A More Perfect Market

"I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature..."

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:17:00 -0700

“I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature sufficiently to rescue themselves and to rescue their planet, is through enthusiastic intimacy with works of their own imaginations.”

- Kurt Vonnegut wrote that. In the preface to Wampeters, Foma & Granfallooons.

It makes me think of the world’s cognitive surplus. I bet Vonnegut would have loved Clay Shirky.

(INCENTIVES) This is not the best we can do.

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:01:00 -0700

(INCENTIVES)

This is not the best we can do.

"Is communication a waste of time? That is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. I constantly point to the..."

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:04:00 -0700

“Is communication a waste of time? That is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. I constantly point to the Aflac story showing the unbounded power of mass media — a company that doubled its business in 4 years simply by building an ad campaign around a duck. There could be a duck campaign out there for global warming — we’ll never know if all the communication efforts continue to be so conservative and dull.”

- Randy Olson emailed that to Andy Revkin. Revkin included it in one of a fascinating series of posts on science and communication.

“I think the public is getting suspicious!” Well...

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:15:47 -0700

“I think the public is getting suspicious!”

Well done, Upright Citizens Brigade. And thank you, Grist, for sharing.

(OUR RESPONSIBILITY) It’s true. We are responsible. We buy...

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:55:50 -0700

(OUR RESPONSIBILITY)

It’s true. We are responsible.

We buy what they sell. And ask them to sell it to us cheap.

Thank you Andy Revkin.

BP Global PR

Fri, 28 May 2010 12:58:43 -0700

BP Global PR:

Best Twitter account ever.

Well, maybe second best.

"We claim to have an advanced industrial economy, and yet it is run on primeval swamp goo and..."

Tue, 25 May 2010 11:57:24 -0700

“We claim to have an advanced industrial economy, and yet it is run on primeval swamp goo and dinosaur poop. Surely there must be some more modern way to do it.”

- Amory Lovins said that, in Rocky Mountain Institute’s new video about their Reinventing Fire project.

He had me at dinosaur poop.

"The old chestnut that ‘coal is West Virginia’s greatest natural resource’ deserves..."

Fri, 07 May 2010 00:09:45 -0700

“The old chestnut that ‘coal is West Virginia’s greatest natural resource’ deserves revision. I believe that our people are West Virginia’s most valuable resource. We must demand to be treated as such.”

- Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) wrote that.

I hate to quote a politician kissing his constituents’ asses. But you gotta love a West Virginia politician distancing himself from the coal industry. And you gotta love an old man dropping a nonsensical metaphor.

Thank you Switchboard.

"One heck of a conspiracy would be needed to get all of these completely independent data sets to..."

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:20:55 -0700

“One heck of a conspiracy would be needed to get all of these completely independent data sets to point in the same direction.”

- NRDC’s Dan Lashof wrote that, in a blog post about a report that the EPA just released. The report tracks 24 trends, all independent of one another, all indicators that climate change is happening.

Laundry

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:01:36 -0700

One of my favorite recurring, everyday moments is walking away from a full clothesline.

I’ve done my little bit of work, and I’ve passed the job to the sun and the wind. The Sun and The Wind. Working for me. And working, it seems to me, happily.

Now if only we could figure out a similarly free and clean and harmonious system for washing the clothes.

"European airspace, shrouded in a toxic cloud, has actually become remarkably cleaner in the last few..."

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:17:00 -0700

“European airspace, shrouded in a toxic cloud, has actually become remarkably cleaner in the last few days, at least in CO2 terms.”

- According to NRDC’s Peter Malik, the erupting Mt. Eyjafjallajökull has emitted less carbon dioxide than a normally functioning European aviation sector would emit in sixty normal minutes.

Update: Looks like the numbers I used above were wrong. Sorry. The quote still works, however.

"I was prowling the stone hallways of Christ Church College one rainy day when I peered into a dusty..."

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:36:18 -0700

“I was prowling the stone hallways of Christ Church College one rainy day when I peered into a dusty chemistry lab and caught sight of a large metal contraption. A jumble of pipes and gauges, wires and tubes, it had a certain space-age charm. I noticed a bespectacled man in a white lab coat, dropping in banana peels and candy wrappers. A whirring ensued. Then, Eureka! Lights flashed on. My God, I thought, these Brits are on to something!”

- That’s John O’Hurley, as J. Peterman, the character he once played on Seinfeld, describing, in Peterman Catalog style, a biomass-burning energy technology that is a big part of his business.

The man’s now a poop and garbage entrepreneur. For that, I salute him.

I also salute him for his dramatic video introduction to his company’s website.

(PLASTIC BAG) 18 minutes of online video is a lot to ask. But,...

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:03:00 -0700

(PLASTIC BAG)

18 minutes of online video is a lot to ask. But, if you hang in there, you’ll hear an amazing closing line. And, of course, a constant stream of classic Werner Herzog narration.

(SPOOKY’S ANTARCTICA) Here’s some radio background...

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:17:16 -0700

(SPOOKY’S ANTARCTICA)

Here’s some radio background on DJ Spooky’s relationship with the ice.

And here’s some blog background on the What Matters Most? project, the project that inspired Spooky to create that graphic.

Thank you Andy Revkin.

On Collapse And Complexity

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:04:53 -0700

On Collapse And Complexity:

That’s a link to a PSFK post about a Clay Shirky article.

Here’s how Shirky ends it:

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

Maybe that “ecosystem” is market economics, and maybe the simpler, the more perfect.

(MAKING THE DEAL) Mysterious place that Washington DC.

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:21:05 -0700

(MAKING THE DEAL)

Mysterious place that Washington DC.

An April Fools joke maybe? Yikes. (Update: Yes. An April Fools...

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:39:00 -0700

An April Fools joke maybe? Yikes.

(Update: Yes. An April Fools joke. And a weird one. Tough to be funny and terrifying at the same time. But props to Sierra Club for trying.)

"What I try to remember is that the whole country’s going through a process. We’re going..."

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:34:34 -0700

“What I try to remember is that the whole country’s going through a process. We’re going to be a very different country in 20 years. That brings up a lot of fear and a lot of anger. People on both sides of the political spectrum are going to make mistakes. In my heart, I see these noisy attacks on me as friendly fire. These are my fellow countrymen and women, who don’t want to see this country continue to suffer. I feel exactly the same way.”

- Van Jones said that, in an interview with Grist’s David Roberts, after Roberts asked him if he’s angry about what went down last September.

Solid response, in my opinion.

Forgiveness is a hugely powerful thing.

"To be honest, I’m not sure I’d characterize myself as an environmentalist now. While I got into..."

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 07:46:49 -0700

“To be honest, I’m not sure I’d characterize myself as an environmentalist now. While I got into global warming out of scientific curiosity, my continued interest and all the hours I spend on it are more out of concern for humanity than nature. I’m a Christian and a strong aspect of my faith is social conscience – hating injustice and caring for the poor. As I pored through the research into global warming impacts, I learned that poor and developing countries are those worst affected by global warming. Ironically, these are the countries least able to adapt to climate change.”

- Aussie science-sorter John Cook said that in an interview with Andy Revkin.

Cook is a physicist, not a climate scientist, but he has spent a lot of time over the past few years examining the specifics of climate change skepticism. He’s not impressed.

So he blogs, “getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.” And he collects information, distills it, and feeds it into his iPhone App.

Still lots of work to do before I really truly call this thing a...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:25:18 -0700

Still lots of work to do before I really truly call this thing a working web site. But we smoothed out a few wrinkles. And added some biodiversity to our upside-down lawn.

Come play if you want: www.carrotproject.com. If you don’t already have an account, request an invitation. Requests get granted.