It is long past time to cease altogether the $52 billion (or more) in subsidies and tax breaks paid to the US Fossil Fuel industry. Sign this quick petition to President Obama. With just 25,000 signatures, it will land on his desk! Put those billions into alternative energy development and we could start to steer this sinking ‘united spaceship planet earth’ onto a whole new course.
Tag: climate change
Obama throws climate under bus…….Send e-mail now.
Time to send another e-mail to Mr. Obama, who has failed the climate and its people once again. Some 20 million offshore acres, many in deepwater, have been auctioned off to the oil industry. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held an oil and gas lease sale this morning selling off most of the 20 million offshore acres available in the Western Gulf of Mexico. That’s every last available parcel.
And that’s not all. President Obama also just signed a bill that excludes all U.S. airlines from modest, reasonable European carbon emissions fees. Here’s the full story from The Hill. It would have amounted to a few bucks per international plane ticket. But the U.S. airlines industry threw a typical hissy fit, and congress whipped together a “ban” on such tariffs. Obama signed the law on Tuesday.
This was President Obama’s first test of his second term. He has failed, proving that Americans and their president are all talk and no action on climate change.
And yes, this the same president who said that Americans are “threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”
Now, this morning, Obama wants Americans to tweet that they want their “#my2k” in tax cuts. Tweet this to Obama:
“What good is #my2k to people on a dying planet?”
While you’re at it, send him an email, demanding he stop coddling the corporate toddlers who are ruining the planet. Tell him to end fossil fuel subsidies now. To face our global climate failure now. To live up to his promises, to deal with this issue.
Strap in for a rocky ride on United Spaceship Planet Earth. I can feel poor Bucky spinning in his grave right now.
Another easy way to support clean energy.
Bucky called them “readily available cosmic energies” — sun, wind, wave, geothermal, magnetic, gravity. These are the clean energies that must be developed quickly and extensively if humanity is to exist beyond the climate crisis that is now underway.
Here’s a link where you can demand your government invest more in clean energy technologies. www.onemillioncalls.org Check it out, then come back and scroll down for more things you can do. For inspiration, here are Buckminster Fuller’s own words about the insanity of burning up the planet in order to energize it:
“We have discovered that it is highly feasible for all the human passengers
aboard Spaceship Earth to enjoy the whole ship … provided that we are not so foolish as to burn up our ship … by powering our prime operations exclusively on fossil fuels and atomic reactor generated energy. We cannot afford to expend our fossil fuels faster than we are “recharging our battery,” which means precisely the rate at which the fossil fuels are being continually deposited within Earth’s spherical crust…The fossil-fuel savings account has been put aboard Spaceship Earth for the exclusive function of getting the new machinery built with which to support life and humanity at ever more effective standards of vital physical energy and reinspiring metaphysical sustenance to be sustained exclusively on our Sun radiation’s and Moon pull gravity’s tidal, wind, and rainfall generated pulsating and therefore harnessable energies.”
How to Share the Truth about Climate Change.
Here’s an interesting idea to help individuals share scientific facts about climate change. Let’s hope it will help counter the powerful voices of denial coming from the fossil fuel industry. Let me know what you think!
End Fossil Fuel Subsidies Now
The pardoxes in climate change are astounding. Developed countries give $400 billion per year in subsidies to fossil fuel companies. They give $4 billion to developed countries to help them fight the problems caused by fossil fuel emissions. That’s 100 times more money given to those creating the problems, versus those desperate for solutions. WE MUST END FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES NOW. Watch this video, then come back and send President Obama an email urging him to put climate change on the front burner!
Silver lining of hurricane Sandy is awareness of climate change
In life after Sandy, it seems everyone from Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo to Chris Hayes and NJ Governor Christie are talking about climate change, and wondering if there might actually be some meaningful solutions. It’s an exciting time for those of us who have been waiting for decades for the world to change.
The late Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) started waiting in the middle of the last century. He urgently called for a “design science revolution” that would help free the planet from the grip of fossil fuels, and would provide sufficient “livingry, rather than weaponry” for all human beings on earth.
Bucky (the name he preferred) said that nature’s rules must be adhered to by humankind, if we were to survive and thrive as a species. He wrote that because of environmental issues, humanity was approaching its “critical test” as a species, in which it would be determined “whether or not man was a mistake of nature, or its greatest accomplishment.”
This subject is covered extensively in both “Critical Path” and “Uptopia or Oblivion”: From the introduction by Jaime Snyder, Fuller’s grandson: “A comprehensive global crisis is now clearly dawning in humanity’s collective awareness, interweaving dramatic climate change and massive environmental destruction as we hover closer to “points of no return” — not to mention the ongoing hazard of nuclear weaponry, and persistent large-scale extreme poverty. It has become harder and harder to avoid the recognition that we are in a full-scale planetary emergency. . . it can be very difficult to move out of denial about our predicament, without the cognition that there is a future scenario where we can turn this emergency into an emergence of sustainability for all life on earth.”
And thus Buckminster Fuller called for an anticipatory Design Science Revolution. “Fuller held that modern science was too encumbered by rigid ideas to solve the world’s great problems, and that the governing principles of nature — which even the layman could intuit and harness — would yield the essential creative solutions.” This is from Fuller’s (self-proclaimed) seminal posthumously published work entitled “Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario for the Future of Humanity” with Adjuvant Kiyoshi Kuromiya. This contains Bucky’s geometry lessons for understanding the functioning of the universe, which he said would lead to the knowledge necessary to manifest results that would allow all humanity to thrive. Fuller said that by simply shifting focus “from weaponry to livingry” all of humanity could thrive. Fuller first called for this revolution in 1965. It was to be a ten-year turn about. We are nearly fifty years late.
In the recent SFMOMA Show “Utopian Impulse” Fuller states that he believes in humanity’s chances of accomplishing this necessary revolution, and he explains that a Utopian type of impulse is a necessary component of human evolution; that “humanity must embrace the best of itself, living lives of conscious evolution.”
Bucky wrote at length about energy, and “the need to stop burning up the planet in order to energize it”. He worried that fossil fuels could rob humanity of its future by poisoning the environment, but that deeply entrenched economic powers would make the transference to alternative sources of energy difficult. In Critical Path, Fuller explains the absurdity of having the same interests that are heavily vested in opposing such developments also in charge of making them happen.
Buckminster Fuller’s Design Science Revolution was about gaining the maximum value from the minimum resources. He coined the term “synergy” to explain how design science could create rich returns, such as how “energy income” could be harvested from the environment.
From Cosmography: “The Dark Ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This prison has no steel bards, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by misorientation and built of misinformation. We are powerfully imprisoned … by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.”
Hurricane Sandy, while being a truly devastating event for all those involved, may also be a important catalyst to break us out of our prison of denial. We can only hope.
The 99% that really matters right now.
While the Occupy Wall Street is interesting and important, the 99% that Americans should be focused on now is the percentage of scientists who believe that our planet faces serious climate calamity unless we get ahead of the greenhouse gas situation very soon. Just recently there were reports that Co2 levels in the atmosphere are worse than even the worst case scenarios of a few years ago.
What is needed is the “anticipatory design science revolution” that Buckminster Fuller and others urgently called for, starting in the 1960’s. In addition to technologies that sequester carbon, this would aim for the large scale creation and distribution of free and renewable energies, energies that scientists know to exist. Ask any climate scientist. Alternative energies that don’t destroy and deplete our ecosystem are readily tappable by all of humanity.
We must demand that our government support and incentivize companies and technologies which have the potential to solve climate change. We must focus on this, and stay focused on this, since it is a critical issue for all of humanity, according to the quiet and studious 99% of scientists.
America is ADD. How often do we read something that alarms us, but then just go on living and performing our “jobs”, never doing anything about it? We quietly hope and pray that someone else is handling the hard stuff. We’ve all heard or read about how corporate interests have intentionally sequestered inventions that could significantly reduce our demand for fossil fuels. That technologies and inventions to create “free energy” were bought and then buried, just to make sure they never happened.
What is a person supposed to do with this information? What can anybody do?
Buckminster Fuller said that whether or not humanity passes this most critical test would be an individual decision. Therefore, we, as individuals, can start listening to the 99% of scientists who understand the severity of the consequences of doing nothing. Then we can make sure our priorities are reflected in our laws and economic policies.
Government and corporations have had their shot. They have failed miserably. It’s the scientists’ turn to lead. It is time for us to know and follow Mother Nature’s rules, and do as She requires. The time is now. Earth needs us to pay attention! Forget Wall Street for the moment. Let the banksters make off with the treasury. Let our government dicker around with its phony wars and silly politics. But let’s not join those who sit around fiddling while Rome (and all of the Earth) burns!
We must start applying some serious human energy and political will to solving climate change. Stopping the Keystone Pipeline is a start. But the rest of the job is unfathomably huge. Occupying Congress may be a good idea. It sure won’t do any good to petition greedy corporations directly. It may be naive to think that we can actually make a difference in how the world looks at, and uses fossil fuels.
We can’t fix everything. But if we don’t fix this, there may be nothing left to fix!
Best Bucky Reads.
There are some great reads by and about Buckminster Fuller, and one really, really important one.
The best, most important book for today is “Utopia or Oblivion – The Prospects for Humanity” by R. Buckminster Fuller. It is a “provocative blueprint for the future of spaceship earth . . . relaying an urgent message for “earthians’ critical moment”. He champions the need to live off our “energy income” and stop “burning up the ship.” It will scare you, but help you better understand the choices we are (all!)making.
If you want a short life summary written by Bucky himself, I recommend his “Guinea Pig B: The 56 year experiment”. This is a tiny 42-page summary of the experiment he made of his life, starting in 1927, the year Bucky nearly committed suicide. As a young architect and designer , he blamed himself for the death of his first daughter. Apparently the home was cold and drafty, while Bucky “traveled about the world” in pursuit of his design business. Bucky’s plan was to throw himself into Lake Michigan, off Chicago’s Montrose Harbor. As he was about to jump in, Bucky heard the voice of god say: “You have no right to end your life. Your life does not belong to you.” So Bucky made a deal with god and himself. He would only allow himself to live if he dedicated the rest of his life to an experiment to learn what one person could do if he set out to better the lot of all humanity. Guinea Pig B also summarizes some of Bucky’s key ideas, and has a full list of his patents and books in the back. By the way, he did have another daughter, Allegra, who is still alive today and a very long happy marriage. The couple died within 36 hours of each other in their late eighties, in 1983.
For a bigger, colorful review of Bucky’s ideas and inventions, look for ‘Bucky Works’ By J. Baldwin. I haven’t gotten through all of it, but the illustrations and photographs are excellent, and is beautifully written as well.
A last note for today. It saddens me that our CO2 emissions now exceed even the worst case scenarios for 2012. Are we as a species really just going to sit by and let our planet go the way that Venus apparently did? Are we really going to just sit here and let the big oil companies and power complex lead us all the way to a big fiery end? We could unplug and use our own “energy income” in time if we only we would try. But political dysfunction is stopping the necessary and urgent “design science revolution” from happening. If i t doesn’t, Bucky predicted calmly that we’ll end up proving to the universe that mother nature’s experiment with humanity was a waste of time.
But Bucky had undying faith in humanity, that we can do this! But we must actually DO it. It will only happen with everybody’s help. Please let me know if you see any signs of hope.
Happy Friday.
P.S. I read somewhere that Einstein called Bucky the next Einstein, and am working to verify that.
Buckminster Fuller Had it All Figured Out.
“Humanity is at its most critical juncture.”
This blog is devoted to the ideas and inventions of R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 to 1983), who was nick named ”The Planet’s Friendly Genius” by Time Magazine in 1980. He invented the geodesic dome, which is shown at right.
Despite his undeniable wisdom about nature and the environment and his many resourceful inventions for living, Bucky Fuller has all but disappeared from the American mind and media.
Whether Bucky was intentionally swept under the carpet by the vested status quo, or whether we have all just been too busy thinking of other things is not important now.
What is essential is that we, as a species, get behind a massive design science revolution that will create a better environment for humanity and make human survival more likely. Bucky thought the situation was getting urgent in 1964. He became more worried as he neared his death in the early 1980′s.
(Sources are available for all of the following quotes, although I have compiled them from various sources, and paraphrased them where necessary for understanding. Bucky was known for his omni-thick, obtusely worded passages. I am trying to translate for them for the lay person.)
In the approximate words of Bucky, as he preferred to be called, here is what’s really going on with the human species:
“Humanity is now experiencing history’s most difficult evolutionary transformation. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and- go relay race right up to the final moment. Humanity is in ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in universe.”
Our challenge, according to Bucky, is to get all of humanity to educate itself quickly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors and political pressures that will support the inventions that are necessary to help us avoid extinction. We need global environmental solutions quickly.
We must re-align ourselves with nature, using natural laws to solve our problems. Nature is trying very hard to help us succeed, but nature does not depend on humanity. We are not nature’s only experiment. Avoiding extinction will require that we adopt new ways of living, and make a greater committment to the future for all mankind.
According to Fuller, humanity has now passed through an evolutionary inflection point where, for the first time in history, it is irrefutably demonstrable that a “design science revolution” that employs significant resources of humanity, (within an establishment which is now majorly invested in weaponry technology) , can, within ten years, have all of humanity enjoying a higher standard of living that is sustainable by focusing on livingry.
As Bucky put it, the old structures of money & war is not good for life. Politicians are obsolete as problem solvers because they are always maneuvering for the next election. Mankind must reestablish, employ and enjoy his innate “comprehensivity”, then face the fact that we are ruining our planet, and then do something about it.
Bucky was full of hope.
“The youth of Earth are moving intuitively toward an utterly classless, raceless, omnicooperative, omniworld humanity. They can lead humanity into a new era of successful human experience. If establishment leaders will allow it, which they eventually will. The question now is whether it happens in time. Some say the tipping point has past. So the solutions will need to be even more dramatic and substantial.
(Here is Bucky’s most jaw-dropping statement of all, from his book Guinea Pig B🙂
“A vast overabundance of Earthian cosmic energy is now technically impoundable and distributable to humanity by presently proven technology. We are not allowed to enjoy this primarily because taxhungry government and moneydrunk big business can’t find a way of putting meters on it, and so nothing is done about it.”
It was even worse that Bucky predicted. He would have never believed corporations would willfully hide solutions in the name of profits alone. He didn’t predict the rapacious greed that has come to grip our nations and our societies.
Progress toward clean, renewable energy has been intentionally impeded. It’s time we start turning this ship around. If big business and big government do not want to amass and make available adequate capital for up-to-date technological tooling, people must demand it of them — or we will only “rarely be able to tap the cosmic energy income, except by berry-, nut-, apple-picking and by fishing.”
Is it back to the cave we go? I sure hope not! And finally, in Bucky’s words: “I hope this book will prove to be an encouraging example of what one average human being can do if you have absolute faith in the eternal (and internal) cosmic intelligence we call God.”
The easiest thing we can do to fight climate change is stay home. Stay home and unplug as much as possible. Bike and walk whenever you can. Bucky thought that the idea that everyone had to go to work everyday was ridiculous. He would be suggest that all of America at least take a day off every now and then. A day when everyone is encouraged not to drive. But to unplug and go off grid as much as possible.
Bucky might have suggested that this would be the most logical way to impact our situtation. What we do and how we spend our time and money definitely affects demand. We must do whatever it takes to change the way our world looks at energy.
At least, that is, if we still want nature’s great experiment with humanity to have been a success.
BUCKYIDEAS 