environment Politics: Australia carbon tax Julia Gillard
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 27: There’s Something About Julia
More on Australia’s carbon tax plans, from the July 10 NYT:
SYDNEY — Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced a plan on Sunday that would tax the carbon dioxide emissions of the country’s 500 worst polluters and create the second-biggest emissions trading program in the world, after the European Union’s.
The plan is projected to cut 159 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2020, the government said. In 2010, Australia produced 577 million tons of carbon emissions, according to the Department of Climate Change.
This is basically yesterday’s letter, rearranged and reconfigured. It’s fun to use the word “nobility” in the same paragraph with a reference to American politicians. It’s kind of like using the word “genteel” while discussing a Farrelly brothers film. Sent July 11:
Washington wants us to believe that unraveling the safety net for our most defenseless citizens in the name of deficit reduction is somehow an act of political courage, since those same citizens (unsurprisingly) don’t like the idea. But conservatives’ hypocritical posturings have always been supported by the wealthiest and most powerful forces in our economy — and with billions of dollars behind them, their casual dismissal of the needs of millions of citizens has nothing of nobility in it. By contrast, Australia’s Julia Gillard has dared to show something few of our politicians can even contemplate: visionary concern for her nation’s future. By imposing a tax on carbon pollution, she’s confronted both the powerful coal industry and the inchoate fears of her fellow citizens. Why? Because Prime Minister Gillard recognizes that the greenhouse effect and its destructive consequences will be far more expensive than any amount of deficit spending.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Australia Big Coal Julia Gillard
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 26: Up With Down Under!
Australia’s PM is doing something wonderful, reports the Boston Globe in its issue of July 10:
SYDNEY—Australia will force its 500 worst polluters to pay 23 Australian dollars ($25) for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit, with the government promising to compensate households hit with higher power bills under a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions unveiled Sunday.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard sought to reassure wary Australians that the deeply unpopular carbon tax will only cause a minority of households to pay more and insisted it is critical to helping the country lower its massive carbon emissions. Australia is one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas polluters, due to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity.
“We generate more carbon pollution per head than any other country in the developed world,” Gillard told reporters in Canberra as she released details of the tax, which will go into effect on July 1, 2012. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to hold our place in the race that the world is running.”
She’s right. Australia is right. And America is full of blinkered idiots, as usual.
Sent July 10:
Faced with an intractable choice between business as usual and an environmentally responsible policy on carbon emissions, Australia’s Julia Gillard showed something this country hasn’t seen in quite a while: genuine leadership. Promoting unpopular policies on deficit reduction is not the mark of political courage many of our politicians claim; there is no nobility in advocating policies that are heavily favored by deep-pocketed multinational corporations and the monied elites who reap the benefits of their success. Any world leader who ignores the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change (approaching unanimity as rapidly as the Arctic is shedding ice mass) is betting the lives of countless millions of people on a very long shot indeed. In taking on the enormous power of Australia’s coal industry, Prime Minister Gillard is doing something our politicians cannot: the right thing, both for her nation and the world.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: 78 rpm discs genius pakhawaj rhythm tabla
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Ustad Amir Hussain Khan and Pt. Madhavrao Alkutkar
Here is another great set of rhythmic music — a tabla/pakhawaj duet between Ustad Amir Hussain Khan and Pt. Madhavrao Alkutkar. These 78s were part of the group I acquired stateside from another collector who had no interest in Indian music.
The two artists play two different taals side by side. Jhaptaal and Jhampa have the same number of beats (10), while Rupak and Dhamar are 7 and 14 beats respectively. The performances are too short…but brilliant!
Enjoy.
Jhaptaal aur Jhampa
Rupak aur Dhamar
environment: denialists scientific consensus wildfires
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 25: Smoke Signals
The July 9 edition of the Summit County Voice (CO), features a good report on how scientists are studying the relationship between climate change and the wildfires that have been wreaking havoc in the American West:
Fires are one of nature’s primary carbon-cycling mechanisms, said Dr. Melita Keywood, a researcher with Australia’s national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
A press release from CSIRO highlighted some of the questions Keywood raised in a recent presentation at a gathering of geophysicists.
“Understanding changes in the occurrence and magnitude of fires will be an important challenge for which there needs to be a clear focus on the tools and methodologies available to scientists to predict fire occurrence in a changing climate,” Keywood said.
She said the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.
Smoking is bad for your health. Sent July 9:
The key phrase in your report on wildfires and climate change can be found in the fifth paragraph: “the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.” Both parts of this sentence deserve careful attention. Climate denialists universally fail to understand that complicated phenomena are connected in complicated ways; their simplistic “analysis” reaches its most sophisticated level with “global warming can’t be real, because it’s cold outside.” And those same denialists have never been able to grasp the idea of “feedbacks,” loops of causation in which the symptoms of a problem exacerbate the problem itself (what happens when you and your partner mix up the dual controls on an electric blanket?). When a scientist uses a phrase like “multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks,” she’s giving us a very strongly worded warning: this problem has the potential to get much worse in ways we cannot yet imagine. Welcome to the future!
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: 78 rpm discs genius pakhawaj rhythmic cycles
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Pt. Govindrao Burhanpurkar – Pakhawaj
Here is a two-sided performance of Chautaal by the pakhawajiya Govindrao Burhanpurkar. Amazing stuff:
environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 24: Ditto, Ditto, Ditto…
A guy named Ken Midkiff writes a good piece on our likely future in the July 8 issue of the Columbia Tribune (MO):
There are, to be sure, a few skeptics and deniers — mostly those who rely on faux news for “information.” There was never any doubt that that more greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere would cause the planet to become warmer. But the skeptics and deniers have determined it is futile to argue that the planetary temperature is not rising — every measurement demonstrates that it is. The arguments now are about human responsibility and which areas will be affected and how.
As to the first argument, the global-warming skeptics and deniers are quite literally willing to gamble on everyone’s life. If human activities are responsible for raising the level of greenhouse gases and no contrary action is taken, the gamble fails. That is not a risk that should be taken.
At what level of certainty is a seat belt to be fastened? Even if we are just contributing to (not totally causing) global warming, we need to find non-polluting ways of doing things.
I didn’t even bother reading the comments; I just sent the following:
Ken Midkiff’s realistic assessment of the country’s next few decades is sure to demonstrate one of contemporary life’s few certainties: any published article dealing straightforwardly with the facts of climate change will attract vituperation from people who consider Rush Limbaugh a trustworthy source of information. As the scientific evidence piles up higher and higher, the climate denialists are going into overdrive. Their feverish reiterations of “hoax” and their derisive references to “algore” (Rush’s nickname for one of the few politicians to fully grasp the magnitude of the crisis) show their desperation. A sane society would properly relegate these hyperparanoid conspiracy theorists to the margins. Alas, in contemporary American culture, outright rejection of science is a virtual prerequisite for success in either politics or the media — which means that we can no longer expect our laws and opinions to bear any relationship to reality. It would be hilarious if our lives weren’t at stake.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: 78 rpm discs Dance genius
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Kathak Dance by Sitara Devi
Here is a very unusual item: four 3-minute performances of Kathak dance by the great Sitara Devi:
Sitara Devi (born early 1920s on a Diwali day) is an eminent Indian dancer of the classical Kathak style of dancing. When she was in her teens, Rabindranath Tagore, after watching a performance by her described her as Nritya Samragini, meaning, the empress of dance. The epithet continues, and she is still described as the Kathak queen.
Wiki
This rare boxed set was part of a group of 78s that were sent to me by a fellow collector.
Sitara Devi is among the great dancers of modern India. Born in Calcutta, she was trained in Kathak by her father Shri Sukhdev Maharaj Misra and by masters of Lucknow gharana including Achhan Maharaj, Lachhu Maharaj and Shambu Maharaj. She has combined the traditions of Banaras and Lucknow in her performance of Kathak.
An exhaustive treatment of the entire gamut of nritta, sometimes in different talas, interspersed with gats of lyrical beauty and compositions of dramatic intensity followed by moving renditions of thumris and Bhajans constitute the format of her hours long performances, characterized by an electrifying energy. In many ways she represents a lost era of complete Kathak performed all night with the accompaniment of masters of Tabla like Kanthe Maharaj, Samta Prasad and Kishan Maharaj.
Sitara Devi has danced extensively in India and abroad contributing to the popularization of the art. She has also been an actess and dancer in films since the silent era. In a class of her own, she continues to inspire her audience and fellow artists.
She has been honoured with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1969) and the Padma Shri.
Moordhan Poornam & Trotakam
Parahang
Padakriya (Tatkar)
Tarana
environment Politics: disaster capitalism economics floods Montana oil spills Yellowstone Park
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 23: Shaken, Not Stirred
In the July 7 L.A. Times, the brilliant and prescient Naomi Klein turns her eye to the interlocked disasters currently unfolding in the American West, in this case Montana — with floods and oil spills competing for the attention of the rescue and cleanup crews.
“We’re a disaster area,” Alexis Bonogofsky told me, “and it’s going to take a long time to get over it.”
Bonogofsky and her partner, Mike Scott, are all over the news this week, telling the world about how Montana’s Exxon Mobil pipeline spill has fouled their goat ranch and is threatening the health of their animals.
But my conversation with Bonogofsky was four full days before the pipeline began pouring oil into the Yellowstone River. And no, it’s not that she’s psychic; she was talking about this year’s historic flooding.
“It’s unbelievable,” she said. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime. It destroyed houses; people died; crops didn’t get in the fields…. We barely were able to get our hay crop in.”
Everyone agrees that the two disasters — the flooding of the Yellowstone River and the oil spill in the riverbed — are connected. According to Exxon officials, the high and fast-moving river has four times its usual flow this year, which has hampered cleanup and prevented their workers from reaching the exact source of the spill. Also thanks to the flooding, the oiled water has breached the riverbanks, inundating farmland, endangering animals, killing crops and contaminating surface water. And the rush of water appears to be carrying the oil toward North Dakota.
This letter was subsequently published by the LA Times with some editing. Yay, me.
Naomi Klein’s discussion of climate change’s repercussions in Montana leaves unaddressed the concept of “disaster capitalism,” her crucial contribution to contemporary economic analysis. As climate change’s catastrophic effects become more widespread, our already-crumbling infrastructure will no longer be up to the challenge of an adequate response; the inevitable result will be more human misery — which will in turn trigger ever-more-egregious corporate encroachments on both the lives of individuals and their communities. We can confidently expect more lenient enforcement of existing emissions and pollution law in the wake of climatic crises, along with legislative weakening of troublesome and unprofitable regulations. And let’s not forget more tax breaks to help multinational corporations (many of which facilitated global warming in the first place) reap further benefits from the havoc they’ve helped bring about. “Disaster capitalism” was bad enough already. With climate change added to the mix, it’s a poisonous recipe for humanity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: China coal corporate irresponsibility denialists sulfur pollution
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 7, Day 22: Ad Hoc Geoengineering
The Daily Mail (UK) runs an article on the Chinese sulfur emissions question:
China’s rapid industrial expansion may have halted global warming for much of the last decade, climate scientists claimed.
They said sulphur pollution from China’s coal-fired power stations helped to keep world temperatures stable despite soaring greenhouse gas emissions.
Burning coal releases carbon dioxide which traps heat from the Sun, raising temperatures. But it also emits particles of sulphur that help block the Sun’s rays and cool the Earth.
One of the attractions of the alternate-universes cosmology is the notion that somewhere there is a planet Earth where the humans haven’t fucked things up so completely.
Sent July 6:
The analysis suggesting that Chinese sulfur emissions have helped slow global heating trends is yet another confirmation of a simple fact: the science of climate change is complicated. Of course, that should be no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention, but the idea that there are multiple inter-relating factors seems to be hard for climate-change deniers to grasp. Given that ending the West’s dependence on fossil fuels will have enormously beneficial economic and environmental impacts, the reluctance of the denialists in our politics and media to move forward on this crucial issue can only be attributed to their fear of change, whether positive or negative. It certainly couldn’t be because they’re financially beholden to multinational energy corporations that will lose a few percentage points of profit; even the most avaricious of politicians surely wouldn’t put short-term profit over the survival of our species or our civilization. Or would they?
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: 78 rpm discs genius
by Warren
2 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan
Four performances by the great vichitra veena artist Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan.
Ustad Abdul Aziz Khan.
Originally a Sarangi player in Mumbai, he was the first person to play Khayals and Thumris in Vichitra Veena. After his maiden performance, at the annual music conference of the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Lahore, he never had to look back. He preferred Tabla accompaniment to Pakhawaj. He had been the court musician to the Maharaja of Patiala.
The Vichitra Veena emerged towards the beginning of the twentieth century and is descended from the ektantri veena or the ghoshvati veena as it was known, prior to the 6th century. It shared the same sound production techniques as the ektantri. The credit of giving the vichitra veena its present shape and developing its modern style of playing goes to Abdul Aziz Khan, a former sarangi player of Patiala. Today, the vichitra veena remains a rare instrument, with not many artists who play this instrument.
Raga Darbari Kanada — a different performance of this raag from the one posted earlier (he doesn’t give himself any daad, for one thing):
The beautiful compound morning raga Jogiya Asavari:
Raga Misra Pilu:
Raga Bhairavi: