FutureFuel Reads The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann

Anthropology, philosophy, spirituality, ecology… Where does this book get filed? The keyword on the upper left corner of the back cover says Current Affairs. I guess those are current affairs; I guess it’s high time they were.

I actually bought this book after hearing Hartmann speak at Bioneers in 2006, impressed by his reasoned (intellectual) and grounded (spiritual/emotional) presence on stage. But I never got around to cracking it until I realized it might inform my current researches for Van Jones’ book on Green Collar Jobs.

Hartmann’s first goal is to explain how humanity exceeded natural carrying capacity on earth. For most of human existence, alongside every other living creature, we lived off what he calls “current local sunlight,” the amount of sun that hit the earth and got stored in plants, which fed the herbivores, which in turn fed the carnivores. Human shelter and clothing were derived from plants and animal parts too, and thus also from sunlight.

Population densities stabilized at the level which local sunlight could sustain, growing slightly when we developed herding and farming practices, which more efficiently converted sunlight into food.

Then we discovered what he calls “ancient sunlight:” coal, a material derived from plants that had stored sunlight for hundreds of millions of years. As coal replaced wood as a main source of heat, forests in turn could be cleared for food production, and global population jumped: from 500 million people around 1000 A.D. to one billion in 1800. And then we discovered another form of ancient sunlight: oil.

So while it took us 200,000 years to produce our first billion people, with the discovery of oil, it took just 130 years for our second billion, and a paltry 30 years for our third billion. Then, leveling off from exponentials into more linear growth—14 more years until we hit 4 billion, 13 more years to 5 billion, and 12 additional years to hit 6 billion in 1999. And growing.

And now there’s almost no more ancient sunlight left. Experts differ on the exact amounts remaining, but everyone is clear we’ll be totally OUT within the next 40-60ish years at current rates of usage– and increased use is predicted. Since demand and population is still growing, and since even our alterative energy technologies require oil (to produce photovoltaic cells, for example), and since we’re running out of all sorts of other things (water, metals, trees) we obviously need to Get Smart now.

Then Hartmann switches tacks entirely, in order to introduce us to the people who may hold the answer to effective resource management: the Older Cultures, such as the San, Kogi, Ik, Kayapo. He spends a lot of time debunking our Younger Culture’s prevailing narratives about these primitive peoples, and questioning our Younger/Dominant Cultural values. What is enough? What is wealth? What is growth? Who really attains leisure or contentment? Whose culture is deeper?

There are so many gems in this book that my copy is riddled with dog-eared pages, underlined passages, asterisks and exclamation points. There are far too many to convey here, so I’m just going to ask very nicely—maybe even beg you—to read the book yourself, and believe what he conveys about transformation rippling from the individual to the community to the global level, and how individual acts of grace, generosity, and gratitude can change humanity’s trajectory.

FutureFuel Reads Inevitable Surprises

I’ve been reading a ton of books about climate change and clean energy as part of my work with Van Jones and Green For All. I thought I’d start sharing my gleanings from and reactions to those books here.

Inevitable Surprises, Peter Schwartz

Wunderkind Peter Schwartz has been crafting predictions about the future—chiefly on behalf of his huge corporate clients, and for Hollywood productions like “Minority Report” and “War Games”—since the mid-1980s. And he’s been right a lot of the time, which is why I found myself reading—and re-reading—his book carefully.

Since he’s not only paid by corporate power, but is also a venture capitalist, often investing in the projects he’s describing as the Next Big Thing, I also found myself taking him with a big ole lick of salt, particularly when I read things from him that nearly every other scientist and observer gainsays, like “pollution is diminishing. Species are harder to extinguish than they seem.”

Among the things he predicts, which I note here without any editorializing:

Significantly-increased lifespans, with corresponding larger numbers of working, playing, procreating and consuming Elders.

Massive population migrations.
One specific approaching shift he points to is based on the fact that cultural preference for male children in China has resulted in a skewed ratio of male-to-female births, which “translates into ½ million ‘excess’ males coming into the population each year for the next 20 years.” He predicts this will lead to a diaspora of Chinese males seeking wives, and tremendous immigration of non-Chinese women to China.

Economic growth over the long haul, mostly due to increased productivity, globalization, and global infrastructure.

Ongoing terrorist acts by a set of “disorderly nations,” augmented by the impulsive behavior of the “rogue superpower” United States. Religious wars. The disconnectedness of 14 million parentless children growing up in Africa. Huge numbers of AIDS cases in China, India, and Russia.

Total and virtually inescapable surveillance, facilitated by retinal scans and nanotechnology. Human control over biological processes such as fertility. Bioindustrial processes (e.g. growing steaks in steel vats). Regenerative medicine: grow a new one of whatever you need. Computers that are a hundred million times as powerful as today’s. Space travel, eventually, possibly.

Posssibly, information theory as underlying reality: the idea that “there is a code that determines what happens when atoms and other small entities come together, and it is possible to crack that code….Reality, in short, is a giant computer, and it conceivably could be programmed if we knew how to input the right ‘data.’”

Population growth levels off. Green energy prevails—including nuclear. Global climate change, and with it: severe shortages of water, flooded coastal communities, tropical diseases’ spread to northern climates, and the resulting migration of populations.

A hugely devastating global plague—from a newer disease like Ebola or (airborne?) AIDS, or the return of an oldie now drug-resistant, like staph, the flu, or tuberculosis. And finally, equally cheerily, an asteroid hitting the earth and potentially destroying human civilization as we know it.

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Although at first I was tempted to fully discount Schwartz’s views as biased by his own economic interests, subsequent readings have also made me perceive my own biases and my wishful thinking. Reading Inevitable Surprises, I’m left with a mix of hope and despair not far from the ratio I already hold, but comprised of different ingredients. You might want to read this book, just in case.

FutureFuel Reads The Revenge of Gaia

I’ve been reading a ton of books about climate change and clean energy as part of my work with Van Jones and Green For All. I thought I’d start sharing my gleanings from and reactions to those books here.

The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock

What’s infuriating about this book’s implementation of Lovelock’s trademark concept of Gaia, the living and self-regulating superorganism that is Earth—including “her” atmosphere, oceans, geological strata, etc.—is that it often casts “her inhabitants” as separate and external. The duality is evidenced by statements like: “we still talk of sustainable development and renewable energy as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice.”

Lovelock is far from the only theorist to draw that line of distinction, but given that the theory underscores the interconnectedness of earth systems—and given that the intent of this book is to build our empathy for this creature named Gaia and thereby shake humanity into action (his highly-contested primary recommended action being widespread adoption of nuclear power)—I find this a dubious disconnect.

In his prediction that billions of humans will die due to climate change and the resulting loss of habitable areas, Lovelock writes: “Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but the planet will lose a precious resource: human civilization. Humans are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us Gaia has seen herself from space and begins to know her place in the universe.”

I find this a terribly confused description of the relationship between the planet and humanity—casting us simultaneously as a superior and separate entity (we are the ones who has shown Gaia herself), as a pox upon her surface, and as a part of her (specifically, her nervous system.)

As Christy Rogers pointed out in her review of the book, we know it’s going to take the Promise of a Dramatic Improvement in our Situation and/or the clear identification of an Enemy to motivate us to change our ways. Lovelock provides neither of these motivations, and merely muddies the throughtstream with his arguments. This is an ineffably skippable book.

Read my love.

I have a crush on a book. Not the characters, and not the author, no, I mean the book itself: a work of brilliance and beauty that challenges and expands my brain, tickles me with its wit, and turns me on with sensuousness. All of this not just at first read, but ongoing, for the book and I have become inseparable. Even as I read others, I find myself putting them down, reaching into my bag, and re-connecting with the pages of my obsession. My wandering eyes are encountering nothing comparable, at least not for now.

The book was a gift from a friend with impeccable taste (thank you, friend). At the enthralling first two chapters my cheeks flushed, my pupils dilated: what characters, what pace and suspense! But certain precious details, like beauty marks hovering by a full upper lip, gave me pause: wait, was this… nonfiction? I stopped, examined the front and back cover for the first time. It was nonfiction!…is: The Emperor of Scent: a true story of perfume and obsession.

Indeed, journalist Chandler Burr’s book is the true story of biophysicist and perfume connoisseur Luca Turin and his adventures in the scientific community and in the ultra-secret world of corporate perfumers, as he develops a new, hotly-contested scientific theory of how we smell things.

Some of Burr’s effusive yet incisive prose:

Turin is an instinctive egalitarian with an exquisitely refined aesthetic and unabashedly elitist tastes, and so he felt completely comfortable in the perfume world, which is populated by former members of the lower classes who spend their time creating outrageously expensive aesthetically oriented luxury goods for the rich.

Turin says:

“People will say, ‘But isn’t smell totally subjective?’ And I’ll say ‘What the hell does that mean?’ It’s not more subjective than color or sound. Real men and scientists feel slightly ridiculous smelling something. I’ll say ‘Let me show you some smells,’ and I start passing out vials and everyone titters, like I’ve just asked them to take off their clothes or something.”

For Turin, who can identify the ingredients of a scent down to the molecular level using only his nose, and can describe them in ordinary (and beautiful) language with absolute precision, smell is anything but subjective. It is scientific, and that’s the whole point. But what, exactly, is scientific? In a fascinating turn, the book reveals the political and petty and pretty darn subjective side of science—the peer review process in particular. Also and above all, it shows the paradoxically magical quality of science.

Burr notes:

The trouble with science is that, as a rule, oddity among scientists—perfume obsessions, strange work habits—is often indistinguishable from inefficiency. What appears ludicrous and implausible and outrageous usually is. And then, sometimes it’s not….

And Turin concludes:

“The problem of smell wasn’t that hard to crack. The catch was that to crack it, you had to know a huge number of disparate facts. It was simply a question of probability. How many people would be aware simultaneously of the recipe for Chanel No. 5, the vibrational numbers of boranes, Blitz, and Malcolm Dyson. And also have my particular approach, which was: if I smell it to be true, it is true…. Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful. Why. Because there is no such thing as disconnected facts. There is only complex structure. And both to explain complex structure to others, and, perhaps more important—this is forgotten, usually—to understand them oneself, one needs better metaphors. If I was able to understand this, it was because my chaotic accrual of information simply gave me better metaphors than anyone else.”

*sigh*

My words, bookbound

In 2004 my friend Pilar slipped me a copy of “LiP: Informed Revolt,” a quarterly magazine unlike the others. LiP took aim at the system– this corporate-held global matrix that feeds & maintains the worst in us humans–
–hatred, fear and/or envy of the Other (ie, immigrants, unAmericans, animals, people in turbans,people with brown skin (for fellow honkys), people who have more than me, people who have less than me because they might get fed up and rise up…);
–oblivion through television and drugs (on prescription and off) and so-many-shiny-things-to-own;
–and the sentiment that we are powerless to change any of this.

LiP entirely avoided any discussions of electoral politics, recognizing them for the diversion tactic they are (which is to say that there are no substantive differences between Democrats and Republicans, and money & thoughtspace spent on their jousting is Waste.)

LiP had the savviest voice on the dying set of categories we know as gender, already adopting the utterly fluid state of things to come.

And LiP was the only publication that had anything helpful to say on the subject of systemic racism to me as a white person trying to understand and tackle that painful taboo topic; LiP’s Race Editor Tim Wise is the wisest (and funniest) white voice I know on the subject of racism and anti-racist work.

And now, fresh from AK Press, there’s an anthology out of the best of it. It’s among the smartest and funniest social commentary out there, and I’m in there, too.

Making it the first time my work has ever appeared in a book. An actual book.

You can buy it here.

Divine free wet secrets,

or, how I love Mark Morford.

See http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/a/2007/07/25/notes072507.DTL for today’s prickly column about the chaos of love & relationships.

Also from him, from a while back, one of the most inspiring things I read in the past decade. He calls it a “spiritual perspective frappé”:

1. Choose not to believe much of the disinformation spinning forth from the White House at this time. Look at Donald Rumsfeld’s shockingly beady and pitch-black eyes and realize this man, these people, they are deeply convoluted and power blinded and do not have your best interests at heart.

2. Choose, furthermore, not to believe the world is really full of these vile power-mad slugs and lizards and prevaricators and fools and Rumsfelds. Stop thinking this is all there is, war and suffering and apparently very pale and egomaniacal and spiritless men running the world into the ground.

Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counterbalancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral.

3. Resist the great surges toward nihilism about the media, in seeing them all as either a bunch of depressing snickering pansy-assed gol-dang liberal scum or corporate-controlled sensationalistic J-school lackeys all parroting the same old pro-Shrub war stories and beating the same thudding pro-violence drum.

Seek out nuance and counterargument and subtle irony and contrarianism and balance and perspective. Realize it’s never as one-sided as they want you to believe. Read more outside your normal box of viewpoints and interests. Find out for yourself.

4. Remember the world does not consist of simpleminded and reductive good/evil polarities, but, rather, is a living organism, interconnected and breathing and dying and renewing in constant flux, religions interflowing, beliefs inbreeding, crammed full of ecstatically bejeweled people who are just as contradictory and confused and gorgeous and kaleidoscopic and baffled and sleepy and horny and lost and desperately craving of juicy unfiltered spiritual nourishment as you are, in this very moment, as you read these words.

5. Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel and head for the mountains with a case of Grey Goose and a box of Scharffenberger chocolates and the entire DeLillo collection and “Baraka” on DVD. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

And instead you can more fully engage, openly celebrate and share the items you happen to love — vodka, chocolate or otherwise — as tools of knowledge and power and luscious imbibing of life, throw them right smack in the face of all the Ashcroftian scowling and limpness, upping the vibration instead of merely enduring it, thus countering the urgent federal mandate to please live in a constant state of shuddering obedient paranoia and fear.

6. Realize the divine is not quite what you think it might be, that old methods of imploring, say, a cantankerous bearded patriarchal figure to please please please let you win the lottery and help you have better orgasms and oh yes smite your enemies might be a bit antiquated and prohibitive and just slightly lacking in vital ancient sordid chthonic feminine power.

Realize, further, that it is just these very outmoded and fervid mind-sets that are fueling a great many current hatreds and arming a great many warheads, and that maybe, just maybe, blind devouring adherence to any narrow doctrine — Christian, Muslim, Jew — is potentially fatal to the soul, bad for the skin and also just no fun at all.

7. Change the way you pray. Choose to believe in true orgiastic, energetic, self-realized divinity inside the self and emanating out, as opposed to an angry vengeful righteous God out there, one who demands that everyone must pay and suffer and kill and die, in His name, same as it ever was.

After all, it is your intention that sends the energy into play, that directly affects the world, every single person and every single soul, and your hate and fear and self-righteous belief does nothing to up the patriotism not just for country but for the entire planet. You have so much power. More than you know.

8. Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume, right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious, right when the snakes and pit vipers and squinting finger-pointing cowboy wanna-bes are all distracted — there’s your opening.

9. Remember magic.

10. And, finally, believe you are a part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable. You can breathe like this is the most lucid thing there is to believe. You can walk down the street like you are full of divine free wet secrets.

Where I’ve Been

I was sixteen in junior year of high school. My English teacher was Eleanor “Ellie” Heginbotham, a willowy devotee of Emily Dickinson who dressed in dark ankle-length skirts and high-collared silk blouses, the daughter of a preacher.

One day, in response to an assignment from her, I turned in a poem called “The Poet’s Candle.”

Here it is.

How glorious it is to see the good of life, which previously
Was shadowed by the constant view of grey sobriety. It’s new
For me to dwell upon the light—this flow of ink could only cite
Love’s misfortunes, in the past, or cloudiness in life’s forecast.
Unjust laws or unwed virgins, unhealed wounds or unfed urchins…
Enough of that! The only way to deal with grief is smile and say:
Though cursed arrows drop like flies or fly like drops of venomous lies,
Infest the kelly of the green with a festering olive sheen
And curdle milky whites of souls to seething, wicked, empty holes,
My belly-laughter is the cure through which I gaily glimpse the pure.
Armed with toothed and spiraled giggles I force grave men to grin and wriggle.
Technology’s left me unharmed—this fanciful poet now is charmed
By all of god’s great emerald earth: plush colors in the pinks of birth,
The golds of grain, the browns of soil. And these are common! With some toil
One sees the parchment of the moon, saffron poppies, sand’s amber dunes,
Whole spectra caught by dryads few in iridescent drops of dew.
My pair of shades now laid aside, I settle fuschia ones with pride
Upon my nose. I am assailed By nuances freshly unveiled:
Coy winks from wet grass, strangers’ gaits, dimpled elbows, waves from plaits,
Cryptic cobwebs, velvet toadstools, sea-ground stones in boisterous pools,
Toothless smiles of extreme ages— such pleasures grace all my pages.
With rhymes and rainbows I will weave joy. Of woe I take my leave.
Enough persons observe the grim. I hold a candle to the dim instead.

Reading it now, it rings indulgent and melodramatic—in a word, juvenile. But back then Ellie thought it was Just Wonderful and asked whether I’d heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay. When I said no, Ellie read my class the poem that made Millay famous before she’d turned twenty, entitled Renascence.

It was a formative moment. Ellie’s voice cantered along the lyrical lines as the finger of some celestial being poked at me: you—you there. I felt the ground drop beneath me, with Ellie’s voice descending from a long way above me. Here is the closing stanza; it cemented the poet’s grip on my heart that day:

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

It wouldn’t be the last time I felt the sensation of collapsing inward downward, stolen away by a piece of writing, but it was the first.

Still in Ellie’s class, I learned a bit more about “Edna,” as I lovingly called her: chiefly, that she engaged politically, particularly around the unjust death sentence of two Italian immigrants named Sacco and Vanzetti. And that she was bisexual.

I’d mostly forgotten my youthful obsession with the out-of-vogue Vincent when Nancy Milford’s 2001 biography “Savage Beauty” refreshed it. My life seemed to be following her lead in some ways. Except that my writing was stifled. I’d stopped writing with any focus in 1995, the last year of college.

On December 26, 2006, my divorce was finalized. June 9, 2007 would have been my fifth wedding anniversary, but it turned out to be something far better. On June 8, I had dinner with my friend Philo to talk about life and writing. Philo told me about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, her book containing a 12-week program for regaining contact with your creativity. We agreed to embark on it together. As soon as Philo and I left the restaurant, I bought the book.

Reading the introduction brought back that feeling I was sinking. Tremors—literal convulsions, like I’ve had when my body’s fought with a hallucinogen for control of my mind—rippled through me. A little after midnight, early on the ninth, I signed the contract in the book committing to embrace my calling as a writer. In essence, I married my, well, destiny. I’m happy to report that I’m still very much in love with myself.

Philo and I are nearly halfway through The Artist’s Way now. I took last week off to deepen my commitment by attending the Tin House writers’ workshop up in Portland OR, where, against a rolling green campus studded with neo-gothic university buildings, I communed with writers. Endlessly we discussed Craft and favorite authors and the Interestingness of things all around us. I’ve been having that relinquishing feeling nearly continuously, like I’ve accepted that I’m supposed to be a Writer: it’s not self-indulgent, and it can make a difference, and yes, it’s what I’m here for.

I’m full of gratitude—for my awe-inspiring workshop leader Colson Whitehead and the others at Tin House, for the encouragement of my brilliant writer friend Philo, and for Vincent’s hand in things.