Word on the Street: Obama, Vodka, and Fish Sleds

The Simon Community Gang passes out food to every and anybody,
at various times and places throughout the week.
Pictured here is Jo, passing out some chili.

More news in the continuing saga with the homeless. For the last few weeks I've been meeting with a Street Cafe (as in, a van that dishes out chili, bread, and coffee to the homeless) over in front of a church on Sunday afternoons. The first time I showed up it was raining dogs (no cats) and we stuck it out: 50-100 people were fed, and I got the interesting role of passing out rolling papers and tobacco to the gentlemen (and women) who wanted them.

The last few times I've found myself without a job to do, which invariably means I end up in conversation with everybody. Homeless people, when they have food in their bellies and a smoke in their hand, will tell you about the world, and if you are the least bit wise, you'll listen. While I'm getting a world class education about rights and justice and economics and the like, I have to say the small tidbits I get from the likes of Jim, Richard, Tom, Jo, Alan and others are worth just as much.

Today's conversation: Comparing Obama to Nixon, Bush, Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln and even Washington. There were some beautiful analogies with respect to how Lincoln dealt with his conservative enemy, Mr. Chase-- apparently he let Chase badmouth him until one day Lincoln called Chase out in front of the whole Congress. Lincoln asked his entire cabinet: is there any disharmony here? Everybody said no, and when Lincoln pointed at Chase and asked the same question, Chase, forced with the decision of either speaking up and leaving the cabinet or shutting up in front of the entire congress, chose to stay. Lincoln gave him a Supreme Court appointment once the war was over, but had the guy boxed during the time that really mattered. I can't help listening to this story and considering it's relevance to Obama and the Clintons. I hope, very much, that Obama is a man of history. This is, of course, the big fear with Obama: does the man have an ego? Can he control the ego of others? Will he be effective at delegating and leading his cabinet and government through the hard times ahead? I can only hope so.

I was given an interesting view of how manual laborers are treated in London versus the states. Apparently you get paid about 5,000 pounds for the loss of a finger, or a certain amount for the loss of an eye, but this sort of compensation pales in comparison to what an American worker, with a good lawyer to back him up, can get if he sues the company for negligence. We had a big discussion about paperwork- Londoners don't seem to mind bureacracy, which unfortunately leads to situations where you can have more adminstrative workers than actual laborers in a company. Certain inefficiencies abound.. I listen and learn.

I heard stories from a man who lived in Siberia for 6 years. He says they drink a shot of vodka every morning (a man can NEVER be without his vodka), and that temperatures can at times get down to 45 degrees below (this in Celsius!!). Apparently trees can explode at 60 below. Metal breaks at 25 below. This same chap told us about the Chukchis, a native tribe of Siberia that live in the eternal cold much in the same way as the Eskimo. Apparently these people believe that everything that comes from the Earth is owned by everybody. So one day this guy leaves his tool kit on the ground, walks away, comes back, and instead of his toolkit there's a monstrous frozen fish. Apparently the Chukchis believe that if you take something back for yourself, you should trade something in return. The fish probably wouldn't make a good drill, but I'd imagine it would have been pretty effective as a hammer. This same sort of view leads to some interesting practices-- apparently if you stay in a Chukchis house and have no wife, you will be offered an unmarried family member, as man (or woman) should not be without somebody to sleep with at night. Well, this is what I was told.. I looked the Chukchis up on wikipedia, and apparently that sort of practice no longer has a stronghold on Chukchis culture, but it used to be that when Chukchis followed their massive trading routes over hundreds of kilometers, men sometimes slept with other men's wives and even fathered children in other villages. Perhaps this is even more interesting.. I leave it to you.

And I'm complaining about the London weather..

Most interestingly, the Chukchis are amazing ecologists. If a man has 6 dogs, some rope, some water, and some fish, he can go many miles. Tie up the dogs, lay the fish down and pour water on them so they freeze. Now you have a sled. Travel on the sled back to your home. Unfreeze the fish. Eat your sled.

We were thinking it's rather difficult to eat your car.

Listening, Learning, and Sharingly Yours,
T.

Climate Change March in Central London

Rabble-rabble-rabble-rabble-rabble!!! :)

Well, I knew I came to LSE for a reason. It would appear that the climate change movement is rather strong here in England, although this can be said with a twinge of irony because even though England is one of the few first-world countries that has met the Kyoto target for this year, the only reason England met the target is because Thatcher took on the Coal miners coalition back in the late 80s and, in typical Thatcher-esque style, ground it to a pulp. So England produces very little carbon, relative to other countries. Hurrah!! Of course, England still CONSUMES waaay more carbon than it should be, and if we look into this consumptive (pardon the pun) story, we find that England has actually increased it's carbon consumption by 20% since Kyoto, instead of reducing it.

Ahh, a Beautiful London Day. After a bike ride
through silent streets (traffic stopped for the march),


I find my marching companions, with the police looking on.

There are a lot of marching companions :)


I pick up my Groovy "No New Coal" Sign, and simply must
take a picture of it in front of the US Embassy over in Grosvenor Downs.
If you look closely, you can see the US flag in the distance.

Still, the Londoners care about climate change, and London has got to be one of the best places in the world to have a political march. I say this because London is nothing but old, tall buildings, and when you march through them, the drums echo in every which way, and you can hear the people cheering in the throng ahead of you, and there are so many bystanders watching you pass by that you can't help but feel good about yourself. Add to this that the day was, for once, nice and sunny, and you have an ideal situation.

Despite the idealness of the situation, only about 10,000 of us came out. This may seem like a lot, but one of the speakers at the rally where the march ended noted that over 250,000 showed up in the 80s for a peace movement. Unfortunately the climate change movement has a ways to go.

London likes Fancy Dress.. In some part of town, it's ALWAYS Halloween,
Including unique individuals like the Mummy over here
(Sign references the addition of a Third Runway at Heathrow)

Nice Flowers.. Cheater!!

I say this is unfortunate because, my friends, the situation that faces us is truly bleak. I would imagine that most of us Americans have not such a good idea of what's really going on, because unbiased information in America is rather difficult to come by. NPR does a fairly decent job, but has no TV station. When CNN and FOX are competing with holograms, well, you can see the problem. So from across the pond, let me be your correspondent, who has now read numerous professional academic articles on the subject (including reports from Stern, Nordhaus, McGuiness, Dasgupta, Broome, Weitzman, Atkinson, and others), and who has also attended numerous public lectures at LSE on the subject.

Marching Down Picadilly Lane

The facts:
- Al Gore really SHOULD apologize. The story's actually much worse than what he weaves in "An Inconvenient Truth".
- The arctic passage will be ice free in the summer by 2015.. that's 80 years ahead of what the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) reported a few years ago.
- Greenland is going, but not in 50 years like some of us think.. It should be gone, if we keep moving in the same path, in 200-300 years. If, however, Greenland goes, ocean levels rise 7 meters. Goodbye Newport Beach.. at least I got to enjoy the waves before you sank.
- Even if the climate changes ONLY by 2 degrees Celsius (which, if we completely stop producing carbon by 2050 will be the likely result), ocean levels will still rise AT LEAST 60 cm. If you get a chance in the near future, go visit the Maldives. They're going to be gone.
- A 2 degree change means that certain areas will actually be MUCH hotter, and certain areas will actually be MUCH warmer (or colder) than 2 degrees on average. Africa is looking particularly bad; I believe the Sahara moves Southward something like 15 km a year, but that's off the cuff so it might be + or - 5 km. Some of us may say "So what?". Well my friends, desertification means famine, and famine means refugees, wars, and perhaps genocide. It has been argued that Darfur is the first climate-change driven genocide, because Darfur isn't really genocide- it's politically-based seizure of LAND because the land the Arabs used to live on peacefully as nomads has been turning into.. you guessed it- Desert.
- The reason it's called climate change (it used to be called global warming) is because the Earth is not simply getting warmer. The entire climate system is changing; some areas are getting colder, some are getting warmer. Canadians joke that Climate change is going to make Summers warmer. This is true, but often winters get Colder as well. I can't speak for Canada, but the UK, for example, will experience not only warmer summers, but much colder winters. Apparently as the climate shifts, the seasons become more extreme.
- Expect more Hurricanes, and more volcanoes. Perhaps this explains our interest in Katrina-- in Thomas Friedman's words, we pause and wonder.. "Did we cause that?"..
- Lastly, to put it all in perspective: The Earth's average temperature shifts all the time. However, a change of two degrees usually takes a few million years. We're going to accomplish that in more or less 300 years.

Wanted: Mr. Bush- the Toxic Texan.


Seeing Mr. Bush Portrayed this way makes me smile.

The danger is sadly all too real, and while some remarkable political efforts are underway (the UK, for example, just passed into law a Climate Bill that sets a target of 80% reduction of carbon by 2050-- an admirable goal, although current science predicts that even this target is not enough, at least it's a step in the right direction). Even better, some 8,000 talking heads will be meeting in Copenhagen this month to create a new, better Kyoto-esque protocol that the US will hopefully ratify. In fact I'm almost positive the US will ratify Copenhagen, because Obama has pledged the following:

The Obama-Biden comprehensive New Energy for America plan will:

• Help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future.
• Within 10 years save more oil than we currently import from the Middle East and Venezuela combined.
• Put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars -- cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon -- on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America.
• Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

Some of the Police were kind enough to join us on the March.
I'm loving the yellow jackets-- they wore these so seriously,
but they all look like a bunch of walking New York taxis.. awesome.

This is good news, but again, it may not be enough. Let me explain, because unless we know what's truly going on, these kinds of initiatives make it seem like the solution is already arrived at and we have no need to worry.

The sad truth, in the words of Lord Anthony Giddens, a previous director of LSE and a UK politico himself, is that the government is producing a lot of WORDS, but very little ACTION. What do I mean by this? Well let's look at Kyoto. According to Kyoto, we were at least supposed to level off if not reduce carbon consumption by now. Instead, carbon consumption has increased by some 2-3 percent in America (and China and India) per annum. Even in the progressive and liberal UK (and they truly are-- even the police marched in the street with us-- how lovely :), Parlaiment is passing the wonderful Climate Change bill with one hand, while agreeing to build 8 NEW COAL POWER PLANTS with the other one (Parliament also wants to expand Heathrow Airport- yet ANOTHER massive increase in carbon consumption). How does this sort of hypocrisy happen? People don't listen, don't care, or simply don't understand.

This is a pretty good shot of the crowd heading down Regent Street
toward Trafalgar Square.. if you click on the image, you'll see just
how far down the street the crowd goes, and that's about 1/4 of us.

Marchers and Drummers in Trafalgar Square

Friends and Family, the same sort of thing is going on all over the world. I've never been much of a liberal or a politico, but Climate Change is a DIRE situation. The effects are starting to be felt now, and they're going to get worse. Not only will millions of people starve and civil wars will break out in impoverished countries. Not only will we feel hotter summers and colder winters, or perhaps lose some beach property-- in Lord Nicholas Stern's words, we run the risk of a complete global collapse.

The Crowd reaches Parliament Square, and the
"Trees Are our Friends" poster looks rather nice with Big Ben backing it up.

We truly are like the frog in a pot of water that's slowly starting to boil, but isn't aware of the situation. All this discussion on the Credit Crunch, on jobs, on gay rights, on abortion- I hate to sound like a jerk but the most extreme problem has to be addressed now.

The crowd files into Parliament Square.

Hmm.. Creepy to know they're watching us, depending on who THEY are..

I know what some of us are thinking, and they would be agreeing with Yale Professor William Nordhaus even though they aren't aware of it.

Look, Travis: When the economy grows, we can slowly invest into the problem and as technology improves, our ability to find a solution will greatly improve and we will have a better and cheaper way of fixing the problem.

To all you Nordhausian's, you're missing the point. This is THE WORLD we're talking about. I know we often don't care about some people on the other side of the planet murdering eachother or slaving away in sweatshops. I mean, we donate to charity, but we really don't CARE to the point of changing our habits or working toward a global solution- we have other people to do that for us. Friends, this is something we HAVE to care about because it involves ALL OF US, and even though there are organizations fighting for us it just ain't enough.

What risk are we willing to take with the existence of civilization as we know it? What I mean by this is that if the temperature raises by 3 degrees celsius, the possibility of global catastrophe significantly increases. If it raises by 5 degrees celsius (which it EASILY could if we don't hit the 80% mark by 2050, which means no more increased carbon by 2015 or 2020 at the latest), there are so many unknowns that the science goobers just kind of shrug and ponder the ThermoHaline Current shutting off, or ocean levels up 10 - 20 meters. Forget the millions of people starved- all coastal cities will be wiped out-- and although this may not be during our lifetimes, it's only a generation or two away. This type of catastrophe is what Stern and Weitzman call "Thick Left Tail Probabilities". If you can imagine a bell curve, that's the shape we get when we know what's going on. Apparently when the temperature raises by more than 3 degrees celsius, the Left Tail of the curve THICKENS, so you start to get instead of one smooth bump, a small bump on the left and a larger bump on the right. The small bump is the increasing possibility of civilization going bye-bye.

So when only 10,000 of us march and sit out in the cold shade on a damp lawn to listen to speakers talk of small rallies held all over the world, we are very troubled. Some of the people at the march are undoubtedly here for hippie reasons, or wonderful dreams like global peace. But some of us know how dire the situation is. Please believe me when I say, it's truly something worth fighting for. If we can't see it in the sense of preserving the lives of millions of innocents in impoverished countries who will lose their drinking water, crops, and livelihoods, perhaps we can see it through the eyes of our children who will have to live in that world. Perhaps we can see it in the weirder weather that we keep experiencing, which we shrug off, like a frog in a pot of water that's starting to boil....

A nice view of the sun, AKA the true culprit behind all this mess!!


Ahh- it was nice of the people who designed Parliament Square
to put the WHOLE THING in the freezing shade..

The Krishnas rock out on the corner of Parliament Square.

As a caveat, I wish to say I'm really not turning into some sort of climate nut. I'm still willing to drive, to wear clothes produced in third-world countries, and to celebrate most things American.. but I'm no longer willing to put this issue aside. I've learned too much about it, and I've come to the conclusion that if the world is to mature past the current crisis it faces, the responsibility lies with each of us to make whatever difference we may. If you have any questions/ comments/ concerns, please feel free to email me or leave a comment.

London Updates

Rosebery Kebab. These guys are up till 4 AM on the weekends feeding
us drunk and hungry college students. We love them. Their spicy sauce
is KILLER..

Ahh, London weather. So unpredictable, except that you are always, always, always cold. Sunny in the morning, raining in the afternoon, but always cold. Biting cold. Cold that we poor Southern Californians simply don't understand.

I feel like shaking my fist at the sky: WHY? I mean.. c'mon. It's SUNNY but it's 2 degrees Celsius out!! Grrrrr...

I feel kinda like I'm stepping off a ski lift every time I step outside.. if only there was snow. Speaking of which, it's supposed to snow tomorrow.. how random is that? Snow in London, again.

As for life at LSE, hectic, but incredibly interesting. This week is AIDS week. Cool speakers from Zimbabwe, and students passing out flavored condoms on Houghton Street (LSE's main drag).

Classes are running along smoothly- we come to the end of the term dragging our feet, reluctant to read, brains stuffed with information. I think some of us are wondering why we did this to ourselves.

On a lighter note (no pun intended), I've joined an a capella group, and we'll be singing (hopefully) in LSE's Timeless; a school-wide performance that goes off in January in front of well over a thousand people. Should be fun- we're singing Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours".. I'm the bass. Hoorah, ladies and gentlement.

In the last couple of weeks life has been relatively repetitive. There WAS an awesome breakdancing dance off between yours truly and one of the other philosophy students (Mark) at The Big Chill last weekend.. no pictures to speak of yet.. only the stuff of legends. Suffice to say, Mark is a much better dancer. Nobody was harmed during the dancing though.. that was a plus. There was a lot of spilling afterwards-- I'm not sure why but slightly inebriated philosophers aren't the best at holding onto their drinks. I think one of us soaked the DJ with a bottle of champagne (yes, you know who you are, and NOW you're on the blog.. Muahahahaah).

Otherwise, a few random pictures of life in London, and ahh yes. This Saturday yours truly is heading into Central London to join a March on Parlaiment for Climate Change. Apparently Britain has already adopted some rather rigorous climate change legislation, but it's never bad to harass the government a little more when given the chance. I believe this will be the next topic. To all who take the time to read this, thanks for bearing with me (indeed, for putting up with my rambling). I promise substance the next time around ;)

Cheers,
T

Rough Trade: The Raddest Store in London
A lot of up and coming artists/ new music here.
Situated (of course) in the raddest part of town:
Brick Lane (Hey that's the place where I got my bike!)

House Party at Bovens'!!
Jordi Gives the Camera an Evil Smirk, while Professor Bovens
(the raddest philosopher I know) looks on.

An interesting Side Note: Every weekday the Hare Krishnas give out
FREE VEGETARIAN FOOD to the students from this little cart here.
The food is actually really good- The Krishnas don't try to preach, except
for a small poster about the benefits of vegetarianism.
Students will wait in line for 30 minutes for this food.. even in the rain.

Professor McGuinness's Sobering Lecture on the Real and Dire Situation that is
Climate Change.
More on this to follow.

Here's To Being Chill

Ahh, the final two weeks of the term. The stock market comes to mind: barely-controlled chaos. Tired students file into classes, and sit, silent and mossy, rock-like, as the teachers try to get them to converse about Hume, rights, the ethical associations of civilization.

We don't care. Our eyes are turned inward; fantasies of plane-flights, warm weather, a day or two without the need to read..

I was getting rather caught up in this- still have a 12 page essay on climate change to start. Everything came to a head last night.. all the packing to do, the arrangements to be made, the items to buy, the papers to print out, the essay to write.. at some point, my world exploded, and I found myself, ironically, in a very calm, relaxed state.

I'm not sure what it is-- kind of an 'eye of the hurricane' syndrome. I watch the people zap around me, worried about this and that, and I feel.. oddly light.

I'm blaming it on yoga. Not that I've been practicing a lot lately- but I have been teaching a bi-weekly class here at Rosebery (have about 10 regular students), and while the job doesn't pay much, it is infinitely valuable to me in that it forces me to relax.. chill out.. share the energy I have with others.

In the midst of chaos, I'm actually somewhat happy :) I can only wish the same feeling for all my friends, family, associates, acquaintances, and everybody else-- life is too short to get all caught up in the season. Take a moment. Breathe-- long, deep breaths. Don't worry about where you'll be tomorrow- odds are tomorrow will probably be somewhat unexpectedly different anyways.

Take joy in friendship. Hug your loved ones. Do what you have to do but do it because you CHOOSE to do it, not because you have to. If you have too much to do, don't worry- do what you can.

I have the uncomfortable feeling I sound like a hallmark card. I suppose I am-- in class today I wore a funny hat. I woke up late, slept in, and even though there are so many things to do, I feel oddly resigned; relaxed.

I can only wish the same feeling for others-- or perhaps something even better :)

Hope you all are doing well, staying safe, keeping healthy.

Namaste.