VIA the always-excellent O'Reilly Radar (*): Wattzon

Wattzon is a detailed, engineering/scientific-style examination of global warming. Over the course of 192 slides in two parallel streams (text-heavy and graphics-heavy), Saul Griffith examines the causes and consequences of global warming. Not only does he provide a big-picture view of the entire system, he provides a detailed view of how our individual actions contribute to the problem. Using this, he approaches global warming as an engineering problem: how can we engineer society to minimize, and even eventually reverse, the effects of global warming? What choices do we have to make?

We are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light a candle. As Winston Churchill said on taking office some twenty years ago: If we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

This is another diary in the continuing "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment and deal with the inevitable post-oil period.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you'd like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).

Because I don't have a lot of time this week, we're going to look at something simple: environmentalism and market economics.

This is another diary in the continuing "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment and deal with the inevitable post-oil period.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you'd like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).

This week's New Environmentalism is going to take a slightly different tack. In previous weeks, we've looked at actual techniques and technologies that can be used by a sustainable society. Everything from transportation to water management. This time, we're going to look at something whose benefit and purpose is a little more vague: environmentalism in entertainment!

This is another diary in the continuing "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment and deal with the inevitable post-oil period.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you'd like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).

Two previous diaries in this series have looked at the problems of short-range and long-range transportation. I focused mainly on mass urban and inter-urban transportation. Most of the solutions I examined existed in a vacuum. Any realistic solution to the problem of transportation in a post-oil society is going to require a multiplicity of solutions operating together, unlike our current "one size fits all" model. In this diary, I'm going to re-examine a couple of things I skimmed over before, look at transportation for rural areas, and look at integration issues for transportation systems.

This is another diary in the continuing "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you'd like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).

In one of the first diaries in the series, we looked at short-range transportation within a city. We saw that this could be managed without automobiles (though further reading has shown that biodiesel-powered busses are more feasible than I thought at the time) through a well-constructed public transit network. Now we're going to look at long-distance movement, both of goods and people.

Is it true? Did Canada take a swerve to the right? Did the media dialog carry the day? Well, no, not really. Things actually aren't looking half-bad. At this point, it would probably require some major results tampering to wind up with a Conservative majority. The most likely result looks like a Conservative minority, with the balance of power resting with the Liberal party and the Bloc Québécois.

Detailed election results can be found on the CBC website. They have all sorts of interesting breakdowns and statistics. Most notable: the popular vote projections match the latest polls almost exactly. Looks like either Strategic intentionally over-estimated conservative support, or they really did peak too early.

If current projections hold, we Canadians are going to have a very interesting year ahead of us. The Conservatives are projected for 120 to 125 seats, well short of a majority and even worse off than the Liberal government last time. Harper's going to have a tough time pushing through anything questionable, especially since another election's likely in less than a year, so the leaders of the other parties are going to be waiting for him to do something stupid they can pounce on. Unfortunately, he's probably between a rock and a hard place, and governing as a moderate won't endear him to his base.

Well, well, well. What a surprise. After some extensive testing, there's another confirmed case of mad cow disease in Canada. In Alberta, in particular.

This is another diary in the continuing "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to a sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

Knoxville Progressive and I encourage you to contact either of us by email if you'd like to be a contributor to this series (post a diary / host a discussion).

Previous diaries have included an overview of the series and a discussion of short-range (local, personal) transportation issues and an examination of how we can "fit into" our environment. Future diaries will deal with more issues and solutions in the fields of ecosystem management, transportation, city planning, manufacturing, and energy generation. This time, I'm going to give a high-level overview of something that should be near and dear to the heart of every human being: agriculture. Keep in mind that I haven't studied this in anywhere near as much detail as energy generation or transportation, so I very well could get things wrong. If I do, please correct me in comments.

As election day approaches here in Canada, we find ourselves in the middle of a fascinating case of a purely manufactured media dialog. Harper's got a solid, unassailable momentum, CTV and the Globe and Mail tell us. Canadians have displayed an unprecdented level of support for his policies. We'll have a Conservative Majority government for sure.

(More after the fold...)

This is the first diary in the "New Environmentalism" series. In this series, we're going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work - sometimes significantly - in order to live in harmony with our environment. The source of the series was a diary I wrote last week, laying out a very high-level "vision" for this new environmentalism. Numerous people in the ensuing discussion expressed interest in a more in-depth series of diaries. If you want to get involved in writing for the series, or have a topic you want covered or resource you think is cool, please feel free to e-mail Knoxville Progressive and I. We'd love to have more people involved with this, especially since the ultimate goal is a real grass-roots effort to implement the vision.

Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to this sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.

In this essay, we examine the problem of transportation: moving people and things around. This problem is fundamental to human society. Not everything can be done in one place, and the things we need to do stuff tend to be inconveniently spread around. Because we have so many different reasons for "moving stuff around", and the problems and solutions are so complicated, I'm going to split this essay into three different diaries: "short-range transportation", "long-range transportation", and "avoiding transportation".

One recurring theme is going to be the obsession with speed. While reasonable travel times are necessary for human happiness, minimal transit times aren't. Going everywhere as fast as we can is kind of silly. "As fast as we need to" seems to be a much better attitude.

Earth's oil supplies are running out. That's all there is to it. Not only that, but oil-based machines and industries are responsible for much of the polution that's making a mess of the rest of the environment. Can we survive the coming burst of the "oil bubble"? And if so, how?

The answer is "yes", but it's going to take two things that have become dirty words to the Democratic party: leadership and change.

Apologies for the length. I couldn't stop myself.

The Internet is built on what Computer Scientists like to call the "end-to-end" principle. Everything important is at the "edges" of the network and is treated equally. It doesn't matter whether you're a server or a client; either way, you've got a connection to the network. The stuff in the middle just handles moving things between endpoints.

Moving things between endpoints is cheap. Especially since the expectation is that everything will be moved equally. This is what makes communication over the Internet so fast, convenient, cheap, and valuable. Unfortunately, a number of companies whose business models are built on making communication as difficult, slow, troublesome, and expensive as possible are now looking for ways to kill the goose that laid the golden (but radioactive) egg.