Findings: Installing Solar
Plus -- burning book festivals, Anthropocene art, community, presidential politics, and an economic history of "the long 20th century"
Monday findings, from Substack and elsewhere.
Anthropocene
It’s one thing to learn about, think about, worry about the Anthropocene and what it means for humanity. It’s another thing to grapple with how to change one’s own life day to day. Our society’s economic and cultural systems, age-old habits (“traditions”), and built environment make it difficult to find alternative paths. Thankfully, in many areas, alternatives are emerging, and they can be integrated into an otherwise normal life.
Installing Solar
Live Susty (Sustainably) is a wonderful, deep-dive project doing just that, covering all manner of adaptations you can do at home. I’m hoping my husband and I will be able to install solar soon. Living in New Mexico, we’ve got the ideal location for it. We plan to use Live Susty’s most recent guide to do our homework and make intelligent choices. The article gets right down to business.
With the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, the Federal government introduced Federal tax credits for installing solar panels on both residential and commercial buildings. Many states followed suit and introduced state tax credits or rebates as well. In response, solar panel providers and marketing companies have proliferated, eager to help consumers take advantage of these incentives.
Full disclosure: the author of Live Sust(ainabl)y is my brilliant — and fully committed-to-the-cause! — daughter, who lives in Chicago. She also has professional bona fides in the field of carbon reduction.
Wrong-Headed Activism
recently attended the Hay-on-Wye book festival, an appearance she almost canceled because climate activists were boycotting, based on one of the festival’s sponsors being involved in small investments in fossil fuels. Departing from her usual data science posts, Ritchie reflects on the ethics of shunning. Recommended.
Anthropocene Art
Feeling like something creative and artsy? It’s a thing recently to express the Anthropocene in art.
The Deep Roots of Plant Time | Edge Effects
This essay explores how plant time challenges human temporal conceptualizations through a discussion of Kapwani Kiwanga’s sculpture On Growth. It is part of the Troubling Time series, which interrogates environmental ideas, spaces, processes, and problems through the lens of temporality.
When we lived in New York, we walked the High Line a number of times. I don’t recall seeing this, but it’s a temporary installation. I had no idea there’s such an interesting backstory:
The metal and glass enclosure might be mistaken for a futuristic space pod but harkens back to a distinctly nineteenth-century invention: the Wardian case, a precursor of the terrarium. Initially conceived as a protective environment for growing ferns and other houseplants, the Wardian case was quickly adapted for the purposes of colonial botany and global plant transfers.
Or consider:
'Nadarra' by Barry Wark redefines architecture in the Anthropocene (stirworld.com)
Architect and designer Barry Wark speaks to STIR on blurring boundaries between nature and artifice with Nadarra at the Dubai Museum of the Future.
Seems a bit artsy-fartsy to me, but the 3D printing and consideration of circular materials makes it a worthwhile read. What I really want to see is a real-life prototype or model “town” under construction. There are some pretty crazy projects going on in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia is building The Line, a new city enclosed by mirrored walls : NPR.
Next up: Australia →
Creating in the Age of the Anthropocene — Art Guide Australia
Caught between hope, purpose, fatigue and anxiety, for many people it’s art—whether creating, viewing or experiencing—where one can explore the immensity, fragility and power of the natural world.
Featuring the work of five artists, from the article here is John Wolseley:
Sixty years ago, I started painting vital, flowing ecosystems in Europe, capturing habitats as they started to lose their diversity. I then emigrated to Australia, searching for healthier rivers, forests and deserts, which has taken me through vibrant living landscapes and, increasingly, into country cleared and impoverished.
How does an artist of land in the Anthropocene deal with this downward spiral? I have tried all manner of strategies to maintain my romantic conviction that artists and poets can be a voice for living earth—from quiet meditative celebrations to practical activism. I have always kept in mind a quote from John Ruskin’s essay, ‘All Great Art is Praise’. He wrote, “The art of man (sic) is the expression of his rational and disciplined delight in the forms and laws of the creation of which (s)he forms a part.” My work often attempts to reveal some underlying pattern by relating the details of a particular ecosystem to the greater system of the total cosmos.
Human delight. Art relates particular details to the greater cosmos.
Finally, this c/o my father in Florida, an active nonagenarian volunteer at the Naples Botanical Garden. He recently attended a show featuring climate art: Patterns of Change | Naples Botanical Garden (naplesgarden.org)
This juried exhibition features artworks created by members of The Batik Guild. The group of international artists created work that visualizes environmental changes experienced or observed in their personal lives; inspiring change and rousing hope in our communities.
The Naples Botanical Garden is a must-visit if you’re in south Florida. I like that they’re incorporating cultural offerings along with themed gardens, extensive educational programs, and family-friendly outdoor fun.
Other Findings
Community and collaboration are essential to both the learning endeavor and Anthropocene concerns. Last week’s featured book presented an elaborate scheme for building sustainable 5000-person communities — how they might work architecturally. Getting the social aspects right is a whole other challenge. Plenty of communities have been built online, especially since the pandemic.
is a master of the art of community and recently promoted this article, which riffs off the popular TV show Friends and is written by Substack’s resident utopian, .
How would you see your ideal community?
From
, this is not what you might think, given recent news — although it’s relevant. Here is a story of how Taiwan handles political crises as a young but successful democracy. At this point, America is no longer a beacon for the world (however contested the history of it being so in the past). It’s time we look beyond our borders to learn from those who may be doing it better.
Despite being a relatively young democracy, Taiwan managed to make it out of a scandal of government corruption, and potential repression with their democratic institutions not just intact, but stronger and more legitimate than before. The nation has many other aspects of its governance that contribute to the strength of its democracy but the way in which the government handled this specific controversy offers a good example of how to handle potentially polarizing situations in a democratic way. As the United States handles its own criminal investigation of a former President, we too should consider the importance of balancing the rule of law with the perception of legitimacy of our democratic institutions. Both are necessary for a democracy to function successfully. Prioritizing one over the other in either way may result in future unintended consequences that erode our democracy. It therefore behooves us to learn from states like Taiwan, which have successfully navigated similar challenges already.
What are your thoughts about this article about the Taiwan presidency and political parties? I’ve traveled in Asia many times in recent years, and I often think we have an awful lot to learn from this part of the world.
Finally, just for fun. My grandma, Goldie Belle Hyland Tiedt, was a Rosie the Riveter. (This is not her. She passed away in 2000.)
Books
I can’t quite get through the final chapters of this book by
but I recommend it nonetheless, especially for coverage of the “long 20th century” and its description of sustained economic growth beginning in the late 19th c. The book informed my recent attempt to capture some of the essential pro’s and cons of capitalism.From the human historical standpoint, sustained change may have started only as late as the concluding decades of the 19th century. So says Brad DeLong in his 2022 book Slouching Toward Utopia, which I’m currently reading.
Anyone trying to get a grip on the Anthropocene needs basic Economics 101. DeLong tells the story of the long 20th century as economic history, from 1870 through 2010. He employs a clever juxtaposition of Hayek and Polanyi as the theoretical geniuses telling two versions of the development story, a back and forth between sheer growth (Hayek) and an inevitable pushback against it when human rights, justice, and fairness are encroached upon a bit too much (Polanyi). As DeLong puts it, Hayek’s motto is, “The market giveth, the market taketh away; blessed be the name of the market.” Polanyi, by contrast, proclaims, “The market is made for man, not man for the market.” (See Souching ch. 3.)
Theoretically, deLong’s use of the Hayek-Polanyi juxtaposition as analytical framework is helpful, but I really do wonder if he isn’t conflating Polanyi with Progressivism, which is his preferred political-economic perspective — as a way to counter the late 20th century romance (neoliberal, think Reagan era) with Hayek.
Here’s another good review by
: What Brad DeLong Missed in His History (substack.com). His perspective is that the key theme of economic growth needs to be accompanied by a history of the technology that creates that growth.
My 2-cents on DeLong's SLOUCHING TOWARDS UTOPIA: https://open.substack.com/pub/sgreenleaf/p/slouching-towards-utopia-an-economic?r=2cw20&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
An encouragement to finish it?
Love the art feature!