Nowtopian

Frontiers Unfettered by Any Frowning Fortress: Nowtopian Buffalo

Buffalo, an animal and a city...

Spent two and a half days in Buffalo, a place I’d never been before”¦ Always wondered why it was named Buffalo since that beast probably never roamed anywhere near here. Locals say it’s derived from a French expression Beau L’eau, with an “˜f’ somehow inserted into it by long lost accents”¦ the beautiful water of course would refer to the Niagara River meeting Lake Erie here, along with a variety of smaller waterways. Pouring through the Niagara Gorge, a famously beautiful natural rock formation, the waters then plunge over Niagara Falls a short way north of here.

I heard a lot about the local water from a woman I met last night, Katie B., who hails from Athens, Georgia. She works locally with a Riverwatcher nonprofit, helping local citizens monitor water quality in wetlands, creeks, and rivers hereabouts. She loves her job which she was anxious to tell me after my public appearance on a panel last night, where I gave my usual rant against useless, stupid work. It was at a place called “Sugar City,” mostly known as a punk rock venue. (Oddly it seemed like a sweet local art gallery much more than a punk venue, but I think that’s because they had to shut down for 3 months due to hostile neighbors, and are now reinventing themselves as a good neighbor.) It’s a great spot in one of Buffalo’s thriving districts, Allentown, full of historic architecture, a hopping bar scene at night, and a fine used bookshop, Rust Belt Books. The bookstore owner, Christie, told me in a brief conversation about the city, “Buffalo is not depressed. Buffalo is unimpressed!”

Rust Belt Books in Allentown district of Buffalo, NY.

Cool rusting bike racks in front of Rust Belt Books.

Allentown District sign, with its surprising invitation to anarchists to be residents!

True enough, it’s a town full of secret energies and a palpable sense of an interesting future embedded in a depopulated, often devastated landscape. This is after all the home of Love Canal and countless other lesser known toxic catastrophes (probably some still ahead). Buffalo was one of the most important cities in the U.S. back in the 19th century, first when the Erie Canal arrived in the early part of that century, and then during the long booms and busts of industrialization that followed. At its earliest moments around 1820 there was even a communal society that built a thriving village called Harmony on forested land purchased from the Seneca Indians, in an area now absorbed by the city of Buffalo.

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Future Shorelines

Been way too busy with the book project (Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-1978) and a fascinating oral history project (“Ecology Emerges”) that has had me doing sixteen interviews in the past few weeks… sorry for my poor blog here, which has lost out in the tussle for my time… anyway, wah wah wah.

These are now available from me via my personal website... perfect for hanging on your bike as the oceans rise!

I’m planning to be in Copenhagen at the Climate Conference (not inside, but outside) in December, and along with a whole lot of other folks on the planet, I’m thinking more and more about the dire facts piling up… We’ll be riding this Saturday in San Francisco along one possible future shoreline, as part of the thousands of actions across the country clamoring for meaningful policy change on Climate Change. We’re hosting a Talk next Wednesday at CounterPULSE on “Climate Change/Climate Justice” and I hope a lot of folks will come out for it.

I’ve been expecting to see a major rise in ocean levels in my life time, in spite of the commonly cited figures of a meter rise by 2100 or even less. I think it’s all going a lot faster than anyone can measure, and the synergistic reactions among different factors, like melting ice sheets, thawing arctic tundra, etc., are coalescing into a perfect storm. Inundation of coastal areas seems like it could happen rather suddenly, like within 10-20 years. Here’s a piece I came upon today that drives it home with a bit more science:

And what of that lodestone, global sea level? This happens to be a very interesting question, because ocean levels are set to rise dramatically. According to UCLA scientists, the last time carbon dioxide levels were as high as they are today was 15 million years ago. At that time, the sea level was between 20 and 36 metres higher (75 to 120 feet), there was no permanent ice cap in the arctic, and very little ice in Antarctica or Greenland. That is where we are headed. The only remaining question is, How long will it take us to get there?

The authors of the Hadley Centre report predict a rise of just 1.4 metres by 2100. The IPCC in their 2007 4th Assessment Report predicted something like half a metre by 2100 based on a combination of the fattening of the oceanic envelope caused by thermal expansion and the increased runoff from glaciers and minor ice sheets. None of this sounds particularly catastrophic just yet, but then it turns out that these predictions are not based on anything particularly relevant: the British Antarctic Survey, in 2008, made it clear that the IPCC had not included the source of nearly 100% of the world’s potential ice melt ““ the major ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland ““ simply because they had little idea of how the ice caps would behave in a heating world:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the issue by suggesting that current knowledge is inadequate to estimate confidently the contribution that ice sheets might make to sea-level rise in coming centuries. While technology makes sea-level rise easier to observe, and we can predict some contributions to future sea-level rise with increasing certainty, we cannot yet fully predict the ice sheets’ contribution. There is thus a risk that sea-level rise could be higher than the (incomplete) estimates provided by the IPCC.

Thus, the most peer-reviewed piece of climate science ever written turns out to be completely inadequate when it comes to estimating the level of disruption associated with a very important aspect of climate change: the rising seas. If Antarctica contains 90% of the world’s land ice (sea ice, like that in the Arctic, does not directly cause the oceans to rise when it melts) and Greenland contains most of the rest, then what’s going to happen when they start to melt with a vengeance, and when are they going to start melting? Official science is mute on the subject.

Our logo for Saturday's ride.

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New Generation Meets Iconic Bicycle Messenger

I’m happy to welcome my media naranja, Adriana Camarena, as a guest blogger. This is her first but I hope not last contribution to The Nowtopian!

When I think of bicycles in Mexico beautiful images of workers spring to mind. Delivery men flutter on the streets on two or three wheels pollinating the neighborhoods with water, bread, telegrams, mail, newspapers, flowers, pharmacy errands, tacos de canasta, and other daily comforts. The factory workers also arrive on their bicycles. The films of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema — often in the same category as cult Mexican films — nurtured the national imagination with an abundance of characters on bicycle. Pedro Infante -““ a legendary Mexican singer and actor of that era — in a biographical film about his life is depicted as a humble bicycle mechanic in his beginnings. Among my favorite cast of characters on bicycle is the knife sharpener. He blows a sharp whistle as he rides through the street, telling his clients that he is available. When I lived in Mexico City, many times I called out from my top window “I’ll be right out!” El Afilador de Cuchillos places his back wheel on a stand. He sits and peddles backwards on his bike to whirl the sharpening stone; sparks fly to give knives a new edge. For more than a century, such workers have peddled the streets of Mexico. Even in the most populated cities of Mexico, the flowers, the bread, the water, the news, the mail, still arrive on bicycle.

Knife sharpening on the streets of Mexico with a bicycle-based machine.

knife-sharpener-cu-DSC00637

On Saturday, September 19th 2009, Chris and I wandered the pedestrian zones of the historical colonial center of Guadalajara during the lunch hour, here known as la hora de la comida or la hora de la siesta. La hora lasts about two hours. We spent the hour eating pistachio and prune ice paletas, while window shopping, buying a wooden spatula on the street, and people watching; I even tried on a sparkly QuinceaÃ±era crown made of silver and crystals because it was rather remarkable. In other words, we were making time before the afternoon conferences of the second day of the Second Annual National Cycling Conference. (I say making time, because while English speakers “kill time” whenever they have a surplus of time on their hand before an event, we Spanish speakers say we are haciendo tiempo: making time.)

While we wander around, making time, I see an elder gentleman with his bicycle in front of a pharmacy. I shamelessly ask him “Disculpe, seÃ±or, are you a messenger?” Messengers are on my mind. Later that afternoon, we will attend a conference delivered by a panel of bike messengers.

Well, this is my own purchase, right now”, he says pointing to a bag in the crate on the back of his bike, “But, I am a messenger in everyday life. “¦ Once upon a time, I delivered telegrams.”

Adriana and Don Francisco Gonzalez Estrada with his 1957 bicycle.

We have a conversation, and part ways. Chris and I retrace our steps to the Museo de la Ciudad to attend the Bicycle Messenger Talk headed by bike messenger Jimmy Lazima from Los Angeles, California, one young bike messenger from Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, and fixie bike aficionados from Guadalajara. Jimmy engages the audience with stories about riding and working through gridlocked Los Angeles streets. The Mexican messenger talks about his on-going and painstaking efforts to set-up business, create a clientele basis, and promote ecological culture in Ciudad Guzman without yet being able to make a living from his efforts.

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