Get Busy: A Climate of Urgent Dullness

In his latest Viridian Note, science fiction author, futurist and eco-design advocate Bruce Sterling writes about his attendance at the recent Clean Energy Venture Summit of businesses involved in green technology, which was held in Austin, Texas at the same time as the Large Cities Climate Summit in New York. While Texas may seem the anti-environmental state, thanks especially to Lord Bushemort, Austin claims the title of the nation's top city for clean technology development. (In an earlier note, Sterling rightly focused on the otherwise unheralded but very important buyout in Texas that stopped the construction of eight coal-fired electrical plants, in a sweeping deal partly negotiated by the Environmental Defense Fund. Coal produces more global heating pollution than any other fuel.)

Here's what Sterling said about the conference itself:

The Clean Energy Venture Summit was an intensely dull event. There was scarcely a "visionary" to be seen. On the contrary: suited, duely-diligent lawyers and bankers were throwing millions of dollars at engineers. That's the work of the world, folks. This is our third swing at this particular baseball: 1970s: eco-consciousness raising; 1990s, global political accords; 2010s, cybergreen ecotech. They gotta win, they must not fail, because otherwise, by the 2030s it's gonna be Khaki Green all the way: a future of All Katrina, all the time, for everybody.

And that's the truth. Somebody has to dig into the dull details of technologies, and carbon cap and trade, and so on. The problem is not to lose the vision, not to lose the point, in all that detail and the politics of it, which is what I'm afraid largely happened to the environmental movement. But the "work of the world" has to be done. At the moment, there is still a role for people like me, to thread the information into the Big Picture, to keep badgering and coming at it from different directions until it all sinks in. Changing the world one heart&mind at a time.

Because every day brings impetus to urgency. While the Bush Death Eaters try to stop next month's Group of Eight summit in Germany from advocating urgent talks on a new deal to fight global heating, the National Academy of Scientists released a report Monday saying that carbon dioxide emissions increased worldwide three times faster after 2000 than in the 1990s, putting them at the high end of a range of forecasts by an international climate change panel. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.