end fossil fuel subsidies – Page 3

Let’s get this revolution started!

My task is to bring back Bucky’s ideas and serve them up in bite size pieces so that you can use them to make change happen in your world. Bucky’s genius works toward any cause that ‘arcs with the truth’, and it is all actually quite simple.

Take Einstein’s E = mc2 for example. It’s super easy to understand if it’s explained simply: E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass, and c2 is the speed of light squared, or multiplied by itself. Because the speed of light is a very large number, and then you multiply it by itself, you can see the point that this equation shows how even the tiniest amount of matter can release a huge amount of energy, as in a single atom splitting in a nuclear reaction.

Or, as in one person writing to a president, or creating a meme that goes viral.

Bucky’s Synergetic Geometry explains that a triangle is the fundamental building block of the universe, the strongest structure in existence. Modern science is proving him right, as understanding of physics and biochemistry continues to grow.
Social Media creates a perfect triangle. It connects you, to others, through it — a three-sided phenomenon. A de facto digital democracy.

Bucky also called on us to reconnect to nature. Nature, after all, is the perfect designer. She has been at it for billions of years. If a living thing doesn’t abide by nature’s rules, nature expels it like a kidney stone. This is the pathway the human race is currently strolling down while we stare at beautiful behinds on our i-phones. Once we understand how nature works, we can do the same. If we simply set out with the right objective, we can accomplish Bucky’s suggested mission: “To make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

To get there, he called for an ‘Anticipatory Design Science Revolution’, which sounds like an monster of an idea, but breaking down the genius makes it simple:

Anticipatory – Figuring out which way things are headed.
Design – Creating technologies and artifacts that maximize current technology.
Science – Accepting the truth of the necessity to adapt to nature’s principles.
Revolution – Turning things upside down to make it happen.

The first three are underway. The question is whether or not the “revolution” part is happening quickly enough. Most scientists say it’s not, at least not yet. The fact that we still allowing, even subsidizing, more and more desperate measures to extract fossil fuels from the ground (through Fracking and Tar Sands and building huge pipelines across continents) is surely ample evidence that the revolution has not yet begun.

It is long past time for it to start.

Bucky’s words, first said in 1965, should infuriate us all: “Because our tax-hungry government and our money hungry corporations (which run our government) have not figured a way to place a meter between us and the sun, we are not allowed to enjoy the vast supplies of free (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc) energy that could be powering the world.

The technology exists to create a clean energy economy. We only have to demand it happen.

Only the individual has the power to do and say exactly what he believes. No matter what your age or station in life, you, as an individual, have the power to influence others.

We take power into our hands every time we pick up our phones. We can voice our opinions louder, quicker and easier than ever before. We can demand our government create a clean energy economy. We can demand our government develop a better relationship with our boss, mother nature. We can demand they stop “burning up the house to keep the family warm.”

I think if Bucky were alive today, he would ask us to make it a daily habit. Every day: Brush your teeth, comb your hair, read up and then and speak out about something you care about. Put some time every day into doing something for your fellow man. Focus on the environment, or peace and justice, children’s rights, whatever you care most about. If only a small percentage of the seven plus billion of us would start doing this, the revolution would ram right through the current nonsense of today like a herd of wild elephants.

Just like Einstein’s law, such a big concentration of even something very small could release a huge amount of energy.

Thank you for sharing Buckyworld.

Alpha Males Running Amuck on Planet Earth

Whether it’s mankind’s insane propensity for war, his growing gun violence, his abuse of women and children, his militarized police, or even big oil’s excessive greed, the root of many of our problems is one and the same: There is too much alpha male energy running things on Spaceship Earth.

It is time for leaders to emerge from either gender who use more highly evolved qualities — such as compassion, cooperation and a sense of community — to right the ship.

New Feminine Paradigm Needed.

The National Geographic movie entitled Stress offers much needed enlightenment on this issue. It tells the story of how, for decades, Stanford researchers studied a tribe of baboons, which live much like humans do; in nuclear families, caring for their children, men going off in search of food and coming home. They wanted to understand how they dealt with stress. The Alpha male came home empty handed from the hunt. Frustrated, he would swat his wife and their children. His stress becomes their stress; and before long they’re all running around biting each other on the bottoms. Much like life in America today. Stress not managed begats more and more stress.

One day in the Baboons’ backyard, a load of meat poisoned by disease was inadvertently dumped. The alpha males fought off all the others and got to the meat first. They all died. Without them, an entirely new kind of community emerged. Women took over, supported by the beta men. More time was spent grooming and raising children, a sort of utopia came to be.

Buckminster Fuller’s wisdom about the overall superiority of women to rule the world – or for a new feminine paradigm of leadership – was published in a 1968 McCall’s Magazine article, entitled “Why Women Will Rule the World”.

Bucky said a world run by women would refute the outdated notion of scarcity, and set out instead to provide for 100% of humanity. Our abundantly advanced technology and all our new knowledge has brought us to the point where it no longer needs to be “us versus them”, but instead the objective could be “to make the world work for 100% of the people, without harm to the environment.”

We must get control of the alpha energy that’s running amok. We must demand a new more intelligent government. We must make it clear to all of our leaders that war is no longer a sustainable activity. We must demand the transition off fossil fuels happen now. We must demand justice and equality for all peoples, and the environment.

How can women lead the way to make this happen?

Maybe we could get creative and take a lesson from the war-weary women of Sudan who staged a sex strike for peace. Somehow, whatever it takes, we must all find the courage to demand a world where “governance equals nurturance”. As corny as it may sound, love really is the answer. And once humanity demands a compassionately-attuned-to-other world we will get it. As Bucky said, “When there is a strong enough will, there can be no other way. Whatever we think is what will be.”

It doesn’t have to be women who lead, just people who have traditionally feminine values and approaches to problem solving. For example, Bernie Sanders. With his focus on caring for people and the planet, he could have been more of a woman president than Hillary. Elizabeth Warren thinks like a mom. What’s fair? How do we make it work for everybody? And, of course everyone by now everyone knows that Barack Obama is, at heart, already our first feminine paradigm president.

Read Bucky’s article below to get your own vision of how good life might be with a more feminine paradigm of leadership in place. Share it with the women you know who might make great leaders if they had a little encouragement.

Here’s a link to the full McCall’s article by Buckminster Fuller, courtesy of Brent Reitzel at Univ of Illinois, Carbondale.

Find the courage to speak truth to power NOW. Wield your mighty keyboard. And please share Buckyworld.

Flower Power Realized

Harvest solar power and desalinate water -- a new species of flower power. — Harvest solar power and desalinate water — a new species of flower power.

The sudden blossoming of renewable energies is filling Buckyworld with hope today.

One such project is IBM’s Sunflower.

Set to launch in 2017, this new kind of flower power can not only provide electricity but also desalinate water for sanitation and drinking. A group of several solar generators could provide enough fresh water for an entire town. It tracks the sun and always points in the best direction for collecting rays, just as a real sunflower does. This is an excellent example of Biomimicry, which Bucky said was the only science that could save us. As he explained many times, since Nature is always right, by learning how to do things the way Nature does, we can prove ourselves worthy of continuance as a species on United Spaceship Planet Earth.

Add these exciting new technologies to all President Obama is doing to address climate change, and to the growing wariness of the greedy and selfish oil industry, there is new hope that we may be at long last on the garden pathway toward true planetary sustainability.

Knowledge gives people the courage speak up and demand clean energy now, so please share Buckyworld with your friends.

Obama is Bucky’s kind of guy.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that renders the old one obsolete.”

― R. Buckminster Fuller

We live in dysfunctional times, and realizing this, President Obama is finding new ways to get things done for America and for the planet, and in doing so, creating a new model of leadership.

It’s no secret that the U.S. Congress is broken. Its most recent approval ratings approach single digits. During the midterm campaigns, while Republicans unanimously pointed the blame at him, President Obama quietly moved on to create new ways of working that would render the broken model obsolete.

It was announced yesterday that Obama had worked behind the scenes to solidify a plan with China to curb greenhouse emissions, and now, today we learn he also has a plan to address immigration reform.

It is a beautiful modern-day drama playing itself out: The kooky keystone cops run about smacking each other on the heads, while the calm, intelligent yet maligned leader of the free world gets matters under control. He knows our Republican controlled congress will continue to be distracted with efforts to destroy him and his previous accomplishments, such as Obamacare. While they fiddle and Rome burns, President Obama will wake up every morning and calmly step into his virtual phone booth to don his superhero cape.

It’s not that he’s being a dictator. He’s doing what he knows the majority of Americans want, and need. He’s following the wishes of his constituency, doing an end run around the bowel constriction that our Congress has become.

Now, if only he would also embrace Bucky’s core philosophy that “either war is obsolete or man is” and realize that in order to create a world that works for 100% of humanity, all we have to do is turn away from weaponry, and focus instead on creating “livingry”.

President Obama would do well to read Bucky’s book The Grunch of Giants, a brilliant exposé of how a corporate controlled government works against the interests of every living thing, including all humanity. Maybe then he will find the strength to give a flat veto to any more pipelines, including Keystone, end fossil fuel subsidies, and not ratify any more trade agreements that undermine the environment and social justice interests. Maybe he’ll even come up with some reasonable new gun laws?

Our Superhero may not be perfect, but at least he’s trying. I believe President Obama would get a big thumbs up from the genius that was Buckminster Fuller.

We are being fossil fooled.

If the world has a chance of limiting temperature rise to 2C, which has been determined to be crucial to our survival on Earth, 60 to 80 percent of current fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground.

The reverse is happening. We are subsidizing the scraping of every last vein on Earth. Ours and our government’s addiction to big oil have been happy bedfellows with the fools who put their own private financial interests ahead of humanity’s survival.

We simply must break the chains of this enslavement or risk ecosystem collapse.

Worldwide, governments are still subsidizing fossil fuel development to the tune of $500 billion annually, according to conservative estimates. What will it take to phase out exploration subsidies, and then all fossil-fuel subsidies, while while we also transfer these critical public resources to low-carbon development and universal clean energy?

How do we stop this idiotic, fossil fuelish destruction of our planet?

It begins with the courage to speak up.

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“A problem clearly stated is a problem solved.”

Buckminster Fuller said it best. If you can clearly define the problem, it is well on its way to a solution. Apply this to our dysfunctional government in America today. How do we arrive at a clear statement of the problem in light of the devastating mid-term elections, where a inexplicably destructive right wing gained full control of the US Congress?

Here is one attempt:

The takeover of our Democracy is now complete. A primary goal of this takeover is to perpetuate continued denial about the most urgent matter humans will ever face: climate change. This is to ensure continued profits for the fossil fuel industry, and makes it clear that the accelerating destruction of Earth is motivated by simple materialistic greed. Is America about to hit bottom?

Why is accurately stating the problem so important? Here’s what Bucky said (from the book Fuller’s Earth, by Richard J. Brenneman):

“The first and most important thing in solving a problem is to state what the problem is, very clearly, concisely, and incisively. State what the problem really is. I can’t stress how important this is: a problem stated is a problem solved. So many people misstate the problem to fool themselves or others. But if a problem is properly stated, if its relatedness is clearly defined, the answer will become apparent.”

Okay, your turn. How would you sum up the problem with America today? Thank you in advance for your thoughts, and for sharing Buckyworld.

The time has come…

All of nature — including humanity — can thrive.

What Bucky knew back in 1972.

We won’t be burning up our fossil fuels and saying to the next generation, “How are you going to get on?”

Here’s a vision of the coming century, in Bucky’s own words, from an interview with him in the February, 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine:

“We are coming into a new phase of man’s being successful on board his planet, performing his function in a bigger way than the old up-and-down infinite plane world with heaven above and hell below, the earth sandwiched in between. In this new phase, We won’t be burning up our fossil fuels and saying to the next generation, “How are you going to get on?”

Bucky Playboy Interview, 1972 “The changes that are taking place are still unfamiliar to everybody, even to those who expect change. If you start plotting the changes that are occurring, the most difficult to plot is the change in attitude, the change of awareness. But I’ve been around long enough to really see these changes and I tell you the acceleration is terrific. I see this world of man coming on rapidly.

“In the traditional view of the world, there was never enough to go around and somebody had to go down, in order for everyone to eat, but that’s not the case any longer. I’m absolutely convinced of it it’s only ignorance that makes it continue to appear so. Even when I was a kid we had complete comprehensive illiteracy. Man was still very ignorant and his ignorance led to fear for his own skin. You have to remember that, early in the history of man, life was so bad that they couldn’t even think of anything good about it. Therefore they said the whole thing was just a trial for another life in some other magical place….now we know there is an abundance of energy and everything we need available to us right here.

“… Whether or not man thrives is a matter of our living up to our final test, and weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. … Our awareness of our powers to evolve consciously and create a better world is growing, and the future of mankind is very bright, as long as we have the courage to step up to the challenges of the 20th century.”

If this was all known way back when, how did we ever get so waylaid on the path to a clean energy world? If there ever was a war that humanity must win, it is to declare our freedom from fossil fuels. Clean energy is now entirely feasible. It is inexcusable that we are still providing billions of dollars to subsidize fossil fuel producers, instead of holding them accountable for their damage to the planet and its people.

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