Stone. Immaculate.

Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon, Arizona                                www.shelleylake.com

BP Alternative Energy

Beginning in 1962, BP began its leading stance in environmental research at the corporate level. Its studies on air pollution and alternative energies helped facilitate the worldwide notion that the future of the energy industry was going to be heavily centered around these topics. In 1998, BP became the first energy company to set targets on its internal emissions control to a goal of 10%   below their 1990 levels by the year 2010. Two years later, to further its goal in becoming a leader in environmental awareness, it redesigned its 80 year old logo to represent a helios, which symbolizes energy in all its forms.

BP Alternative Energy invests in the fuel and power of the future. Their portfolio covers a wide range of new energy technologies, from large-scale commercial businesses in solar and wind power to first-in-class projects in promising new areas, such as advanced biofuels, energy conversion, and carbon capture. BP's role is to incubate and establish major growth businesses, helping to fulfill their purpose of meeting the world's demand for increasing volumes of secure, green and affordable energy. With investment running at $1.5 bn a year, their business demonstrates the scale of BP's commitment to the new energy sector.

One example of this commitment is the establishment of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI) at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This $500 million dollar research effort was formed under the direction of the new Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration, Steven Chu. The EBI will initially focus its research on biotechnology biofuels - that is, turning plants and plant materials, including corn, field waste, switchgrass and algae, into transportation fuels.

  

www.bp.com

www.energybiosciencesinstitute.org

         

The bow bends; the wood complains - Camus

We shall choose Ithaca, the faithful land, frugal and audacious thought, lucid action, the generosity of the man who understands. In the light, the earth, the earth remains our first and last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again renounce to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter food, the harsh wind off the sea, the ancient dawn forever renewed.

With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing. Not even that phantom Nietzsche who, for twelve years after his downfall, was continually invoked by the West as the ruined image of its loftiest knowledge and its nihilism; nor the prophet of justice without mercy who rests, by mistake, in the unbelievers' plot at Highgate Cemetery; nor the deified mummy of the man of action in his glass coffin; nor any part of what the intelligence and energy of Europe have ceaselessly furnished to the pride of a contemptible period. All may indeed live again, side by side with the martyrs of 1905, but on condition that they shall understand how they correct one another, and that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all. Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism.

At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent rages. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.

To Infinity and Beyond...

Space Debris Illustrated: The Problem in Pictures

The Forgiveness of the Commons

The world has changed significantly since Garret Hardin’s 1968 piece The Tragedy of the Commons. While the state of the commons has become more tragic in almost every measurable way, there is a rapidly growing movement across the planet to try and repair our badly damaged relationship with the natural world. This movement consists of millions of peoples from diverse backgrounds, cultures and all levels of economic development. It has provided a platform for shared purpose between competing and often adversarial actors. It is characterized by small daily gestures, local autonomous planning and grand, sophisticated designs. These actions in aggregate signal an aspirational synthesis with transformative potential.

Will the commons have the capacity to forgive apathy and avarice? We have driven roughshod over the topography - with not so much as a backwards glance - for so long that our tracks are long and deep.  We have spewed toxins into the atmosphere at alarming levels that desperately need to be stabilized and, over time, decreased. We have degraded the soils and plants with very little regard for future generations while putting our very sustenance at risk. We have fouled our oceans, the planet’s life support system, in an almost unspeakable manner.      

 Will we finally be able to understand that proper stewardship of the planet actually holds up extremely well to a cost benefit analysis? The crude and corrupt commodification of our natural resources has created negative equity that has left our sustainability balance sheet deeply in the red. Increased investment in enhanced efficiencies, sustainable building practices, and renewable energy sources and technologies provide the greatest potential for new growth markets. This type of integrated investment will pay significant economic and ecological dividends and will allow us to resume our intergenerational responsibility. The global economic contraction has already forced reduced consumption across the board. Although this appears to be a long overdue correction on a karmic level, it has and will create much hardship.  There will be many who suffer disproportionately and the rest of us should take heed. The best we can offer these people and ourselves is a dedication to working towards rebuilding in a sustainable manner that exemplifies our better human natures.

We may not be forgiven by the commons, but we can begin to forgive ourselves. The restorative power of nature should never be underestimated.    

 

 

GE Ecomagination SmartGrid

Click on the link below and take ten minutes to work your way through the SmartGrid section of GE's website. The digital hologram with augmented reality is remarkable. You should also take the time to navigate through the 3d interactive sections of the site. They provide very clear pictures of the way increased efficiencies through the implementation of existing technology can generate economic and ecological benefits in the near term. GE is currently working on a project with OG&E and the installation of SmartMeters. GE has also invested heavily in wind energy and they predict as much as 50 percent growth in their 2012 budget projections. There appears to be a window of opportunity for Oklahoma and its business entities to expand their relationship with GE as we continue to develop our wind capacity .   

http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/?c_id=googbrandsmartgrid#/landing_pageeco

Strands of Sustainability

Aspens, Silverton, Colorado

www.shelleylake.com

The City Council in Willoughby, Australia defines sustainability as, "A vision of achieving simultaneous human and ecosystem well-being, with a goal of 'parallel care and respect for the ecosystem and the people within'. Sustainability is made up of three strands - social, economic and ecological (or environmental)".

The term parallel care has particular resonance and iconographic potential. I am also drawn to the imagery of global strands of sustainability braided from an infinite number of individual fibers.