Collide-a-scape

That’s the headline on this dispatch describing a “mortuary crisis” in  Zimbabwe. It’s the latest humanitarian tragedy to hit a country in agonizing free fall.

For panarchy?  It’s a complex theory about how complex we’ve made the world, after several long cycles of change and adaptation –and why human civilization may now be on the cusp of social and ecological collapse.

Here’s the money quote, from ecologist Buzz Holling–which he said before the worldwide economic meltdown:

This is a moment of great volatility and instability in the world system. We need urgently to do what we can to avoid deep collapse. We also need to figure out how to exploit the opportunity provided by crisis and collapse when they occur, because some kind of systemic breakdown is now almost certain.

The theory of panarchy is the subject of Thomas-Homer Dixon’s new book, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization. The current issue of WorldWatch is excerpting a chapter, which contains an interesting discussion with Holling, who believes the world is reaching “a stage of vulnerability that could trigger a rare and major ‘pulse’ of social transformation.” Dixon argues that

Humankind has experienced only three or four such pulses during its entire evolution, including the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to agricultural settlement, the industrial revolution, and the recent global communications revolution. Today another pulse is about to begin.

In case anyone missed, it,  Andrew Revkin’s post on the possible unintended effects of a renewable energy breakthrough is must reading. Revkin’s provocative thought experiment has inspired a lively conversation on his essential blog, dotearth, with over 100 comments.

Reader reactions have run the gamut, but the one that caught my eye was this one, which suggested that a “world of infinite energy resources…would enable the human species to be decoupled from its home planet.” It then

might be possible for us to leave earth all together and either terra-form other planets or live Death-Star-style in a massive space station. In this respect, there is no known material limit to the universe. Because of this, we could effectively leave the nest altogether and maintain earth as a kind of primitive life reserve. I consider this the ultimate kind of environmental preservation.

Yeah, that’s a thought: let’s colonize the universe.

Being in the Republican minority has it’s perks, especially if you’re Marc Morano, the communications director for Republican Senator and climate skeptic dead-ender James Inhofe.

You get to spend oodles of time debating the merits of climate science with journalists on blogs, as Morano did most of yesterday over here.  What impresses me most is not Morano’s rhetoric, but how he was able summon his evidence at will, as many of his comments were issued robo-call style, often within one minute of each other.

By 6pm, my colleague Tom Yulsman, who runs CEJournal, where the debate took place, was so exhausted that he thew up the white flag and closed the comments section.

Not long after I posted this about a Utah state legislative resolution to keep hydraulic fracturing unregulated, I got wind of a similar effort underway in Wyoming.

What a coincidence:  the separate bills are moving through their respective chambers today.

Could this be the stirrings of another sagebrush rebellion?  Last week, Mike Noel, a Utah state legislator (R-Knab), offered to lead the charge.

This aint the 1970s, though. The demographics and electoral politics of the West are much different today (except in Utah, perhaps). So we’ll have to wait and see if there is any appetite for Son of Sagebrush: the sequel.

I heard back from Odyssey this morning about this charge, which they said is “untrue.” Then they politely directed me to their long list of publications here and here.

The Utah state legislature is getting odder by the day. Recently, it passed a  bill that prohibited wildlife from being injected with birth control substances–except in special circumstances and then only by authorized personnel. I explained the reason here.

Today,  a senate committee of the state legislature  is taking up consideration of a bill that

urges Congress to preserve the exemption for hydraulic fracturing in the Safe Drinking Water Act and to refrain from passing legislation that would remove the hydraulic fracturing exemption.

Now why would Utah pols want to do that, just as evidence is emerging that ground water in the West is being contaminated by mysterious drilling fluids used widely by energy companies?

Is Odyssey Marine Exploration, the Florida-based company that discovered a 18th century British warship, talk a good archaeological game? I argued here that the gains to science trump the company’s treasure-seeking motive.   But do they do any archaeology? A reader emails me:

The complaint archaeologists have against Odyssey’s plundering the oceans is that they refuse to document and scientifically record what they find.

Is this really true? I’m going to contact their headquarters tomorrow to find out.

It makes total sense. We like to throw moldy bread at squawking pigeons and ducks, and place birdfeeders in our backyards. So maybe it’s not so asinine that some people have taken to feeding wild coyotes.

This story in the Rocky Mountain News explains why that’s not a good idea.  Neither is decorating your yard like Sanford and Son, or letting Taffy the wonder dog prance around outside at dawn and dusk.

We are supposed to be the smarter species, right? Happy Darwin Day.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the horrible fires in Australia can be partly attributed to global warming. It’s a legitimate storyline, which many in the media have picked up on.

By and large, these stories have been measured, with the appropriate caveats. (See here and here for two good examples.)

The brutal heat wave that preceded the fires (which Tom Yulsman graphically lays out here), combined with an epic drought, and high winds, set the stage for a tragic disaster that may have been initially caused by arsonists.

Still, in this insightful analysis published on the Forest History Society’s blog, environmental historian Stephen Pyne cautions against fixating on global warming or arson as the agents of destruction:

Both are reasons, and both are also potential misdirections.  Global warming might magnify outbreaks, but it means a change in degree, not in kind; and its effects must still be absorbed by the combustible cover.  Arson can put fire in the worst place at the worst time, but its power depends on ignition’s capacity to spread and on flame to destroy susceptible buildings.

Australia, says Pyne, knows this well. The country “developed many key concepts of fire ecology and models of bushfire behavior.  It pioneered landscape-scale prescribed burning as a method of bushfire management.”

In recent years, however, this knowledge has not been put into practice. Australia, Pyne writes,

seems to be abandoning its historic solutions for precisely the kind of telegenic suppression operations and political theater that have failed elsewhere.  Even when controlled burning is accepted “in principle,” there always seems a reason not to burn in this place or at this time.  The burning gets outsourced to lightning, accident, and arson.

Or global warming.