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CURATED ECOLOGICAL NEWS Is a river alive?
“On the solstice, I began reading Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive? He relates a story of when his nine-year-old son asks the title of the book. Upon hearing the title, the child responds ‘… that’s going to be a short book… because the answer is yes!’ “Macfarlane chuckles a bit and wistfully alludes to the wonder alive in children that enables them to unquestioningly accept the living conviviality in the rest of the world. Macfarlane seems to say, grown-ups heavy with rationalizations and cultural conditioning lose that facility with the life in the Other. “But what if the child is right? Duh! It’s alive. Of course, you numbskull. It eats. It breathes. It grows. It reproduces itself. It changes. And yes… it dies. Transmogrifies into something else. That’s life! “The question might be better formulated as ‘Is a human alive?’ What makes a human, a complex organism composed of millions of other organisms working in concert, an individual life? And how is it different from a river? “Both bodies are composites of many bodies. Both transform materials and energy into bodily forms. Both have beginnings that are dependent upon others. Both bodies end, though life continues on, transforming the bodies into new bodies. The question isn’t ‘is a river alive?’ It is why do we not recognize that a river is alive? “Turns out most bodies are not fully alive, by our standards. All these bodies lack that one essential quality that makes it a living entity with embodied rights — they lack a body that perfectly matches the ruling body. “This began with the recognition of the central fact of animality — we can’t produce our own energy. We must eat other bodies to get at the nourishment that is produced by plants and that ultimately comes from the burning of our star, the sun. There is guilt associated with this eating. It necessitates taking lives. “So that we might incorporate that life into our own bodies, most of the world, including all the primary producers, including the Earth itself, was named inanimate. Not living. We stripped all these bodies of their senses, their thoughts, their interiority. We rendered them into base matter, to be used as we superior beings wished. We took their lives.” More at: AI will eat us out of house and home
“The colossal energy demands of artificial intelligence have earth-shaking implications for everyone. Already rising steeply, they are set to accelerate at a dizzying pace as various global powers race to be the first to achieve supreme intelligence over everything. Without thought or consequence. Without checks or limits. “Case in point is the petrostate of Alberta. More than 70% of the province’s electricity now comes from natural gas-powered turbines. Energy Minister Brian Jean put it: ‘Alberta is driven to be North America’s destination of choice for AI-enabled data centre investment’. “Tech companies have already proposed 29 data centre projects. Together these energy-intensive behemoths would consume 16 gigawatts of energy. That exceeds all of Alberta’s current peak electrical consumption of 12 gigawatts. In filling the demand for AI data centres, Alberta would basically need to create a second, parallel electrical system. “The trend lines are staggering. We’re just in the early days of the AI boom, and already data centres consumed 4.4% of the United States’ electrical supply in 2023. A recent report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates they will command 6.7% to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. “The International Energy Agency recently calculated that powering data centres ‘is on course to account for almost half of the growth in electricity demand between now and 2030’. In fact, the U.S. economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminium, steel, cement and chemicals.” More at: Do humans have the capability to guide AI development?
“Recently Artificial Super Intelligence [has been] acting as both the most promising goal and most pressing threat. But amid the moral debate, there’s been surprisingly little attention paid to a basic question: do we even have the technical capability to guide where any of this is headed? But AI is part of our future, and our present, whether we like it or not. “In this episode, Nate is joined by Artificial Intelligence developer and researcher, Connor Leahy, to discuss the rapid advancements in AI, the potential risks associated with its development, and the challenges of controlling these technologies as they evolve. Connor also explains the phenomenon of what he calls ‘algorithmic cancer’ — AI generated content that crowds out true human creations, propelled by algorithms that can’t tell the difference. “So let’s start there. Start with a brief definition of artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence, and artificial super intelligence. Connor Leahy: Yeah. Start with easy questions. Just define intelligence – yeah. So it already starts with that these terms are contentious. There’s no universally agreed bond definition, even for the word AI. “For me, AI is generally software that can do things. GI, artificial general intelligence, is what I would define as something that can do anything a human can do. So like for me, a GI is a thing. if AI is a chimp, then a GI is a human. “And then there’s an SI or artificial super intelligence. So this I define as a system which is more intelligent, more competent at all relevant tasks than all of humanity put together. So this system, it would be more capable than the economy, it would be more capable than all states put together, not just more competent than individual person. “I personally think that it’s overwhelmingly likely that a GI exists, cause we have an example of a system. The economy can build semiconductors. I can’t, you can’t, no individual human can make, you know, complex semiconductors, but the economy can. “And so the thing that I am most concerned about is that I think the step from a GI to an SI is very fast. So what I mean by this is that AI has been on an exponential improvement curve. You know, every year it gets two units better. And AI can ride the Moore’s law wave, but it can also ride other ways in improvement in algorithms. “So this is an extremely fast level of development already happening, and we have a lot of people including, you know, Nobel Prize winners who say that they think we’re going to get to a GI within the next couple of years. And once you get to a GI, I think you get to a SI quite quickly, because they never need to eat. They never need to sleep. They never get tired. They never get .bored “What I personally am most concerned about are extinction risks. If we have systems or things or species that are more intelligent than us and they are not wise, kind, often called aligned with humanity, well then I think humanity just doesn’t have a long future.” More at: Community-owned microgrids — group electricity generation
“Communities across Oregon are a step closer to being allowed to generate, distribute and own their own energy sources. Microgrids are small, self-contained energy networks, usually powered by wind and solar technology, that produce, distribute and store power locally. Microgrids are usually connected to a utility, but can disconnect and function independently. “Community-owned microgrids could increase renewable energy development in the state, provide grid resilience and reliability, and relieve pressure on transmission power lines. Microgrids can utilize local energy sources, adding energy capacity during normal conditions, while keeping critical infrastructure operating during an emergency. “Dylan Kruse of Sustainable Northwest, said ‘Up until now it’s been unclear who can develop, own and operate a microgrid in Oregon. House Bill 2066 will require the Oregon Public Utility Commission to create a roadmap for building, owning and valuing microgrids in Oregon. “Kruse said, ‘Utilities don’t have enough people to do the engineering and the interconnection studies to bring more of those projects online. This would allow for communities and developers to work with qualified third-party engineers to do those studies so we can get more clean energy projects online faster and meet our state’s renewable goals’.” More at: Tropical dry forests leveled for agriculture at alarming rate
“Stretching across Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific — from Madagascar’s thorny forests to Brazil’s Caatinga, from South America’s Chaco to India’s seasonal woodlands — tropical dry forests account for nearly half of all tropical and subtropical forests worldwide. The scale is staggering. Up to 60% of all forests in India and approximately 30% of the forests in mainland Southeast Asia are classified as dry forests. Yet, these vast ecosystems are often overlooked in the conservation community. “Unlike their perpetually green rainforest cousins, tropical dry forests undergo drastic changes between seasons, receiving 500-1,500 millimeters (19.6-59 inches) of annual rainfall during summer monsoons, followed by pronounced dry seasons. During dry seasons (lasting five to eight months), most trees shed their leaves, creating landscapes that appear almost barren. Then, with the first rains, the forest explodes back to life. “‘Tropical dry forest was the major ecosystem in the tropics … it’s all gone now, because it has been turned into agriculture and pastures’, said renowned ecologist Dan Janzen. By 2020, humans destroyed more than 710,000 km2 (274,000 mi2) of dry forest in just two decades — an area about twice the size of Germany. “What remains in many areas are small, isolated patches scattered across human-dominated landscapes. Much of the recent deforestation happens as capital-intensive agriculture spreads into dry forests, the 2022 study found. This represents a shift from traditional small-scale farming to large-scale commercial operations that can rapidly clear vast areas.” More at: RFK Jr., vaccine denial, and the spread of infectious disease
“A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative, thimerosal — a change to possibly impact future vaccine availability. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. has urged against the use of thimerosal despite a lack of evidence of real-world harm. “Said Dr. Cody Meissner, a panel member who was the lone ‘no’ vote, ‘The risk from influenza is so much greater than the nonexistent — as far as we know — risk from thimerosal. I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only availability preparation contains thimerosal’. “Thimerosal is an ethylmercury-based preservative — different from the kind of mercury found in seafood, called methylmercury. Ethylmercury has a much shorter half-life in the blood and brain, about seven days and 30 days respectively, compared to methylmercury, which has an approximately 44-58 day half-life and accumulates in the brain. The amount of ethylmercury contained in a flu vaccine (25 micrograms) is about half of that contained in a 3-ounce serving of canned tuna fish (40 micrograms). “Kennedy fired all 17 former members of the panel in June, citing conflicts of interest, and appointed eight new members, all of whom are ideological allies of the secretary. None of the new members have published written conflict of interest disclosures or been added to a Trump administration-developed conflict of interest tracker for ACIP members.” More at: Time spent with plants is restorative
“We walked into the room at the University of Richmond to a packed house. Half the people in the class were wearing masks, the other half weren’t. In all, 40 people packed into a tiny classroom. It was the tenth Permaculture course we had taught and our first since COVID. “When we first started teaching, our Permaculture courses were small and homogenous — filled with a certain type of left-leaning do-gooder. Mostly white, usually young, often wealthy or at least upper middle-class. But now our courses are becoming more diverse. Ideologically, we are seeing more people from the so-called right, more Christians, and a lot of veterans — more folks feeling trapped by conventional workday life. “Early in our respective plant journeys, we would memorize plant catalogs. Just after Christmas, Ryan liked to get a good fire going, and spread out nursery and seed catalogs. That ritual always kicked off the season. “While this certainly paints a pleasant picture, the approach felt inadequate. Neither of us enjoyed the rote memory of it. Instead, we longed for something deeper. We both landed on the fact that working and living with plants delivered the thing we longed for something more than facts — it was a relationship. “Plants, like music and food, feed our culture. They create our community; they are our community, and this book offers a model for how to build both plant and human communities.” More at: Clothing at a cottage industry scale
“Joel and I are keen members of a small subgroup of commons researchers and thinkers who focus on reimagining clothing systems. What’s fascinating for us about making clothes, is that it used to be an absolutely central activity of civilization. Spinning (fibre into yarn) in particular, would have likely been a daily meditation before mechanisation, as it is the most time consuming part of textile production. “The intensity of preindustrial clothes making suggests that (at certain points) people in preindustrial cultures had quite a lot of free time, free time to dye pretty colours, and weave extra cloth for big puffy sleeves, and big underskirts, and overskirts, and embroider everything. “Clothes are kind of fascinating, because they always mean something beyond just warmth and dryness and protection from sunburn. They are a form of communication between us, and they can bring us a lot of joy when we get the colour and the cut and the fabric that we’re dreaming of. “In my experience, current clothing trends are either suited for being mostly indoors, or are heavily reliant on plastic. Synthetic clothing releases micro plastics during washing, wearing and disposal, so it’s not suitable for a completely circular system. “Pre-industry spinning wasn’t very recognisable as work. The drop spindle is portable, goes with you, like knitting on the train. You can spin in groups while you all chat. You can spin with your baby crawling around nearby. You can spin at home in the evening by the fire. “Industrial spinning is too loud to be heard over, and it takes place in a designated factory where someone sees you clock in and clock out. And of course- it makes profit for the machine owner rather than clothes for the mill worker. Not to mention the fossil fuel power sources.” More at: The common people against all odds
“All civilisations fall in the end. Will global corporate capitalism buck the trend? Of course not, but how long does it have left? In such a complex system, it’s impossible to predict when there will be a sudden shift, but there’s good evidence that the process of breakdown has already begun. “During the 1990s, I was working on ‘sustainable development’, but was dismayed that most saw corporate capitalism as the path to follow. I founded Lowimpact.org in 2001, and our focus for the first ten years was on ‘sustainable living’ — which I soon realised is about as realistic as ‘health & safety’ on the Titanic. “So we changed our focus to self-provisioning and the commons — where local people own and control resources, rather than absentee landlords or corporations. Now in my 60s, I’m part of a team building replicable commons models. It’s the way I try to help people respond to the accelerating collapse of industrial consumer societies. That’s because I’ve concluded: - We can’t adequately prepare for collapse from within the system that’s causing it. We must lay the foundations of a new system;
- We’ll need to produce and distribute food and other essentials, and maintain houses, energy and water infrastructure outside of the corporate system — and that requires working people to do it;
- Modern social and environmental movements have failed to engage working people;
- Resources owned within the commons can lay the foundations of a new system, by providing affordable, secure housing, affordable utilities and jobs for working-class communities. More at:
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