Conundrum

Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse
© 2012 David Owen
272 pages

If only all big problems could be tackled with product substitution. We're consumers at heart, and our response to difficulties of all kinds usually involves consumption in one form or another. My car's a problem? Tell me what to drive instead. Wrong water heater? I'll switch. Kitchen counters not green? I'll replace them. The challenge arises when consumption itself is at issue. The world faces a long list of environmental challenges, yet most so-called solutions are either irrelevant or make the real problems worse. That's the conundrum facing anyone who yearns for "sustainability."

Green is in, but what if we’re doing it wrong – and our earnest attempts to be environmentally responsible are backfiring on us? Such is David Owen’s proposal in The Conundrum, in which he asserts that typical approaches to sustainability are only aggravating the problem, and confronts the reader with the possibility that we already know the most effective way to keep the climate crisis in check…the only question is our will to do it. That’s the conundrum.

Owen turned conventional environmental thinking on its head with his The Green Metropolis, which took an economical approach and asserted that cities were the most environmentally prudent technology on earth, for they allow each human being to use as little energy as possible. Cities are part of the solution, but here Owen is more concerned with driving home the extent of the problem.  In the past we have been concerned with using energy more efficiently, but this only allows us to use more energy.  The price of gas is an obvious example: when prices are high, we drive less. We have an incentive to do so. When prices are low, however, we drive more.  Attempts to make our current lifestyle Green are doomed to failure, because the living patterns of the first world in the 21st century are fundamentally energy intensive. The "little things" like using better lightbulbs or recycling cans can't overcome the fact that society as a whole has become utterly wasteful.* Even our attempts to free ourselves from using dirty ol’ fossil fuels only maintain the pattern: solar power plants might use renewable fuel, but the physical construction of the plants systems requires intensive processing of scarce resources.  Ultimately, he argues, the solution to our energy and climate problems is simple: use less energy.

While he doesn’t elaborate on what that entails (having already pointed out the resiliency of cities in a prior book),  readers must take a long, hard look at their own lives to see where waste has made itself a habit. Extravagance has become the norm in the west, where today’s gas station make more use of refrigeration units than the grocery stores of the 1960s.  Waste inherent in the built environment: because we have air-conditioning, for instance, we've stopped bothering to build homes that can mitigate. Our windows are to look out of, not to provide ventilation. Our shutters are plastic decor, not functional.

It remains to be seen if we will make the hard choices. Eventually we will have to: reality will leave us no alternative. I'd tend to recommend The Green Metropolis over this; it makes the same point in a broader context and proposes some solutions.


Related:

• David Owen on the Infrastructure Blog
• Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay (Cars are "enemy #1".)
• Too Much Magic, James Howard Kunstler
• The Green Metropolis, David Owen
• "It's Too Easy Being Green: the Prius Fallacy", an excerpt from the book.
• The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov
• - Symphony of Science has finally included Isaac Asimov in one of its videos, and appropriately it's called "Our Biggest Challenge", its subject being the climate crisis. (It's also far more optimistic in regards to technology than Owen and Kunstler.)

* Not that this means you should stop bothering. Conventional lightbulbs wasted over 90% of their energy as heat, so if you stick to using them you're only getting a dime of value for every dollar you send to the electric company, and not even that much if you take into account the increased expenditures for air cooling to compensate for all that heat...

No Logo

No Logo: the Case Against the Brand Bullies 

© 1999, 2009; Naomi Klein

544 pages

The political and financial turmoil of the past few years have seen a rising tide of anger targeted against the political power of wealthy corporations. Little wonder: since the crisis erupted in 2007, millions have lost their jobs, yet the corporate officers of these failing businesses continue to award themselves extravagant bonuses, in some cases with taxpayers' money.  And there is no help to be found in the government;  anti-corporate protesters in New York and elsewhere have been set on by police, and the Supreme Court has declared corporations to be "people", whose freedom of speech in the form of campaign donations should not be limited in the least. (And those actual people who express their own freedom of speech by impeding corporate actions? If their protests are judged to have caused $10,000 in losses, they are deemed domestic terrorists and join the 10% of Americans already in prison.) No Brand  is a sharp criticism of corporations, but one from a different era. First published in 1999, she scrutinizes brand corporations first for their business model, which emphasizes style rather than substance, before examining their invasion of public space and notorious legacy of abusive labor practices.

As a child, I scoffed at my classmates’ obsession with the Nike brand. My derision was born not of any preternatural consumer consciousness; my parents simply were not the kind to pay for overpriced t-shirts. For that is what they were; a Nike t-shirt is not made of magic cotton that repels water, heals wounds, or bestows upon its wearer +2 Armor. The same is true of its synthetic products, aimed toward actual athletes: while they may wick sweat and keep users comfortable, they do it no better than those manufactured by Champion or generic brands. Nike has never advertised its gear on the basis of superiority, like washing detergent. And yet early this spring, when shopping for athletic clothes, I went to Amazon and simply typed in “Nike”. I was interested in all manner of sports apparel, and Nike…was sports.

Therein lies the basis of Klein’s criticism.  Brand companies aren’t about quality, they’re about Ideas, and consumers are not paying money for superior merchandise but are instead buying into an image of themselves, of something they want to be. It’s a formula that has given religions and political ideologies success for thousands of years, and today it is the approach of almost every major corporation. But because their products don’t advertise themselves the way quality products might, these brand corporations have to push their product aggressively, and in the section “NO SPACE”, Klein details how brands are using not just conventional media, but putting up advertisements in schools. While parents might merely resent a company taking advantage of a financially struggling school system to hawk its shoes,  this branded invasion is literally dangerous when school cafeterias become hosts to McDonalds annexes and Coca-Cola gains exclusive distribution rights. Children become a captive audience to advertising; their values are those introduced not by parents or concerned teachers, but marketing execs who are grooming the next generation of consumers.

 Because the companies chiefly concern themselves with pushing their Image, and give little attention to the manufacturing side of things, rampant labor abuses escape their notice completely. The abuses are familiar to anyone conversant with the term sweat shop:  long hours, marginal pay, no rights, and no tolerance for anyone who resists the abuse. Even in countries which have something resembling human rights laws, they are often moot where corporations are concerned. In the Philippines, for instance, there exist economic development zones, little islands of virtually zero regulation where the only rules governing corporations are those they impose upon themselves. Shockingly, with their only motivation being profit margins, exploitation is rife.

But in the United States and Europe, citizens’ groups are working to give these companies another motivation. In “NO LOGO”, Klein covers the growth of activism against these companies, showing how boycotts and government actions have forced Nike and other companies to take responsibility for the labor costs involved in their products. This activism isn’t limited to aging hippies or idealistic college students, either: certain groups have met success in stirring up anger in decaying urban areas, among young black men who dream of making a success of themselves by wearing Nike shoes.

 No Logo is as mature a critique of brand corporations as one might ask for – sharply pointed, but not a screed. She builds her arguments up slowly and steadily, allowing the facts to present the case instead of passion.  The result is disturbing and damning, yet encouraging. Definitely a work to remember. (For those who have read the original, Klein updates it with a section that declares President Obama to be the first superbrand president...with the problems therein.)

This Week at the Library (25 September)

Germany's national holiday, Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit, falls this next Wednesday, so this week my reading will be oriented toward 'das Land der Dichter und Denker',  just as in July I celebrated the American and French revolutions. On the reading menu? Germany: Unraveling an Enigma and Five Germanies I Have Known. One is cultural examination; the other, history.

Late last week, Stephen Baker's The Numerati caught my eye. Its cover belies the remarkable content inside, as Baker addresses as how every facet of our lives is being converted into data and tracked. Our masses of decisions and feelings  are turned into bits that computers can analyze so that mathematicians can construct models that allow corporations to target us more accurately -- or 'serve us better', if you prefer. There are seven chapters, detailing the ways we are examined as workers, shoppers, voters,bloggers, potential terrorists, patients, and lovers.  Although Baker is rather optimistic about the future of our lives under the microscope, I for one  find that the idea of being tracked and scrutinized by economic powers stinks of predation. Baker takes heart in the idea that the Numerati, the mathematicians tied to the computers who use their analyses to construct models that predict our behavior,  aren't one monolithic elite. The political scientists are scrutinized as shoppers, and if they object to a shopping cart suggesting where they should go based on their purchase history, they can fight abuse within their field. I don't find this terribly reassuring, especially when it comes to labor issues. I recently read in Naomi Klein's No Logo how a certain coffee firm has realized how much more profitable it is to only call in most of their staff during peak hours, so that people are summoned to work at short intervals throughout the day instead of serving through a shift. The workers exist only for the employer's convenience: the modeling serves the managers' bottom line nicely, because they sell the same amount of merchandise but don't pay nearly as much for labor. The workers, on the other hand,  can't make enough to support themselves and don't have time to do anything productive during their little intervals. It's the kind of story that makes you sympathize with those kids throwing bricks in Seattle.

I have some interesting book reviews and comments lined up for this week -- Naomi Klein's No Logo, David Owen's Conundrum, and William Power's Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.

Teaser Tuesday (25 September)

The conversation cut off by another person's telephone ringing. The voice that trails away as eyes and brain tunnel into a screen. It's annoying when you're the victim, but then, don't you do the same thing yourself? You're in a real place with someone who means a great deal to you, say having lunch with a close friend or colleague or reading a book to a child. To all appearances, you're present and fully engaged. But your attention is provisional, awaiting the next summons from beyond. A faint vibration or beep is all it takes and off you go.

p. 52, Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, William Powers

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event in which participants share excerpts from their current reads; it is hosted by MizB of ShouldBeReading.


The above is why I keep my cellphone turned off and only check it in the evenings. To everything its place and time..

Raise the Dawn

Star Trek Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn
© 2012 David R. George III
400 pages

The ending of Plagues of Night saw me stand to my feet in shock. Not since the Destiny trilogy has there been such a cliffhanger in Trek literature. Raise the Dawn sees David R. George finish what he began, with brilliant success.

Tensions were high between the Federation and the Typhon Pact before this duology, but however much the leaders of the Federation and Romulan Empire might wish to maintain the peace, other members of the Typhon Pact -- and certain blonde, notoriously villainous elements within the Empireitself --  are more bellicose, and their actions have already led to catastrophe. As the president of the Federation resigns herself to the fact that her heavily fatigued people are in for yet another conflict, the Romulan praetor makes a stunning move, one that confirms that the days of two-dimensional bad guys are over.

Trek literature has steadily been pushing the envelope since the publication of the first Avatar books. George doesn't just overturn the apple cart of the status quo;  since Rough Beasts of Empire, he's set it on fire. A few of Trek's characters have been going through the meatgrinder, and while that's been rough going for readers who feel for these characters, Raise the Dawn offers resolution.  All of the stresses introduced in the first four Typhon Pact novels have coalesced here, putting our characters through the fire, even as they battle private battles of their own, like Prynn Tenmei's struggle to let her father go, and Sisko's alienation from his family. Raise the Dawn continues to be expansive; like Plagues of Night, its characters are drawn from across the Trek verse, excluding only the Titan and Voyager crews. But George goes even further by playing with prophetic visions of the kind we saw in "Far Beyond the Stars" and "Image in the Sand"; characters seem to be inhabiting multiple planes of existence at the same time, interacting with one another when they can't possibly be doing so, and it's too brilliantly done to be confusing, except in a delighted way.

George's duology is a must read for fans of Trek literature. I have not been this mesmerized or moved since the Destiny series; only Full Circle has even come close.

Mudhouse Sabbath

Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline 
© 2008 Laura Winner
162 pages

Increasingly, Christian religious scholars are examining Jesus in the context of his Jewish roots. While the works I'm familiar with have done this primarily to understand his teachings as portrayed in the New Testament,  Laura Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath asks: how can Jesus' Jewishiness inform contemporary Christian spirituality? In Mudhouse Sabbath, she examines eleven aspects of Jewish spirituality and discusses how they can be applied more broadly. While her intended audience is Christians,  this slender work can be of some use to any person with a 'spiritual' bent.

Winner is in a unique place to write this book, because despite being Jewish and raised in the conservative tradition, somehow while  studying in England she became an Anglican priest. She writes in her introduction that upon conversion, she at first did away with all of the elements of her Jewish roots -- the practices and tools of her childhood faith -- but then realized she felt as though she was missing something. Restoring those practices in a new context  made sense to her after she realized that since Jesus was Jewish,  taking inspiration from practices that might have been his, even if the contemporary Christian faith has forgotten them,  would mean being more like Jesus.  In this slender little work she addresses the sabbath,  keeping kosher, mourning, hospitality, prayer, body image, fasting, aging, candle-lighting, weddings, and doorposts. Some elements are distinct to Judaism (Shabbat and nailing mini-Torahs to doorposts) while the majority address a given issue in a Jewish context.

Mudhouse Sabbath leaves me with mixed feelings: Christians should explore Jewish spirituality. They should explore Muslim and Buddhist spirituality, too,  and the reverse is the same. No religion, philosophy, or worldview on Earth has a monopoly on truth, and  few are entirely bereft of it. Our minds find strength in exploring diverse pools of thought: homogeneity is stagnation and death.  Mudhouse Sabbath focuses more on what Christians can learn from Jews, but the value of certain practices transcends all boundaries. I'm particularly partial to the idea of sabbaths, for instance, as an affirmation of human dignity. In the United States, we are feverish with activity -- working long hours, then filling our leisure time with scheduled activities. We are constantly "connected" to the larger world, never free to just rest.  I like the idea of people declaring: Enough!.

The slenderness of the volume prevents Winner from developing her ideas, though. She offers sparks of potential insight rather than a roaring fire of enlightenment. Take the chapter on kashrut, or keeping kosher. She doesn't advocate that Christians or anyone else start keeping two separate sets of cookware because pots that have contained milk can never, ever contain milk; instead, she looks at the broader application of food mindfulness, and her example is the value of eating seasonally instead of letting the supermarket fool us into thinking that tomatoes in January are perfectly appropriate. A more salient example would be that of over-consumption -- or more pointedly, a  given company's sanitary standards or labor practices, both of which are in dire shape in the United States.


Although Winner didn't flesh out her ideas as expansively as I would have liked, it may be enough that she prompts Christians to draw inspiration from a broader source, especially given that Christianity tends to be dominated by beliefs instead of practices, and Winner principally addresses ways of working spiritual themes, like awareness, into the fabric of everyday lives.  Actions are more substantial than beliefs and ideas; as Epictetus groused in his handbook, what we intend matters little. ("Your dumbbells are your own affair, O slave; show me your muscles!")

So, may Winner's sparks be enough to ignite a few ideas in those who read his.


Related:

• The Misunderstood Jew: the Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, Amy Jill-Levine
• Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes, John Shelby Spong
• The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Miracle, Shane Claiborne

Moon Shot

Moon Shot: the Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon
© 1995 Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton. Introduction by Neil Armstrong
383 pages

The Apollo program has been in the news as of late given the death of Neil Armstrong, who with Buzz Aldrin was one of the first men to land on the moon, but my own reading in this subject for the past couple of months was prompted by seeing From the Earth to the Sky, which I've since begun to watch again*.  Moon Shot stands apart from the books I've read previously -- Lost Moon, A Man on the Moon by going beyond Apollo. The authors,  Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, were among the "Mercury Seven", the first Americans chosen to be astronauts, but they were both  medically grounded midway through that first program and spent most of Gemini and Apollo running the astronaut office and flight crew operations. Eventually, they both got their chance to fly, and this is the story of the space program up to 1975, framed by their careers.

 Although the Apollo program would seem to be the star (the book begins with a storied retelling of Apollo 11's landing),  Moon Shot is really "Alan and Deke's book", so the content focuses on Mercury and Gemini, then Apollo 14, and then Deke's triumph when in his early fifties, doctors were finally convinced that the cardiac arrhythmia that grounded him during Mercury was finally resolved and he was able to fly.  In a way,  Moon Shot is the story of the first and last men of Apollo:  Alan Shepard was the first American in space, and Deke Slayton flew the last Apollo module into space, powered by the last Saturn rocket, where he docked with a Soyuz capsule and shook hands with his Russian counterparts, among them Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space.  While there are a great many Apollo histories and astronaut memoirs out there, this is the first I've seen that features Apollo-Soyuz, and follows NASA beyond the last moonlanding mission.  Fittingly, as a tale told in part by a man who participated in Apollo-Soyuz, there are brief sections which give the Russian cosmonauts their own chance to speak, perhaps motivated by the way the sight of Earth from space reduces men to tears and makes them realize how fragile life is, and how stupidly trivial our perceived differences are. By Moon Shot's end,  American and Russian spacewalkers are comrades and fellow explorers -- friends, not foes.  The writing is strong and lively, and given the privileged perspective of the authors -- as  two of the first astronauts, and then the chiefs of the program --  Moon Shot is a very worthy contribution to Apollo literature. It doesn't rival A Man on the Moon for treatment of Apollo itself, but has more extensive background and sees the space race end properly in brotherhood.

* Twelve episodes which are gobsmackingly amazing. Wonderful music, outstanding visuals and acting -- what an accomplishment.