Look closely at the flags.  People across the world have a surprisingly similar message for George Bush.  It could have been worse, considering his name.

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A few weeks ago, Christopher Lydon’s Radio Open Source (in-depth public radio talk show) discussed The Cities of the Future. The discussion began with the History Channel’s challenge to architects and engineers to design the U.S. cities of the 22nd century. Jumping off from their historically-oriented Engineering an Empire, the History Channel asked designers to create cities of 100 years in the future (2106) informed by the engineering leaps of the past. Winners have been chosen for Los Angeles (”multiply the purposes” of existing infrastructure), Chicago (focus on water recycling), and New York (”vanes” built over flooded streets). Voting ended over the weekend to chose a winner among the three, to be announced next month.

What strikes me about all of these cities of the future is the focus on water. The earliest cities we know of in human history grew near major waterways. Water in place was necessary first for agriculture, then for transportation. Thousands of years later, these major U.S. cities were also built near water. What will change in 100 years? The assumption is either that there will be too much water (due to rising sea levels due to global warming) or too little (due to changing weather patterns spreading deserts).

All of the winning designs assume climate change. Most of us assume climate change. With the release last week of the UN report “Climate Change 2007″ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, more people are acknowledging the reality of what is happening around us. Headlines on the report scream:

• worrying report
• wrenching change
• shock the world
• calls for drastic, speedy change
• millions to go hungry, waterless
• warming to continue for centuries
• raise seas for 1,000 years

.

And, yet, some still find the report:

• too rosy

.
Who isn’t yet acknowledging the inevitability of climate change? The executive branch of the U.S. government, of course. Climate scientists report pressure to change or suppress what they find. The Bush administration and their friends in the energy industry don’t find climate change in their best interest (except when melting ice reveals more land for energy exploration). The American Enterprise Institute (funded by ExxonMobil) are willing to pay scientists to speak out against the new climate change study, continuing the policy of Exxon and other energy companies of spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to confuse the public.

In the future, water will be our issue. Those of us in the desert already understand water is an issue, but we can expect worse than we can imagine. I don’t think the technological utopias created by vanes above New York City or repuposing highways of Los Angeles are the answer. I think the water recycling greenways of future Chicago give us the best chance of survival.

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Rather than putting out each fire as they light it, how do we put out the fire from the base? How do we change the fundamental story?

Ruth Rosen from the Progressive think tank Longview Institute (a spin-off of the Rockridge Institute for some reason) tells us to challenge market fundamentalism. You know that story. Tax cuts will provide jobs, which means people will buy their own health care, housing, and transportation. In this story, “the common good” means everyone for themselves. I have no doubt this is one of the lies we need to engage to some degree in order to discredit it. OK. Yes, let’s do that. But, let’s not stop there.

I want to see us go further than telling the story of what we are not. I want to see us tell the story of what we are.

I have been reading Mark Kurlansky’s Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. He quoted Vaclav Havel as having said that the way to create a viable alternative to violent culture was to live not in opposition but to live in parallel. You can be, as John Mohawk wrote, a good subject (”Yes, sir”), a bad subject (in rebellion), or a non subject (moving on with your own concerns, not accepting the terms of domination). The non subject doesn’t live in reference to domination. (Though it is amusing that both nonsubject and nonviolence do refer to themselves in the negative.)

Rather than letting the dominant story determine our response (”not market fundamentalism”), we can tell the story the way we see it — not the challenge to their story but the heart of our story. We can tell the story of community, cooperation, and genuine democracy. This is a story in which we actually do love one another, a story in which the common good is determined in common.

Cliff Schecter thinks we’ll find synergy in the variety of voices and ways they find their audience to retell the story. I hope we reach synergy in our non subjecthood rather than in our bad subjecthood.

UPDATE:

• Immanuel Wallerstein makes an excellent point in his International Herald Tribune article, “The ‘Alter-Globalists’ Hit Their Stride”: the World Social Forum, which met last week, is already on that parallel path.
• Joshua Holland asks “Do you challenge them on their ‘free-market’ fundamentalism, or do you call bullshit on the entire premise?”

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My family suffered as downwinders of the nuclear tests of the 1940s and especially the 1950s. That is true for a lot of Utahns.

Divine Strake

Opposition to the Divine Strake high-explosive test, planned last year then postponed several times, has been winding up recently.

The test will create a mushroom cloud over Nevada. The bomb to be tested is not nuclear but a nuclear bunker-busting super bomb. The test is proposed to take place in underground tunnels where it likely will cause fallout from previous nuclear tests to be “resuspended.” Don’t worry, the government assessments tell us, there is no danger. But — oh, yes — the “resuspended” particles can be carried away on the wind and “may contribute radiological dose to the public.”

In Utah, Kane and Washington County Commissions oppose the test. Last week, the St. George paper, The Spectrum, published an FAQ on the blast as well as a compelling story about a downwinder of an underground nuclear test / accident. He also provided an opinion piece for the paper, “Divine Strake May Kill You.” His wife asks:

How do you stop the military industrial complex?
How do you stop them from doing it?

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