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http://www.vincelewis.net/unsoldcars.html

Thanks to Gary Friedman for leading me to the above web page with photographs of thousands of the world’s unsold cars. Every time I walk through a car-saturated city somewhere in the world (increasingly, these cities are in Asia), I wonder when this mad and mindless proliferation will stop. Having personally experienced  the dramatic improvement in quality-of-life since selling the family car a few years ago, it is definitely time for a planetary re-think. Of course a change like this is much easier when one lives in a city with good infrastructure, affordable public transportation, pedestrian-friendly built up areas, and safe bicycle paths that are separated from both pedestrians and cars.

Overproduction of cars is only the most visible and resource-consuming chunk of the overproduction of stuff in general. Which brings me to Tim Jackson’s influential book, Prosperity without Growth. In an age of quick soundbites, his message requires at least a few hours of thought to consider and digest. However, as a guest speaker in wide demand on platforms across the world, he has condensed the content of his book into 30 minutes divided in three roughly 10-minute chunks. The first part deals with the dilemma of growth; the second with exploring the economic and social systems that compound this dilemma. The third deals with avenues for change that lead to a different kind of prosperity. In the video below, hear Tim Jackson speak at a lecture in Australia in 2010.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ3Rnfg8oUE

For those in too much of a hurry to listen to the full 35 minutes of Tim Jackson’s talk, here are some of the most important questions, thoughts and ideas that came from the talk.

How can our economy continually expand on a finite planet? The answer is deeply philosophical and deals with who we are as humanity.

More than climate change, it is biodiversity loss that is furthest beyond planetary boundaries of sustainability.

To bring the poorest nations out of poverty under current patterns of growth, you need an economy that is 200 times bigger than at present, therefore growth is unsustainable.

Income growth matters in the poorest nations. As incomes increase, that distinction weakens. Beyond a certain threshold, income growth in rich countries does not lead to better quality of life.

Constant increases in labor productivity drives people out of work unless the economy keeps expanding. Constant growth is unsustainable. The answer is to de-couple the world economy and growth, but de-growth is unstable. In a world of 9 billion people, all aspiring to western levels of income, carbon intensity needs to be reduced from 770 grams per dollar to less than 6.

The consumption of novelty is the driving force behind the increased consumption of stuff.  Why do we consume much more than we need? In the words of anthropologist Mary Douglas we, as human beings, are helping to create the social world and find a credible place in it.

Consumer debt was encouraged. It led us to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that don’t last on people we don’t care about; or worse still, who don’t care about us. So what was all that about?

Coming to face with planetary limits says to us that our prosperity hangs with the prosperity of those around us, as theirs does on us. Investment is a fundamental economic relationship between the present and the future.

An unrelated video entitled “Africa is Poor and 5 other Myths,” provides some pointers to avenues for change that lead to a different kind of prosperity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go4Xsd53Qqw

Thanks to Erich Striessnig for drawing my attention to this story with a Facebook posting. According to the Old Testament version of the story, God created the earth, the waters, animals, birds and everything else in it, in the first 5 days of creation. And on the 6th day, he created man and woman, Adam and Eve. They were left to live in innocent delight in the garden of Eden. They could eat and drink all they wanted. The birds and the beasts of the earth, as well as the fruit of every tree were at their disposal. Except of course, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The well known story goes on to narrate that the evil serpent first approaches the “gullible” or “more easily corruptible” woman (words in quotes are my own interpretations of what the Old Testament text implies) and tempts her to eat the apple. Adam joins in the feast out of a sense of solidarity. The scales of innocence drop from their eyes. Adam and Eve realise they are naked and cover their bodies with aprons sewn of fig leaves. God finds out. God, of course, is angry. In the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, Adam comes across as a snitch and weak character. He immediately blames the woman, “the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” Whereupon, God turns to the woman and asks, “what is this that THOU hast done?” Thereby laying the blame for mankind’s ills squarely in the lap of womanhood for all time.

Historians of the Bible were always convinced that the story of Adam and Eve was based on other, older legends about creation. However, until recently, there was apparently no written or historical evidence to prove it. The so-called Ugaritic clay tablets were found in Syria in 1929 and partially translated in the 1970s. Ugaritic is a northwestern Semitic language and the clay tablets were discovered by French archaeologists in Ugarit (modern day Ras Samara, Syria) in 1929. American scholar Cyrus Gordon Herzl calls Ugaritic “the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform”. In their recently published book: Adam, Eve and the Devil, two scholars from the Protestant Theological University of Amsterdam have re-interpreted the texts in their Biblical context. These cuneiform writings are around 800 years older than the Biblical texts (i.e. from 400 BC).

In the Ugaritic version, Adam is portrayed as a (good) God who has to fight against an evil one. This evil God disguises himself as a serpent and poisons the tree of life, thereby depriving the first couple of immortality when they eat its fruit. The Sun Goddess consoles Adam and the good woman by his side (Eve). They will nevertheless achieve a kind of eternal life through natural reproduction.  This older version of the story seems much more logical and sensible to me and, importantly, does not make one half of humanity less worthy than their male counterparts. This small shift in perception will, I’m convinced, go a long way to curing many of the ills in the world today, two millenia after these stories were written.

Adam, Eve and the Devil: a new beginning (Hebrew Bible Monographs)
Marjo C.a. Korpel, Johannes C. de Moor
Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014, 346 pages

“Let yourself be found by a book” is the slogan that captures the spirit of this bookstore in the heart of old Vienna. The Ruprechts Viertel, or quarter, dates back to a venerable several decades BC (if not earlier) and is the oldest part of Vienna. Located just a short stroll away from a crowded St. Stephen’s Cathedral Square, the spiritual and geographic heart of Vienna, on a quiet side street, this is the quintessential booklovers’ store. Run by bibliophiles for bibliophiles, the shelves house an eclectic collection, books densely packed from floor to high ceiling. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, ask one of the knowledgeable owners who take turns minding the store; chances are they have it in stock and will quickly find it for you.

This is a store that keeps literary traditions alive in several ways, regularly hosting book readings by itinerant authors, celebrating 14 June (Bloomsday) with a vegetarian breakfast that Leopold Bloom would approve of. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom sees someone “chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over,” and decides to go meatless. Many years ago I was one of a crowd in the packed bookstore when Anthony Burgess roared in, trailed by the British Ambassador, and plunged into a vigorous reading of passages from “A Clockwork Orange,” and “Earthly Powers” before signing copies of his books and roaring out again, leaving behind an empty stillness, as though he had taken all the air out of the room with him. On another occasion, Carl Djerassi, a chemist and co-inventor of the birth control pill, who later became an author and playwright read excepts from his science-in-fiction in the store.

The most recent reading on the premises was the author of (ahem) “The Ironwood Poacher and Other Stories.” If you find yourself in old Vienna with some time on your hands, my advice to you would be, wander past the Synagogue on Seitenstettengasse, in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle (so-called because the area is packed with eateries and drinkeries where you can lose yourself) to this sign on Sterngasse 2 and let yourself be found by a book. 

Shakespeare and Company, Sterngasse 2, 1010 Vienna, booksellers@shakespeare.co.at, tel. +43 1 535 5053, http://www.shakespeare.co.at/

Perovskites are a class of crystalline mineral compounds found in several places on earth. They have recently been experimented with for possible use as a base material for solar cells and have rapidly attained efficiencies of upto 15%, comparable to conventional silicon based cells. The attraction of perovskites is that solar cells based on them are much cheaper to manufacture, and can be produced using simple evaporation techniques. Experimentation with this class of materials began only in 2008 and cell efficiency has jumped from 3 to 16%  in just 6 years. It took decades for silicon based cells to make comparable gains and despite the years of experience, are still expensive to manufacture. Many research groups around the world look on perovskites as the “next big thing” in photovoltaic technology, with theoretical efficiency gains of 30 and 40% possible using techniques used to produce multi-junction silicon based cells, but at much lower cost.

It appears that statecraft, the art of governing nations, has changed little through the millennia. Charles de Gaulle reputedly said: France has no friends, only interests. Here he was clearly referring, in the context of his conversation, not to France alone, but to all nation-states.

The frequently quoted saying: Geography is History, expresses the same concept in different words. Why? How are geography and history related? An anonymous internet contributor offers the following well-reasoned answer. Key concepts of geography, such as location, place, and region are tied inseparably to major ideas of history such as time, period, and events. Geography and history in tandem enable learners to understand how events and places have affected each other across time. It is worthwhile remembering the enduring truth of the foregoing in connection with Russia’s recent actions in the Ukraine.

Seen in this context, Putin’s reaction to a potentially less friendly regime in the underbelly of Russia is consistent with China’s reaction to Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, or with the United States to Cuba. In 1854, John Quincy Adams talked of annexing Cuba, which was then governed by Spain, saying “But there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from its bosom.”

Larry Willmore, in a recent post on his blog thought_du_jour@yahoogroups.co.uk cites an article by journalist Patrick Smith that nicely tempers the current geopolity with the reminder that history does not need to repeat itself. “The first thing to know is that in one form or another spheres of influence have been around as long as there have been human communities. Second, among the primary tasks of our time is to outgrow them. The third thing to know is that we have not yet done so.”

It appears that the world of today is still firmly embedded in phase 1 of Patrick Smith’s 3-stage progress of geopolitical development. The world needs statesmen of courage and vision to move the world to phases 2 and 3.

Here’s a neat calculator from the National Geographic site, a personal energy meter to calculate individual carbon footprints.

Calculate your own energy use.

This website will help you convert energy units if needed. http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm

And don’t forget to divide total household usage by the number of people in your household to calculate per capita energy usage.

Here is a link to National Geographic’s main article that asks: How can we power our planet responsibly? big questions

Unarm, Eros; the long day’s task is done
And we must sleep.
Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 4, Scene 14

Wrestling with facts in fiction… long and hard. Sunset on Lamma. A long day’s work. Little progress.