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Well, I think I spoke a little too soon about the beauty of the snow and the gentile folk frolicking in the street. Although those things were present, it is hard to deny the damage that a moderate snowfall can do in a place like Barcelona, where people just aren't prepared for it. To start with, in our garden, the lettuce was severely damaged and the broad beans cracked at their stems under the weight of the snow! There goes 3 months of growing... and to think it would have been harvest time in a month. The onions were not affected, but the celery was pretty much gone and the artichokes took a beating.

Snow brings out the best in people here in Barcelona. Well, at least that's my experience. As I sit here writing this blog I look onto the hordes of people on the street below laughing, baguettes lodged under their arms, throwing snowballs, dogs barking playfully and running about freely in streets now vacant of traffic.

http://howardzinn.org/default/

Arguably, science has contributed more to society through its intrinsic skepticism than any other thought process. Science is not ‘beakers and lasers and lab coats’ as society may perceive. Instead, science is a thought process. It is humanity’s rational method of describing and explaining our ambient natural surroundings and the laws of physics (often vaguely called ‘the environment’) through a lens of questioning curiosity. Science is a form of modern philosophy. It is the ultimate expression of what separates humans from our animal cousins, the ability to envision the concept of ‘future’ and to affect it. But, with this capacity comes a profound responsibility, one that we are just coming to accept. This responsibility I broadly describe as survival within wise limits. The survival of humanity, yes, but underscoring it with the knowledge that we ought not exist alone, but rather as a part of the Earth systems within which we have biologically and culturally evolved. Moreover, we must grant that although our ability to affect the environment is entropically grand, it is not unbounded, thus our optimism to uniquely steer the course of the natural history is incongruous with physics. One thing we can be sure of is that the Universe and the Earth within it existed long before us humans were able to begin to contemplate it, probably shortly after our discovery of controlled fire, which allowed us to consume a higher variety of nutritious, cerebral foods and to stay up at night, safe, warm and alone with our thoughts.

Nowadays science, through its discoveries, has become more esoteric and increasingly specialized. In the meantime, the human brain ever remains a generalist, adept at addressing many different tasks, from food preparation to philosophy, from elementary particles to the grandest scales of the Universe. This disparity is widening the epistemological gap between science and society, and correspondingly between scientists and global decision makers.

Science proceeds thoroughly and meticulously via reductionism to a rational conclusion that is necessarily testable and falsifiable. This long process of introspection is sometimes incompatible with the pace of decision-making at government or corporate levels, where many are affected. The most obvious contemporary case is that of Climate Change. In this case, society implores of science nothing less than to determine the future state of the biosphere and whether it will be habitable to humanity or not. The global scientific statement by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on this vital matter is firm:

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.¹

The report goes further to conclude:

Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century.¹

Very likely. That's the operative word. The words "very likely" in climatology are basically paramount to full affirmation. Nevertheless, in the nearly three years that has passed since the release of this statement, little has been done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, should science wait for a more comprehensive consensus, we may enter a time when positive feedback mechanisms commence and further climate mitigation is no longer possible. The proverbial point of no return. This is why I say that our ability to affect the environment is “entropically” grand, meaning we can chaotically continue to emit greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere without acknowledging consequences, but to which end? Do we have the will to wield that power responsibly? The Earth is supremely indifferent to the affairs of humans. So, to ensure survival we would do best to adopt a precautionary approach when warranted by scientific analyses as in the current case with Climate Change.

Peace,

Grant

Please visit and read this in-depth article by James Hanson about the climate problem. It's worth the read.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2010/20100112_PeopleVersusCap.pdf

Peace,
Grant

Find out why "cap and trade" is really a lot of hot air.

http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/

What we really need are REAL cuts to carbon emissions, not just moving the carbon to another industry. Cap and Trade is attractive in principal, but it leaves open too many loop holes that circumvent actual carbon emissions cuts.

THE solution is explained very well by the well known former NASA scientist who first got the world thinking about antropogenic effects on climate, back in the 80's, James Hanson. Back then, environmental solutions were focused on acid rain and pollution. While these are worthy causes and have been largely dealt with in some ways, climate change is much bigger and global in scope.

See James Hanson interview here:


Tom Freidman has the right idea about making an Apollo sized effort to transform the global economy to be about creating alternative (soon to be called standard, we hope) energies, such as wind, solar, tidal etc... These will not save our sorry asses, but they will mitigate society's collapse. What about all those workers laid off from automobile factories? Well, they all have useful, transferrable skills such that can used to create a better more efficient energy infrastructure. But we mustn't be fooled into a false sense of techno-triumphalism, thinking that technology is the answer. It's part of the answer, but technology does not equate to energy. We need to scale-back and re-localize our economy. Localization not globalization. Localism not globalism. This doesn't mean that we can't promote international trade, but should we make trade the very purpose of our existence? Should we define ourselves simply as "consumers"? What about citizens? ...or humans?

Peace,
Grant

To be honest I have been having trouble eating animals lately. This has been bothering me most notably since mid-August when we returned to Catalonia. Anyway, to start off I realized it was too hard for me to just give up meat... err... cold turkey... so I started by avoiding mammals. Now, I just eat outside my taxonomical class. To tell you the truth, chicken doesn't do it for me anymore either... but so far, I still haven't switched to tofurkey.

My recent ruminations (so to speak) on eating animals have really be the result of wanting to eat and live more sustainably, not per se for any particular moral rejection of eating them. It's much harder here in Spain than it North America, I would say. Here, if you don't eat "meat", they serve you "lamb"... ;) When it comes down to it, I would much prefer to eat a hunted wild animal than one that has been mass produced like a cheap piece of plastic or fabric. That's the essence of factory farming... bottom line. As Jonathan Safran Foer's recent book taught me, when it comes to eating animals, we'd do good to ask the question where it's all coming from, and in Western society at least, the majority of beef, poultry and fish is in fact factory farmed. What does that mean? Isn't "Factory Farm" a contradiction in terms? Yes. If you look at how meat is marketed, it still portrays the utopian farm life, with your typical grazing animals and chicken coops. But, in reality this is not so. It is far far from the truth. In reality animals are herded into massive abattoirs, or, in the case of chickens, either left on floors together by the 10's of thousands in their own filth, pumped with steroids, hormones and antibiotics to technologically fix the diseases that results from their abnormal lives or for "broilers", (chickens you eat, as opposed to just their eggs), in cages too small to turn around. Cows are fed a diet of corn, even though their stomachs have evolved to only digest grass. This also means we need to technologically fix them. Rather than working with nature, we again oppose it.

This leads me to the book I am currently reading, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", another great book by Michael Pollan. Pollan follows the food of the typical American diet from seed to plate, in three different ways, the industrial, the pastoral and the hunter/gatherer. He rightly decries fast food in favor of slow food, he suggests avoiding any advertised food and as a rule of thumb trying to avoid buying food with more than 5 ingredients. It's harder than you think.

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants”.

Pollan's treatise on "Organic" in which he notes does not mean what you think... if you think it means, "no synthetic chemicals" or "peacefully grazing animals". At least in the US (and I can only imagine from the artificially cheap price, the same in Europe), animals are only required "access to the outdoors", a seemingly deliberately vague statement that allows manufacturers the liberty to determine when and if their animals live natural lives.

Simply stated, Organic doesn't necessarily mean "Sustainable" (another overused and often misused word), especially if you happen to buy a 70 calorie Organic lettuce produced 4000 miles away... it consuming in the meantime some 4600 calories of petroleum to get on your plate (shipping, refrigeration, etc...). In any case, the true definition of "organic" is any member of a large class of chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. But, it's meaning has come to mean something different in terms of Organic Food.

All I advocate in most of these blogs is to focus on the local, because whether we like it or not, our age of cheap oil, when all this unsustainability was possible, is coming to an end in the coming years and decades. It's up to you to ensure that you local realm of control is in check.

In the words of Hughes Mearns:

As I was sitting in my chair,

I knew the bottom wasn't there,

Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,

Ignoring little things like that.

Peace,

Grant