Ecolonomics
Recent posts:
2nd November 2011
Hype, hearsay and hyperbolæ – shale gas and the UK energy economy
I take the first random bus and here I am, within one of the areas that might be soon licensed for unconventional gas production. Is there no sanctuary for the weary researcher? This has been my work for the last few months, and even when I try to get away from it, it won't let me go!23rd May 2011
"Promulgating the Web's calorie controlled diet"
Whilst catching up on a long-overdue chore as I recover from the flu, I muse on the role of "design" within the driving energy and resource trends of information systems, and how we measure such ethereal trends in order to define a process for change.16th April 2011
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one"
Sitting in a dusky evening, a conjugating map of ideas linking like the linear lattice of the hedgerowed landscape, I mull over the milestone we have reached; and why the mainstream media, political and campaign groups seem to have missed it.22nd-25th March 2011
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
I met George Monbiot many years ago, during the various roads and land campaigns of the early 1990s – not long after the security guards at the Batheaston/Swainswick bypass used "minimum reasonable force" to bust his foot, after which he limped from event-to-event on a crutch. As far as nuclear power goes, George has been sitting on the fence for a while now; this week he fell off, on the pro-nuclear side.
23rd December 2010
When You're Windows are Broken don't be Surprised if you Feel the Cold Draught of Distress
Analysing my annual chore – performing maintenance, upgrading and reinstalling my "critical information infrastructure" – I find that this process reveals how the control and intellectual property patterns of the wider economy impose themselves upon our creative use of information technology; or not, if you decide to opt-out of the exploitative clutches of proprietary control and live in the "free" world.
Posts during:
• 2011 (4)
• 2010 (2)
• 2009 (7)
2011 Archive
Hype, hearsay and hyperbolæ
– shale gas and the UK energy economy
I take the first random bus and here I am, within one of the areas that
might be soon licensed for unconventional gas production. Is there no sanctuary for the weary
researcher? This has been my work for the last few months, and even when I try to get
away from it, it won't let me go!
Banburyshire, Wednesday 2nd November 2011
Out of the house, onto a bus and away to a distant hill; I've run off for the day to escape my work,
but it seems to have followed me. I took the first out-of-town bus to arrive at the bus station; not
caring where it went, just wanting to quickly go to the countryside so I could walk home again.
Disembarking at Farthinghoe, a small village between Banbury and Brackley, I get out my sheaf of
local maps and arrange them to idle my way home. Whilst doing so I find that I'm "in the zone" –
an area currently under review for the licensing of oil and gas production using the hydraulic fracturing,
or "fracking", method.
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"Promulgating the Web's calorie controlled diet"
– web design, environmental impact and the much ignored ecological efficiency of the Internet
Whilst catching up on a long-overdue chore as I recover from the flu, I muse
on the role of “design” within the driving energy and resource trends of information systems, and
how we measure such ethereal trends in order to define a process for change.
Banbury, Monday 23rd May 2011
I'm feeling pretty awful; for the last few days I've been laid low with a bug that just won't go
away. As I sit, trying to find something to do, it occurs to me that I could catch-up on some of
the really tedious, dead-head chores that I've been putting off for a while. If I feel so awful,
how more awful can it be to do those things that I never feel like doing in any case? I begin by
trying to write a long-overdue beginner's guide to the Linux command line interface – I get as far
as designing a rather entertaining logo before realising this requires far too much brain power
for my current state of mind! Then I remember the "design statement" for the Free Range
Activism Web Site. That requires measuring lots of web pages to demonstrate, statistically, why
the design system for the FRAW site is, ecologically, better than mainstream design methods. Hmmn,
yeah, downloading lots of web pages, categorising their component parts and then spreadsheeting
the results for later analysis. OK, as occupations go it's the digital equivalent of watching paint
dry, but right now I feel that I can do that!
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"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but
certainty is an absurd one" – peak oil, nuclear power and the ecolonomics of
existential material reality
Sitting in a dusky evening, a conjugating map of ideas linking like the
linear lattice of the hedgerowed landscape, I mull over the milestone we have reached; and
why the mainstream media, political and campaign groups seem to have missed it.
Crouch Hill, Banbury, Saturday 16th April 2011
Another edition of ecolonomics so soon after the last? It's
been one of those fortnights. The response to my last ecolonomics has been
somewhat greater than usual – over 3,000 copies have been downloaded. I've
had a lot of email too, not just mulling over my critique of George Monbiot but
also looking at the whole context of what I said; which is good, because that's
why I wrote it. I'm writing so soon after the last (in terms of size)
"double issue" because of the events that have happened since then
– events which put the content of the last edition in a whole new
light.
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When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
I met George Monbiot many years ago, during the various roads and land
campaigns of the early 1990s – not long after the security guards at the Batheaston/Swainswick
bypass used "minimum reasonable force" to bust his foot, after which he limped from
event-to-event on a crutch. As far as nuclear power goes, George has been sitting on the fence
for a while now; this week he fell off, on the pro-nuclear side.
Banbury, Tuesday 22nd-Friday 25th March 2011
Given his previous opposition, George Monbiot's shift towards a blithe acceptance – if not
full support – for nuclear power, in spite of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, has
left many environmentalists feeling a little betrayed; I've even had a few emails today, due to
my long history of working on energy and nuclear issues, asking me to vociferously "take
him on". I don't see the point of a personalised attack, or what purpose it would serve to
advance the debate – although it might act as a conduit for people to vent their fear and
angst at the seeming collapse of the ecological alliance against nuclear power. Right or wrong,
George's opinions are rightly his own. However, if he is representing "opinion" as
some sort of "fact", using his "green icon" status to lend credibility, then
that's an entirely different matter (I'm not entirely sure if he is, given his rather diffident
views on the whole nuclear issue of late). What matters then are the facts; George is free to
interpret these as he wishes. Although, in that context, I'd expect him to apply the oft-quoted
phrase from John Maynard Keynes; "When the facts change, I change my mind." So, looking
at the whole nuclear issue, what "facts" have possibly changed to make us, or George,
believe that nuclear power today – in contrast to last week, last year, or even thirty years
ago (when I was presented with the arguments at school) – has any better chance of solving
our various ecological problems?
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2010 Archive
When You're Windows are Broken don't be Surprised if you Feel the Cold
Draught of Distress
Analysing my annual chore – performing maintenance, upgrading and
reinstalling my "critical information infrastructure" – I find
that this process reveals how the control and intellectual property patterns of
the wider economy impose themselves upon our creative use of information
technology; or not, if you decide to opt-out of the exploitative clutches of
proprietary control and live in the "free" world.
Banbury, Thursday 23rd December 2010
The phone rings; against the background noise of a call centre a young man
says, "I am phoning about your Windows computer". I reply casually,
"I don't have a Windoze computer" (I always make an effort to
nasally sound the 'z' consonant). He apologises and rings off. Later his simple
statement begins to bother me; why would anyone assume an automatic connection
between the concepts "Windows" and "computer" when clearly
Windoze is one of the worst operating systems that you can load onto a
computer in order to use it creatively?
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Mandelbrot's systems within systems,
the layers of the universe experiencing itself subjectively
Seeking a more meaningful approach to our everyday needs through a
practical interaction with the world around us; we do not exist to consume without limits,
but we need to consume 'simply' to exist.
Banburyshire, Sunday 7th November 2010
It's been a long time since I've written an
ecolonomics –
it's been one of those years.
Last time I had time to take a pause from work was February. From the
Spring onwards I've had the busiest period of work for quite a while.
Trouble is, when you're writing creatively for your work it's not
something you want to do when you're taking time-off. I've also suffered a
serious lack of 'wind-down walks' this year, which also hasn't helped my
compositional mood. Realising that Autumn was nearly over I went for a
walk before an approaching storm stripped the trees of their leaves. As I
reflect on the walk, and the related activities in the few days since, I
find myself returning to one theme – why can't people accept the
reality of the world we live in, and, to deflect from this unwelcome
reality, why do they spin incredible stories to create a delusional sense
of well-being?
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2009 Archive
Sating the arboreal spirit in the "desert
of the real world"
What has "Christ's Mass" got to do with Christmas?; an
afternoon spent in the western hills beyond Sor Brook, seeking an
escape from the pressures of the annual consumer frenzy within
the dark of a December day
The Sor valley, west of Banbury, Sunday 13th December 2009
If Christmas is a time for peace and love
why do people get so stressed out by it? We are expected, and
usually expect ourselves, to accomplish certain tasks and
undertake certain actions in order to satisfy the self-imposed
rituals of what we call "Christmas", but in turn the
modern conceptualisation of "Christ's Mass" twists
these celebrations into an secular fallacy of consumption.
You can opt-out of Christmas because you care about the
environment, or carbon emissions, or just because you can't be
bothered, but for whatever reason this doesn't address the fact
that the modern Christmas "doesn't do what is says on the
tin"; accept that fact and you might find a route around the
enforced mania of consumption that the season imposes, perhaps to
find a more ecologically conscious way to mark the turning of the
year.
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"A man sits down to write a letter but instead he
writes a book, the book begins 'Dear Sir'"
To understand the present ecological crisis you need to establish a set of
causal relationships from the phenomena that we can observe; to describe the causes you need
to look at the factors creating the trends or phenomena responsible; but what happens when you
(or rather "we", the affluent members of the human species collectively) are undeniably
one of those factors?
The Heart of Wales Line (Llanwrda to Shrewsbury), Tuesday 13th October 2009
So many things that need to be said but often we can't; not because we lack the terms or evidence
to describe them but because such a message isn't something that "our leaders and betters",
and sometimes even ourselves, wish to hear. Like the game Chinese whispers, the message of the human
ecological crisis has been edited and sub-edited to the point where the commonly used terms that
describe the problem, and likely solutions, have little relevance to the original diagnosis; in particular,
what started as the concerns of environmentalists in the 1970s, regarding the impacts of human society
on the planet, have now been reduced to mere "carbonism" – a reduction of the
complexity of human ecology to an issue of carbon or climate change being our principle problem, and a
belief that we can solve the global climate crisis through simple, deck-chair re-arranging measures such
as "low carbon technologies". The fact is we might have the capacity to address such problems
realistically, and we might conceive of alternative ways of ministering to society's needs, but the
unfortunate reality is that those in charge of the public debate do not wish to contemplate what this truly
means to the lifestyles of the world's richest citizens. In possessing that knowledge do you, yourself,
internalise the significance of that deduction into a programme of action, irrespective of what that means
for you personally; or do you skip over the problematic evidence because it might adversely affect the
"Western lifestyle" that we enjoy, and therefore cannot be considered a "politically
realistic" way of characterising the problem?
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"We're all planetary hospice workers now"
From local currencies to planning for life beyond the growth
paradigm; moving beyond the mentality of Bretton Woods to
something more meaningful
Euston Road/Marylebone Road, London, 26th September 2009
The current economic crisis may, according to some pundits, be over but the
trends that forced it into being are still operating in the background –
and will return once the global economy takes off again. Amidst the
pressures of our everyday life we focus primarily on the surface
features of existence; we have so little time to peel away the
surface of what is presented to us, and delve into its deeper
meaning. If we did what terrors would that hold for a society
inhered by the economic dogma that emerged from that previous
great crash into the conference of Bretton Woods sixty-five years
ago. The global economic framework that was developed in 1944 has
delivered us into the world we inhabit today, but the assumptions
upon which that system was based are no longer valid; such bad
news might not be pleasant, but sometimes it is necessary to
state such a truth in order to move on.
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'The "green-Prometheans";
better, but still a futile gesture?'
We've got problems – and across society people are
trying to advance ideas to avoid eco-catastrophe, but what many
of these solutions cannot or will not address is the present
structure of the human ecosystem that's creating much of the
impact.
Banbury, Saturday 12th September 2009
An intellectual debate where a whole set
of questions or positions are excluded from public examination is
not a real discourse, it's a distraction to deflect criticism
from the ideological viewpoints that constrain society. From
the structure of building codes through to global climate
negotiations, governments and lobbyists put emphasis on markets,
or the marshalling of large resources – both vestiges of
early industrialisation – to solve problems; but what if the
true solution lay beyond this boundary? What if it's that very
same structure of globalised markets and the growth paradigm that
underpins their operation were to be the problem that we must
solve? If the problem is the structure of modern society, and
especially the global economy, how can "mainstream
ideas" possibly solve the underlying trends driving the destruction
of the Earth's ecosystem; more to the point, if these ideas work within
this system to what extent will they perpetuate it?
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The Trap – Technology, the Virtual World, and Hacking the
Meanings of Society
The concepts of modern technology and their manipulation by society
have become increasingly virtual; as a result does the public's indifference towards the physical world,
as they rely more and more upon virtual mediation in their everyday life, hobble their ability
to change society?
Michael's Wood Services – Tuesday 25th August 2009
The predominant view of how we radically change society is by
"taking over"; revolutions – be they political, technological,
intellectual, or merely the sophistry of the marketing profession – represent the
succession of one dominant culture by the next, and are the means by which we take one way
of viewing society can supplant it with another. But in a society where our relations are
increasingly virtual, and we put our faith into mechanistic systems to handle our lives –
not through conscious understanding but by attaching abstract meaning to technologically
mediated interaction – is that view of changing society still valid?
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Thoughts stirred by an afternoon on Garreg Hir... and wind turbines
Does the present debate about energy, and especially climate change and wind
power, mask a more troubling and pressing debate that mainstream society just doesn't want to have?
Saturday 15th August – Garreg Hir, Clatter, mid-Wales
An afternoon walking in the hills of mid-Wales, inspiring thoughts on the problems with the debate about
energy; people are not talking about the real "energy problem", and instead engage in a totemic
debate that creates the pretence of action whilst ignoring the more unwelcome truths about how we
consume in our "modern society".
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PDF version
"I'm not keen on blogging, but..."
The inaugural post for my low-spec./low-tech. message board cum newsletter
Thursday 13th August – Carno, mid-Wales
Firstly, my apologies
to those wanting the everyday 'blog-o-sphere'-type brief,
digested or vacuous information constructs within these
pages; I don't tweet, I don't do sound bites, and I don't
insult my own or my reader's intelligence by spouting views in
isolation from the ideas that define them. My medium is the word,
the argument and the reference, and in these pages I'm going to
push that medium as far as I can. If that's "not you",
or you strongly object to reading lengthy passages of text, please
click
here.
