Porcupines You Can Live In: Degrowth and Its Pleasures

I attended the July 8 opening party at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts. My attention was drawn by Suzanne Husky’s Sleeper Cell Hotel exhibit. There we find three porcupine-like structures, made out of wood pieces. Peeking in, you see there is soft bedding inside them, an invitation to curl up inside and exist off the grid in your very own beehive in the forest, or perhaps in the urban landscape. A handmade sign labeled “Degrowth” suggests this is an encampment of activists—you might become one! Informational materials are scattered around. I was gratified to learn about the concept of Degrowth. If I get it correctly, here is Degrowth in a nutshell:

Why keep pushing our economy to expand continuously when this very economic growth has been the root of environmental degradation? Let’s take our hours out of the market and put them into making culture here together. Let’s get rich in hours “spent”/given over to creating community among us! (Sounds fun!)

Yes, I always have always wondered why newscasters announce the number of "new housing starts" as a measure of our economy's health, when new housing starts inevitably imply new destruction of habitat. (Am I missing something?)

The exhibit quotes Wikipedia on Degrowth:

Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption—the contraction of economies—as overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Reducing consumption does not require individual martyring and a decrease in well-being.

Rather, 'degrowthists' aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community.

See more on Suzanne Husky's art

Atlantis Lifts Off

Atlantis Lifts Off
For Last Shuttle Mission,
Job Growth Falters Badly.
Newest Nation is Full
Of Hope and Problems.
More Syria Protests.
Another Dose of Neurosis.
Oceans Are At Dire Risk,
Team of Scientists Warns.
As Wall St. Polices Itself,
Prosecutors Use Softer Approach.
Extreme Heat Bleaches
Coral, and Threat Is Seen
In Rising Seas.
Atlantis Lifts
Atlantis Lifts Off
Atlantis Lifts

—from headlines of July 8, 2011

Early Morning Fishing on the Xingu River

"The Brazilian government's position on Belo Monte goes against the image it promotes as a regional leader and its role as the host of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio +20) in 2012," said Astrid Puentes, Co-Director of the Inter-American Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA). "We hope that the governments of the region stop promoting environmentally and socially harmful projects and instead seek truly sustainable development based on respect for human rights.”(Source: Amazon Watch website.)

Although the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has demanded that Brazil stop the licensing process, at the end of May Brazil authorized the license for the dam. IACHR has stated that the license violates international law pertaining to the human rights of the indigenous peoples there. What's more, the dam violates Brazil's own constitutional protections--both of indigenous peoples and of the environment.

Specifically, Brazilian constitutional protections against forced expulsions of native peoples will be violated in the Big Bend area of the Xingu River, as the river will be diverted and an artificial reservoir created, forcing thousands of native Xingu to be displaced.

Ironic that Brazilians honor a yearly Indigenous Peoples celebration by noting historical mistreatments of now-extinct peoples, while this current turn of events seems to set up a tragedy-in-the-making for a still-living native people who have continued their traditions for thousands of years.

Photo from Amazon Watch
Read More News on Brazil from Amazon Watch

Global Warming Doesn't Exist?

I met a man who told me, "Global warming doesn't exist."

"No?" I asked.

He replied, "No. Volcanoes spew far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than humans do. It's impossible that we're creating climate change."

Curious, I decided to do a little research, and I found that...

Atop a crater on the Big Island of Hawaii, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory at Kilauea has been entertaining this question of whether volcanoes determine warming more than human activity. Their research finds that both underwater and aboveground volcanoes all over the planet give off about 200 million tonnes of CO2 each year. Volcano admissions stay pretty steady across time, whereas human emissions have only grown. Total "global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value," according to the USGS.

This same fellow also maintained that global warming was a scare tactic created by oil companies and their pals (like Al Gore, he said!) so they can jack up the price of oil to the scared public, convinced of scarcity.

So many dooms, so many fears!

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

In this documentary, Werner Herzog films the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, where cave paintings were discovered in 2004. Put by some archeologists at around 30,000 years old, they are said to be the oldest cave paintings on record, and twice as old as any previously found.

In 2004, three French cavers walking in the vicinity detected an air current brushing their cheeks. Tracking down its source, they scraped away at rock until they unsealed a cave that had been closed for millennia. The French government allowed Herzog’s crew privileged access to the cave.

We see paintings of tender-eyed bison, soulful horses, rhinoceroses hitting horns so you can almost hear them ringing with the sound. A lioness with lips puckering in warning displeasure as a male lion angles for sex when she’s not ready.

The cave walls undulate as voluptuously as the hills of the region in the South of France, and the ancient painters have made use of the rock fluctuation to make the animals seem as if they were still in motion; the horses seem still to gallop. Eyes of animals are drawn with sensitivity, as if the artist were evoking not simply the flesh but the soul as well. Over the muscled shoulder blades, just beyond the charcoal-scraped outlines, seems to hover the numina of the herd.

The cave painters set fires in the cave, casting their long shadows against its walls, now filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and one expert evokes the image of them dancing with their flickering shadows, an art form in its own right. In this interesting era, Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted, and yet, only our Homo Sapiens ancestors constructed such symbolic work.

One expert in the era explains that many of our modern divisions, for example that between humans and animals, would simply not have held in the psyche of these Pleistocene action painters. Beast of beasts, beast among beasts. A woman, denoted by black pubic triangle and powerful legs, is made love to by a bison.

A modern indigenous painter is asked, Why do you paint? He replies that he does not paint. Rather, the spirit paints, and his listening arm moves, brushes, allowing deep spirit to form.

Wars of Choice, Wars of Need?

Today's headline in the New York Times: Looking Back, Gates Says He’s Grown Wary of ‘Wars of Choice’

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, as he prepared to depart the government for the second time, said in an interview on Friday that the human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had made him far more wary about unleashing the might of the American armed forces.

“When I took this job, the United States was fighting two very difficult, very costly wars,” Mr. Gates said. “And it has seemed to me: Let’s get this business wrapped up before we go looking for more opportunities.”

“If we were about to be attacked or had been attacked or something happened that threatened a vital U.S. national interest, I would be the first in line to say, ‘Let’s go,’ ” Mr. Gates said. “I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.”

May we remember this the next moment we're faced with a military intervention. And yet, as we recall, both the Iraq and Afghan wars he speaks of were sold very strongly as wars of need. Not wars of choice. How, at that time, could we have convinced decision makers that those were not wars of need?

Wars of choice. The phrase rings of the right to an array of choices at the heart of consumerist society. Is that what got us into this?

Oil Water Rushing Rushing

A video installation Moises and I collaborated on and showed at our Open Studios at the Berkeley loft June 11-12.

Moises' description: Artistic collaboration by Poet/Musician Tiffany Higgins and Filmmaker/VIsual Artist Moisés J. Nascimento creates a piece that blends music, poetry, filmmaking. A poetic response to the BP Oil Spill incident this past year and the death of life in the ocean. The assemblage piece has a fishbowl over the video playing horizontally on a table. Inside, you only find sand, a beer bottle, an old tire and a cell phone.

See the video