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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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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OK, now I get it.

The reason the energo-fascists and science deniers don’t care about global warming is:

Global Warming plays into their plan.

If the Arctic continues to melt, even becoming ice free within 35 years, that opens up massive oil and natural gas fields for exploitation. Energy companies are already preparing for drilling projects.

Climate balance inhibited the greedy drive for more energy. How long will they postpone the inevitable crash? A decade, a few years, not at all?

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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wrote to me today to let me know that she intends to do something about global warming. Me and tens of thousands of her closest friends, probably. Still, I was glad to hear from her. She’s been bringing up the subject of climate change often since the election–and before, though now she has a chance to be heard.

An Earth Day Network poll conducted in October showed that

Americans are worried about global warming - 58 percent say it will have a “great to extreme” impact on their children’s future and two out of three agree it will adversely impact the U.S. economy over the next ten years.

My worry is surely strong enough to count double in any nationwide poll. And what are the other 42% thinking? They’re probably still believing the Inhofe vacuity (R-OK). A few years ago in a speech on the Senate floor, he perpetuated conservatives’ war on science. He wrote of his speech,

I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations.

I wonder if he has changed his mind, whether he thinks Al Gore made it all up, or what. I know. He’s still calling it a hoax. Get that man out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and get Boxer in! What a relief.

Now that climate change is going to be a serious issue, it will help to understand the what and how of it. There are so many important stories on climate change that I don’t know where to start.

• Truth Out has a long list of climate change stories.

• John Mohawk on Prophecy and Survival has several years of climate change news excerpts with an emphasis on what peoples have learned in the past that might help us to navigate the future.

• Of course, you could see An Inconvenient Truth. I’ve heard of frequent community showings and house parties presenting the movie in Salt Lake City lately.

• The recent review of 866 scientific studies on climate change makes compelling reading.

• If you doubt that warmer temperatures are causing harm, look at the images from Tuvalu, an island nation in the Pacific (several small islands and atolls). The highest point is 16ft above sea level. Actually, it may not be that high any longer. The people will need to be evacuated soon (those not yet gone) because the sea level is rising. Warmer temperatures = melting ice = rising seas.

• For general coverage and an overview of climate change, should you need it, I find the BBC more helpful than US news sites. The British have acknowledged the problem, being an island nation themselves, and they are addressing it more directly.

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Listening to Seymour Hersch this morning on Democracy Now made so much news I read and listen to seem like the playful circus it is. This goes far beyond Hersch’s article this week on the likelihood of the U.S. going to war with Iran. In talking to Amy Goodman, Hersch connects dots and brings a knowledge of the past political generation that many may not be familiar with. This is no sound byte with a smile. Hersch takes the time to weave together threads of conduct of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra era with the two Bush administrations in their Middle East wars.

I would gladly trade 24-hour fake news for a few hours weekly with my copy of The New Yorker.

If you read only two stories this week, make them Seymour Hersch’s New Yorker article “The Next Act” and a little AP story on a review of 866 studies relating to climate change. What else matters?

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