Thursday, July 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Failure- Adaptation or Resistance?
Failure-
Adaptation
or
Resistance? (1)
by tyler caruso
"My awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it,
lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever
directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before
I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought
near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always
preceded by a zone of evaporation "( Proust “Swann’s Way”).
Architecture as a discipline is struggling to understand its own accountability in relation to society, and how to communicate itself beyond its immediate practical relevance. Furthermore Architecture is far from an auspicious moment, how can it proceed when the world has entered into the consciousness that the best thing we as a society can do is not build. What then is its new role or function? I believe Architecture must, without digressing into rhetoric or crouching into a defensive stance move the role of the built environment beyond the object and open up a critical dialogue of social space. A space should enable its occupants to draw connections from a matrix of ideas and structures- moving simultaneously between the lived experience of embodiment and the theoretical lens of observation. The visionaries of this new arena will not accept but embrace the state of perpetual flux. We have seen the transformation of everyday spaces in Margaret Crawford’s work and the dynamic role the public has on space but as time progresses we will experience an unstable physical form from the earth itself, as we enter into the climate crisis.
While most would agree that language is at times unwieldy- even volatile in certain situations one cannot be content to leave the nature of the built form off limits- carving words into effable stars or punctuations of our very existence. In Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, Braidotti explains, “The body, far from being an essentialist notion, is situated at the intersection of the biological and the symbolic; as such it marks a metaphysical surface of integrated material and symbolic elements that defy separation.” If we entertain this, what then is the body of architecture? I postulate that Architecture takes this theory a step further and attempts to delineate between the self and the society. The built form must see beyond its state of conception and feature a flexibility that moves away from its material form, creating many different social realms where the individual can participate in the space- where the user has the ability to experience a unique embodiment of that space without the observer trying to define in a homogenous manner the nature of his/her experience (2). We always need to be cognoscente of the material nature of the signifier itself (the built form in this instance), for materiality and signification (the built form and society) are indissoluble (3). It is through the navigation of these realms and the attraction to certain elements and distancing from others that we begin to amass ‘self-knowledge’ and mould the concept of a persisting self – our own ontological nature, identity conditions and character. Sartre posited that,
“Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust towards existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Sartre “Existentialism and Human Emotions”).
What if there is no reasoned existence- what if a critical reading is the only truth we have- in which the reader wrestles from the text- the ever changing failure to communicate. Post Structuralist or Post- Saussurean(4) readings of text denote that “…common sense is itself ideologically and discursively constructed, rooted in a specific historical situation, and operating in conjunction with a particular social formation” (5). ‘Obvious’ and ‘natural’ are produced in a specific society by the way that very society talks about and frames the way it conceives itself.
Common sense theory is analogous to how the world has grown into a grotesques mass functioning on the assumption of infinite limitless resources. I attribute this to a failure of being able to articulate time- we have the same language for years that can be experienced within a life and those that will exceed many lifetimes- we cannot know time that extends beyond the expanse of a single life; it is intangible to us. Empiricism thereby evades confrontation with our demise and the realization of the planet’s limits. We refuse the precautionary principle because human existence has metastasized to an endless formation of wants, powered by the verb of consumerism and the myth of immortality in our language. We cannot carry ourselves as immune the very language we use. Belsey’s reveals that, “…. language is not merely the medium in which autonomous individuals transmits messages to each other about an independently constitutes world of things. On the contrary, it is language which offers the possibility of constructing a world of distinct individuals and things, and of differentiating between them”.
The failure of language to bring people together then rests a heavy burden on our spaces- Barthe relates this feeling, “Sometimes I would mention this amazement buts since no one seemed to share it, nor even understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it”(6). My own “ontological desire” is a struggle to understand the failure of language and how that helps to create or restrict social spaces. What is architecture? What are its boundaries? What if architecture is not meant to be more than anything then a “come here”, a ‘meeting’, an interruption of the ‘void’- we are choosing by building this moment- this interruption or fatality. Architecture diverges from other forms of art becomes while the roles of ‘operator’ and ‘spectator’ remain, the ‘referent’ however is transformed into not only an object but a cultural meeting point where the interaction both occurs and is instigated (7). Nicolas Borruidaud argued a similar task for art in the 90s in Relational Aesthics- however I feel that his emotional excitement about the creation of new daily social micro utopias falls sort of action into a sort of acceptance, failing to take the challenge out of the gallery space.
Similar to Crawford’s critique of Davis I agree with Bourriaud’s ‘symptoms’ or description of relational aesthetics but I believe without consent he has pinned the banner of ‘avante garde’ inappropriately on a artists who are not able to take up that mantle. He defined relational art as 'a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space' where art works are intended to provoke and produce inter-human relations. These ideas are rooted to the SI's constructed situations, which are a response to 60s/70s oil crisis, class discord and national terrorism.
In a critique of Bourriaud the Radical Culture Research Collective (RCRC) dissect his positioning relational art as the heir to the 20th century avant-gardes. They feel that,
“The avant-garde legacy becomes at stake with Bourriaud’s claim about the historical importance of relational art as the new cutting edge of politicized cultural practice… The old avant-gardes, Bourriaud tells us, were oriented toward conflict and social struggle; relieved of this dogmatic radical antagonism and macro-focus on the global system, relational-alleviation art “is concerned with negotiations, bonds, and co-existences.” (Bourriaud 45) The new relational avant-gardistes “are not naïve or cynical enough ‘to go about things as if’ the radical and universalist utopia were still on the agenda” (Bourriaud 70). We would put it differently. Precisely formulated, relational aesthetics represents the liberalization of the avant-garde project of radical transformation. In 1998, Bourriaud saw this as a virtue. Today, we see it as the main limitation of relational art – and one that negates any claim it makes to the legacy of the avant-gardes. While we would defend relational art from its conservative and reactionary critics, we would also insist that it not come to stand in for the radical project it falls short of – and indeed refuses”.
New architecture has the potential to be our avante garde- in its response to globalization the grandchild of post-modernism the built form needs to champion its own position- and it is one that both accepts and then moves beyond, to engage failure, in the flexible nature of the space- to create a ‘third space’ (8).
NOTES:
1- Taken from Stuart Hall
2- Jacques Rancière throughout his work he has taken issue with the way that intellectuals have theorized the proletariat. While I agree with Davis that democratic space in America is less I cannot readily sign off that we are in a time of decline from other more emollient times. Writer’s often don the romantic lens of nostalgia and take up the labored view of depicting the proliteratriate as a single mass waiting for their own liberation. In Crawford’s criticism of Mike Davis she concurs that the ‘symptoms’ are valid but she points out that, “ …the perception of loss originates in the extremely narrow definitions of both ‘public’ and ‘space that derives from the insistence on unity, desire for fixed categories of time and space, and rigidly conceived notions of private and public”. Her theoretical framework comes from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay, “Can the subaltern Speak?”, where she warns of the potential of “epistemic violence” to cause just as much harm to a subjugated class as the original colonizers did. Everyone must work to refuse the use of a collective voice that assumes a ‘homogenous’ voice can be lent to the ‘others’.
3-Understood from Judith Butler’s “Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex”.
4-Crawford is engaging in the architectural equivalent to literature’s Post- Saussurean critical theory in her breakdown of the social landscape into which, “cultures consolidate and separate” taking the time to identify the differences that exist between saying Latino and being Mexican as oppose to Cuban.
5- “Critical Practice”
6- Barthes, Roland "Camera Lucida"
7- Brthes, Roland "Camera Lucida"
8- Taken from Margaret Crawford’s adoption of Edward Soja who followed Henri Lefebvre- “a category that is neither material space that experience nor a representation of space- it becomes a space of representation, a space bearing the possibility of new meaning, a space activated through social action and the social imagination”.
Adaptation
or
Resistance? (1)
by tyler caruso
"My awareness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it,
lining it with a thin spiritual border that prevented me from ever
directly touching its substance; it would volatize in some way before
I could make contact with it, just as an incandescent body brought
near a wet object never touches its moisture because it is always
preceded by a zone of evaporation "( Proust “Swann’s Way”).
Architecture as a discipline is struggling to understand its own accountability in relation to society, and how to communicate itself beyond its immediate practical relevance. Furthermore Architecture is far from an auspicious moment, how can it proceed when the world has entered into the consciousness that the best thing we as a society can do is not build. What then is its new role or function? I believe Architecture must, without digressing into rhetoric or crouching into a defensive stance move the role of the built environment beyond the object and open up a critical dialogue of social space. A space should enable its occupants to draw connections from a matrix of ideas and structures- moving simultaneously between the lived experience of embodiment and the theoretical lens of observation. The visionaries of this new arena will not accept but embrace the state of perpetual flux. We have seen the transformation of everyday spaces in Margaret Crawford’s work and the dynamic role the public has on space but as time progresses we will experience an unstable physical form from the earth itself, as we enter into the climate crisis.
While most would agree that language is at times unwieldy- even volatile in certain situations one cannot be content to leave the nature of the built form off limits- carving words into effable stars or punctuations of our very existence. In Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, Braidotti explains, “The body, far from being an essentialist notion, is situated at the intersection of the biological and the symbolic; as such it marks a metaphysical surface of integrated material and symbolic elements that defy separation.” If we entertain this, what then is the body of architecture? I postulate that Architecture takes this theory a step further and attempts to delineate between the self and the society. The built form must see beyond its state of conception and feature a flexibility that moves away from its material form, creating many different social realms where the individual can participate in the space- where the user has the ability to experience a unique embodiment of that space without the observer trying to define in a homogenous manner the nature of his/her experience (2). We always need to be cognoscente of the material nature of the signifier itself (the built form in this instance), for materiality and signification (the built form and society) are indissoluble (3). It is through the navigation of these realms and the attraction to certain elements and distancing from others that we begin to amass ‘self-knowledge’ and mould the concept of a persisting self – our own ontological nature, identity conditions and character. Sartre posited that,
“Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterwards will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust towards existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Sartre “Existentialism and Human Emotions”).
What if there is no reasoned existence- what if a critical reading is the only truth we have- in which the reader wrestles from the text- the ever changing failure to communicate. Post Structuralist or Post- Saussurean(4) readings of text denote that “…common sense is itself ideologically and discursively constructed, rooted in a specific historical situation, and operating in conjunction with a particular social formation” (5). ‘Obvious’ and ‘natural’ are produced in a specific society by the way that very society talks about and frames the way it conceives itself.
Common sense theory is analogous to how the world has grown into a grotesques mass functioning on the assumption of infinite limitless resources. I attribute this to a failure of being able to articulate time- we have the same language for years that can be experienced within a life and those that will exceed many lifetimes- we cannot know time that extends beyond the expanse of a single life; it is intangible to us. Empiricism thereby evades confrontation with our demise and the realization of the planet’s limits. We refuse the precautionary principle because human existence has metastasized to an endless formation of wants, powered by the verb of consumerism and the myth of immortality in our language. We cannot carry ourselves as immune the very language we use. Belsey’s reveals that, “…. language is not merely the medium in which autonomous individuals transmits messages to each other about an independently constitutes world of things. On the contrary, it is language which offers the possibility of constructing a world of distinct individuals and things, and of differentiating between them”.
The failure of language to bring people together then rests a heavy burden on our spaces- Barthe relates this feeling, “Sometimes I would mention this amazement buts since no one seemed to share it, nor even understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it”(6). My own “ontological desire” is a struggle to understand the failure of language and how that helps to create or restrict social spaces. What is architecture? What are its boundaries? What if architecture is not meant to be more than anything then a “come here”, a ‘meeting’, an interruption of the ‘void’- we are choosing by building this moment- this interruption or fatality. Architecture diverges from other forms of art becomes while the roles of ‘operator’ and ‘spectator’ remain, the ‘referent’ however is transformed into not only an object but a cultural meeting point where the interaction both occurs and is instigated (7). Nicolas Borruidaud argued a similar task for art in the 90s in Relational Aesthics- however I feel that his emotional excitement about the creation of new daily social micro utopias falls sort of action into a sort of acceptance, failing to take the challenge out of the gallery space.
Similar to Crawford’s critique of Davis I agree with Bourriaud’s ‘symptoms’ or description of relational aesthetics but I believe without consent he has pinned the banner of ‘avante garde’ inappropriately on a artists who are not able to take up that mantle. He defined relational art as 'a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space' where art works are intended to provoke and produce inter-human relations. These ideas are rooted to the SI's constructed situations, which are a response to 60s/70s oil crisis, class discord and national terrorism.
In a critique of Bourriaud the Radical Culture Research Collective (RCRC) dissect his positioning relational art as the heir to the 20th century avant-gardes. They feel that,
“The avant-garde legacy becomes at stake with Bourriaud’s claim about the historical importance of relational art as the new cutting edge of politicized cultural practice… The old avant-gardes, Bourriaud tells us, were oriented toward conflict and social struggle; relieved of this dogmatic radical antagonism and macro-focus on the global system, relational-alleviation art “is concerned with negotiations, bonds, and co-existences.” (Bourriaud 45) The new relational avant-gardistes “are not naïve or cynical enough ‘to go about things as if’ the radical and universalist utopia were still on the agenda” (Bourriaud 70). We would put it differently. Precisely formulated, relational aesthetics represents the liberalization of the avant-garde project of radical transformation. In 1998, Bourriaud saw this as a virtue. Today, we see it as the main limitation of relational art – and one that negates any claim it makes to the legacy of the avant-gardes. While we would defend relational art from its conservative and reactionary critics, we would also insist that it not come to stand in for the radical project it falls short of – and indeed refuses”.
New architecture has the potential to be our avante garde- in its response to globalization the grandchild of post-modernism the built form needs to champion its own position- and it is one that both accepts and then moves beyond, to engage failure, in the flexible nature of the space- to create a ‘third space’ (8).
NOTES:
1- Taken from Stuart Hall
2- Jacques Rancière throughout his work he has taken issue with the way that intellectuals have theorized the proletariat. While I agree with Davis that democratic space in America is less I cannot readily sign off that we are in a time of decline from other more emollient times. Writer’s often don the romantic lens of nostalgia and take up the labored view of depicting the proliteratriate as a single mass waiting for their own liberation. In Crawford’s criticism of Mike Davis she concurs that the ‘symptoms’ are valid but she points out that, “ …the perception of loss originates in the extremely narrow definitions of both ‘public’ and ‘space that derives from the insistence on unity, desire for fixed categories of time and space, and rigidly conceived notions of private and public”. Her theoretical framework comes from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s essay, “Can the subaltern Speak?”, where she warns of the potential of “epistemic violence” to cause just as much harm to a subjugated class as the original colonizers did. Everyone must work to refuse the use of a collective voice that assumes a ‘homogenous’ voice can be lent to the ‘others’.
3-Understood from Judith Butler’s “Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex”.
4-Crawford is engaging in the architectural equivalent to literature’s Post- Saussurean critical theory in her breakdown of the social landscape into which, “cultures consolidate and separate” taking the time to identify the differences that exist between saying Latino and being Mexican as oppose to Cuban.
5- “Critical Practice”
6- Barthes, Roland "Camera Lucida"
7- Brthes, Roland "Camera Lucida"
8- Taken from Margaret Crawford’s adoption of Edward Soja who followed Henri Lefebvre- “a category that is neither material space that experience nor a representation of space- it becomes a space of representation, a space bearing the possibility of new meaning, a space activated through social action and the social imagination”.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Op-Ed Published in the RiverReporter-
See my Op-Ed about gas drilling in the River Reporter Newspaper:
http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/10-03-11/ed1-caruso.html
http://www.riverreporter.com/issues/10-03-11/ed1-caruso.html
Monday, March 1, 2010
My (belated) new years letter
So...
I know it's nearing the end of February and that I am about 1.5 months passed the acceptable 'Happy new year/best wishes' threshold for emailing- but i this weekend I watched the DVD "No Impact Man" and despite myself, the long winter, lack of sunlight, and the sight of dirty melting snow- I feel inspired.
However I would be remis if I didn't say that the current state of the world imposes a sort of emotional bi-polar state in regards to my general level of life hope- oscillating between inspired hope and a feeling of being on a sinking ship on the deck just before the panic sets in and everyone else realizes it’s sinking. Today I woke up to read more stories on the disaster in Chile, the on-going chaos in Haiti and now the Ny times article- “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.”.
Seriously?!
“As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising…..The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.”
At Pratt I have spent the last year or so, slowly and at times painfully becoming aware of how the things I do (no matter how mundane they appear) effect the world at large. However I know that by expressing that sentiment/revelation, I am simultaneously aware that regardless of my intention, I run the risk of sounding preachy (which no one likes) and also striking a nerve inducing defensiveness from most of the people in my life. This paradox has left me very self-conscious and sort of quiet (for me!)- about all the things I am learning and the way it has been reconfiguring my life. And I think to some extent it has started to make me feel further from the rest of my life- and no one likes living a duality especially one that is self-imposed.
The things that have become really apparent to me- are the ways in which we all and those before us- have allowed society to develop/ grow in an unsustainable manner- we run the Earth in a way that i am sure would make a good business man cringe- everyone, even someone who is as wildly adept as myself with money knows that. We live in such a way that we trash/use up the very thing that is sustaining us- and I believe/hope if you get people in a honest moment that most would agree to some extent with what I am saying. I am also aware the minute any sort of 'environmental' 'earth' ramble is voiced it becomes immediately out of fashion and the image of me typing at a library computer terminal in a pair of flowey linen cargo pants with a t-shirt that may or may not reference the whales-while droning on and on about the polar bears jumps to mind- However, 1) I’d never don such and outfit 2) I really don’t understand the dichotomy between having a successful creative modern world and living in a way that doesn’t pollute the earth. Being fully aware of what choices we are making and what that really means for the Earth at large doesn't have to boil down to a life with individuality, character, fun, convenience or art. It just means not being afraid to be fully informed about the total life cycle of the products we use are (even down to what type of energy we use and how it is produced). As I near 30 I am realizing that 1) I am an adult and fully responsible to make my life what I want it to be and 2) everything I do will impact the next generation (the ones I/my peers would raise) and 3) how being an 'environmentalist' really to me is about health- of myself, the people I love, the next generations, and last but not least the place we all live.
When I went upstate to see the Mayor of Dish, TX talk about how natural gas drilling has just decimated his tiny town of 2 sq miles (http://baddish.blogspot.com/) - and at the end of his talk- this person who I would have wrongly judged to have nothing in common with- this straight shooter ex-military man with a crew cut- looked out into the audience and simply said- 'Now you know, and you can't not know'. Which is exactly the sentiment I am trying to express, after spending a year actively making all the pieces of my life connect to the big picture- now that I know that all our trash is either buried or burned or shipped over seas I can't not know- which makes me need to know where does it go once it leaves my street in Brooklyn. Now that i know about natural gas, coal and oil- I can't not know- how can we find renewable sources of energy. A few years ago I had NO idea why I had to shut of the lights - I thought it was just to save money; I had no idea how electricity was produced.
The thing that really gets me is that all these 'things' that at first make it hard to imagine a life without, they seem so essential but i saw this girl carrying this tote bag that said- 'less oil more courage' and it really struck me that we can do this better. We have more power and imagination and that this defeatist attitude of ‘this is how it's been and this is how it will be’- it’s holding us back and I wouldn’t accept that type of attitude in any other part of my life so why would I accept it for the entire world? I also now understand that some of the things I am afraid to lose have also contributed to making me farther from the people in my life and more separated from the community that I really desire. We can’t go backwards- even if it seems easier- we’ll pay for it later- ‘“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek’ (NYT)”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html
Wishing you well in the new year
I attached an article that I think is really amazing by Mike Davis and below are some resources I wanted to pass on.
Films:
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Flow
No Impact Man
Food Inc
Tapped
King Corn
Books-
Gone tomorrow - http://www.gonetomorrow.org/
Hot Flat and Crowded- http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded
Natural Capitalism- http://www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid5.php
Cradle to Cradle- http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
Websites/Watch/Interactive
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
http://www.gasland.us/wp/
http://www.habitatmap.org
News:
http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters
http://www.treehugger.com/
Organizations
http://www.rmi.org/
http://www.aldoleopold.org
http://www.ssbx.org/
Natural Gas Drilling Info:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/press_releases/09-15pr.shtml
http://www.riverkeeper.org/
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/
http://nyh2o.org/#main/home
http://www.catskillcitizens.org/
http://catskillmountainkeeper.org/
I know it's nearing the end of February and that I am about 1.5 months passed the acceptable 'Happy new year/best wishes' threshold for emailing- but i this weekend I watched the DVD "No Impact Man" and despite myself, the long winter, lack of sunlight, and the sight of dirty melting snow- I feel inspired.
However I would be remis if I didn't say that the current state of the world imposes a sort of emotional bi-polar state in regards to my general level of life hope- oscillating between inspired hope and a feeling of being on a sinking ship on the deck just before the panic sets in and everyone else realizes it’s sinking. Today I woke up to read more stories on the disaster in Chile, the on-going chaos in Haiti and now the Ny times article- “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.”.
Seriously?!
“As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising…..The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.”
At Pratt I have spent the last year or so, slowly and at times painfully becoming aware of how the things I do (no matter how mundane they appear) effect the world at large. However I know that by expressing that sentiment/revelation, I am simultaneously aware that regardless of my intention, I run the risk of sounding preachy (which no one likes) and also striking a nerve inducing defensiveness from most of the people in my life. This paradox has left me very self-conscious and sort of quiet (for me!)- about all the things I am learning and the way it has been reconfiguring my life. And I think to some extent it has started to make me feel further from the rest of my life- and no one likes living a duality especially one that is self-imposed.
The things that have become really apparent to me- are the ways in which we all and those before us- have allowed society to develop/ grow in an unsustainable manner- we run the Earth in a way that i am sure would make a good business man cringe- everyone, even someone who is as wildly adept as myself with money knows that. We live in such a way that we trash/use up the very thing that is sustaining us- and I believe/hope if you get people in a honest moment that most would agree to some extent with what I am saying. I am also aware the minute any sort of 'environmental' 'earth' ramble is voiced it becomes immediately out of fashion and the image of me typing at a library computer terminal in a pair of flowey linen cargo pants with a t-shirt that may or may not reference the whales-while droning on and on about the polar bears jumps to mind- However, 1) I’d never don such and outfit 2) I really don’t understand the dichotomy between having a successful creative modern world and living in a way that doesn’t pollute the earth. Being fully aware of what choices we are making and what that really means for the Earth at large doesn't have to boil down to a life with individuality, character, fun, convenience or art. It just means not being afraid to be fully informed about the total life cycle of the products we use are (even down to what type of energy we use and how it is produced). As I near 30 I am realizing that 1) I am an adult and fully responsible to make my life what I want it to be and 2) everything I do will impact the next generation (the ones I/my peers would raise) and 3) how being an 'environmentalist' really to me is about health- of myself, the people I love, the next generations, and last but not least the place we all live.
When I went upstate to see the Mayor of Dish, TX talk about how natural gas drilling has just decimated his tiny town of 2 sq miles (http://baddish.blogspot.com/) - and at the end of his talk- this person who I would have wrongly judged to have nothing in common with- this straight shooter ex-military man with a crew cut- looked out into the audience and simply said- 'Now you know, and you can't not know'. Which is exactly the sentiment I am trying to express, after spending a year actively making all the pieces of my life connect to the big picture- now that I know that all our trash is either buried or burned or shipped over seas I can't not know- which makes me need to know where does it go once it leaves my street in Brooklyn. Now that i know about natural gas, coal and oil- I can't not know- how can we find renewable sources of energy. A few years ago I had NO idea why I had to shut of the lights - I thought it was just to save money; I had no idea how electricity was produced.
The thing that really gets me is that all these 'things' that at first make it hard to imagine a life without, they seem so essential but i saw this girl carrying this tote bag that said- 'less oil more courage' and it really struck me that we can do this better. We have more power and imagination and that this defeatist attitude of ‘this is how it's been and this is how it will be’- it’s holding us back and I wouldn’t accept that type of attitude in any other part of my life so why would I accept it for the entire world? I also now understand that some of the things I am afraid to lose have also contributed to making me farther from the people in my life and more separated from the community that I really desire. We can’t go backwards- even if it seems easier- we’ll pay for it later- ‘“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek’ (NYT)”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html
Wishing you well in the new year
I attached an article that I think is really amazing by Mike Davis and below are some resources I wanted to pass on.
Films:
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Flow
No Impact Man
Food Inc
Tapped
King Corn
Books-
Gone tomorrow - http://www.gonetomorrow.org/
Hot Flat and Crowded- http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded
Natural Capitalism- http://www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid5.php
Cradle to Cradle- http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
Websites/Watch/Interactive
http://www.storyofstuff.com/
http://www.gasland.us/wp/
http://www.habitatmap.org
News:
http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters
http://www.treehugger.com/
Organizations
http://www.rmi.org/
http://www.aldoleopold.org
http://www.ssbx.org/
Natural Gas Drilling Info:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/press_releases/09-15pr.shtml
http://www.riverkeeper.org/
http://www.damascuscitizens.org/
http://nyh2o.org/#main/home
http://www.catskillcitizens.org/
http://catskillmountainkeeper.org/
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 14, 2010
My Op-Ed piece about Natural Gas drilling
Did Somebody Put Something in the Water in Albany?
By Tyler Caruso
As a Master’s student in an Environmental Policy and Sustainability program, I have worked hard to cling to a small reserve of hope for the future, even with all the mounting evidence that we have backed ourselves into somewhat of an environmental dooms day scenario. My hope was rooted in the belief that we as a country are moving (albeit slowly) towards a more sustainable future. However recent happenings in Albany have begun to erode away at that hope, as Governor Patterson continues to lend his support to Hydraulic fracturing ( natural gas drilling). The good news is that New York City at the close of 2009 officially registered its opposition to hydraulic fracturing in its watershed, which supplies drinking water to more than 9 million residents of NYC.
Currently New York City is one of only four cities in the country that the EPA allows drinking water to flow unfiltered. Hydraulic fracturing posses the threat of contaminating NYC’s water supply, which the Department of Environmental Protection has invested over $1.5 billion dollars in protecting. If drilling is permitted our water supply could be laced with a toxic brew of chemicals and once these chemicals find their way into a water supply, they are nearly impossible to filter out. Governor Patterson and the state legislation need to take pause and answer if natural gas drilling is really the way to move NYS towards its current goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Natural Gas the new Clean and Clear Energy Alternative?
Natural gas companies have spread their claims far and wide that natural gas is the new “clean” and “clear” energy alternative to ‘older’ ‘dirtier’ fossil fuels like coal and oil. In a society as industrialized and developed as ours it’s easy to only think about products in their market-ready state, never weighing their extraction and production process as part of the big picture while evaluating their environmental impacts. These drilling operations are highly industrial in nature; with large numbers of diesel engines running 24/7 producing noise and large amounts of exhaust. Drilling has also been documented to have a very negative impact on air quality, with unacceptable ozone contribution, methane releases and extremely large amounts of green house gas emissions.
What exactly is HydroFracking?
Hydraulic Fracturing or Hydro-Fracking is the method of pumping large amounts of locally sourced fresh water, sand and a blend of proprietary chemicals, at high pressure into the ground vertically and horizontally. The pumping fractures the shale and releases the trapped natural gas, letting it ‘flow’ upwards through the well. The complete list of chemicals injected during hydo-fracking were not made publicly available in the draft SGEIS on the claim that such information constitutes proprietary trade secrets of the mining company.
In a paper by Lindsay Speers she reports,
In a statement from the NY Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) it is written that,
There have been many instances of drinking water contamination resulting from hydro-fracking that have been documented. A 2009 EPA study of drinking water in Pavilion, Wyoming documented contamination from hydro-fracking in at least 11 household wells. In Dimock, PA in 2008, a water well exploded from methane contamination from nearby hydro-fracking and many others have been rendered undrinkable and the list goes on and on.
The Gas Companies Promise- 100% safe
The drilling companies assure us that this process is totally safe- and they have somehow managed to convince Albany that all possibilities of human and mechanical error have been abated. We need to take a step backwards and consider the potential consequences we as New Yorker’s will bear if drilling is allowed and contamination ensues: We will have to: 1) Build a costly filtration plant, which according to the DEP would cost a minimum of $10 billion, 2) This new water treatment plant will need energy to filter our now polluted waters and we would then be in the ironic position of supplying this new plant with energy for it’s construction and maintenance (which theoretically could be supplied by the same gas we drilled for in the first place) and 3) Once all the natural gas has run out, which it will, we’ll be right back where we started and we will still have pay for the maintenance and upkeep this plant. I would like to ask the good folks up in Albany if they can really stand behind drilling, as moving the state’s energy policy in the right direction. Instead of investing further in the extraction of the remaining fossil fuels, our state, and nation should be developing energy policies which will move us to totally renewable sources, such as solar and wind and set a global example of what is possible. I urge everyone to contact Governor Patterson and demand a ban on gas drilling in NY State.
By Tyler Caruso
As a Master’s student in an Environmental Policy and Sustainability program, I have worked hard to cling to a small reserve of hope for the future, even with all the mounting evidence that we have backed ourselves into somewhat of an environmental dooms day scenario. My hope was rooted in the belief that we as a country are moving (albeit slowly) towards a more sustainable future. However recent happenings in Albany have begun to erode away at that hope, as Governor Patterson continues to lend his support to Hydraulic fracturing ( natural gas drilling). The good news is that New York City at the close of 2009 officially registered its opposition to hydraulic fracturing in its watershed, which supplies drinking water to more than 9 million residents of NYC.
Currently New York City is one of only four cities in the country that the EPA allows drinking water to flow unfiltered. Hydraulic fracturing posses the threat of contaminating NYC’s water supply, which the Department of Environmental Protection has invested over $1.5 billion dollars in protecting. If drilling is permitted our water supply could be laced with a toxic brew of chemicals and once these chemicals find their way into a water supply, they are nearly impossible to filter out. Governor Patterson and the state legislation need to take pause and answer if natural gas drilling is really the way to move NYS towards its current goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Natural Gas the new Clean and Clear Energy Alternative?
Natural gas companies have spread their claims far and wide that natural gas is the new “clean” and “clear” energy alternative to ‘older’ ‘dirtier’ fossil fuels like coal and oil. In a society as industrialized and developed as ours it’s easy to only think about products in their market-ready state, never weighing their extraction and production process as part of the big picture while evaluating their environmental impacts. These drilling operations are highly industrial in nature; with large numbers of diesel engines running 24/7 producing noise and large amounts of exhaust. Drilling has also been documented to have a very negative impact on air quality, with unacceptable ozone contribution, methane releases and extremely large amounts of green house gas emissions.
What exactly is HydroFracking?
Hydraulic Fracturing or Hydro-Fracking is the method of pumping large amounts of locally sourced fresh water, sand and a blend of proprietary chemicals, at high pressure into the ground vertically and horizontally. The pumping fractures the shale and releases the trapped natural gas, letting it ‘flow’ upwards through the well. The complete list of chemicals injected during hydo-fracking were not made publicly available in the draft SGEIS on the claim that such information constitutes proprietary trade secrets of the mining company.
In a paper by Lindsay Speers she reports,
“The findings of scientists at ‘The Endocrine Disruption Exchange’ show that nearly all of those soluble chemicals are known skin, eye, and sensory organ irritants, and cause respiratory, gastrointestinal, and liver distress. Approximately 75% affect the brain, nervous system, and the cardiovascular system. Nearly half of them affect the kidneys, immune system, cause developmental difficulties, and have known ecological effects. And most importantly, a third of the chemicals are known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, mutagens, and/or affect the reproductive system”.
In a statement from the NY Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) it is written that,
“…The chemicals used as part of the process are injected into the subsurface rock formations and can travel along underground fissures to ground water and ultimately streams that feed reservoirs…In addition, the resulting wastewater- potentially 1 billion gallons per year- can also contaminate water supplies. Currently there is no way to locally treat this wastewater” (DEP 12/12/09).
There have been many instances of drinking water contamination resulting from hydro-fracking that have been documented. A 2009 EPA study of drinking water in Pavilion, Wyoming documented contamination from hydro-fracking in at least 11 household wells. In Dimock, PA in 2008, a water well exploded from methane contamination from nearby hydro-fracking and many others have been rendered undrinkable and the list goes on and on.
The Gas Companies Promise- 100% safe
The drilling companies assure us that this process is totally safe- and they have somehow managed to convince Albany that all possibilities of human and mechanical error have been abated. We need to take a step backwards and consider the potential consequences we as New Yorker’s will bear if drilling is allowed and contamination ensues: We will have to: 1) Build a costly filtration plant, which according to the DEP would cost a minimum of $10 billion, 2) This new water treatment plant will need energy to filter our now polluted waters and we would then be in the ironic position of supplying this new plant with energy for it’s construction and maintenance (which theoretically could be supplied by the same gas we drilled for in the first place) and 3) Once all the natural gas has run out, which it will, we’ll be right back where we started and we will still have pay for the maintenance and upkeep this plant. I would like to ask the good folks up in Albany if they can really stand behind drilling, as moving the state’s energy policy in the right direction. Instead of investing further in the extraction of the remaining fossil fuels, our state, and nation should be developing energy policies which will move us to totally renewable sources, such as solar and wind and set a global example of what is possible. I urge everyone to contact Governor Patterson and demand a ban on gas drilling in NY State.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Relational Form
From Relational Aesthetics - Nicolas Bourriaud (1998)
"Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist. Althusser said that one always catches the world's train on the move; Deleuze, that "grass grows from the middle" and not from the bottom or the top. The artist dwells in the circumstances the present offers him,so as to turn the setting of his life (his links with the physical and conceptual world) into a lasting world. He catches the world on the move:
he is a tenant of culture, to borrow Michel de Certeau's expression'. Nowadays, modernity extends into the practices of cultural do-it-yourself and recycling, into the invention of the everyday and the development of time lived, which are not objects less deserving of attention and examination than Messianistic utopias and the formal "novelties" that typified modernity yesterday. There is nothing more absurd either than the assertion that contemporary art does not involve any political project, or than the claim that its subversive aspects are not based on any theoretical terrain. Its plan, which has just as much to do with working conditions and the conditions in which cultural objects are produced, as with the changing forms of social life, may
nevertheless seem dull to minds formed in the mould of cultural Darwinism. Here, then, is the time of the "dolce utopia", to use Maurizio Cattelan's phrase... "
"Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist. Althusser said that one always catches the world's train on the move; Deleuze, that "grass grows from the middle" and not from the bottom or the top. The artist dwells in the circumstances the present offers him,so as to turn the setting of his life (his links with the physical and conceptual world) into a lasting world. He catches the world on the move:
he is a tenant of culture, to borrow Michel de Certeau's expression'. Nowadays, modernity extends into the practices of cultural do-it-yourself and recycling, into the invention of the everyday and the development of time lived, which are not objects less deserving of attention and examination than Messianistic utopias and the formal "novelties" that typified modernity yesterday. There is nothing more absurd either than the assertion that contemporary art does not involve any political project, or than the claim that its subversive aspects are not based on any theoretical terrain. Its plan, which has just as much to do with working conditions and the conditions in which cultural objects are produced, as with the changing forms of social life, may
nevertheless seem dull to minds formed in the mould of cultural Darwinism. Here, then, is the time of the "dolce utopia", to use Maurizio Cattelan's phrase... "
Monday, February 1, 2010
Toxic Waters- amazing NY Times Series
The NY times toxic waters series.
My relationship to the NY Times is tenuous- while I think they do bring up important issues i feel that their slant is always far less urgent or revealing then the situation merits (especially anything they've written around Natural Gas Drilling)- However with their Toxic Water Series I must admit they've done a wonderful job. I first noticed this series with their front page story around drinking water with the little boy's teeth, it also really helped hit home the failure of NYC's CSS system- and showed very plainly all the CSOs stating clearly- that virtually every time it rains in NYC it pollutes. However the most interesting article I read was the one I posted to our news forum- about La's water. I had actually just returned from a Grey water installer's workshop in LA- when I read that article in the airport! That reservoir is a few mins drive from my friends house (the one where they put all the black plastic balls)- and i kept thinking I drank that water. And to lesson to all the people who object to the Dr's work- it baffles me. I really don't understand their argument. Also the Clean Water Act- I really don't understand how we can be following an out dated law- that 1) we don't properly enforce and also 2) when environmental conditions are rapidly changing (or degrading) and we are also probably dealing with a whole host of new chemicals, dynamic industries and also years of all these chemicals interacting with each other....the series has a great link on the left side that allows you to search by state what contaminants in our water supply- even thought it met two standards: the legal limits established by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the typically stricter health guidelines. The data was collected by an advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group, who shared it with The Times.
In the Catskill/Delaware system (I live in Brooklyn):
Trichloroacetic acid levels were below legal limits, but above health guidelines
11 contaminants found within health guidelines and legal limits: Bromodichloromethane, Chloroform, Copper, Dibromoacetic acid, Dibromochloromethane, Dichloroacetic acid, Lead (total), Monobromoacetic acid, Monochloroacetic acid, Total haloacetic acids (HAAs), Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs)
2 contaminants tested for but not found: Arsenic (total), Bromoform
Who puts in place the health regulations vs the Safe Drinking water act? What are NYCs health regulations- how does it compare to other cities? How are the people who regulate the health regulations hired or voted in?
I then clicked on another link to a drinking water quality report shows by the water utility and provided to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) by the New York Department of Health- Bureau of Public Water Supply Protection. It is in the next post which shows their results.
My relationship to the NY Times is tenuous- while I think they do bring up important issues i feel that their slant is always far less urgent or revealing then the situation merits (especially anything they've written around Natural Gas Drilling)- However with their Toxic Water Series I must admit they've done a wonderful job. I first noticed this series with their front page story around drinking water with the little boy's teeth, it also really helped hit home the failure of NYC's CSS system- and showed very plainly all the CSOs stating clearly- that virtually every time it rains in NYC it pollutes. However the most interesting article I read was the one I posted to our news forum- about La's water. I had actually just returned from a Grey water installer's workshop in LA- when I read that article in the airport! That reservoir is a few mins drive from my friends house (the one where they put all the black plastic balls)- and i kept thinking I drank that water. And to lesson to all the people who object to the Dr's work- it baffles me. I really don't understand their argument. Also the Clean Water Act- I really don't understand how we can be following an out dated law- that 1) we don't properly enforce and also 2) when environmental conditions are rapidly changing (or degrading) and we are also probably dealing with a whole host of new chemicals, dynamic industries and also years of all these chemicals interacting with each other....the series has a great link on the left side that allows you to search by state what contaminants in our water supply- even thought it met two standards: the legal limits established by the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the typically stricter health guidelines. The data was collected by an advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group, who shared it with The Times.
In the Catskill/Delaware system (I live in Brooklyn):
Trichloroacetic acid levels were below legal limits, but above health guidelines
11 contaminants found within health guidelines and legal limits: Bromodichloromethane, Chloroform, Copper, Dibromoacetic acid, Dibromochloromethane, Dichloroacetic acid, Lead (total), Monobromoacetic acid, Monochloroacetic acid, Total haloacetic acids (HAAs), Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs)
2 contaminants tested for but not found: Arsenic (total), Bromoform
Who puts in place the health regulations vs the Safe Drinking water act? What are NYCs health regulations- how does it compare to other cities? How are the people who regulate the health regulations hired or voted in?
I then clicked on another link to a drinking water quality report shows by the water utility and provided to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) by the New York Department of Health- Bureau of Public Water Supply Protection. It is in the next post which shows their results.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
From NYtimes: "Is there an Ecological Unconsious?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Amazing video about Grey water and Rainwater projects in Germany
Just wade through the first 5 mins- it gets really interesting
http://www.susana.org/lang-en/videos/the-innovative-turn
http://www.susana.org/lang-en/videos/the-innovative-turn
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Toilet That Can Help Solve Our Water and Energy Problems
By Gar Smith
Upwards of 3 million people die annually from diarrhea, dysentery, and parasitic diseases -- all for the want of clean water. Meanwhile, each year in the water-rich United States, 2.1 billion gallons of the world's most precious liquid are used, not to water thirsty crops or slake parched throats, but to flush human waste from home toilets to municipal sewers. While harvesting rainwater and recycling graywater are fine strategies, it's time to get to the seat of the problem. We need a Toilet Revolution.
As frequently happens, the solution to this modern problem can be found in the recent past -- and the Third World present. Jeff Conant, author of The Community Guide to Environmental Health, has traveled the world in search of the perfect "waterless toilet." He found it in the Mexican town of Tepotzlan, which boasts hundreds of "non-traditional waterless" eco-loos. In the 1980s, Tepotzlan's innovators got a boost when former UNICEF
While the practice of using human waste as fertilizer is as old as humanity itself, Tepotzlan's eco-sanistas marked an engineering watershed when they found a way to separate feces from urine. A locally designed toilet seat harvests the fluids while allowing the solid wastes to fall into a dry compost toilet. (Not such a strange idea: The human body is designed to send solid and liquid wastes in opposite directions.) One immediate result of separating pee from poo is the elimination of the unpleasant aromas associated with the traditional outhouse.
While installing waterless toilets in high-rise apartments might raise certain engineering challenges, "urine-separating dry toilets" are being adopted around the world -- from South Africa, Peru, Cuba, and India to the United States, where composting waterless toilets can be purchased online. There are several to choose from, including Biolet, Envirolet, Sun-Mar, the venerable-sounding Clivus Multrum, and the EcoJohn (an "incinerating toilet" that's being used in US homes and military camps). Most sell for around $1,500. Home Depot lists a Biolet for $1,400 (about the price of a new fridge). The Nature's Head urine-separating dry toilet (designed by sailors for onboard use) is a bargain, priced at $850.
Dry-compost toilets not only conserve water, they also protect rivers and oceans. By circumventing modern sewers, dry-compost toilets avoid diverting nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate-rich wastes from the land (where they would enrich the soil) to rivers and oceans, where they cause algal blooms, oxygen-robbing eutrophication, and oceanic "dead zones."
The first flush of the Toilet Revolution was heard in Orange County, of all places. In 1997, San Diego announced plans to have a "Toilet-to-Tap" system up and running by 2001. In 1998, California's governor signed a law directing the state to evaluate the potential of recycling the post-toilet flow to "ensure that any water produced by these systems meets the identical standards that our drinking water does now." While San Diego's filtration system successfully reduced contaminants to the same level as "untreated fresh water," many people had trouble swallowing the idea of sipping treated waste water, even though toilet-to-tap is a proven, Space-Age technology. For decades, America's orbiting astronauts have thrived by drinking their own urine, recycled endlessly through space shuttle filtration systems.
There's another powerful reason to separate and recycle urine. It turns out that urine -- the world's most abundant waste -- could become the "fuel of the future." Ohio University researcher Geradine Botte has developed a catalyst that can extract hydrogen fuel from urine. While it takes 1.23 volts to split two hydrogen atoms from H2O, it only takes 0.37 volts to strip four hydrogen atoms from a urea molecule. That's twice as much hydrogen for one-third the effort. The Royal Society of Chemistry's journal, Chemical Communications, confirms Botte's discovery: "While water is an increasingly limited essential resource," the journal notes, "there will never be a lack of urine."
Existing nickel electrode technology can be easily scaled up to produce hydrogen from the effluent of today's sewage treatment plants. As Botte notes: "We do not need to reinvent the wheel." But tomorrow's water-smart homeowners will need to adapt. There will be one more container to add to the line-up for weekly curbside pick-up -- the urine bin.
Solving two problems for the price of one is a rare deal, especially when tankless toilets will start paying back the investment immediately as household water use falls by one-third. Sometimes, relief can come from surprising places. If this all pans out, we may need to replace the phrase "piss-poor" with "urine-rich."
Upwards of 3 million people die annually from diarrhea, dysentery, and parasitic diseases -- all for the want of clean water. Meanwhile, each year in the water-rich United States, 2.1 billion gallons of the world's most precious liquid are used, not to water thirsty crops or slake parched throats, but to flush human waste from home toilets to municipal sewers. While harvesting rainwater and recycling graywater are fine strategies, it's time to get to the seat of the problem. We need a Toilet Revolution.
As frequently happens, the solution to this modern problem can be found in the recent past -- and the Third World present. Jeff Conant, author of The Community Guide to Environmental Health, has traveled the world in search of the perfect "waterless toilet." He found it in the Mexican town of Tepotzlan, which boasts hundreds of "non-traditional waterless" eco-loos. In the 1980s, Tepotzlan's innovators got a boost when former UNICEF
While the practice of using human waste as fertilizer is as old as humanity itself, Tepotzlan's eco-sanistas marked an engineering watershed when they found a way to separate feces from urine. A locally designed toilet seat harvests the fluids while allowing the solid wastes to fall into a dry compost toilet. (Not such a strange idea: The human body is designed to send solid and liquid wastes in opposite directions.) One immediate result of separating pee from poo is the elimination of the unpleasant aromas associated with the traditional outhouse.
While installing waterless toilets in high-rise apartments might raise certain engineering challenges, "urine-separating dry toilets" are being adopted around the world -- from South Africa, Peru, Cuba, and India to the United States, where composting waterless toilets can be purchased online. There are several to choose from, including Biolet, Envirolet, Sun-Mar, the venerable-sounding Clivus Multrum, and the EcoJohn (an "incinerating toilet" that's being used in US homes and military camps). Most sell for around $1,500. Home Depot lists a Biolet for $1,400 (about the price of a new fridge). The Nature's Head urine-separating dry toilet (designed by sailors for onboard use) is a bargain, priced at $850.
Dry-compost toilets not only conserve water, they also protect rivers and oceans. By circumventing modern sewers, dry-compost toilets avoid diverting nitrogen, potassium, and phosphate-rich wastes from the land (where they would enrich the soil) to rivers and oceans, where they cause algal blooms, oxygen-robbing eutrophication, and oceanic "dead zones."
The first flush of the Toilet Revolution was heard in Orange County, of all places. In 1997, San Diego announced plans to have a "Toilet-to-Tap" system up and running by 2001. In 1998, California's governor signed a law directing the state to evaluate the potential of recycling the post-toilet flow to "ensure that any water produced by these systems meets the identical standards that our drinking water does now." While San Diego's filtration system successfully reduced contaminants to the same level as "untreated fresh water," many people had trouble swallowing the idea of sipping treated waste water, even though toilet-to-tap is a proven, Space-Age technology. For decades, America's orbiting astronauts have thrived by drinking their own urine, recycled endlessly through space shuttle filtration systems.
There's another powerful reason to separate and recycle urine. It turns out that urine -- the world's most abundant waste -- could become the "fuel of the future." Ohio University researcher Geradine Botte has developed a catalyst that can extract hydrogen fuel from urine. While it takes 1.23 volts to split two hydrogen atoms from H2O, it only takes 0.37 volts to strip four hydrogen atoms from a urea molecule. That's twice as much hydrogen for one-third the effort. The Royal Society of Chemistry's journal, Chemical Communications, confirms Botte's discovery: "While water is an increasingly limited essential resource," the journal notes, "there will never be a lack of urine."
Existing nickel electrode technology can be easily scaled up to produce hydrogen from the effluent of today's sewage treatment plants. As Botte notes: "We do not need to reinvent the wheel." But tomorrow's water-smart homeowners will need to adapt. There will be one more container to add to the line-up for weekly curbside pick-up -- the urine bin.
Solving two problems for the price of one is a rare deal, especially when tankless toilets will start paying back the investment immediately as household water use falls by one-third. Sometimes, relief can come from surprising places. If this all pans out, we may need to replace the phrase "piss-poor" with "urine-rich."
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Geothermal Project in California Is Shut Down
This article in the NYTimes shows the importance of doing a full life cycle assessment on emerging technologies before proceeding forward. The quickest and most important actions that will mitigate climate change- are the modifications of our behaviors and patterns- we can't rely on these new constructed science techniques to come in and save the day.
By JAMES GLANZ in NY Times
Published: December 11, 2009
The company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned.
The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers.
But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that “it will not be continuing work at the Geysers” as part of the agency’s geothermal development program.
The project’s apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. Taken together, the two setbacks could change the direction of the Obama administration’s geothermal program, which had raised hopes that the earth’s bedrock could be quickly tapped as a clean and almost limitless energy source.
The Energy Department referred other questions about the project’s shutdown to AltaRock, a startup company based in Seattle. Reached by telephone, the company’s chief operations officer, James T. Turner, confirmed that the rig had been removed but said he had not been informed of the notice that the company had given the government. Two other senior company officials did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear whether AltaRock might try to restart the project with private money.
In addition to a $6 million grant from the Energy Department, AltaRock had attracted some $30 million in venture capital from high-profile investors like Google, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
“Some of these startup companies got out in front and convinced some venture capitalists that they were very close to commercial deployment,” said Daniel P. Schrag, a professor of geology and director of the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.
Geothermal enthusiasts asserted that drilling miles into hard rock, as required by the technique, could be done quickly and economically with small improvements in existing methods, Professor Schrag said. “What we’ve discovered is that it’s harder to make those improvements than some people believed,” he added.
In fact, AltaRock immediately ran into snags with its drilling, repeatedly snapping off bits in shallow formations called caprock. The project’s safety was also under review at the Energy Department after federal officials said the company had not been entirely forthcoming about the earthquakes produced in Basel in making the case for the Geysers project.
The results of that review have not yet been announced, but the type of geothermal energy explored in Basel and at the Geysers requires fracturing the bedrock then circulating water through the cracks to produce steam. By its nature, fracturing creates earthquakes, though most of them are small.
On Friday, the Energy Department, which has put some $440 million into its geothermal program this year alone, said that despite the latest developments, it remained confident of the technology’s long-term prospects. Many geothermal methods do not require drilling so deep or fracturing bedrock.
“The Department of Energy believes that geothermal energy holds enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy while decreasing our carbon pollution,” said Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman.
AltaRock has also received some $25 million in federal money for a project in Oregon, and some scientists speculated on Friday that after the spate of problems at the Geysers, the company wanted to focus on a new site.
But the company, whose project at the Geysers was located on land leased from the federal government by the Northern California Power Agency, has held information about its project tightly. Not even the power agency has been informed of AltaRock’s ultimate intentions at the site, said Murray Grande, who is in charge of geothermal facilities for the agency.
“They just probably gave up, but we don’t know,” Mr. Grande said. “We have nothing official from them at all.”
But a resident of the nearby town of Anderson Springs, which is already shaken by quakes generated by less ambitious geothermal projects, reacted with jubilation when told it appeared the new project was ending.
“How I feel is beyond anything that words can express,” said the resident, Jacque Felber, who added that an unnerving quake had rattled her property the night before. “I’m just so relieved, because with this going on, I’m afraid one of these days it’s going to knock my house off the hill.”
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Who Lives here? Who can Afford to Live here?
A friend of mine just posted this link- it's an interactive map that looks at income demographics and the rents of neighborhoods all over NYC.
Very much worth checking out.
http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map
Very much worth checking out.
http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Combined Sewage Overflows and UV LEDS
Hello
My professor at Pratt sent out an email conversation that happened between Paul Mankiewicz's who teaches the water quality class at Pratt. She wanted to share this email conversation because it embodies our whole systems approach....Below you will see a proposal for handling the raw sewage that flows untreated into NYC's surrounding water bodies during wet weather events due to our combined sewer system.
Cheers,
Tyler
"Dear Harbor Ecology Friends,
I would be grateful if you'd join me in exploring the possibility of using ultraviolet light emitting diodes to disinfect combined sewage overflows at the waterfront. It might be worthwhile to partner with the LED industry and a local university to create a test site. Would you be willing to meet to explore this possibility?
I first proposed this idea to the Mayor's Office for Sustainability and Long-term Planning and some years ago, and the technologies involved (UV LEDs and on-site generation using solar panels and wind turbines) have advanced significantly in even that short period of time. With outlets designed to generate turbulence (to assure changeover in exposed waters, to overcome the high turbidity that prevents UV penetration), UV LEDs could eliminate all or much of the bacterial load of CSOs before estuary contact.
Our current sewage treatment system uses mercury arc lights to bombard water with UV and EUV rays. Arc lights are cheaper than LEDs, but the price of LEDs lowers annually (as do photovoltaic panel prices). Tighter wavelength LEDs like UV cost more than those producing long wavelengths, like red. They are being adopted, however, by sewage plant designers in Southeast Asia, among other places: http://www.aseanenvironment.info/Abstract/41013577.pdf
When UV LED prices lower sufficiently, distributed disinfection at individual CSOs will become viable. That should be within the coming decade.
Why at the CSO rather than upstream? Because they are easy to access and have less water flowing through them than large tubes, making it easier for UV light to penetrate through the flow, and lower water volumes are easier to make turbulent. This also allows us to target sites mostly likely to damage habitat and human health -- we might start with one of what I dubbed the "Nasty Nine" worst CSOs.
LEDs are tough -- they require little maintenance. Solar panels and wind turbines allow for off-grid work on the waterfront, though many CSOs are quite near electric street lamps, allowing for an easy line extension.
I believe that with this system installed, NYC could free its harbor of much of its bacterial problem without expensive infrastructure additions or added chemical disinfection. Wildlife and stray animal eyesight, if that's found to be put at risk by the equipment, could be guaranteed by motion-sensor shutoffs and deterrents.
I've been invited to join the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce's technology committee and I'd be happy to ask colleagues for support in this endeavor. Local universities might also be ideal partners.
This LED UV solution to CSOs isn't complete, however. We need a serious requirement to install bioswales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioswale), green roofs, and permeable surfaces, and to plant even more trees. Only those measures will reduce the runoffs, which carry chemical pollutants that can't be addressed by UV LEDs (though the good news is that the worst of this problem is swept along with the first ten minutes of rain, which is typically caught by the system before CSOs are opened)."
PAUL's RESPONSE......
"..It would be nice if some super technology would come along to solve the combined sewer problem, but am afraid we already know how to do this:
Solid state light production is neat indeed, but how to get all that water in contact with light sources is not simple to do.
Discharge less (or no) water from the land;
enhance natural filters in the water.
The City is putting at least a billion dollars, maybe two billion, into producing ultraviolet light to kill microbes in Croton water.
Water has to be clear and clean enough not to absorb the UV before it hits the microbe, and, even though UV does work OK for Cryptosporidium, it is not effective on many bacteria..."
Humic matter is absorbs UV, as does suspended solids.
better, perhaps, to put in a filter that costs little (less than 100K for aquaculture media for enough mussels to filter 2 billion gpd)
and connects with the food chain and food web that sustains much of the life in the Hudson and Atlantic
paul
Paul S. Mankiewicz, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Gaia Institute
440 City Island Avenue
Bronx, NY 10464
718 885-1906 office
paul@thegaiainstitute.org
www.thegaiainstitute.org
New York City Soil & Water Conservation District
121 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10013
www.nycswcd.net
My professor at Pratt sent out an email conversation that happened between Paul Mankiewicz's who teaches the water quality class at Pratt. She wanted to share this email conversation because it embodies our whole systems approach....Below you will see a proposal for handling the raw sewage that flows untreated into NYC's surrounding water bodies during wet weather events due to our combined sewer system.
Cheers,
Tyler
"Dear Harbor Ecology Friends,
I would be grateful if you'd join me in exploring the possibility of using ultraviolet light emitting diodes to disinfect combined sewage overflows at the waterfront. It might be worthwhile to partner with the LED industry and a local university to create a test site. Would you be willing to meet to explore this possibility?
I first proposed this idea to the Mayor's Office for Sustainability and Long-term Planning and some years ago, and the technologies involved (UV LEDs and on-site generation using solar panels and wind turbines) have advanced significantly in even that short period of time. With outlets designed to generate turbulence (to assure changeover in exposed waters, to overcome the high turbidity that prevents UV penetration), UV LEDs could eliminate all or much of the bacterial load of CSOs before estuary contact.
Our current sewage treatment system uses mercury arc lights to bombard water with UV and EUV rays. Arc lights are cheaper than LEDs, but the price of LEDs lowers annually (as do photovoltaic panel prices). Tighter wavelength LEDs like UV cost more than those producing long wavelengths, like red. They are being adopted, however, by sewage plant designers in Southeast Asia, among other places: http://www.aseanenvironment.info/Abstract/41013577.pdf
When UV LED prices lower sufficiently, distributed disinfection at individual CSOs will become viable. That should be within the coming decade.
Why at the CSO rather than upstream? Because they are easy to access and have less water flowing through them than large tubes, making it easier for UV light to penetrate through the flow, and lower water volumes are easier to make turbulent. This also allows us to target sites mostly likely to damage habitat and human health -- we might start with one of what I dubbed the "Nasty Nine" worst CSOs.
LEDs are tough -- they require little maintenance. Solar panels and wind turbines allow for off-grid work on the waterfront, though many CSOs are quite near electric street lamps, allowing for an easy line extension.
I believe that with this system installed, NYC could free its harbor of much of its bacterial problem without expensive infrastructure additions or added chemical disinfection. Wildlife and stray animal eyesight, if that's found to be put at risk by the equipment, could be guaranteed by motion-sensor shutoffs and deterrents.
I've been invited to join the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce's technology committee and I'd be happy to ask colleagues for support in this endeavor. Local universities might also be ideal partners.
This LED UV solution to CSOs isn't complete, however. We need a serious requirement to install bioswales (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioswale), green roofs, and permeable surfaces, and to plant even more trees. Only those measures will reduce the runoffs, which carry chemical pollutants that can't be addressed by UV LEDs (though the good news is that the worst of this problem is swept along with the first ten minutes of rain, which is typically caught by the system before CSOs are opened)."
PAUL's RESPONSE......
"..It would be nice if some super technology would come along to solve the combined sewer problem, but am afraid we already know how to do this:
Solid state light production is neat indeed, but how to get all that water in contact with light sources is not simple to do.
Discharge less (or no) water from the land;
enhance natural filters in the water.
The City is putting at least a billion dollars, maybe two billion, into producing ultraviolet light to kill microbes in Croton water.
Water has to be clear and clean enough not to absorb the UV before it hits the microbe, and, even though UV does work OK for Cryptosporidium, it is not effective on many bacteria..."
Humic matter is absorbs UV, as does suspended solids.
better, perhaps, to put in a filter that costs little (less than 100K for aquaculture media for enough mussels to filter 2 billion gpd)
and connects with the food chain and food web that sustains much of the life in the Hudson and Atlantic
paul
Paul S. Mankiewicz, Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Gaia Institute
440 City Island Avenue
Bronx, NY 10464
718 885-1906 office
paul@thegaiainstitute.org
www.thegaiainstitute.org
New York City Soil & Water Conservation District
121 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10013
www.nycswcd.net
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