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New documentary: “The Great Squeeze”
Chris Fauchere, Tiroir A films
The Great Squeeze picks up where the documentary Energy Crossroads left off. This new film explores our current ecological and economic crisis stemming from our dependence on cheap and abundant energy; turning fossil fuels into a double-edged sword. Although our actions have lifted our civilization to new heights, it has come at a tremendous price.
With the help of specialists in anthropology, economics and biology, the film demonstrates that there are recurring patterns in history of self-destructive and shortsighted behaviors that parallel our modern times. Today, with 6 billion people and growing, those patterns are no longer isolated and are affecting the entire globe.
We are now at a point where humanity’s demands for natural resources far exceed the earth’s capacity to sustain us. The extraction and the use of those resources in the past two centuries have changed our climate and ecosystems so significantly, that a new geological era had to be created.
Our current paradigm must change. We will have to accept the new reality; the human economy is part of nature and not the other way around. We are faced with great challenges. But unlike the rest of the living world, we have the unique ability to adapt and decide our fate and the fate of most of the biosphere, for better or worse, in order to survive the human project.
The Great Squeeze features: economist Lester Brown, founder of The Earth Policy Institute, Richard Heinberg, world renowned Peak Oil expert, Edward O. Wilson, legendary biologist, Alexandra Cousteau, leading advocate for marine ecosystems, author Howard Kunstler, paleoclimatologist Jim White and many more.
Experts who appear in the film.
Trailer
(January 2009)
I just watched a review copy of this hour+ film. It covers familiar ground, but unlike most peak oil films, it ties peak oil in with climate, water, species extinction, etc. The voices are more diverse than normally heard in peak oil circles, with several women featured.
The film draws a parallel between the trajectory of the United States and the disappearance/migration of the Anasazi (ancient Pueblo peoples). The film concludes with hopeful sequences on how Americans rapidly changed the course of their economy in response to Pearl Harbor.
The film is a good summary of the various crises, but the net effect is rather daunting. I don’t know how I would make the film any differently. It’s a daunting subject with enough content for several graduate level seminars.
We are hoping for a more complete review from co-editor KS. -BA
Bruce Sterling: State of the World discussion
Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsk, The Well
… These posts are making the New Year situation look blacker than I think it is, so maybe I should raise the cogent issue of self-reliance and “resilient cities.” I notice that John Robb, one of my favorite prophets of doom, has formed some tacit New Urbanist alliance with James Howard Kunstler, also one of my favorite prophets of doom.
This would be John “Global Guerrillas” Robb and James Howard “Long Emergency” Kunstler, for those of you entering the catastrophe sweepstakes late in the game. If you’ve never read these guys before, you might want to take a walk around the block before Googling ’em, as otherwise your heart might stop.
In any case, after eight glum years of watching Bush and his neocons methodically wreck the Republic, both Kunstler and Robb have gotten really big on American localism — “resilient” localism. Kunstler has this painterly, small-town-America, Thoreauvian thing going on, kinda locavore voluntary simplicity, with lots of time for… I dunno, group chorale singing. Kunstler seems kinda hung up on the singing effort, somehow… Whereas Robb has a military background and is more into a gated-community, bug-out-bag, militia rapid-response thing.
Certainly neither of these American visions look anything like what happened to Russia. As Orlov accurately points out, in the Russian collapse, if you were on a farm or in some small neighborly town, you were toast. The hustlers in the cities were the ones with inventive opportunities, so they were the ones getting by.
So the model polity for local urban resilience isn’t Russia. I’m inclined to think the model there is Italy. Italy has had calamitous Bush-levels of national incompetence during almost its entire 150-year national existence.
Before that time, Italy was all city-states — and not even “states,” mostly just cities. Florence, Milan, Genoa, Venice. Rome. They were really brilliantly-run, powerful cities. (Well, not Rome — but Rome was global.) Gorgeous cities full of initiaive and inventive genius. If you’re a fan of urbanism you’ve surely got to consider the cities of the Italian Renaissance among the top urban inventions of all time.
And cities do seem in many ways to respond much better to globalization than nation-states do. When a city’s population globalizes, when it becomes a global marketplace, if it can keep the local peace and order, it booms. London, Paris, New York, Toronto, they’ve never been more polyglot and multiethnic.
In my futurist book TOMORROW NOW I was speculating that there might be a post-national global new order arising in cities. Cities as laboratories of the post-Westphalian order.
However… okay, never mind the downside yet. Let’s just predict that in 2009 we’re gonna see a whole lot of contemporary urbanism going on. Digital cities. Cities There For You to Use. Software for cities. Googleable cities. Cities with green power campaigns. Location-aware cities. Urban co-ops. “Informal housing.” “Architecture fiction.” The ruins of the unsustainable as the new frontier.
A President from Chicago who carried the ghettos and barrios by massive margins. Gotta mean something, I figure.
(2 January 2009)
This email discussion mentions several peak oil stalwarts such as Dmitry Orlov and James Howard Kunstler.
Eric Etheridge quotes from the venerable Bruce Sterling on his blog at the NY TImes .
-BA
Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America
Flowing Data
Over the weekend, I mapped the spread of Walmart using Modest Maps. It starts slow and then spreads like wildfire in the southeast and makes its way towards the west coast
(X January 2009)
Click to original to see a dramatic graphic depiction of the data. Interpretation is to what this means is left as an exercise to the reader. – BA
About Flowing Data:
FlowingData explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.
Pat Robertson’s helpful tips for 2009 (text and YouTube)
Steve Benen, Political Animal, Washington Monthly
If you’ve never seen TV preacher Pat Robertson’s television show, you may not realize that the one-time Republican presidential candidate insists he has a special divine gift. Untold millions may try to communicate with God through prayer, but Robertson believes God communicates with him through “words of knowledge.”
Robertson then tells his viewing audience about all of the “messages” he’s received from above, including annual predictions for the new year, which he believes are inspired directly by the Big Guy. (If the prediction proves to be right, it’s proof of Robertson’s connection with God; if the prediction proves false, it means Robertson simply misinterpreted God’s message. Either way, rest assured, the TV preacher really is regularly engaged in divine communication.)
This year, Robertson had all kinds of interesting predictions to share, including word from God that Americans will embrace socialism in large numbers in response to the economic crisis, Obama will help fix the economy, the value of the dollar will fall, Islam will “weaken,” and widespread poverty will give Christian evangelism a boost.
Of course, as my friend Kyle noted, Robertson’s track record on divine predictions is a little shaky, so “700 Club” viewers should plan accordingly.
Remember, as easy as it is to scoff at Robertson’s nonsense, he has a large audience that regularly writes him generous checks, and he’s still considered an influential figure in conservative politics.
No, I don’t understand it either.
(9 January 2009)
I think I take Pat Robertson’s predictions more seriously than Steve Benen does. After all, Pat Robertson DID predict $150 oil and the economic downturn!
Some of Robertson’s prediction look like those coming from the peak oil camp. Except for the idea that Islam is losing strength, the predictions don’t look like conservative wishful thinking.
A non-religious explanation of prophecy would be that the process allows Robertson to draw upon his unconscious, in much the same way that dreams and artists do.
YouTube of Robertson at the original.
-BA
