Thursday, December 31, 2009
augury
as adherents of the first church of dirt, it is our duty to attempt ritual purity at all times. it is understood that the perfection of this task is not plausible during the present Kali Yuga*, but the attempt is still required. we are, however, not alone in this task: consult the augur, who will take the auspices on your behalf and reveal occulted sources of bodily pollution to you. do not take for granted such mundane substances as the water you drink. even activities fundamental as interpersonal communication are demonstrated to originate vile filth. the balms and lotions that soften your skin also profane the temple of your body with foul contaminants. success is not guaranteed, but vigilance will be rewarded.
*"Kali Yuga" as used here refers to the toxic environment we currently inhabit, not to the 432,000 years beginning on February 18, 3102 BCE. apologies for any confusion.
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Monday, December 28, 2009
service
what follows is an untimely public service announcement:
folks, don't hyperventilate before you dive into some water. you're liable to give yourself some hypocapnia followed by hypoxia followed by syncope followed by you drown and you're dead. in vernacular, that's a shallow water blackout we're trying to avoid. seriously, don't drown.
if you're wondering what this has to do with dirt, well, I'll tell you when you're older.
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Wednesday, December 16, 2009
false prophets
the United Nations Environment Programme recently issued a press release about a report by UNEP's International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management called Assessing Biofuels. the report largely concerns the climate impacts of various biofuels but also covers impacts on water quality and quantity and biodiversity.
I haven't finished reading the full report just yet (the press release is rather more concise than the whole report, but if that's still too long for you, this article gives a shorter summary), but I believe it boils down to this: biofuels aren't so great as folks seem to think.
clearing and draining tropical peat forests to plant oil palms (Elaeis oleifera and E. guineensis) is the worst practice the report mentions, saying it creates 2000% more greenhouse gases than using fossil energy would. clearing any land for fuel crops is obviously a pretty stupid idea (this is being done, by the way, and at an alarming rate, in Indonesia, Brazil, and elsewhere). the other option for growing fuel crops is to use existing farmland, thereby displacing food crops. also probably not a good idea, given our planet's rapidly increasing human population and that population's rapidly increasing appetite for land-intensive animal foods.
the report points out a number of other problems resulting from production of biofuels that have not been evaluated as extensively as greenhouse gas emissions. these include acidification and eutrophication of water, toxicity potential, smog creation, ozone depletion, abiotic resource depletion, and impacts on biodiversity. many of these are linked to agricultural practices used to grow fuel crops.
agricultural and industrial wastes and residues are also examined as possible feedstocks for biofuel operations. these options fare better from a greenhouse gas perspective, but they are also not without negative consequences.
the picture I get from this report isn't so much about biofuels, though, as it is about folks. affluent folks the world over are slowly becoming aware that their consumption has many extremely negative consequences. instead of changing their way of life in any substantive way, however, these folks are seeking technological fixes. this is unfortunate. switching the fuel used to power always-accelerating and rampantly destructive economies will not solve our problems. it will exacerbate existing problems and create new problems. dirt, along with the life it supports, will suffer.
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Wednesday, December 09, 2009
evil
you are most likely familiar with the phrase "money is the root of all evil". it's from the Christian bible. specifically the First Epistle to Timothy, chapter six, verse ten:
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
that's the King James Version of the Christian bible, in case you're curious.
![7-4Time[1].jpg](/ptblog/uploads/7-4Time%5B1%5D.jpg "Le Corbusier. Jefferson. Montessori. Pizarro. Elizabeth. Tinkerbell. all of them high order Masons.")
whoever it was writing to Timothy (Paul? Polycarp? the pneuma?) seems to have gotten it backwards. the truncated malapropism most of us are familiar with is likewise mixed up: money, or the love of it, isn't the root of evil. rather, it seems to this church, evil is the root of money and greed. or maybe neither caused the other; they just happen to make a really good team.
how about some multimedia? this video is a decent primer on some major issues with the modern monetary system. it's a bit cutesy and of course a gross simplification, but a decent primer. pay special attention to the importance of exponential growth. if you've got the slightly longer attention span for it, there's also sort of a sequel (learn some Finnish while you watch!). if you're up for some, uh, light reading on the topic, The Lost Science of Money isn't a bad place to start. if your local library doesn't have it, they can almost certainly track a copy down and get it to you through an interlibrary loan.
those animations and book only address them briefly, but the negative social, health, and environmental consequences resulting inevitably from the modern money system are relatively well documented, if not well known or acknowledged. this church is concerned, first and foremost, with the impact of the prevailing money system on dirt. that impact is too vast to adequately elaborate here, so a very brief summary will have to do: in order to function, the money system requires an always increasing rate of consumption of finite resources. that consumption necessarily harms dirt and at an always increasing rate. for such a system to continue indefinitely is an impossibility. to believe otherwise is folly. to accept the truth but do nothing to change things is a selfishness that future generations will not and should not forgive.
but do not despair; there are alternatives. for today, we'll limit ourselves to discussion of the evil status quo, but take comfort in the knowledge that there are ways out. there are people who can help. whether you notice them or not, they are all around you.
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