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Tonight's editor: boatsie
All views expressed by today's editor do not necessarily represent those of eKos or eKos listed diarists.
The Gulf Of Mexico, Daybreak, July 9, 2010. White Smoke visible from oil burning fires evidence of ... photo by Philippe Cousteau
boatsie's introductory tips to effective climate activism
Step 1. The element of surprise.
practicing my running-over-water skills by poopoorama
The art I love most dearly emerges from an acknowledgement that we’re none of us pure of either mind or heart. It’s the art of mixed tones—buffoonery mixed with regret, as in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro; comic absurdity mixed with heartache, as in Chekhov’s stories; salvation that appears improbably out of despair, as in Shakespeare’s King Lear, or when all hope is lost, as in The Winter’s Tale. It’s the art of surprise, which can only come from the unpredictable—and what I mean by "unpredictable" isn’t the preposterous (like the twists in M. Night Shmalayan’s movies) but the turn you don’t expect just because it’s so true to life, and life is never predictable, yet when you see it or hear it you think, "Of course." The Art of Surprise Steve Vineberg
We should think like the great chefs. Where ReWork spoke of sharing knowledge, I'd propose another spin.
Every night, chefs tantalize taste buds. Food has now become not a utilitarian necessity of life - it has become a pleasure. And the artists behind the counter have turned it into that, by offering their patrons not what they want - but what they don't know they want.
The great chefs don't pander - they engage. They take old favorites, and put an incredible new spin on them. Being in Cleveland, I've seen this happen. A native Ohioan, I was here for the first time when food was Hamburger Helper and restaurant food was Hamburger Helper with Velveeta at the local Applebees. But now?
Lola. Lolita. The Greenhouse Tavern. Melt. They have all taken everyday, ordinary foods and turned them into works of art. And they do it night after night, day after day, week after week, and so on and so forth.
And every night, people from every walk of life pay to eat it. The soccer moms. The Hamburger Helpers. The foodies. The hoodies. Everyone, everything.
So why the hell can't we do that one film at a time?
How do we bridge the gap between film for idle watching, like most of it is now, and a deep involvement? How do we become the great chefs of the film world? The Flays? The Symons? The Morimotos?
By giving the audience what they don't know they want. As the great chefs tantalize the tastebuds, we must tantalize the eyes, the ears, the brain. We must not cater to the information addiction.
Control the appetizer portions, and give them one hell of a main course.
Tantalize. Surprise.
Om. Nom. Nom. From Rework & 37signals Jason Fried
Step 2: How Frog Boiling 5GW can utilize a Black Swan event. (stay tuned as I work from preliminary notes)
UN Set to Finally Recognize Fundamental Human Right to Water
Ottawa – The United Nations General Assembly is considering an historic draft resolution recognizing the human right to "safe and clean drinking water and sanitation" initiated by the Bolivian government. Other member states have been consulted on the resolution and the final text is expected to be presented to the President of the General Assembly, for tabling by the end of July.
In a letter sent today to all UN Ambassadors and permanent missions, global water advocate and Blue Planet Project founder Maude Barlow urges a decisive and swift passage of the resolution.
"This would be one of the most important things the UN has done since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," says Barlow, who chairs the boards of the Council of Canadians and Washington-based Food and Water Watch. In 2008/2009, Barlow served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the UN General Assembly. Link
Action: Support the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation by signing the petition to UN Missions, drafted byBlue Planet Project.
ClimateGate. ClimateAction. Climate Insurance?
through the eyes dim with tears ... by ichiro kishimi
Joe Conason reports for Salonon how MSM is ignoring the ClimateGate debunking after spinning tons and tons of ink and airtime on the email scandal which decimated the validity of UNFCCC official reporting.
There is more than a degree of poetic justice in the release of two reports exonerating the "Climategate" scientists during this brutal heat wave -- especially because so many of the broadcasters and journalists who popularized the bogus scandal are trying to stay cool in stifling New York and Washington. The rest of us suffer along with them, alas, so at the very least they ought to devote as much attention to the debunking as they did to the original accusations.
By restoring the reputation of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the reports released by a Netherlands environmental agency and a special British investigative panel should do much to dispel the widespread doubt generated by hackers who pinched nasty e-mails from the computers of climate scientists associated with the IPCC.
China Plans Energy Efficiency Demonstration City
Some 60,000 Chinese will soon relocate to an 8.8 solar powered square kilometer area in sunshine rich Turpan -- a city which wracks up over 3,200 hours of sunlight a year -- as China makes a powerful movement towards meeting its commitment to an energy budget of 15 percent clean and renewable power sources. A 13 MW photovoltaic plant will supply local energy and power public transportation vehicles. People’s Daily Online.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that the French are on target to close down half of their coal-fed power plants by 2015, more than doubling the amount of energy produced from renewable resources by 2020.
And, as absurd as it seems, given the fact that the most economically disenfranchised regions are facing the most drastic effets of climate change, ReliefWeb publishes a report debating whether "Disaster Insurance" has a role in climate change adaptation....
Climate Change is happening and it is impacting communities through the extreme weather events associated with it. As the cost of damage caused by these extreme weather conditions soars, the need to find more effective and sustainable ways to tackle weather risk is also rising. Some governments and experts are turning to the private sector and initiatives like the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) to manage the risk and the payouts in event of impact. This briefing explores the current debates around insurance mechanisms, look at the example of the CCRIF in responding to extreme weather events, and examine the opportunities and challenges of such insurance systems.
In "The answer is 42! Why Development is not about solutions, it’s about problem-solving systems,"mon héros William Easterly discusses "why direct solutions to problems cannot foster development."
Development happens thanks to problem-solving systems. To vastly oversimplify for illustrative purposes, the market is a decentralized (private) problem solving system with rich feedback and accountability. Democracy, civil liberties, free speech, protection of rights of dissidents and activists is a decentralized (public) problem solving system with (imperfect) feedback and accountability. Individual liberty in general fosters systems that allow many different individuals to use their particular local knowledge and expertise to attempt many different independent trials at solutions. When you have a large number of independent trials, the probability of solutions goes way up.
Good systems make the private returns to decentralized problem-solvers close to the social returns. Again oversimplifying to drive home the big point, the market does this with private goods (even allowing for well-known exceptions of market failures), and a free political system is the best way known to do this for public goods (reward political actors in line with the social return to their actions).
WarrenS made a New Year's Resolution to write a letter advocating climate action every day. The result is over one hundred letters to congresspeople, newspapers, President Obama, and more. Warren has even had letters published in the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Learn Warren's letter writing technique here. And be sure to steal his stuff!
From his blog:
Month 7, Day 9: Even Though I’m Not A John Denver Fan
The Rainforest Action Network sent me an email. They’re apparently camping out in EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s vicinity, letting her know that mountaintop removal mining is a Bad Thing. Which it is.
We’re here at the EPA today with a giant sound system playing Lisa Jackson her own words over and over at a deafening volume, mixed with the sounds of dynamite blowing apart mountains, and a little of John Denver’s "Take Me Home, Country Roads" for good measure. We hope this intensely emotional soundtrack filling the halls of the EPA all day long will guarantee they hear us this time.
They requested me to go to their online action site and send an email. Which I did. I’m also going to print it and fax it/send it.
Dear Administrator Jackson,
There are many reasons to oppose mountaintop removal mining. The obvious ones are local in essence: an MTR project means millions of tons of toxic debris winds up in the waterways; it means that what was once a flourishing forested area will be transformed into a blasted, dessicated moonscape; it means that once the project is over, local ecosystems and economies are blighted, perhaps beyond recovery.
Those are the obvious reasons. The less obvious reasons are national and global in essence: America and the world need to stop burning coal as soon as humanly possible, because of the extraordinary amount of harm it does through increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The goal of the EPA should be what its name implies: protecting the environment.
There really is no good reason for green-lighting the Pine Creek MTR proposal, which is projected to destroy almost a thousand acres of pristine forest and over two miles of streams. Please reverse your decision. Mountaintop removal is a bad idea in every sense, and it is time for your agency to offer genuine stewardship instead of an "Environmental Protection Racket."
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
The Amazing Sight of Animals Riding Turtles
Photo: joe-wright.com
Everyone has hitched a ride at sometime, but it usually happens because you have somewhere to go. You don’t ever imagine that something as slow as a turtle would make for a quick and comfortable ride, but as these videos show, this is not a view shared by all creatures.
Real News from the Gulf
Corexit ingredient propylene glycol was between 360 and 440 parts per million. Just 25 parts per million is known to kill most fish.
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(All times Eastern!)
Today's eKos diaries:
Author | Diary | Time | Tags |
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Geotripper | Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater: The Serpentine Issue in California | 07/09/10 12:14AM Eastern | Serpentine, serpentinite, peridotite, chrysotile asbestos, mesothelioma |
Haole in Hawaii | Underwater Hawai'i - A Photo Diary with a Booby | 07/09/10 12:42AM Eastern | Hawaii, community, photography, marine life, dolphin |
Gulf Watchers | BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 45 | 07/09/10 06:00AM Eastern | Oilpocalypse, BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, LMRP |
BorderJumpers | Creating Food Sovereignty for Small-Scale Farmers | 07/09/10 09:52AM Eastern | Agriculture, developing countries, Farmers, Food, Food Sovereignty |
RogerShuler | Is BP Trying to Cover Up Its Mess on Alabama Beaches? | 07/09/10 12:16PM Eastern | BP oil spill, Alabama beaches, John Wathen, Glynn Wilson, Keith Olbermann |
8ackgr0und N015e | BP's airborne pollutant levels dramatically increase in Florida | 07/09/10 01:32PM Eastern | BP, ekos, environmental catastrophe, pollution, benzene |
Miep | FEMA Trailers Still Making the Rounds (with updates) | 07/09/10 01:51PM Eastern | Haiti, Gulf oil disaster, trailers, FEMA, eKos |
nirbama | Heat Waves: Stanford Study Says Many More Coming | 07/09/10 02:16PM Eastern | heat waves; global warming; Climategate; Stanford Study, eKos |
rebb | De Facto Stay of Offshore Drilling | 07/09/10 02:35PM Eastern | eKos, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, oil spill Moratorium, law |
Heather TaylorMiesle NRDC Action Fund | Edward James Olmos on the Definition of "Insanity" | 07/09/10 02:41PM Eastern | clean energy, Climate Bill, Climate change, Edward Olmos, energy |
Jane Stillwater | We are ALL pelicans: The harsh consequences of environmental pollution | 07/09/10 03:30PM Eastern | Gulf oil spill, environmental pollution, curing leg cramps, ekos |
A Siegel | Preventive vs Reactive: A dysfunctional society? | 07/09/10 04:06PM Eastern | ekos, dk greenroots, environmental, energy, united states society |
Bruce Nilles | Ashley Judd is Doing the Right Thing | 07/09/10 04:43PM Eastern | Sierra Club, coal, mtr, eKos |
RLMiller | Weekend at Bernie's: Reading Tea Leaves on an Ex-Climate Bill | 07/09/10 07:41PM Eastern | ekos, ACELA, American Clean Energy Leadership Act, S.1462, Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) |
eKos | far frigging out friday earthship | 07/09/10 09:09PM Eastern | ekos |
Vetwife | BP goon or Macho cop? Bullying just the same. | 07/09/10 09:36PM Eastern | eKos, justice, bully, clarence thomas, militarization |
FishOutofWater | I Pledge Allegiance: BP Oil Spill 9July10 | 07/09/10 11:09PM Eastern | Recommended, ekos, dkgreenroots, environment, bp oil spill |
Yesterday's eKos diaries:
Author | Diary | Time | Tags |
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FishOutofWater | Black Plague of Death Lurks Below, BP Booms the Press | 07/08/10 09:18PM Eastern | Recommended, bp oil spill, oil, ekos, DKgreenroots |
hold tight | 'Special Places at Risk...' | 07/08/10 09:42PM Eastern | BP oil spill, Gulf coast ecology, eKos |
A Siegel | Put Solar On It! | 07/08/10 11:19PM Eastern | solar power, action, eKos, white house, 350.org |
dov12348 | Warning: Gulf Coasters Beware. | 07/08/10 08:10AM Eastern | Gulf Coast, oil spill, oil crisis, blisters, burning |
DollyMadison | Distortions about oil boom from Packgen | 07/08/10 11:54AM Eastern | BP, Boom, Gulf Oil Leak, Packgen, Oil Containment Boom |
Forrest Brown | BP Makes Me Sick | 07/08/10 12:32PM Eastern | BP, oil spill, Olbermann, RFK Jr., Obama |
Food and Water Watch | Renew America's Water | 07/08/10 02:20PM Eastern | Water, Renew America's Water, water main break, water infrastructure, eKos |
Bruce Nilles | EPA Takes Action to Protect People from Dangerous Coal Pollution | 07/08/10 02:21PM Eastern | eKos, Sierra Club, coal, EPA, global warming |
Jed Lewison | Transocean, BP's drilling partner, linked to Iran, Syria | 07/08/10 02:30PM Eastern | BP, oil, roundup, eKos |
Chellie Pingree | To BP: the meter's running - you spill it, you buy it | 07/08/10 02:33PM Eastern | BP, Oil Spill, gulf oil spill, clean energy, Chellie Pingree |
Patric Juillet | Getting Off the Grid....Slowly but Surely. | 07/08/10 03:51PM Eastern | Recommended, Getting Off the Grid, Eco-justice, eKos, Environment |
billlaurelMD | News from the Arctic: Record low ice in June 2010 (Update at bottom) | 07/08/10 06:38PM Eastern | eKos, DKos GreenRoots, environment, arctic sea ice, climate change |
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