Olafur Eliasson on the Iceland Glacier

Hi everyone. Olafur asked me to spread the word so here we go: 

On Sunday, we are mourning the passing of a glacier in a ceremony of commemoration unlike any in human history. The glacier, situated north-east of Reykjavik, was known as OK, and it has melted away and is no more. This is a tragic event, not just for my fellow Icelanders, but for the entire world. Something that seemed eternal has vanished for ever – as a result of human activity and inaction.  

A plaque at the site will mark this point in time. It sounds a warning, and is a call to arms, to every human being on this planet. Andri Snær Magnason, the Icelandic writer, conceived the inscription around a question to future generations: “We know what is happening and what needs to be done,” he wrote. “Only you know if we did it.”

The poignancy of this moment must not go to waste. On Monday, the prime ministers of the Nordic countries will gather in Iceland for their annual meeting, with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel as their guest. Climate change is on the agenda. There could hardly be a more appropriate moment to take the words on the plaque to heart. To show their recognition of the gravity of the situation, the Nordic countries must jointly declare a climate emergency.

The Nordic countries have powerful shared traditions and values – of democracy, social welfare, and culture. They are all striving to shape a strong environmental profile that combines not only giving up some goods and services that we have come to take for granted, but also enacting progressive policies that encourage investment in the green innovations that will contribute to our continued prosperity.

On this sad occasion, I call on the Nordic prime ministers – Mette Frederiksen (DK), Stefan Löfven (SE), Erna Solberg (NO), Katrín Jakobsdóttir (IS), Antti Rinne (FI), Aksel V. Johannesen (Faroe Islands), Kim Kielsen (Greenland), and Katrin Sjögren (Åland) – to act. They have a moral responsibility towards the future generations of the countries they represent. They also have an opportunity to forge a coalition that will show the leadership on climate change so badly needed in the world today.

Every glacier lost reflects our inaction. Every glacier saved will be a testament to the moral courage and sense of purpose that we can muster in the face of this emergency. One day, instead of mourning the loss of more glaciers, we must be able to stand tall in celebration of their survival.

Interview about Time Time Time, the opera I wrote with Jennifer Walshe

So good to hear Jennifer on this and MC Schmidt of Matmos:

We Are The Asteroid III in Houston

Do you know I've made this artwork with Justin Guariglia? And would you like it in your town/country? Let's do it! It was so prominent at the Extinction Rebellion in London and it's in the USA in Alaska Oklahoma New York Chicago and now in Houston, right in oil town...

It's a huge road sign that among other things says

WE ARE THE ASTEROID

Look at this lovely essay about it from the local press. Pictures!

My Verso Editor on Brexit

Well, not him directly, but my genius Verso editor Federico Campagna and I see totally eye to I on this: labour movements are planetary and international, and do not involve huddling into smaller and smaller insular fascist enclaves (duh). So he just posted this so here am I posting it. I commented: 

Who was it out of Corbyn Milne and I forget who said "we don't give a toss about Brexit" or something like that recently? And where in the manual aka the Communist Manifesto does it say "always listen to thugs to tell you what to do like it's an ersatz focus group like the ones you hated Blair for creating"? And I could've sworn that in the textbook aka Capital the sequence goes globalization--international unions--the next bit or something...

Hypothesis: There Is Only One Graviton

What do I know, I just read Nature Physics and quantum theory textbooks, but I so don't have a physics degree (unlike my grandfather).

But here's an idea. And it does have the merit of extreme simplicity and not needing to invent shit we can't observe because they're too tiny or multidimensional.

We can't find gravitons or make them work, not because of anything mysterious about dimensions, but because there's only one graviton. The singularity like "point" that expanded and became our universe is just a graviton and it has a really really really low frequency called the spacetime continuum.

Dark energy that is sucking the universe somewhere, and all those galaxies appearing to accelerate and maybe disappear in one sector of the sky: that's the one antigraviton, which by definition is what the universe isn't (and it thus "outside" of it). Our graviton is just being attracted towards the antigraviton somehow, hence the acceleration.

When they touch, a universe destroying-creating energy will be released and there will be another graviton–antigraviton pair.

Black holes are like the fractal nature of radio waves observed in Bell Labs: there are little versions of the wave inside the wave, so  your cell phone aerial needs to be crinkly, like maybe a Sierpinski carpet. The universe makes little versions of itself because that's the shape and activity of a graviton.

1500 Citations for The Ecological Thought

I'm very pleased to announce that my second big old ecology book has now been cited 1500 times in scholarly publications. That's getting close to Ecology without Nature, which was kind of the icebreaker (as it were--what a bad noun in ways). The Ecological Thought is definitely my most integrated book--it says two things really really smoothly. I originally wrote the whole thing in 3 pages then over the course of 8 weeks I added more and more sentences to those pages, until I had a book.

Spencer Glendon with We Are the Asteroid Pin

...laying down some intense stuff about ice and warming (if you don't know about the pin, it's based on the work I made with Justin Brice Guariglia, which featured big in the Extinction Rebellion):

Correct

On Monday evening, Trump held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania at which he ranted that his campaign had been spied on and that the federal investigators who had probed Russiagate had committed “treason.” In response, the crowd chanted, “Lock them up!” This was both absurd and dangerous. Yet it showed once again that Trump has a simple, if false, story to peddle: He’s the victim of a wide-ranging fraud orchestrated by a cabal of nefarious connivers who despise him and the country. Those who give a damn about protecting democracy, though, also have a simple story: Putin attacked an election to help Trump, and Trump actively went along with it—and lied to cover up the attack. Yet Trump’s political opposition—up against a bombardment of spin and deception—has not continuously presented this case clearly. It’s not too late to do so. They need to fight false spin with truthful drama—and, whatever happens on the obstruction and impeachment fronts, they ought to do it soon.   (Mother Jones)

Justin Wrote This Great Thing

...on our We Are the Asteroid, for Columbia.

French The Ecological Thought

It has a beautiful cover and it's just been published everywhere! Get thee to a bookstore!

Hyperobjects in iD

Thanks to the amazing Greta Thunberg, I get to be in iD for the first time. I guess there was a very good review of Hyperobjects in Vice by Ingrid Luquet-Gad, that's about it... And it's an honor to be in there because of Thunberg, she is obviously doing an amazing job and it's shameful that a child has to do it (this is child labor, think about it). iD formed some of my thoughts about where I was at in the later 80s, so it's very nice to be in it.

Croatian Dark Ecology

...so glad to have been translated into this language! Soon, and I guess it's somewhat close geographically speaking, comes  Romanian Hyperobjects (I think! Hard to keep up.)

Lovely French Article (because of French The Ecological Thought)

This Is Why I Really Respect AOC

Unlike Sanders, who comes off elitist in his purity, she's ready to help people without much money have nice things, now. This was exactly why I loved and still love Obamacare. Try for national health and fail nobly? Millions of people die. Make a bit of a compromise? Succeed and set it up for people to start demanding more healthcare as their right.

What about progressive hopes for a more fundamental health care overhaul? Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got it exactly right: While still calling for hearings on “Medicare for all,” she declared herself “happy to support any provision that strengthens the A.C.A. and plugs some of the gaps that we’re seeing.” (So far, Bernie Sanders has refused to support the plan. Let’s hope he walks that back.)  (Paul Krugman)

When I first arrived in America, from a country whose health care is way way more socialist than single payer, I was desperate for someone to say out loud how fucked it was that there was this "pre-existing conditions" thing. Like not even wealthy people who needed health insurance understood. Now they do. Good. Why? Obama. Yes. So now they're ready for Medicare for All or whatever. Respect to the Obamacare and for avoiding looking perfect and good and holy at the expense of real people's lives.

My friend's brother, a doctor, tried to charge me $250 for some sample antibiotics when I got sick. Coming from the UK, I was able to say fuck off really fast.

Which Body? Witchbody!

I really do think you would like to read this book called Witchbody that Sabrina Scott wrote, and drew, and drew-wrote, and wrote-drew...I wrote the foreword, then this amazing comic book publisher has made it be everywhere. The amazon page lets you read some of it:

We keep looking in the wrong place for happiness and fulfillment. We think it must be next week. Tomorrow. Maybe 5 minutes from now I'll be truly happy. Or maybe we have regret. Happiness was then, last month, when we were small. Can't have it now. Happiness couldn't be now, could it, because that would mean it's somewhere inside.

What do you call someone who shows you that you don't have to look elsewhere for magic?

You call them a witch. And you can be that. You can be a Witchbody. Which is also a which body? Things are full of gaps and breaks, they are full of illusion, suffused with moonlight. Things are kinked and queer, everything.

You can't ever tell exactly which witch body you are. What a relief! You get to explore the strangeness of that beautiful unique twist that is just exactly you, without an official you copyright stamp in sight.

You will want this book by your side, like a window on the moon. You've invited the witch to heal you. The truth is they never really left.

If you don't know about Sabrina and her righteous brilliance, you can start with this: 

[as soon as I get off this plane I will embed a nice video]