News & commentary on sustainability, activism, urban planning, politics, and our world.
At the Tate Modern in London, British Petroleum seeks to capture our imagination by hitching its BP sunflower logo to the Miro exhibit. This reduces the artistic experience to a dangerously passive consumerism. Only the Earth itself, a kind of freak storm inside, can free us from such a damaging lie.
In 1900, the oceans of the world contained six times more fish than they did in 2009. Now, it takes 17 times more effort to catch one ton of North Sea fish than it did then. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 80% of the world’s fish stocks are either being over-exploited or have already been depleted.
Why did we have to wait for Google to invest in building our solar energy infrastructure? What has happened to the government’s commitment to green energy and creating jobs in the green sector?
It looks like it took the money-making minds of Silicon Valley to come up with the idea of backing this brilliant scheme. SolarCity says they don’t have to beat the price of coal, they only have to beat the price the consumer pays its utility company. The consumer will vote with their dollars even if they don’t care about being green at all. It looks like with the help of Silicon Valley and Solar City, capitalism may eventually trick the United States into going green.
I highly recommend reading “Too Small to Fail” to help brighten your day, and make you think. Unlike his other cartoons, the somewhat autobiographical “K Chronicles” and the daily syndicated strip “The Knight Life”, the (Th)ink series is limited to just a single panel. Though it constantly amazes me how deftly Keith incorporates so many important and diverse issues into just one comic panel, dealing with everything from racism, to climate change, gun violence and the prison industrial complex, while still being incredibly relevant and funny.
“You want this government to get out of debt? Then you get out of debt personally. Stop the spending! Stop the borrowing! Stop over-consumption — buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have, that’s robbing you and your family of a future. It’s robbing this country out of jobs.
So I’m going to ask every American right now, get out your credit cards, cut them up, free yourselves — free yourselves! Don’t count on this Congress to help you. This Congress already voted to end Medicare. They’re flirting with disaster on this debt right now.”
