it could solve our energy crisis, we would have the considerable ecological situation left growing worse every day.
In any case, the concept of peak oil has been accepted to the point of being veritably main-stream over the past 6 years. Something which is surprisingly little more than a fringe consideration currently, is peak minerals. While on the topic of our western lifestyles, we must realize that everything we use is grown (or at least created by taking advantage of the nuclear energy of our sun in some way), or it is mined.
image of a copper mine, courtesy of the mysteries of google.
Read more »
Design, according to Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary can be defined:
1. To draw preliminary outline or main features of; to sketch for a pattern or model; to delineate; to trace out; to draw.
2. To mark out and exhibit; to designate; to indicate; to show; to point out; to appoint.
3. To create or produce, as a work of art; to form a plan or scheme of; to form in idea; to invent; to project; to lay out in the mind; as, a [person] designs an essay, a poem, a statue, or a cathedral.
In both the most broad and the most specific terms, I think it is fair to say that the problems we face today as a planet are problems of design.1 I would argue 1) that short sighted design of the past has created our present catastrophe, and 2) that only in radically readdressing the design of our design—the reasons and goals for designing anything in the first place—can we survive as a species.2
The danger in not looking past the apparent logic or ubiquity of poor design choices has given us world hunger, mass genocide, extinctions, and a chain of climate events that could potentially turn off all the life enabling function of our planet. As one of many hundreds of initiatives to counteract these and other problems, Valerie Casey (designer, CCA professor) gives us:
a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.
Designers (like myself) have a way of feeling guilty about manipulating the public3 into buying goods4 or services5 for the benefit of a corporation,6 and profiting on the work in the process. (funny, that.)
The Designers Accord works to help the ills of our planet, and ease the guilt of it’s designers: a win-win proposition, in both the most broad and the most specific terms.
2 The merits of saving our species are greatly debatable, but I’d say we should at least give it a shot.
3 Manipulation largely means of cutting down trees, applying energy to process those trees into paper, as well as to process various compounds into ink, and printing advertisements that are often not recycled (itself a non-resource efficient process), advertisements that are generally unsafe to put in the ground or the water3a (even though we do).
3a Unsafe because they end up In either land fills or water fills, as a result either of littering or sloppy distribution, and are produced with unruly or toxic chemicals in the paper and ink both.
4 Products which themselves end up in the ground or the water.
5 Services which are often superfluous, or at least questionable.
6 Corporations which generally (as taken in the long view) are unhealthy for the economy, for their communities, for their employees, or for the environment.
tappening.com has a good deal of interesting information on the benefits of tap water in general, on worldwide ecological health, and on the U.S of A’s use of money.
Say what you will about the over-use of such tactics as the ironic juxtaposition in the following video (and the potentially corrosive effects of such irony), this strongly effected me when i was 10, and it still does (Good Morning, Vietnam):
