Up To Here

Al Whispers an Orchestra; Coretta Solos

2007-01-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

One of the themes I've tried to harp on, in my few-and-far-between posts here, is political will. More precisely, the inadequacy of our political "situation" in dealing with the results of our society's lavish excesses. And the need for a complete shift in how the government carries out democracy. Today I'll play the harp with the full orchestra.

And what could represent an orchestra in the subject of sea level rise? A certain film that is sweeping the Rotary Club circuit, the home "entertainment" consoles, the Webwaves, and even the halls of power (in some countries). It's called An Inconvenient Truth. There's more than a wee chance you've already heard of it.

I saw the slide show that Al Gore developed and presented for years prior to the film being made. In the slide show there's something he talks about that doesn't show up in the film.

Gore says that government isn't going to save us. Familiar? Of course, he doesn't use the rest of my riff (that therefore we need a nonviolent revolution). But at least he plants that one seed.

That we can't depend on government to save us is not something you'd even expect him to mention, let alone harp on. But he does. And since he's the great "former next president" personage, I feel justified in factoring in a certain magnification. Thus, I feel justified calling it an orchestral accompaniment to my harping. Should I call it the harp seal of approval?

Too bad it's not in the film. I mean the acknowledgment, not the cute baby seal.

But wait! Is it slithering in? I recently got a look at the "updated" version of the DVD that's available. In the "Extras" some of the topics are worked over more extensively and he says:

"But how do we possibly debate something like this in the traditional framework of our political dialogue? This is so catastrophic, we obviously cannot allow this to happen. But we're headed right toward this right now."

Take out your magnifier. It's there. Between the lines. Al Gore is saying our government ain't worth diddley!! Not only our present government, but even our traditional framework is inadequate.

So what to do about that? Ask Coretta. (Scroll down to her last five paragraphs to see her solution.)

How to Cook

2006-11-16T08:28:00.000-08:00

Okay so I read this review of a synopsis of a published study once. I think it was a study from the Union of Concerned Scientists. I don't know what their methods were, but I kinda trust UCS except when they say electric cars are good because no cars are good, it's just that some cars are less bad. In fact, the harder to measure aspects of life are where the real trouble hangs out.

Anyway, it's not their methods that were interesting, it's their conclusions.

They looked at what's nowadays called 'ecological footprint' of certain activites. They decided to focus on everyday activities rather than industrial activities or war or other things that we already know are Godzilla versus Bambi. We're Bambi. We and all the rest of the delicate balance of nature.

Okay so anyway they looked at how much damage to the environment you cause when you do your life, like brush your teeth, play video games, build a basement, get a gall stone transplant, stuff like that. They learned something very surprising, shortly after they were done learning something obvious.

We'll get the obvious thing out of the way, so you can quit bugging me about it. Cars. King Kong to you. In the living room. Sitting quietly. Us, not the gorilla, which is happily munching on shorelines and alveoli and glaciers and making quite a racket, especially if you include the car alarms and car crashes and the ensuing sirens.

So that's out of the way and we can get to the topic at hand, which is cooking. Turns out that after the resounding first place finish, the second and third most ecologically destructive things most people do in their daily lives happen to be...drum roll...eating, and ...well, eating. (Eating does indeed have to do with cooking, right?)

That's right, eating. Meat and veggies in that order.

It makes sense really. Even before chemical warfare was being used in agriculture, even before commodification of food, or the earliest pre-rototiller agriculture, humans were pushing some animals to regional extinction. Because they were edible.

And nowadays the disruption to nature of hauling tasty morsels halfway around the world—our current habit—to say nothing of devoting land that was indeed once a complex multi-species wilderness, well, like I say, it's easy to understand why the munchies rate, though I don't even think the transportation costs were included in this particular study.

But isn't that the way it should be? We animals eat to stay alive and that has a passing impact on natural systems. It's the original natural way of things. I mean, c'mon. We're here. We're human animals. We've gotta eat. What are we gonna do? Beam food out of a black hole?

Why meat? If we glare at the facts, that's not so hard to accept. Just glare at the way meat is fed before it becomes food itself, and the way land is converted for food animals, and the hormones and distribution systems and so on and so forth, meat apparently makes quite a bloody mess before it gets to your table.

But vegetables? That's not so easy to swallow. It seems like something else would be more destructive than eating your puffed cereal, your beans and broccoli. Building that luxury home maybe? Replacing your stockings every day after they run all over you? Replacing your family after your ancestors run down? Actually I don't think that last one was considered in the study. But anyway yeah. Vegetables.

And apparently that's before including transportation. The transportation thing is a biggie, since we want our favorite food and we want it now. Seasons shmeasons. Somewhere in the world the season and soil are producing what we want right now. And as long as the cost of fuel allows it, someone will tow it across salty sands and burning seas to allow us to buy it.

Okay now let's pause for a moment and point out that this study is about American daily life, not people elsewhere. In many places people do feel limited by the seasons, by droughts, and by, well, certain unforgiving natural limits.

Also, for the sake of blog relevance, I see the climate change element wasn't weighted as heavily in the 1999 study as it might be today.

Rather than just feeling bad, I think organic and less meat is a good way to go, but as with my stand on almost everything, the big task we face if we want to improve the world is taking decisions away from the megacorporations. In organics as elsewhere, that seems not to be the trend.

We need organic, small scale agriculture, and local sources. Oh, and forcing the war-car-oil-TV-fear-based economy out of business. And since that isn't happening in time to stave off trouble, let's educate ourselves and work together, rather than bicker amongst ourselves as to who's failing to eat properly or recycle. It's not the main issue, and wastes energy that could go toward revolution or deep change.

Deep breath.

I saw another study more recently, this one by Consumer Reports. I trust them, too. Even though viewing people as consumers skews the sample. This study was comparing organic against commercially grown foods on the basis of whether chemical pesticide and other cringe-inducing residues end up in your food. Turns out, oddly enough, if you base it on intake of toxic yuck, some foods aren't worth the huge price increase just to get purity into your mouth. Those foods are processed in a way that destroys the residues before they reach your table, they say. (Other foods they looked at show a clear benefit to organic.)

Make of it what you will, but it three-quarters misses the point, this study. Your health tomorrow may depend on what residues you ingest today, but your health in 40 years depends on what some greedy agribusiness sprays or doesn't spray, injects or doesn't inject, grows for export or allows locals to eat, justifies as fertilizer byproduct from the oil. I don't mean "your health" in 40 years, in the abstract, like, one's health forty years after eating. I mean your health measured individually will probably be damaged more by secondary effects of our global habits than by what you actually eat.

Forty years from right now, the factors that'll determine your health are more likely to be about whether the entire global ecology is functioning than about whether you lazily allowed a residue of contamination onto your plate. Faddish epidemics, million refugee marches, wildfires, floods, battles, crashing educational standards: those are the things that will result from 40 years of lazily ignored food systems. Besides, instead of burning the local corner store when we riot against the horrors, we should be burning the system of commerce.

Here we are trying to eat. Guilt is a bad thing. Don't bother. Instead, if you want to feel immediately, gratifyingly virtuous, stop driving, reduce or eliminate meat from your diet and eat organic. If you drive twenty extra miles a week to buy organic, give up the car and eat organic food less often. It's better for the world. If you can join a CSA, where a farm delivers directly to a home in your neighborhood, walk to that home and get your box, thereby saving not only the drive for you, but the drive for the distributor you are leaving out of the food chain. But most of all, stop with the passivity. Tell people, especially younger people, that Monsanto is ruining your future, that profit margins are guaranteeing a future of poison, global unrest, and bad eating habits. In many cases, no eating habits, like starving people by the millions.

What's big and blue and eats rocks?

2006-10-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Slowly. Except sometimes more quickly. All correct replies will be stuffed into a bottle with a nice fancy cork and thrown into the answer to this question.
(apologies to Bennett Cerf)

Last week I showed a funny little Google Map photo and hinted at a possible, upcoming...oh okay, enough suspense. At the bottom, center of that photo is the MassArt Tower of the Massachusetts College of Art It's at 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Mass., USA and in this closer photo is the brown building across the street from the big green V-shaped one, at the bottom, center.

Paul Dobbs, MassArt Library Director, was inspired by the Up To Here blog to talk with MassArt Director of Facilities Howie LaRosee and Sustainable Campus Coordinator Luanne Witkowski about marking future sea level on campus buildings. They've started to organize to put a blue line at seven meters above sea level on all their buildings.

Paul says: "It's looking good for applying a blue line along four or five Mass. College of Art buildings on both sides of Huntington Avenue."

The campus is at elevation 13 feet, so the line would "only" be ten feet off the sidewalk. That's perfect for visibility, of course: near eye level and yet out of reach of people wanting to mess with it. So they could leave it up for a while.

They also hope to involve other Boston institutions.

This will be the first future sea level project I've been tipped to that has a p.r. department working with them. That means this may get a wee bit more media attention than Hugh taping that pole on Kansas Street (sorry, Hugh).

Mission Lakes and Mission Statements

2006-10-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

A quick trip in the time machine: Where to put all the trash? It's 1871 and we have not only the gold coming down from the Sierra Nevada mountains, but now the gold and silver of the Comstock Lode, too. Suddenly, the outskirts of San Francisco are trampling the old Mission Dolores. And up by Mission Creek, folks are too busy getting rich (and building grand scale redwood homes) to haul their trash out any farther than the nearest ditch. So, that ditch that was Mission Creek, a flowing and navigable watercourse just a decade back, is now one big heap of rubbish.

Community standards and long term thinking become flexible and expendable in a boom economy. That's how things went in San Francisco's Mission District until all the waterways were clogged and forced out of use. The world has been in the grip of a relative boom economy ever since the Industrial Revolution, and it has habituated us to waste disposal in the nearest "ditches": global air and water.

Today, in celebration of the largest waterway of our neighborhood, Ledia Carroll's Mission Lake Project is hosting a bike ride and barbecue. Part of the project is drawing a blue line where once sloshed the old shore of the lake, Lago Dolores. It's noted on this map as Laguna de Manantial, which means fresh water lake. In the future, the entire basin that held the lake will again be under water, salty water, below sea level.

Why blog on sea level rise?
1. Spread the word about future sea level projects to inspire more of them.
2. Get people to talk, think, meet and act creatively in coastal neighborhoods and elsewhere.
3. Contribute information and inspiration to the urgent move toward control of carbon emissions.
4. Spread and refine the message that political circumstances have to change if we want to react to weather-related disasters in a fair way.

Already lots of people are making efforts at slowing the world's output of greenhouse gases. I'd say that's being nicer to my toddling nieces and nephews than, say, just blasting along making the problem worse for our own immediate wealth and convenience, leaving them to face their fates.

The effort to reduce carbon emissions is extremely important. But no matter what we accomplish in that area, climate changes are already happening, and so we also need to focus our efforts on making our political and social workings more responsive and fairer in handling the disasters that come. Let's work on localized contingency systems that can handle displacement and disruption—and somehow I don't think we can leave this to the "markets".

It may even require giving things up that seem like we've won the right to them through ingenuity, struggle, and war. We've won the right to individualism at the cost of community, to luxury at the cost of exploitation, to convenience at the cost of fairness.

Milo thinks about the future

2006-10-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

My niblings are all still very young. But Milo is now old enough to start the infinite process of accepting and rejecting the complicated world his generation is inheriting. My brother, Andrei gathered his kids Luca and Milo to put up blue tape on their home in Charleston, South Carolina this past weekend. Luca got pretty wrapped up in the project.

Nearly their entire house will be under water when sea levels are at seven meters.

Andrei then recorded Milo thinking aloud about global warming, polar melt, and car use. I'll put that recording up here shortly.

The Artful Dodger

2006-10-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

After so successfully dodging the flood waters by moving out of my old place (with plenty of time to spare), I'm ready to make another dodge.

You thought I was excited when the SF Department of Environment was caught doing my seven meters blue taping too! That was so great!! And they made some really excellent tape for their short display at the Aquarium.

Well, get ready for more excitement: I just got tipped off that a major institution in another city is considering, or maybe even planning, a long term statement using a seven meter future water line, as a result of someone reading this here little underfed blog! (!!)

Sorry to be so dodgy, but...you'll just have to tune in again soon! I'll let you know the full scoop as soon as I've confirmed the details.

It's catching on!

2006-10-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm not the only one to have started a water line taping project at seven meters above sea level. For five days, the San Francisco Department of the Environment (in collaboration with the Sierra Club and funded by the Columbia Foundation) had stunning tape up on Pier 39 at the Aquarium of the Bay. Above is the Department's Alexis Harte bluly taping away.

And here's Rick Chien taping an aquarium wall with the cruise terminal behind him…will the tape reach? There are other pictures up at their web site, futuresealevel.org. Alexis Harte and Shawn Moss at the Dept of Env have been working hard on this. Shawn tells me that there was good coverage of the five-day event, but a news search today plus a regular search today didn't turn up much for me except blogging, which ain't quite nuthin'.

Their tape isn't yellow as originally planned. I'm glad to sea, it's blue!

Pessimism & children & optimism

2006-09-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

Up To Here has been called pessimistic and depressing, since it focuses on the ill-effects of our lifestyles. I must say, I understand that perspective but I view it very differently.

I think that as a species we have two options:
1) whatever
2) hey let's!

I prefer the second. An open-eyed grappling with the troubles of life is the more optimistic of the two. It's easy to be distracted by troubles of moment-by-moment life and leave the bigger troubles for others—or nobody—to deal with. But I don't trust the people most likely to grab leadership in these areas.

So, in my efforts to see the future as a place where kids of today can do wonderful, creative, nondepressing things, I am willing to grapple with depressing things today. It gives the fecal mess a scent of sweet optimism, especially when you look at it as a chance to do something more than scream "EMERGENCY!"

Up To Here is partly a form of screaming, sure, but it's also a step or two in the process of looking at what we need to do, come hell or high water.

Here's a nice little pair of kid pics from Davis, California, USA. Laura Aptekar-Cassels holds her nose so the sea doesn't flood her windpipe. (The tape on the pole reads "Future sea level", placed by Christopher Cassels.)

Ah, but look! Wesley takes action, climbing above his sister, and brother Dylan, to where he can breathe free!

You see, it's not all doom and gloom...hey let's follow Wesley's example and do something! Not just something to slow global warming, which is very important, but let's do something to change our position: We need to restructure enough about how our economy, societies and daily habits function, so that we can respond creatively and cooperatively, without leaving the unlucky poor behind. Think Katrina.

Okay, sure, sure, Davis is waaaaay above sea level now. 50 feet, in fact. So, it's a thought-provoking message. During the Pliocene, sea level was 82 feet above where it is now. That was the last time the global average temperature was three degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now.

Future shorelines of Manhattan

2006-09-07T21:20:00.000-07:00

Finally a photo of a future sea level marked in another city, albeit blue-taped by a San Franciscan. Here's a picture of one blue-taped pole from the Fairly Large Apple. Chris Carlsson blogged about it, and marked it with our nice "Future Shoreline" sticker, designed by Hugh D'Andrade.

Snorkel the future shoreline!

2006-08-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

Ten days ago I beat the clock. I got out of my old apartment before the sea came washing in.

We're still at it (blue-taping) here in SF. Hugh D'Andrade marked a storefront banner at seven meters in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. I then wrote "FUTURE SEA LEVEL" on the tape and got the eye-popping reaction we'd hoped for from a customer heading into the store. It's oversimplifying, sure, but it's good to get folks a talkin'.

Thanks partly to Al Gore and Mona Caron, lots of people are a talkin' about sea level rise, including the San Francisco Department of the Environment. They plan to be gadflying at an altitude of seven meters in the second half of September, with a water line taping project similar to Up To Here. My contacts at the Department say that the underrated Aquarium of the Bay, and the over-indulged tourist bonanza Pier 39, are volunteering to festoon their second level pilings with ribbony reminders of impending catastrophe—as if their ongoing orgy of unnecessary commodities weren't reminder enough. The effort will be called Future Sea Level (dot org) and is being funded and launched in a decidedly NGO fashion—considering that they are supposedly a GO, albeit without much G funding—in collaboration with the Sierra Club and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. I'm expecting their URL to be functional in a couple or three weeks.

Meanwhile the Critical Mass bicyclists are erupting into chaos over the issue. A few folks from various cities seem intent upon trumpeting the link between car culture and destructive hurricanes. The one year anniversary of one strong storm's landfall comes very close to Friday, August 25th, the same day as the monthly Critical Mass. Let Chris Carlsson know if you want to help cover the $300 printing costs of the sticker.

What if the sea came...

2006-08-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome and get out the blue tape!

Hi. My name is Joel and I live on Earth in a coastal city called San Francisco. Coastal cities are cities with shorelines. Shorelines come, shorelines go. C'mon along as we tape off some possible new shorelines in coastal cities all around the world, with bright blue tape!

I live at the corner of Guerrero and 16th Streets, two miles from the Bay. At least I do for now. Things are changing. It's a race: I gave notice that I'd move out of my apartment by August 11, seven days from now. Will the sea engulf my building before then? No. I predict it won't. I predict I'll win the race! Bravado? You decide.

My building is at 49 feet elevation—that's about fifteen meters. And my apartment is another three flights and a landing above the street, for a total of 22 vertical meters. If the sea level continues to rise at its current rate, next Friday the sea will be an impossible-to-measure fraction of a millimeter higher than it is now. So, no, the sea will not engulf my building, nor even reach my landing, before I scram to wherever I'm gonna live.

Nevertheless, as a precaution, I've been offering flotation vests to my visitors. And in the unlikely event of a watery landing, I have my canoe at the ready!

I'm being cautious because, well, there's a catch: sea level rise seems to be speeding up. It might speed up a little in our lifetimes or it might speed up a lot. Nobody knows for certain. But it will change.

That's what this blog is about. Change. Not about my imminent move out of my apartment, really, just about the wee little incremental changes in Earth's average climate, the ones that will affect my niblings (nieces & nephews) Malka, Milo, and Luca as they grow out of toddlerhood and into a world of many challenges over the many years.

Or maybe over the weeks. Averages can be deceptive. Already there's been notable drama in recent weather patterns. The changes have begun. It's time to face the fact that we, as a global voyage, must eventually leave the NO WAKE ZONE.

I've started this blog to swap stories about one fun activity that each of us can do where we live. All you need is some blue tape. Or string. Or paint.

Grab your tape. With your free hand, find your location using Google Earth (not Google Maps). After all the fancy zooming effects settle to a stop, it'll display the elevation above sea level at the bottom of the window. Move the cursor over the place you are interested in. If it's "elev 18 ft" at the intersection, go out onto the street and mark an object at that intersection with a blue line five feet up. (18 ft + 5 ft = 23 ft which is seven meters above sea level.) Then, after you've marked your house or utility pole Up To Here, let me know about it. Send a photo for me to post!

Send some stories to Up To Here describing how people react. And if your efforts include a sign or sticker explaining this "installation" for passersby, maybe send an image of that.

Oh wait! Before we get all sticky and intimate with the blue tape, let's dispense (with) some confusion!

Hey look! It's Q&A!

What about markings at other elevations?
Sure, mark at any elevation you like. These installations are symbolic. They symbolize the challenges ahead, as we experience (and desperately try to avoid) the accelerated changes that make our planetary moment exciting.

I picked seven meters because of widely accepted calculations that if all of Greenland's ice slid or melted into the sea, it would raise worldwide sea levels seven meters. Greenland is already melting faster than new snow accumulates and now it seems that melt water flowing under the very thick ice may lubricate its slide into the sea.

Climate is a brain-twiddlingly complex system, far beyond the understanding of the most observant and diligent scientific geniuses. It's hard to know what will happen, and to the slight extent that we can predict what, we don't know when. So pick a line and tape it! Or put a blue ribbon-magnet on your— Oh no, never mind.