viridiandesign

Viridian Note 00496: Al Gore Wins Nobel

2007-10-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Key concepts:: Al Gore, Cuba, emergencies
Attention Conservation Notice:: great news for greenies all spoilt by glum Viridian futurism.

(((I'm now living in Torino, where the locals are vigorously rebuilding their former fossil-fuel car capital into an artsy creative-class design metropolis.)))
http://www.torinoworlddesigncapital.it/portale/en/

(((Amazingly, even Fiat, whose decline nearly wrecked this city, has a design hit in their new small urban car. What luck! Or was it design skill?))) http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_03/b3967019.htm

(((It's fabulous to be on the ground where Europeans are visibly re-creating their infrastructure in such a design-centric, immediate fashion. There's something exhilarating about it... because it's not a Viridian Pope-Emperor theoretical design engagement; I mean, they're literally ripping up the street outside here and installing light urban rail. I wouldn't call it Oz; it's just an Italian industrial burg; but their previous situation was just so grim, glum, unbearable, palpably doomed and clearly unsustainable that they pretty much had to swallow the blue pill and leap for the unknown. So they suffered == but changed. Now one sees eerie stuff like THIS == a smokestack turned into a steeple dedicated to the Shroud of Turin.)))

Link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45506355@N00/1462923913/

(((I'm trying to figure out what I can do to help. I hope to learn something useful about real-world, hands-on, down-and-dirty, urban sociotechnical transitions. Practically every city in the world has got Torino's former problems, because they're all unsustainable. Changing that is the work of the world. It's happening.)))

(((In the meanwhile, just look at the Viridian issue coverage over here on "Wired Science." I wouldn't precisely call that mainstream science-news == it's WIRED, and also, uh, a new TV show == but they've got something like 50 times my audience, and that's on their bad viewership day. Why would I bother to cover such things when they do it all the time?)))

Links:

Entire Yucatan is a feral Maya garden, not a "wilderness." http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/yucatan-jungles.html#more

Albedo yachts.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/these-ships-cou.html#more

Particle spews.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/pumping-particl.html#more

Turning ocean inside out.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/could-huge-unde.html#more

Vatican goes green.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/the-vatican-goe.html#more

(((Great stuff, eh? I used to do two or three of those a month! Et cetera et cetera.)))

((( And then, of course, Al Gore just won the Nobel. I could let this event pass without a missive to longsuffering Viridian readers.

((( This is the ultimate imprimatur of the intelligentsia chattering-classes. At this point, the climate crisis pretty much wins the global culture war. But only, of course, culturally, and never within the dark terrified den of the American flat-earth contingent, who hate and fear Al and all his works on principle, and always will.)))

(((The good news is there's at least one American statesman left whom the world considers of Nobel class caliber. Gore's a kind of climate Solzhenitsyn in the midst of a dark regime. People from outside the Soviet Union used to look at Nobelist Solzhenitsyn and think: "Well, we can't give up on 'em; here's this heroic guy endlessly scraping up and archiving true data about gulags and torture and prisons, even when the regime denies such things exist." In the continental superpower biz, what goes around comes around.)))

(((I'd like to engage in some brisk triumphalism here... yeah, like I won the goddamn prize by sending a lot of emails... but I prefer to take a lead from Al's own sobering response. Al's not making any big deal of this. I suspect that's because Al has sincerely and actually come to realize, on some bone-deep, post-cynical, wolves-at-the-door level, that there really is a global climate crisis. That's not a vehicle for generating Al Gore worship. It's an emergency. A deep, terrible, lasting emergency whose permanent scars for society all lie ahead of us. The Turinese are certainly changing their local piece of the world == but they got scourged into changing. The bright spots here now are an inverse reflection of their sorrow and mayhem fifteen years ago.)))

Links
Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize == the Bright Green response.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007407.html

Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/13/AR2007101300284.html

"Gore: Award Puts Focus on Global Warming

"By SETH BORENSTEIN and LISA LEFF "The Associated Press
"Saturday, October 13, 2007; 7:48 AM

"PALO ALTO, Calif. == He spent decades trying to get the world to listen and believe as he did that global warming would destroy the planet unless people changed their behavior, and fast. But after former Vice President Al Gore and a host of climate scientists were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their warnings, Gore took only the briefest of bows on a live world stage. He avoided the issue of a U.S. presidential run to 'get back to business' on 'a planetary emergency.'

"'For my part, I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honor and the recognition from this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency,' Gore said at the offices of the Alliance For Climate Protection, a nonprofit he founded last year to engage citizens in solving the problem.

(...)

"If he felt any sense of triumph over the political and scientific critics who belittled or ignored his message, Gore did not betray it during his only public appearance Friday. He learned of his award at 2 a.m. while watching the live TV announcement _ hearing his name amid the Norwegian (((aren't those guys Swedes?))) at his apartment in San Francisco.

"Nine hours later, his tone was somber and his remarks brief. With his wife, Tipper, and four Stanford University climate scientists who were co-authors of the international climate report at his side, he referenced a recent report that concluded the ice caps at the North Pole are melting faster than previously thought and could be gone in 23 years without dramatic action.

"Gore said he planned to donate his share of the $1.5 million prize to the nonprofit alliance he chairs.

"This is a chance to elevate global consciousness about the challenges that we face now," he said...

(((I see Al's not living in San Francisco for nothing. Global consciousness, rock concerts, yeah, thanks a lot, sir. You deserve the prize. Congrats.)))

(((In the meantime, I wanted to share this long and remarkable document, which details a grueling transition undergone by a society which, unlike Torino, isn't all glossy, Eurocentric and designery.)))

(((Nobody imagines that life changes much in Cuba, because the same dictator's been running things for half a century. I just saw a local presentation by an exiled Cuban author == (periodically, Cuban agents try to push her under a Parisian bus) == and she said that the worst thing about being an exiled Cuban dissident in Europe is that Europeans somehow imagine that Cuba is a socialist paradise with free healthcare and cool mambo music. Also, Che had such a cool haircut and beret.)))

(((Just because US Republicans don't like them doesn't mean they're great, okay? They're authoritarian Reds on a scrawny island whose lives are pitifully delimited in all kinds of bleak, hairshirt-Marxist, soul-crushing ways. This article is by an American leftie Cuban sympathizer who's all perky about how the Cubans transcended their energy emergency. It's all about emergency living. Except you'd never guess it by the way it's phrased. It's a long, long article, but it serves pretty well as an unintentionally sinister portrait of an oppressed, hapless, stricken society in a no-kidding, tear-the-walls down Greenhouse emergency.)))

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This article appeared in the special Peak Oil issue of Permaculture Activist, Spring 2006, (www.permacultureactivist.net). The author, Megan Quinn, is the outreach director for The Community Solution, (www.communitysolution.org), a program of Community Service Inc., a nonprofit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For information about its soon-to-be-released documentary, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" visit its website, e-mail her at megan@communitysolution.org, or call +1 937-767-2161.

"The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil

By Megan Quinn, Permaculture Activist

First published on Sunday, February 26, 2006

Havana, Cuba == At the Organipónico de Alamar, a neighborhood agriculture project, a workers' collective runs a large urban farm, a produce market and a restaurant.

"Hand tools and human labor replace oil-driven machinery. Worm cultivation and composting create productive soil. Drip irrigation conserves water, and the diverse, multi-hued produce provides the community with a rainbow of healthy foods.

(((I want you to stop here and try to imagine the stark reality of a Communist restaurant run by a workers' collective. In former Communist countries like Russia, there aren't any left. Because those are not "restaurants." The chef hates you. There aren't any "waiters." You have no reason to be there and they do not want to feed you.)))

In other Havana neighborhoods, lacking enough land for such large projects, residents have installed raised garden beds on parking lots and planted vegetable gardens on their patios and rooftops.

(((Did you ever wonder why people stopped planting "Victory Gardens" after World War II ended? Because farming parking-lots is hard work. All farming is hard work. That's why subsistence farmers flee farms and go to urban slums.)))

Since the early 1990s, an urban agriculture movement has swept through Cuba, putting this capital city of 2.2 million on a path toward sustainability. (((Fidel Castro == a prince of sustainability. Hasta La Sustainability Siempre. "Thank you Comrade, my vegetable hash from that parking lot was very sustainable.")))

A small group of Australians assisted in this grass-roots effort, coming to this Caribbean island nation in 1993 to teach permaculture, a system based on sustainable agriculture which uses far less energy. (((I don't have a problem with Australians going to assist the Revolution == I think everybody oughta go to Cuba, and Eastern Europe is even more eye-opening == but is it "grass roots" when Australian politicals are doing it? In the old unashamed days, that used to be "Communist International Solidarity," not sustainable grass roots.)))

This need to bring agriculture into the city began with the fall of the Soviet Union and the loss of more than 50 percent of Cuba's oil imports, much of its food and 85 percent of its trade economy. (((This is a risk one takes when one gets all chummy with petrocratic states. They turn the fuel tap off? Man, you're toast == just like a Californian in the Enron glory days.)))

Transportation halted, people went hungry and the average Cuban lost 30 pounds. (((I didn't believe this assertion at first. I mean, try to imagine the law-and-order problems in an American suburb where the average American == the average! == lost thirty pounds of body weight from lack of groceries. And average Americans have got thirty pounds to lose, easy.)))

"In reality, when this all began, it was a necessity. People had to start cultivating vegetables wherever they could," a tour guide told a documentary crew filming in Cuba in 2004 to record how Cuba survived on far less oil than usual. (((These "tour guide" Potemkin figures are kind of a vanishing breed, but you run into 'em sometimes... I hate to say that they make Fox News look accurate. Nobody can do that.)))

The crew included the staff of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization in Yellow Springs, Ohio which teaches about peak oil == the time when oil production world-wide will reach an all-time high and head into an irreversible decline. Some oil analysts believe this may happen within this decade, making Cuba a role model to follow. (((Activists of every stripe always imagine that they're "teaching" stuff.)))

((("Teaching" peak oil... or, you could just be in an oil-dependent power that loses an oil war. Or petrocrats could just charge whatever they please for the stuff. Oil doesn't have to actually run out for the lights to go off, as Californians should remember keenly. Cuba didn't have a "peak," they just had no fuel.)))

"We wanted to see if we could capture what it is in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time," said Pat Murphy, The Community Solution's executive director. (((Amazing how they gazed raptly at "people" and "culture" rather than the Cuban secret police, party apparatus and army.)))

"Cuba has a lot to show the world in how to deal with energy adversity." (((That part, I'm buying. Cuba shows all kinds of stuff, most of it about as attractive as watching your grandma drop thirty pounds from hunger.)))

Scarce petroleum supplies have not only transformed Cuba's agriculture. The nation has also moved toward small-scale renewable energy and developed an energy- saving mass transit system, while maintaining its government-provided health care system whose preventive, locally-based approach to medicine conserves scarce resources.
(((Closely study how this paragraph of perky eco-geek-speak paraphrases the stark reality that Cuba went broke and the people went desperately hungry. If an eco-calamity makes you lose thirty pounds, you'll be hearing a lot of this.)))

The era in Cuba following the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the Special Period. (((Oh brother.)))

Cuba lost 80 percent of its export market and its imports fell by 80 percent. The Gross Domestic Product dropped by more than one third.

"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash," Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, told the documentary crew.

A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock.

There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third.

(((Now try to imagine yourself being Al Gore and watching this happen on a planetary scale. You think Al is gonna clutch his prize certificate and think, "Wow, I got the Nobel for warning about this sort of thing?" That's why he's got that glum look. He's paying attention.)))

According to a report on Cuba from Oxfam, an international development and relief agency: "In the cities, buses stopped running, generators stopped producing electricity, factories became silent as graveyards. Obtaining enough food for the day became the primary activity for many, if not most, Cubans." (((Note that Oxfam doesn't chime in about how Cubans got all sustainable and carbon-neutral due to imitating graveyards.)))

In part due to the continuing US embargo, but also because of the loss of a foreign market, Cuba couldn't obtain enough imported food. Furthermore, without a substitute for fossil-fuel based large-scale farming, agricultural production dropped drastically.

So Cubans started to grow local organic produce out of necessity, developed bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers as petrochemical substitutes, and incorporated more fruits and vegetables into their diets.

Since they couldn't fuel their aging cars, they walked, biked, rode buses, and carpooled.

"There are infinite small solutions," said Roberto Sanchez from the Cuban-based Foundation for Nature and Humanity. (((You gotta love an entity with a soft, mushy title like that one.)))

"Crises or changes or problems can trigger many of these things which are basically adaptive. We are adapting." (((In the climate crisis, we're gonna hear a lot of this kind of glum ideological lacquer. "The lawn is on fire! There's a flood in the basement!" "Stop whining, for such problems trigger a basically adaptive behavior." You wouldn't want to rebel against Nature and Humanity, I hope.)))

A New Agricultural Revolution

Cubans are also replacing petroleum-fed machinery with oxen, (((boy, there's a step forward == ask any Indian))) and their urban agriculture reduces food transportation distances. Today an estimated 50 percent of Havana's vegetables come from inside the city, (((outdoing the siege of Stalingrad))) while in other Cuban towns and cities urban gardens produce from 80 percent to more than 100 percent of what they need. (((You've got too many squash and green beans in that dirtpile where you used to own a car. "Wow, I have more than 100 percent of what I need!")))

In turning to gardening, individuals and neighborhood organizations (((read: party apparatus))) took the initiative by identifying idle land in the city, cleaning it up, and planting. (((At least, being a dictatorship of the proletariat, they don't have much trouble with NIMBYism and eminent domain issues.)))

When the Australian permaculturists came to Cuba they set up the first permaculture demonstration project with a $26,000 grant from the Cuban government.

Out of this grew the Foundation for Nature and Humanity's urban permaculture demonstration project and center in Havana.

"With this demonstration, neighbors began to see the possibilities of what they can do on their rooftops and their patios," said Carmen López, director of the urban permaculture center, as she stood on the center's rooftop amongst grape vines, potted plants, and compost bins made from tires.

(((It's kind of touching to see these "permaculture activists" interviewing their own cadres to confirm the glowing success of their "demonstration projects.")))

Since then the movement has been spreading rapidly across Havana's barrios. So far López' urban permaculture center has trained more than 400 people in the neighborhood in permaculture and distributes a monthly publication, "El Permacultor." (((That sounds pretty great until you realize we've got two thousand people in Viridian List and we never even got a Cuban state grant.)))

"Not only has the community learned about permaculture," according to López, "we have also learned about the community, helping people wherever there is need." (((Given that Marxism is all about that issue, you have to wonder what they've been learning since Fidel took power in the early 1960s.)))

One permaculture student, Nelson Aguila, an engineer-turned-farmer, (((and this represents a major civilizational advance, presumably))) raises food for the neighborhood on his integrated rooftop farm. On just a few hundred square feet he has rabbits and hens and many large pots of plants.

Running free on the floor are gerbils, which eat the waste from the rabbits, and become an important protein source themselves. ((("Mom! Mom, the former engineer has brought us gerbils!" I hope they've got this post-slaughter waste-consumption thing cleared with the spongiform encephalopathy. What do they feed the gerbil waste to?)))

"Things are changing," Sanchez said. "It's a local economy. In other places people don't know their neighbors. They don't know their names. People don't say 'hello' to each other. Not here." (((Yeah == because if you don't have a steady source for fried gerbils, you're gonna lose thirty pounds.)))

Since going from petrochemical intensive agricultural production to organic farming and gardening, Cuba now uses 21 times less pesticide than before the Special Period.

(((That phrase "Before the Special Period" sure has a chilly tang, doesn't it? "Did you know Al Gore once won the Nobel?" "Oh, that was Before the Special Period." "Both my grandparents were alive Before the Special Period." "Before the Special Period, these tires were on my car instead of serving as compost heaps.")))

They have accomplished this with their large-scale production of bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, exporting some of it to other Latin American countries. (((Until Chavez started shipping them subsidized oil, and then, whew! Thank God!)))

Though the transition to organic production and animal traction was necessary, the Cubans are now seeing the advantages.

"One of the good parts of the crisis was to go back to the oxen," said Miguel Coyula, a community development specialist. "Not only do they save fuel, they do not compact the soil the way the tractor does, and the legs of the oxen churn the earth."

(((I hate to think of a place where farmers hide their tractors from the "community development specialists." When you think how many bad Socialist Realist novels were written about the heroic effort to get tractors... In the peasants and workers states, Communism and tractors were practically synonymous. But no, now those dainty little oxen hooves have become organic plows somehow... yeah, a political rhetoric is a multipurpose tool.)))

"The Cuban agricultural, conventional, 'Green Revolution' system never was able to feed the people," Sanchez said. "It had high yields, but was oriented to plantation agriculture. We exported citrus, tobacco, sugar cane and we imported the basic things. So the system, even in the good times, never fulfilled people's basic needs."

(((Yeah, and once the Russians, who bought those exports, shut off the taps, trade withered and the island could suddenly aspire to the autonomous status of glorious North Korea.)))

Drawing on his permaculture knowledge, Sanchez said, "You have to follow the natural cycles, so you hire nature to work for you, not work against nature. To work against nature, you have to waste huge amounts of energy." (((Isn't "hiring" nature just a tad exploitative? Where's nature's union and free health system?)))

Energy Solutions
Because most of Cuba's electricity had been generated from imported oil, the shortages affected nearly everyone on the island. (((One wonders who the unaffected were. Security services, I'd be guessing.)))

Scheduled rolling blackouts several days per week lasted for many years.

Without refrigerators, food would spoil.

Without electric fans, the heat was almost unbearable in a country that regularly has temperatures in the 80s and 90s. (((Or higher. Most every summer.)))

The solutions to Cuba's energy problems were not easy. (((Though I don't doubt there was some hairshirt ideologue eager to make all that sound progressive.)))

Without money, it couldn't invest in nuclear power and new conventional fossil fuel plants or even large-scale wind and solar energy systems. Instead, the country focused on reducing energy consumption and implementing small-scale renewable energy projects. (((Yeah, that sounds all grass-rootsy and romantic till you get to those years of rolling blackouts and the spoilt food.)))

Ecosol Solar and Cuba Solar are two renewable energy organizations leading the way. They help develop markets for renewable energy, sell and install systems, perform research, publish newsletters, and do energy efficiency studies for large users. (((Reading stuff like this can be a useful corrective. Like: somewhere in this world is the world's most evil, backward and exploitative solar energy company. I'm not saying they're in Cuba == maybe they're a merciless voodoo warlord solar-energy company somewhere in the war-torn Congo. But they're somewhere, and they've got solar panels and they're awful.)))

Ecosol Solar has installed 1.2 megawatts of solar photovoltaic in both small household systems (200 watt capacity) and large systems (15-50 kilowatt capacity). In the United States 1.2 megawatts would provide electricity to about 1000 homes, but can supply power to significantly more houses in Cuba where appliances are few, conservation is the custom, and the homes are much smaller. (((And the homes smell of solar-fried gerbils.)))

About 60 percent of Ecosol Solar's installations go to social programs to power homes, schools, medicals facilities, and community centers in rural Cuba. (((Look, the entire island is a "social program" and "community center." It's a Communist society. If you don't count hard-currency hotels packed with guys spending euros.)))

It recently installed solar photovoltaic panels to electrify 2,364 primary schools throughout rural Cuba where it was not cost effective to take the grid. In addition, it is developing compact model solar water heaters that can be assembled in the field, water pumps powered by PV panels, and solar dryers. (((This is teaching an entire generation of rural Cuban kids to hate solar power as the very symbol of their backwardness, but what the heck; there's no power in their grid anyway, and maybe they'll at least learn to read.)))

A visit to "Los Tumbos," a solar-powered community in the rural hills southwest of Havana demonstrates the positive impact that these strategies can have. Once without electricity, each household now has a small solar panel that powers a radio and a lamp.

Larger systems provide electricity to the school, hospital, and community room, where residents gather to watch the evening news program called the "Round Table." (((Yeah, I bet that program's real newsy.)))

Besides keeping the residents informed, the television room has the added benefit of bringing the community together. (((Has Jerry Mander been informed of this?)))

"The sun was enough to maintain life on earth for millions of years," said Bruno Beres, a director of Cuba Solar. "Only when we [humans] arrived and changed the way we use energy was the sun not enough. So the problem is with our society, not with the world of energy." (((The invention of fire was also clearly a problem.)))

Transportation - A System of Ride Sharing (((It just trundles right along, bearing its bundles of red-green ideological joy.)))

Cubans also faced the problem of providing transportation on a reduced energy diet.

Solutions came from ingenious Cubans, who often quote the phrase, "Necessity is the mother of invention."

With little money or fuel, Cuba now moves masses of people during rush hour in Havana. In an inventive approach, virtually every form of vehicle, large and small, was used to build this mass transit system. Commuters ride in hand-made wheelbarrows, buses, other motorized transport and animal-powered vehicles. (((Even if Cubans are "the masses," a heterogenous crawl of hand-made wheelbarrows is not a "mass transit system.")))

One special Havana transit vehicle, nicknamed a "camel," is a very large metal semi-trailer, pulled by a standard semi-truck tractor, which holds 300 passengers.

(((The "Transportation of Cuba Pool." Man, FlickR is awesome.)))
http://www.flickr.com/groups/transportation_of_cuba/pool/

(((A "Havana Camel.")))
http://www.flickr.com/photos/r-harder/317773656/

Bicycles and motorized two-passenger rickshaws are also prevalent in Havana, while horse drawn carts and large old panel trucks are used in the smaller towns. (((Large old heavily polluting panel trucks, but let's gloss over that.)))

Government officials in yellow garb pull over nearly empty government vehicles and trucks on Havana's streets and fill them with people needing a ride. Chevys from the 1950s cruise along with four people in front and four more in back. (((Imagine the joy of being brusquely waved to the curb by one of these "government officials in yellow garb.")))

A donkey cart with a taxi license nailed to the frame also travels Cuba's streets. Many trucks were converted to passenger transport by welding steps to the back so riders could get on and off with ease. (((Scientific socialist production buries inefficient capital, making the exploitation of man by man a thing of the past.)))

Health Care and Education - National Priorities

Even though Cuba is a poor country, with a per capita Gross Domestic Product of only $3,000 per year (putting them in the bottom third of all nations), life expectancy is the same as in the U.S., and infant mortality is below that in the U.S.

The literacy rate in Cuba is 97 percent, the same as in the U.S. Cuba's education system, as well as its medical system is free. (((I'm all for free health care, but not really nuts about the prospect of being in the bottom third of all nations. You'd think that a society with so much savoir faire and unleashed ingenuity would rank in a little above, say, fascist-plagued Chile.)))

When Cubans suffered through their version of a peak oil crisis, they maintained their free medical system, one of the major factors that helped them to survive. Cubans repeatedly emphasize how proud they are of their system. (((Cue agitprop.)))

Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there was one doctor for every 2000 people. Now there is a doctor for every 167 people. Cuba also has an international medical school and trains doctors to work in other poor countries. Each year there are 20,000 Cuban doctors abroad doing this kind of work. (((With the obligatory nationalist bragging taken care of, we can now return to the topic of permaculture.)))

With meat scarce and fresh local vegetables in abundance since 1995, Cubans now eat a healthy, low-fat, nearly vegetarian, diet. They also have a healthier outdoor lifestyle and walking and bicycling have become much more common.

"Before, Cubans didn't eat that many vegetables. Rice and beans and pork meat was the basic diet," Sanchez from the Foundation for Nature and Humanity said. "At some point necessity taught them, and now they demand [vegetables]." (((I wonder what they really demand. I bet they wouldn't turn up their noses at a 14-ounce T-bone steak with all the trimmings.)))

Doctors and nurses live in the community where they work and usually above the clinic itself. In remote rural areas, three-story buildings are constructed with the doctor's office on the bottom floor and two apartments on the second and third floors, one for the doctor and one for the nurse. (((In other words, the Cuban medical profession is a rural mom-and-pop shop.)))

In the cities, the doctors and nurses always live in the neighborhoods they serve. They know the families of their patients and try to treat people in their homes.

"Medicine is a vocation, not a job," exclaimed a Havana doctor, demonstrating the motivation for her work. In Cuba 60 percent of the doctors are women. (((One wonders why pink-collar jobs are ritually demeaned and disenfranchised == likely its this time-honored willingness of women to go out and labor for social-capital rather than actual pay.)))

Education is considered the most important social activity in Cuba. Before the revolution, there was one teacher for every 3,000 people. Today the ratio is one for every 42 people, with a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 16. Cuba has a higher percentage of professionals than most developing countries, and with 2 percent of the population of Latin America, Cuba has 11 percent of all the scientists. (((Another state poster glued here... how come all these teachers and scientists can't boost the economy out of the bottom ranks? China is Communist, everybody hates and fears them much more than they do Cubans, and yet they're rockin' it.)))

In an effort to halt migration from the countryside to the city during the Special Period, (((try to imagine the scenes of woe and mayhem there))) higher education was spread out into the provinces, expanding learning opportunities and strengthening rural communities. (((Kind of a "send those weak intelligentsia to the countryside" Red Guard innovation. Bet those scientists got a lot of labwork done in those quiet, scholastic retreats.)))

Before the Special Period there were only three institutions of higher learning in Cuba. Now there are 50 colleges and universities throughout the country, seven in Havana. (((Why?)))

The Power of Community

Throughout its travels, the documentary crew saw and experienced the resourcefulness, determination, and optimism of the Cuban people, often hearing the phrase "Sí, se puede" or "Yes it can be done." (((They're also a handsome people who can dance like angels and their ice cream is really tasty.)))

People spoke of the value of "resistir" or "resistance," showing their determination to overcome obstacles. And they have lived under a U.S. economic blockade since the early 1960s, viewed as the ultimate test of the Cuban ability to resist. (((The US has lived under a Cuban economic blockade since the early 1960s, leading American food producers to put fructose corn syrup into prepared foods instead of Cuban sugarcane sucrose sugar, causing hapless Americans to bloat as drastically as overfed Cuban gerbils. Also, no decent cigars.)))

There is much to learn from Cuba's response to the loss of cheap and abundant oil. (((Yeah. It shows that a repellent regime deprived of oil fails to collapse, becoming even more repellent, while disguising the sufferings of the population with wads of predigested green rhetoric. And: no matter how bad things get in the climate crisis, there's gonna be some moron wandering around claiming that all the mayhem is great and should be construed as a civilizational advance. Pray that this guy doesn't have a gun, a uniform and the power of arrest.)))

The staff of The Community Solution sees these lessons as especially important for people in developing countries, who make up 82 percent of the world's population and live more on life's edge. (((Yeah: "Third World" people, always be leary of white guys with "appropriate" "solutions" that they would never dream of imposing on themselves.)))

But developed countries are also vulnerable to shortages in energy. And with the coming onset of peak oil, all countries will have to adapt to the reality of a lower energy world.

With this new reality, the Cuban government changed its 30-year motto from "Socialism or Death" to "A Better World is Possible." (((Did Cuba really do that? That's like changing the motto "Of the People, By the People, For the People" to "How about some extra fries with that?")))

Government officials allowed private entrepreneurial farmers ((("kulak class enemies"))) and neighborhood organizations ((("Marxist party cadres"))) to use public land to grow and sell their produce.

They pushed decision-making down to the grassroots level and encouraged initiatives in their neighborhoods. ((("You're on your own, sucker.")))

They created more provinces. (((Don't blame Castro, blame the provincial flak-catchers.)))

They encouraged migration back to the farms and rural areas and reorganized their provinces to be in-line with agricultural needs. (((Forced relocation out of cities before they implode.)))

From The Community Solution's viewpoint, (((I know I've been going on a bit here, but this is ALL the "Community Solution's viewpoint" == this whole thing is a put-up job without a whisper of dissent))) Cuba did what it could to survive, despite its ideology of a centralized economy.

In the face of peak oil and declining oil production, will America do what it takes to survive, in spite of its ideology of individualism and consumerism? (((Why not worry about Australia? They've got the very same problems, plus no rain.)))

Will Americans come together in community, as Cubans did, in the spirit of sacrifice and mutual support? (((Or will we all end up in the handbasket to hell of Cuban reality, with spies on every block, commandeered cars crammed with strangers, wheelbarrow traffic jams and food grown on the levelled sites of former strip malls and fried-food shacks? Yes, yes, I know this sounds very James Howard Kunstler == there are times when one has to appreciate the prophet of a long emergency. At least the guy writes in real English instead of a numbing, tapioca nomenklatura-ese.)))

"There is climate change, the price of oil, the crisis of energy," Beres from Cuba Solar said, listing off the challenges humanity faces. "What we must know is that the world is changing and we must change the way we see the world."

(((Or we can face the facts on the ground without blinding ourselves with political spin, which may be Al Gore's greatest gift to his fellow politicals. He knows they're in major trouble even if they can't force inconvenient truths out of their mouths.)))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
WELL, HE GOT THE NOBEL,
ANYHOW, AND YEAH, I
COULDN'T BE HAPPIER
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Not a Viridian Note

2007-08-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

Key concepts:: SHARE festival 2008, SHARE contest, digital art prize
Attention Conservation Notice:: an announcement probably pretty typical of the work I will be up to for the next seven months. It's about Italian cyberculture and design.

Competition Announcement: Share Prize 2008 Introduction

SHARE AWARD : DIGITAL ART PRIZE 2008 Competition announcement
Art. 1
Subject
Piemonte Share Festival announces the second edition of the Share Prize 2008 for digital art. The competition jury will award a prize of E2,500.00 to the work (published or unpublished) which best represents experimentation between arts and new technologies.
(((I am the chairman of this competition jury. Yes, me! As all entrants to Viridian Design Contests know, I take such duties with lethal seriousness. Are you an experimental new-media digital-arts type with a hankering to stun all Europe? You are? Then trot that thing over pronto.)))

The candidates for the prize (a short list of a maximum of 6 competitors) will be guests at the 4th edition of the Share Festival, taking place in Turin March 2008 at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin. In order to be declared winner of the prize, every artist has to take part in the 4th edition of Share Festival, by preparing his or her work of art, to be properly evaluated by jury and public.

The organization is available at offering all the costs regarding the preparation of the 6 selected works as well as travel and accommodation expenses for the artists, and, possibly, the prize itself. (((That's right, we will FLY YOU TO EUROPE and likely feed you spaghetti there, given that the Euro is at an unprecedented $1.38. That'll might even make up for mysterious Italian withholding taxes on the Italian prize.)))

Nomination of 6 candidates for the prize: by November, 2007. The announcement will be published on the following website: www.toshare.it The winner will be announced in March 2008 during the award ceremony at Share Festival. (((And I certainly plan to attend that and to congratulate the winner personally.)))

Art. 2
Aim
The prize aims to discover, promote and sustain digital arts. (((Who can't like THAT?!)))

Art.3
Entry Conditions
The contest is open to any Italian and foreign artist using digital technology as a language of creative expression, in all its shapes and formats and in combination with analogical technologies and/or any other material (i.e. computer animation / visual effects, digital music, interactive art, net art, software art, live cinema/vj, audiovisual performance, etc.). Each artist or group can enter up to 3 works. Artists who are part of a group participating in the contest may also enter up to 3 individual works.

Participating entries must be registered on the site www.toshare.it using the registration form.

Registration and description of the competition entry forms should be either in English or Italian; English is preferred.

Art. 4
Conditions of exclusion

The competition is not open to:

Jury members, organising body, their partners or relatives up to the sixth degree inclusive (((That's right, I can't plan to enter myself! Even though I am a net.art critic of long standing, and I not only know what I like, I even know why it's good!)))
employees or collaborators of Jury members or announcement committee
anyone who drew up the competition or any associated document
any person working as a civil servant in Public Institutions or Administrations unless it is specifically permitted by the administration of affiliation (((This is Europe, they have to say stuff like that)))
unfinished projects or work (((This means you, design students == you actually have to finish the project and ship it.)))

Art. 5
Deadlines
a. Entries must be registered on the site www.toshare.it by using the registration form only.

b. Registration must take place by 12.00 pm on 30 September 2007. Entries after that date, for whatever reason, will be excluded from the competition. (((That's why I'm telling you NOW.)))

Art. 6
Required documents
Candidates must fill in the on line registration form available at www.toshare.it
Applications must contain the following information:

Title of the work
C.V. of artist or artists (in case of new groups of artists, each member's C.V. is necessary)
Concise description of the work (max. 150 words).
URL documents concerning the work itself, where further details of the work can be found (see Art. 6bis)
No material must be sent (paper, DVD, CD, etc) in addition to the specific requests of the public notice. Art. 6bis Further details on URL document Every participant must provide further details from those given in the information on a specific web site. It must contain:
Description of the work (max 500 words) explaining the main concept and technologies used
Images (.jpg) and/or video (.avi) and/or audio (.mp3) of the work
C.V. of artist or artists (in case of new groups of artists, each member's C.V. is necessary) NB: competitors are responsible for the design and costs incurred in producing the Web Site regarding the work for the contest.

Art. 7
Selection jury
The jury, meeting in non-public sessions, will select 6 works among those presented for the contest within November, 2007. The candidates for the prize (a short list of a maximum of 6 competitors) will be asked to take part in the 4th edition of the Share Festival, taking place in Turin March 2007 at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin. (((An academy not far from the romantic banks of the River Po, an area of slanting sunbeams, cute cobbled plazas, straw-wrapped Chianti bottles, sunglassed babes in tailored Milanese suits and stiletto heels, yes, when they said "Belle Arti" they weren't kidding about it)))

The announcement will be published on the following website: www.toshare.it
The winner will be announced on March 2008 during the award ceremony at Share Festival.

The jury is composed by:
Bruce Sterling (writer and journalist, Austin) - chairman
Piero Gilardi (artist, Turin) Anne Nigten (managing director, v2 e DEAF, Rotterdam) Oscar Abril Ascaso (curator Sonar, Barcelona) Stefano Mirti (architect, Interaction design Lab, Milano
(((That's right, your jury's from Austin, Turin, Rotterdam, Barcelona and Milan == so try not to suck!)))
Art. 8
Information
The Contest Information offices are located at Association The Sharing premises. General coordination: Manuela De Caro tel. +39.011. 588.36.93 faxes: 0039.011.83.91304 manuela.decaro@toshare.it
Art. 9
Property and rights concerning projects and selected works
With the registration to the contest, the authors of the winning works grant The Sharing Association the right to publish and reproduce the works, totally or partly, as part of cultural promotion.

Art.10
Publishing this notice
This notice is made up of three pages and will be published via Internet at the following address: www.toshare.it. News will also be available via all interested parties.
*two thousands five hundreds gross taxes and national insurance contributions (((I'll let you know when I figure out what that means.)))

Manuela De Caro
SHARE FESTIVAL
experiences in digital cultures

manuela.decaro@toshare.it
www.toshare.it

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O LIFE IS A DASHING AND BOLD ADVENTURE,
AS THE FORTUNE COOKIE LIKES TO SAY
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Viridian Note 00495: Serbia and the Flames

2007-07-24T18:23:00.001-07:00

Key concepts:: Serbia, climate crisis, Jasmina Tesanovic
Attention Conservation Notice:: guest-star Viridian pundit is wife of Bruce Sterling.

Links: Today was the hottest day ever recorded in Belgrade, Serbia. Broke the previous heat record by two-and-a-half degrees Celsius. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6913152.stm

Naturally, I was there. Hey, I could have been worse off in Tewksbury. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6914254.stm

I'd be betting that when they start counting the elderly ex-Communist dead in this region, they're going to stack up in surprising, French-heat-wave style numbers. Although we Viridians have been predicting and describing these calamities for years now, surprisingly, nobody in power seems used to them yet. Even the victims still act a little surprised. http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/24/news/heat.php

I try not to yield to the temptation to repeat the obvious to 2,000 people day after day, though, when mayhem arrives on my doorstep, I still feel that Viridian urge. Nevertheless, I have to shut this list down soon. It makes no sense to mimic news that's on the front page of Google News every day. And it's getting louder. Every year. All those NGOs, corporate-funded professionals, energy speculators... let them do the heavy lifting, dammit!
http://www.climatecrisiscoalition.org/

It's not like the climate crisis is news to people in power; they all know it's there, like AIDS, or a fire in the basement; they just wonder what they can possibly do about their drowning, baking constituents. http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/dimas/index_en.htm http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/brown-links-floods-to-climate-change/2007/07/24/1185043111436.html

Besides, I've now come up with a new,
non-Viridian design-journalism scheme which is going to occupy all my efforts for about six months! Rather than being global and theoretical and involving a lot of eco-handwringing, it's going to involve stuff like heavy industry and lots of cool conventions and glamorous parties! Furthermore, rather than being parochial, Texan and American, it will have a decisively Italian flavor! Did you know that Torino, Italy, is the official 'world capital of design' for 2008? Well, neither does anybody else, and I plan to help change that. Link:
http://www.torinoworlddesigncapital.it/portale/en/

You can help, too. There will be more news in September. In August I'm fleeing the heat by heading into the hills to finish my novel. Hey, somebody's gotta write 'em.

In the meantime, here is an article by Viridian guest star Jasmina Tesanovic.

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmina_Tesanovic http://blog.b92.net/blog/59/Jasmina%20Tesanovic/

Serbia and the Flames

Today was the hottest day in Serbia ever since the temperature has been measured, 45 C.

If we Serbs were truly interested in our survival as a nation, we'd be scrambling to get some modern hardware for dealing with ecological catastrophes. It's been ten years since Milosevic sold off our forest fire-fighting aircraft and pocketed the money.

We would talk together seriously about last year's massive floods throughout the Danube basin, about this year's deadly heat wave in Serbia and throughout the Balkans, about the state of emergency in our neighbor Greece, about the electricity shortages and blackouts throughout the region, about the woods of our homeland set on fire.

Even tidy Britain is being overwhelmed with their flood catastrophes, while here in Serbia we lack any organized emergency-response because the Serbian state is, by its nature, in an emergency situation all the time.

Instead, the Serbian Parliament spent this day discussing Kosovo: angling for Russian friendship to fend off the US demands, while dodging EU pressure to simply let go of that long-lost province. They have no air conditioning inside the Serbian Parliament, so delegates were comically fanning themselves with official papers while the presidents were sweating in their stuffy official suits.

The Russians promised us practical help for the smoldering forests of the border, but they have yet to send a single Russian helicopter. Meanwhile the firemen and local peasants are saving our burning forest heritage with raw courage and mostly hand-tools.

When will we overcome our local obsessions and realize we are part of a world in a general crisis? The climate crisis isn't for rich countries, it's for every country. Especially us. We had Floods in 2006, now Fires in 2007 == the cause is in the Air, and we will end up with no Earth.

Global warming is invisible... it steals up on us like a slow fever, but our daily lives are being transformed by it. Kids can't get milk at school, eggs might be poisoned with salmonella, the crops are wilting in the fields.

My friend, a pianist, sews clothes by her air-conditioner instead of playing her piano.

I am singing after dark instead of writing at noon.

My friend is writing a book about the future but is not sure if it is the same book he started anymore.

My young friend, the web designer, had her computer collapse. So she went out to walk her three dogs and collapsed from the heat in two hours.

My friend activist from inner Serbia is sleeping in an office where there is an air conditioner. Two weeks ago before, she condemned air conditioners because they burn fossil fuels and make the global warming worse. She also has the very Serbian superstition that cold drafts of air are not good for your bones. Well, any hot draft of air over 40C does not cool your body == it heats your body and can kill you from heatstroke.

My pregnant Albanian friend from Pristina sleeps heavily day and night while her friends in Kosovo demonstrate for some unilateral declaration of independence.

If there is any justice in this injustice, it is that global warming has no borders or nationality, and yet it has guilty and victims. Guilty: all of us who ignored inconvenient truths and sacrificed the ecological conscience for other more or less legitimate priorities. Victims: everyone yet to be born on our damaged planet; when crops wilt and forests burn down to black stumps, does it matter if that wasteland is called Kosovo or Serbia?

Year by year, mankind is becoming justly afraid of our vengeful climate. I have an epiphany: our world in 1999 is becoming all the world. No electrical, no water, no business-as-usual: fear. I remember those bombing days of Serbia and Kosovo when everyone in this land, without exception, was a refugee under a scowling enemy sky.

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
IT'S NOT ABOUT SURVIVING;
IT'S ABOUT PREVAILING
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Viridian Note 00494: Climate Change and Nuclear War

2007-07-01T07:49:00.001-07:00

Key concepts:: Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, climate crisis, nuclear war, Russian petrocracy, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, Khaki Green, apocalyptophilia
Attention Conservation Notice:: some Russian worrying a lot about the steady approach of doomsday.

(((We Viridians have often referred to the climate crisis as "the dirty little sister of nuclear armageddon," but there is some small possibility that a mere nuclear war is the cleaner little sister of a climate armageddon.)))

(((So there's something charming about having lived long enough to see a Russian soberly discussing a Dr. Strangelove Automatic Doomsday Climate Calamity. This guy's not just a little upset about it == he's petrified. Given that Russia is today's number-one
petrocracy and almost as fussy about selling fossil fuels as the USA is about suicidally buying them, this rant can be construed as good news. Remember how worried people were about a rapidly accelerating out of control nuclear arms race that nobody could stop? Well, it stopped. Today we've got an out of control unsustainable fossil-fuel race. And here's a Russian telling other Russians about it.)))

Links:
The Russians: a handsome, whimsical people.
http://www.faceyourpockets.com/index1.html

The Americans: in a Soviet-style ideological delirium and doomed to a similar collapse. Says French demographics expert. Okay, fine, but THEN what? It's not like Russia vaporized and went away just because their economy made no sense.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml

The birth of agriculture: a prehistoric global response to climate change.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2007/06/29/plant-domestication-early-and-often

"We are about to leave the Holocene." Re-entering the Holocene ought to be pretty bumpy, too.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006967.html

The Chinese. Far more seriously worried about their own energy consumption than Americans are.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/24/content_6285765.htm

Swiss can no longer sell Swiss snow to global Indians. "We lost the glacier." So everybody's catching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntOjGVRimPc http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/video_prod_en.cfm?type=detail&prodid=1025&src= 1

Feel much better about imminent apocalypse through buying a neat-o bamboo PC!
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/06/27/asus_ecobook/

Arnold Schwarzenegger gets standing ovation from a thousand American mayors. "I was so happy and so delighted when I found out that you've made climate change No. 1 on your 10-point plan to strengthen the nation," he told the crowd in the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza ballroom.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayors24jun24,1,5778707.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

Austinites conspire to seize solar-power market, will talk to anybody, even Germans and Japanese.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:497017

Impact Of Climate Change Equal To Nuclear War

by Viktor Danilov-Danilyan

Moscow (RIA Novosti) Jun 29, 2007

Global climate change defies forecasting. Unprecedented heat, floods, droughts and typhoons brought about by climate change cause tremendous damage. The number of such calamities has doubled over the last 10 years, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Some experts think there is nothing to worry about == periodic alterations in the climate are normal. Some believe the general alarm is the result of a mere lack of knowledge. But then, the danger posed by climate change is no smaller than the danger posed by nuclear war, and we have to face and evaluate it, however vague it might appear.

There is no way to hide from global warming. In fact, the repercussions of climate change might be even worse because the entire climatic system will be thrown out of balance. The average surface temperature is going up, and so are annual deviations from it.

Natural calamities go hand in hand with warming.

(((So do unnatural calamities; if we have an unbearable climate disaster that creates a nuclear war, that'll have to rank as an ultimate Wexelblat Disaster. Did you know Alan's got his own Wikipedia entry here? Kinda awesome reading, eh?))) Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wexelblat_disaster

Disastrous floods are getting more frequent in Russia and many other countries. They account for more than half of weather-related dangers.

Floods alternate with droughts in European Russia's south. Heavy rains in spring and early summer cause floods, after which there is not a single raindrop for three months, destroying those crops that survive the floods.

The Kuban and Stavropol regions, Russia's breadbasket, permanently face this danger.

(((Why did the Soviet Union really collapse? The Reds took the Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, lavishly applied ideological delirium, consistently couldn't feed themselves or anyone else, sold fossil fuels to get bread, then went broke. So says Yegor Gaidar, anyhow. Basically, this means that Lysenkoism, the political inability to scientifically face a very basic resource problem, eventually doomed the Soviet Union.)))
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25991,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Economic disasters caused by natural calamities are becoming ever more frequent. The World Bank estimates Russia's weather damages, largely caused by climate change, at an annual 30-60 billion rubles, roughly $1-$2 billion. (((Kyoto == "too expensive to implement.")))

Floods, usually caused by typhoons, are also frequent in the Russian Far East-the Primorye and Khabarovsk territories, Kamchatka, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.

Winter floods are typical of the Arctic Ocean basin.

The spring inundation of the Lena, the largest Eurasian river, washed away the town and port of Lensk in 2001. The town was rebuilt on a new site. The evacuation and ensuing housing and infrastructural reconstruction cost an exorbitant sum. (((At least they did rebuild it, unlike Holly Beach, Louisiana.)))
Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Beach,_Louisiana

Average warming in Russia due to anthropogenic factors is about one degree. In Siberia, it is four to six degrees == enough to shrink the permafrost area. Pernicious effects are visible even now, with the borders of the taiga, forest tundra and tundra itself receding northward == suffice it to compare space photographs from 30 years ago with the latest ones.

The change endangers oil pipelines (((as you can see, Alan Wexelblat fully BELONGS in Wikipedia))) and the entire infrastructure of Siberia's west and northwest.

Permafrost thawing has not yet achieved a scale that poses a threat of infrastructural accidents == but we can never be too careful. ((("Wexelblat Permafrost Disaster.")))

Warming also poses a great danger to regional flora and fauna, which have to undergo a very painful adaptation process. Considerable warming will result in changes to ecosystems, for example, broadleaved woods ousting the coniferous taiga. Warming makes the climate unstable, with bitter frosts and sultry summers, which is bad for both forest types == conifers suffer in the heat, while broadleaf trees do not survive frosty winters. So the biota will face many shocks before the climate stabilizes. (((Assuming that the climate EVER "stabilizes.")))

Warming is also a major problem for marshes and the permafrost, which will release accumulated methane and carbon dioxide gas. Gas hydrates from the northern sea shelf will vaporize. All that will drastically increase atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, spurring the warming on in a vicious circle.

The environmental balance has already been upset. Many plants and animals will suffer. In particular, the polar bear's habitat is doomed to shrink, and millions of wild geese, eiders, brants and other birds will lose half of their nesting grounds in a matter of 20-40 years. A three to four degree warming may interrupt the food chain of the tundra ecosystem, lead to the extinction of many species.

Invasions of ecosystems by alien species are one of the worst manifestations of global warming. Thus, locusts are moving north, and have become frequent guests in the Samara Region on the Volga and certain other areas. The mite habitat is rapidly expanding, too. Pests migrate north far quicker than the border between, for example, the taiga and the forest tundra shifts.

Once they find themselves in a foreign ecosystem, pests become gangster species, crowding out the native biota with dynamic multiplication. ((("Gangster species." One can see that this article was written for domestic Russian consumption.))) Climate change thus brings epidemics in its wake. Subtropical malarial mosquitoes now feel at home in the area around Moscow.

Scientists who welcome warming as a boon for Russian agriculture are entirely wrong. True, the vegetation period is becoming longer == but this benefit is outweighed by the hazard of spring frosts destroying young crops.

Another argument in favor of warming is the energy that would be saved by a reduced need for heating. But then, the United States uses more energy for air conditioning than Russia does for heating even now.

How can humankind fight climate change? It's no use opposing Nature == but we can reduce pollution and other adverse environmental effects brought about by humankind. The problem appeared on the political agenda in the 20th century.

The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, which brought together several thousand scientists, including Russians.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force in 1994. One hundred and ninety countries have joined it since then. The document determines the scope of the international partnership to deal with the issue, whose first achievement was the Kyoto Protocol of 1997.

Intensive economic activities are surely bad for the climate. That is why the protocol demands a reduction in air pollution caused by methane, carbon dioxide and other gases. (((It isn't "economic activity" that wrecks climate, it's "greenhouse emissions" that wreck climate. They're not the same thing, and they've only been related for about 200 years.)))

Russia ratified the protocol along with another 166 countries, and has been true to its pledge. It is introducing new, clean technologies for industry and everyday life. Cleaner air will help reverse the trend of climate change.

Viktor Danilov-Danilyan is director of the Institute of Water Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

(((Defeated on the facts, fossil-fuel fans like to resort to nationalist arguments. "But he's Russian! Russians sell oil, don't they?" Of course he's Russian; he also exhaled carbon dioxide while writing the article, and most of the Internet, with the exception of Google, Gopod bless them, spewed emissions while transferring his sentiments to your computer screen. If you were born before 1989, you paid for the Cold War. The point isn't who paid to prepare for Apocalypse == the point is that we successfully got it together not to have one.)))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
YES, WE COULD HAVE
BLOWN OURSELVES TO
SHREDS AT A MOMENT'S
NOTICE. WE DIDN'T
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

Viridian Note 00493: British Military Describes Khaki Green

2007-06-28T06:23:00.001-07:00

Key concepts:: Khaki Green, British military, Air Marshall Jock Stirrup, military implications of the climate crisis
Attention Conservation Notice:: keenly depressing, yet something of a tribute to Viridian foresight.

Links:

Climate crisis in former location, central Texas: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/06/climate-crisis-.html

Climate crisis in current location, southeast Europe: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/06/planet-ark-five.html

Link:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/42799/story.htm

Armies Must Ready for Global Warming Role – Britain

UK: June 26, 2007

LONDON – Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain's armed forces said on Monday.

Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning.

Link: Air Marshal Sir Graham Eric Stirrup, (1949 - ): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_Stirrup

But he said first analyses showed planners would not have to switch their geographical focus, because the areas most vulnerable to climate change are those where security risks are already high.

(((Interesting, isn't it? The places where we've already got hell are gonna have more hell.)))

"Just glance at a map of the areas most likely to be affected and you are struck at once by the fact that they are exactly those parts of the world where we see fragility, instability and weak governance today.

"It seems to me rather like pouring petrol onto a burning fire," Stirrup told the Chatham House think-tank in London. (((Nice fossil-fuel metaphor there.)))

Link:
Chatham House studies on climate change: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/index.php?id=189&pid=403

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett chaired the first debate on climate change at the UN Security Council in April this year. She argued that the potential for climate change to cause wars meant it should be on the council's radar.

Stirrup said the unpredictability of the immediate effects of global warming on rainfall patterns and storms meant flashpoints could be advanced by years without warning.

He did not identify the problem areas, but Bert Metz of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the meeting they included Central America, the Amazon Basin, large parts of north, central and southern Africa and swathes of Asia.

(((And New Orleans. And maybe Los Angeles. And Australia.)))

Scientists say average temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due to burning fossil fuels for power and transport, melting ice caps, bringing floods, droughts and famines, and putting millions of lives at risk.

Stirrup said the security threat was far more immediate than those figures might suggest.

"If temperatures rise towards the upper end of the forecast range we could already start to see serious physical consequences by 2040 – and that is if things get no worse." (((He's not a scientist, folks. He's a general. Well, an Air Marshall.)))

"If things do get worse you don't need to come very much forward from 2040 before, in my terms at least, you are talking about the day after tomorrow," Stirrup said.

He said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington showed the devastation that attacks fuelled by political, economic and social deprivation could achieve.

(((It's a tribute to the political genius of Al Qaeda that, six years later, people still talk about the damage to two and one-fifth buildings. Meanwhile, where the real paramilitary trouble is:)))

Global narco-guerillas in North America: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/06/journal_mexicos.html Hollow states:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/04/hollow_states.html

"Now add in the effects of climate change. Poverty and despair multiply, resentment surges and people look for someone to blame," he said.

Even if the world agreed quickly on a way of equitably tackling the climate crisis – which was far from sure – the nature of the problem meant a significant degree of adverse change was already in the pipeline.

"That rapidity, alongside the size of the global population and the complexity of today's society, leaves us particularly vulnerable," Stirrup said. "It is bound to present substantial security challenges of one kind or another."

Asked on the margins of the meeting if that meant military planners should opt for premptive action where they saw a security crisis emerging, he said: "Only in the sense of building governance. Recognising the problem is the first step."

Story by Jeremy Lovell

(((So, what's the story here? Well, as I pointed out earlier, green design is winning. Practically every state with a trace of civilization has got capitalist-green fever now. They'll even do it in the teeth of government opposition, as they do right now in the USA. So design, in the sense of a comprehensive grass-roots effort to change the infrastructure, is doing great. It is scarcely necessary to talk about this; it has become mainstreamed.

(((However, nation-states couldn't get it together to create a Kyoto-friendly world order, so we're seeing many failed states and hollow states. These areas are defeating the armies of nation states through the simple tactic of becoming and remaining ungovernable. This, as Stirrup is pointing out here, is making failed states indistinguishable from climatic disaster areas. They are going to become the same thing. Khaki Green, as an idea, is far from mainstreamed, but this article is a strong signifier of it.

(((The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, but the rain is going to fall with particular virulence on places where there is no government. No army. No civil services. And no functional ability to restore the infrastructure. Peoples who defeat nation-states through tactics of civil disorder are going to be particularly vulnerable to climate-crisis starvation and epidemics. After the era os operations-other-than-war, there will be mass-deaths-other-than-genocide. Mass deaths of peoples, mass deaths of former nations, but without any institutional entity inflicting it. That's the Unthinkable, but it is certain to happen, and is already happening in isolated locales. The question for the next decades is: how much Unthinkable, how big is it. It's a process that "could be advanced by years without warning.")))

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THE LESSONS HERE? (A)
DON'T LET YOUR STATE FAIL;
(B) DON'T IMAGINE YOU CAN
PUT OUT FIRES WITH BAYONETS
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Viridian Note 00492 Austin Green Capitalism

2007-05-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

Key concepts:: Austin Texas, Corporate Green, cleantech, clean energy, venture capital, Austin Technology Incubator, start-up companies, Clean Energy Venture Summit
Attention Conservation Notice:: It's about a bunch of start-up companies asking rich people for money.

Links:

The first and possibly not-only Clean Energy Venture Summit, which planned for 300 attendees and got 400, me included.
http://www.cleanenergyventuresummit.com/

The Austin Clean Energy Incubator, braintrust of the event.
http://www.cleanenergyincubator.org/

Austin Technology Incubator. http://ati.ic2.org/

Letter from the Mayor of Austin, who has a degree in environmental design:

"To the Guests of the Clean Energy Venture Summit:

"I'm pleased to welcome you to Austin for the inaugural Clean Energy Venture Summit. I believe you will find Austin a unique place, ideally suited for the development of the cleantech industry."

Link:
(((Where the Mayor of Austin went instead of attending this local biz event: The Large Cities Climate Summit.)))
http://www.nycclimatesummit.com/

"In Austin, we have a long tradition of creativity, entrepreneurialism and respect for our natural environment. It's the nexus of these traditions that has resulted in Austin recently being named the nation's top city for cleantech development." (((Yeah, take that, Green San Francisco, Green LA, Green Chicago, Green Seattle, and Green New York.)))

"What sets Austin apart from many cities striving to foster cleantech industry is the exceptional combination of resources we're bringing together to help us achieve our goals. The Austin team includes our municipally owned Austin Energy, unquestionably the most progressive utility in the nation; the Clean Energy Incubator, the first ever of its kind; the University of Texas, with its breadth and depth of knowledge; and the citizens of Austin == our most important resource of all.

"The Austin City Council recently adopted some of the most ambitious clean energy and energy efficiency targets in the nation. To achieve our goals, we will need new technologies to help us meet the growing energy demands of our rapidly growing community.

"Our plan is to build the cleantech industry of the future == and that means attracting the right talent, applying the right resources and leveraging a great team to achieve this. I invite you to play a role in this important endeavor. Together, we can build a tomorrow as limitless as our creativity and vision will allow. Regards, Mayor Will Wynn"

(((If you'd told me ten years ago that the Mayor of my home town would be indulging in this kind of rhetoric, I would have been turning cartwheels. The Clean Energy Venture Summit was an intensely dull event. There was scarcely a "visionary" to be seen. On the contrary: suited, duely-diligent lawyers and bankers were throwing millions of dollars at engineers. That's the work of the world, folks. This is our third swing at this particular baseball: 1970s: eco-consciousness raising; 1990s, global political accords; 2010s, cybergreen ecotech. They gotta win, they must not fail, because otherwise, by the 2030s it's gonna be Khaki Green all the way: a future of All Katrina, all the time, for everybody.)))

(((I conveyed these bracing sentiments to the attendees. I then went to my Austin home to find a tree in my yard freshly blasted by a massive lightning storm. As a Viridian guru, I'm pretty much getting what I begged for here. But, just like everybody else under our planet's overheated skies, I'm gonna pay a price.)))

Link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45506355@N00/502244707/

The corporate darlings of the event (for you boisterous tech investors out there):

AgiLight:
http://www.agilight.com/
"The AgiLight Team brings a combined 50+ years of experience in the electronics and solid state lighting industry and has tremendous experience in manufacturing, sourcing, material science, and product integration of LED and other electronics solutions."

Ausra.
http://www.ausra.com/
"Ausra, Inc. is developing large-scale solar electric power parks. Endless electrical energy at affordable prices without carbon emissions is now possible due to our breakthroughs in the design of concentrating solar power systems."

PCN Technologies.
http://www.pcntechnologies.com "PCN Technology, Inc. (PCN) designs, develops and markets advanced I/O subsystem components that leverage existing energy systems of products, devices, machinery, and installations in order to transmit triple play data.PCN products interoperate with legacy and new systems eliminating or decreasing communication hardwire in order to provide alternative RF wireless communication, convergence, and networking for companies & applications having critical needs for secure, reliable, robust data transmission."

SolBeam.
http://www.ngenpartners.com "SolBeam markets and sells concentrating photovoltaic systems."

AccuWater.
http://www.accuwater.com/
"AccuWater delivers products and Internet-based services that enable property owners to optimize landscape irrigation using landscape modelling and local weather conditions."

(((And, as they like to say, "many others.")))

Austin Energy's political pitch: a shotgun marriage of electrical utilities and a (somewhat imaginary) hybrid fleet of American plug-in cars.

Link:
http://www.pluginpartners.org/ "Plug-In Partners is a national grass-roots initiative to demonstrate to automakers that a market for flexible-fuel Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) exists today. Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles can reduce dependence on foreign oil, decrease greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, lower fuel costs, make American agriculture a fuel source, save and created American jobs, and increase use of renewable energy."

Media sponsors: GreenBiz, GreenerBuildings, ep Overviews Daily Report, Inside GreenTech, and Red Herring.

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IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT THEY'RE MOVING AS FAST
AS THEY CAN THROW THE CASH... AND BESIDES,
IT'S SOMETHING OF A PRIVILEGE
TO HAVE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE THIS!
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Viridian Note 00491: Massive Green Buyout

2007-02-27T14:31:00.000-08:00

Key concepts:: Texas utilities, coal orgies, political pressure, leveraged buyouts, backroom Corporate Green maneuvers, TXU, Green Group
Attention Conservation Notice:: Stuff like this is gonna start happening all the time. Might as well learn how it works and get used to it.

Links:
A cleaned-up waterway in New York City has wild beavers in it. It's been two hundred years. http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/40503/story.htm

Capturing carbon dioxide with bio-engineered microbes. http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/2/22/2756644.html

Here's a spacey European scheme to run an entire life-support system out of geo-engineered microbes, which ought to prove handy when all higher organisms are killed off by climate crisis. http://ecls.esa.int/ecls/?p=melissa

Wow, Joseph Romm has a climate-politics blog. He's not kidding around with it, either. http://climateprogress.org/

Science fiction writer Gregory Benford thinks halting the carbon economy is way too little, too late, so he's come up with his own version of the stratospheric Sulfur Cure. Anti-Kyoto wingnuts at the insidious Heartland Institute think Benford's idea is cheap, dirty and great, so we'll probably be hearing a lot more of it. It's actually one of the better thought-through geo-engineering notions, because Dr. Greg Benford really understands physics, God bless him. http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19484

War on Terror! No, Climate Crisis! Wait, Climate Crisis Terrorism, worst o' both worlds! "Conference Focuses On Terror Potential Of Abrupt Climate Change. Much of the attention devoted recently to global climate change has focused, understandably, on its causes and possible prevention. But a group of international experts gathered on January 24 for a conference, organized by a think tank focused on security issues, on the potential for extremists to use the effects of climate change to their own advantage." http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/01/1cb42934-d759-46b3-a2e0-724b633e1804.html

Arab oil sheiks going solar: Abu Dhabi to build giant 500-megawatt solar-power plant. No, they're not kidding. They got nothing but sun and money, so they'll probably be oil-free before anybody else. Â http://www.arabianbusiness.com/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=8167:abu-dhabi-to-build-350m-solar-
power-plant&Itemid=1

Al Gore wins the Oscar, plans gigantic planetary rock and roll concert. Can you imagine George W. Bush doing stuff like this? Some day Bush won't be president – can you imagine anybody trusting Bush plan, promote, explain, or organize anything? Ever? http://www.algore.org

(((Now for the day's news, which is really kind of awe-inspiring in its suddenness and grandiosity. First, enviro activists crow in victory, a sound one hasn't heard from their camp in some years:)))

**Breaking News**
Victory in Texas ... Environmental Agreement Tied to Sale of Electricity Giant Will Block Construction of Eight Dirty Coal-Fired Power Plants

Dear Bruce,

Thanks to the generous support of our online activists and donors, today is a truly historic day in the fight against global warming.

News just broke that Texas Pacific Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. are seeking to acquire Texas-based energy giant TXU Corp.

As part of the sale agreement, Environmental Defense helped negotiate an aggressive environmental platform that will, among other things:

Terminate plans for the construction of 8 of 11 coal-fired power plants TXU had hoped to build; (((They were planning to nail these coal-plants up in a panic rush and grandfather 'em in before Bush leaves power.)))

Stop TXU's plans to expand coal operations in other states;

Endorse the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) platform, including the call for a mandatory federal cap on carbon emissions; and

Reduce the company's carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Here's a story in The New York Times describing how Environmental Defense helped negotiate this deal: http://action.environmentaldefense.org/ct/Vp16sGE1JX7B/

This is a huge victory for the environmental community. It sends a clear message about the undeniable momentum in our campaign calling for federal global warming legislation. (((I'm unclear on why these guys still want to waste time in federal legislation when they got their "historic victory" by hanging out with Corporate Green merger and acquisition financiers. You'd think they'd blow off the Bush government and spend all their time with bankers, but, I dunno, old habits die hard.)))

The story behind today's announcement began last April when TXU announced alarming plans to build 11 dirty coal-fired power plants in Texas. (((Where else? The whole state stinks!)))

(((Except for the much-beleaguered CAPITAL of Texas, Austin, "the leading city in the nation in the fight against global warming"!))) http://austin.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2007/02/05/daily26.html?surround=lfn

From the start, most business and political experts considered it a done deal. Texas Governor Rick Perry got personally involved, fast-tracking the permits and declaring "we're not going to let these bureaucrats jerk us around." (((Like most Governors of Texas including the current President, this guy is a consummate ignoramus. Let's hope and pray he never does anything requiring any more effort and skill than being Governor of Texas.)))

Even our own experts in our Texas office considered the odds of stopping the plants as remote, at best.

But the size of the proposal left us no choice but to aggressively oppose the plants. The 11 coal-fired plants would spew 78 million tons of global warming pollution per year, more than twice the expected carbon reductions from the historic California Clean Cars legislation.

So, Environmental Defense mobilized an all-out grassroots campaign targeting TXU and Texas Governor Rick Perry. Nearly 50,000 Environmental Defense members and activists took action, sending emails, attending public hearings across Texas and submitting public comments against the plants. More than 50 community and environmental groups signed on to our letter urging TXU to change its course.

We took out television, billboard and online ads. We reached out to allies in the Texas state legislature and we worked the legal and financial angles to keep the pressure on TXU.

Our efforts were designed to achieve three goals:

Stop as many of the plants as possible;
Prevent TXU from exporting its coal plant build-out to other states; and
Send a national message to other utility companies that the TXU plan is one they should reject. (((Those companies are listening -- not to the activists, of course, but to guys with enough muscle to buy fossil-fuel companies after the activists wear down the stock price a little.)))

It may have been a long shot when we started this campaign, but this weekend's news meets each of these goals. (((I like it when a guy is smart enough to declare victory and actually stop the war.)))

I want to thank everyone who took action on this campaign and supported our work with generous donations or other actions. We couldn't have claimed this seemingly unattainable victory without your support.

Thanks for everything you help make possible,

Fred Krupp
President

(((Now the New York Times weighs in. Note that Krupp cites their article, so he must more or less agree with their assessment. At least, Krupp was clearly a source.)))

A Buyout Deal That Has Many Shades of Green

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Published: February 26, 2007

About two weeks ago, Fred Krupp, the president of a nonprofit advocacy group called Environmental Defense, received an unusual phone call.

William K. Reilly, the former administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush, was on the other end. But before Mr. Reilly would explain the reason for his call, he said he needed an assurance from Mr. Krupp that he would keep the conversation confidential.

After receiving such a pledge, Mr. Reilly dropped a bombshell: the TXU Corporation, the Texas energy giant that had become the whipping boy of the nation's largest environmental groups, was in talks to be sold to a group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company a nd Texas Pacific Group, two large private equity firms.

Mr. Reilly, who works for Texas Pacific, said he wanted to negotiate a cease-fire. If the investors succeeded in taking over TXU, Mr. Reilly said, they would commit themselves to scale back significantly on TXU's plan to build 11 new coal plants and adhere to a strict set of environmental rules. (((The guy is, after all, the former head of the EPA.)))

In return, he wanted the support of Mr. Krupp and his peers, who had spent the past several months waging a bitter and public war against TXU.

Early Monday, after several weeks of marathon negotiations that brought together both environmentalists and Wall Street bankers, TXU announced that its board of directors had approved the bid from Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific for about $45 billion, which would be the largest buyout in history.

(((And the evil genius who proposed building all the coal plants REMAINS IN POWER. That's the genius of it. In fact, since TXU capo C. John Wilder owns a ton of TXU stock, he's gonna clear millions of dollars. The brilliance of this scheme? You don't actually have to buy companies. You just have to bribe the CEO elite and they'll sell out the enterprise, hook, line and sinker!)))

The deal was noteworthy not just for its size, but for the confluence of business decisions and environmental concerns that drove the ultimate transaction. (((Call it "Corporate Green.")))

Because private equity firms are unregulated and historically have valued their privacy, neither Kohlberg Kravis nor Texas Pacific were eager to become an "enemy combatant" of the environmental groups, people involved in the talks said. Reducing the coal plant initiative will also free up billions of dollars in planned spending that the firms will be able to use for other projects or to help finance the transaction. (((Corporate Green "values its privacy" because it is basically covertly doing what governments used to do back when governments actually governed. Why run the EPA when you can just buy coal plants?)))

Within TXU, the controversial plan to build a raft of coal plants had become so damaging to its stock price that its board had been privately weighing a plan to scrap part of the project, said people involved in the talks, (((note that Krupp is willing to talk publicly to the NY Times, while Corporate Green raiders stay off the record))) bringing the number of new plants to 5 or 6 from 11. Shareholders had sent the stock on a roller coaster ride from more than $67 a share to as low as about $53 (((that's not much of a roller-coaster; consider Enron))) over concerns about the risk and vast expenditure; the stock closed at $60.02 on Friday.

Indeed, it was the quick drop in TXU's stock price that got the attention of Kohlberg Kravis and Texas Pacific, which look for undervalued companies and try to turn them around.

(((Carbon companies will be henceforth subjected to organized under-valuement. Their captains of industry will be bought off and then they'll be annihilated. Watch it happen.)))

Together, both firms approached C. John Wilder, TXU's chief executive, in January with an offer for the company, these people said.

At the time, neither Kohlberg Kravis nor Texas Pacific told TXU about their ambition to scale back its controversial coal plants. But behind the scenes, both firms had been developing a new strategy for the company with the help of Goldman Sachs, their lead adviser.

Goldman Sachs has been a longtime proponent of reducing carbon emissions. Its former chief executive, Henry M. Paulson, now the secretary of the treasury, was also the chairman of the Nature Conservancy, an environmental activist group.

Texas Pacific's co-founder, David Bonderman, is member of the board of the World Wildlife Fund, and Mr. Reilly is chairman emeritus. Mr. Bonderman called Mr. Reilly to help work on the deal and create what they ultimately called The Green Group, a committee of advisers that included Mr. Reilly, Roger Ballentine of Green Strategies and Stuart E. Eizenstat, the former chief domestic policy adviser for President Jimmy Carter. ((("The Green Group." Yikes.)))

"We didn't want to be on the wrong side of history," said a person involved in the bidding group who was not authorized to talk about the transaction before its formal announcement. ((("We also didn't want to be quoted in public.")))

(((Fascinated by weird Texas energy politics? Read your fill!))) http://www.texasobserver.org/blog/?cat=7

Under the terms of the deal, TXU shareholders will receive $69.25 in cash for each TXU share. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup will take small stakes in TXU as well as help finance the debt with J.P. Morgan Chase. In addition, the investor group will assume more than $12 billion of TXU's debt.

The deal represents a 20 percent premium over TXU's closing price on Thursday before word of the deal began to leak and was reported Friday on CNBC after the market closed, TXU said.

It is unclear whether shareholders will agitate for a higher price from the investor group or push for other suitors to emerge. Several recent "go private" deals have drawn opposition from shareholders who expressed concern that they were being shortchanged. (((Yeah? Then how come they pay CEOs so much? The shareholders are gluttons for punishment.)))

Monday's merger agreement allows TXU's board to solicit bids from other potential buyers through April 16, and TXU said it intends to do so. (((It'll be interesting to see if any black angel investors show up and INSIST on building coal plants.)))

The investor group has not laid out any specific plans to grow revenues through alternatives to the coal plants, but TXU is not likely to lose money, at least initially, as a result of scaling back. Three of the plants are already in the works and other eight that will be canceled would not have been built for years.

And the group will be getting more than just a utility. TXU is in the midst of an experiment to run broadband Internet over its power lines as part of a venture with Current Communications. (((Very Enron. They loved Internet pipes.)))

Both TXU, which was advised by Credit Suisse and Lazard, and the investor group spent weeks holed up in three conference rooms at the Gaylord Texan, a hotel just outside of Dallas. With armies of bankers and lawyers that frequently numbered more than 40, the group negotiated the buyout deal, including an unusual provision that will allow TXU to seek higher rival bids over the next 50 days. This clause could potentially create a bidding war, perhaps bringing other private equity firms and utilities into an auction.

Related

Deal's Broader Effect on Coal Plants Is Uncertain (February 26, 2007) (((uncertain, but they've gotta be wondering today)))

Mr. Bonderman and Henry R. Kravis, the founder of Kohlberg Kravis, pleaded their case to the Texas governor, Rick Perry, on Thursday in person at his mansion, mindful that Oregon had rejected Texas Pacificâ��s deal to buy Portland General and that Arizona had rejected Kohlberg Kravis' deal to buy UniSource Energy. The pair has also reached out to James A. Baker, a Texan and former Reagan cabinet member. (((James A. Baker, "the Bush Consigliere.")))

But perhaps the most difficult talks were with the environmentalists, who often seemed more like Wall Street negotiators than green activists. (((Given that government is a non-player, these self-appointed activists barging into the boardroom are the only thing standing between the citizenry and outright corporate-green feudalism. It's no wonder they've finally learned to act like businessmen when business is the only game in town.)))

Mr. Krupp of Environmental Defense used his conversation with Mr. Reilly as an opportunity to negotiate even harder for further concessions. The men agreed that Mr. Krupp's lieutenant, James D. Marston, who was leading the charge against TXU in Texas, would meet with Mr. Reilly and other representatives of the buying group. And representatives from Natural Resource Defense Council, another climate-control advocacy group, was brought into the discussion to help formulate a plan that all sides could agree on.

So last Wednesday, Mr. Marston flew to San Francisco, (((obligatory "oh look, the enviros are flying in airplanes and spewing carbon" riff inserted here))) where he found himself face to face with Mr. Reilly over breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental hotel. There, over scrambled eggs and croissants, Mr. Reilly laid out a plan that included reducing the coal plants from 11 to 3.

Then the men went to Texas Pacific's conference room overlooking Alcatraz and the San Francisco Bay for a day-long negotiation that stretched until early the next morning. The group, which included Mr. Reilly, Mr. Bonderman and Frederick Goltz of Kohlberg Kravis, worked out a "10-point plan" that included a commitment by the investors to return the carbon- dioxide emissions by TXU to 1990 levels by 2020 and support a $400 million energy efficiency program. (((Okay, this is the actual work of the world being performed here. This is the sound of icebergs not melting, seas not rising, etc. Let 'em get after it, don't get in the way.)))

When an agreement was finally struck, at 1 a.m. the next morning, Mr. Reilly grabbed a bottle of pinot noir from his colleague's office to toast the group. But he couldn't find a corkscrew. (((Need more tech geeks in the boardroom. I'm only a damn author and I've got a Swiss Army corkscrew right here.))) So he ran back to the Mandarin Oriental to borrow one. (((Let's be charitable, maybe their corkscrews were confiscated by airline security.)))

Not all of TXU's historical opponents are popping corks. Some noted that a decision by one company did not sway the others that are building plants. In Dallas, Laura Miller, the mayor and leader of a coalition of municipal officials that has spent $600,000 fighting the TXU plants, said the agreement with the environmental groups might not get TXU as much help as it wanted.

Ms. Miller pointed out that one of the three surviving projects, a plant near Waco, is still opposed by local officials and had drawn a negative recommendation from a panel of Texas judges. She said she hoped that TXU's plans would leave an opening for cleaner projects, like a proposal to build a power line to West Texas, where power producers propose to build large wind farms.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting.

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IT ACTUALLY IS A HISTORIC MOMENT,
SO IT'S WORTH PUTTING UP WITH IT.
LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT. IN FACT,
IF YOU CAN HELP THEM, GO DO IT
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