Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Summer Festivals – can they survive climate change?
Filed under: Environment, Finance and Economics | Tags: Festivals, Festivals and climate change, Leeds Festival
Leave a comment Late summer bank holiday weekend, 2024. The Leeds and Reading festivals are scheduled as normal. But normal does not really exist any more. It used to be possible to put on such a festival in August with some confidence that, whilst it may rain, festival goers will at worst be wet. But no longer.
On 23 August 2024, the Leeds part of the festival reported that it had “lost” two stages. The BBC stage and the Chevron stage were withdrawn from the festival programme. The Aux stage was reopened. Wind was a particular problem making camping really challenging (as if camping is not challenging enough already, see above after the storm).
The cause? English weather? Well, weather, probably. In the autumn and winter we had an unprecedented number of so-called named storms – storms that will cause disruption, however defined. This bank holiday weekend “welcomed” (Storm) Lilian to the Leeds festival. Named storms have only been with us since 2015. But I do not recall life-threatening situations at British music festivals in the past from storms (I cannot find evidence – though famously the Woodstock Festival in 1969 offered up a dangerous electrical storm on its third day). The cause, according to the UK Met Office is the behaviour of the Jet Stream – column of fast-moving air that usually sits to the North of the UK in the summer but has shifted frequently in recent years to sit directly above the UK, and particularly the North West of England and Scotland. The consequence is that the particularly moist air above the Atlantic is directed to the UK and is deposited over the country when it meets the land. To make matters worse – and to illustrate the interconnectedness of our weather and climate – unusual weather patterns over North America (sinking cold air) have given additional energy to the Jet Stream.
OK, let us talk about climate change. As expected, there is some reluctance on the part of climate scientist and meteorologists to ascribe causality – a warming planet equals more storms. Named storms are an irrelevance – they are merely a media mechanism to raise awareness that citizens need to be careful in what they do in the face of a named storm. For example, don’t go to outdoor music festivals or hike in the mountains. If you can avoid it. There are data relating to rainfall (certainly increasing) and wind leading to tidal surges and flooding. The UK’s positioning in the north west of Europe leaves the land mass open to exposure to Atlantic weather and the effects of small changes in the positioning of the Jet Stream.
The business implications are immense. Festival organisers (and owners of the brands), now need to consider more carefully how to host such events safely. It is not clear yet, in the Leeds case this year, as to why two stages were withdrawn completely. Were the stages irreparably damaged? Were they merely discovered to be unsafe after the wind (in which case a rethink is needed on stage design)? And what about insurance? What if festivals become uninsurable?
Burtynsky – Extraction/Abstraction (Saatchi Gallery, April 2024)
Filed under: Environment, Photography | Tags: Burtynsky, Saatchi Gallery
Leave a comment I am not a little impressed by photographers that work at scale. I have been the subject of one such photographer, Spencer Tunick, in London. His subjects were always without clothes. It was late April 2003. There were thousands of us. It was quite an experience. And for the exhibitionists amongst us, it was possible to visit the adjacent Saatchi Gallery (then in the old County Hall building) before re-robing.
Then there is the wife-and-husband couple of Hilla and Bernd Becher who spent their careers taking black and white photographs of industrial sites and machinery such as mines, steel plants, water towers, etc. I suppose what really impressed me was the fact that they hit on recording something that I, as a child, thought would be there forever and they, not being children, knew they would not. Hence I regret not taking more photographs of buses, trains and shops in my home town when I was growing up. But there you go.
And then there is American photographer, Edward Burtynsky. His father worked in a steel plant. Burtynsky himself funded his studies by working in that very same plant for a sufficiently long time for him to latch on to the idea that such plants may provide a subject for his photographic career. As it turned out, his most influential work is not the plant itself, rather the extraction of the raw materials that ended up in those plants – iron ore, copper, coal, etc. For that reason, this exhibition was a must (subject to my busy schedule).
I’ve now been and the images are extraordinary. They are presented in very large format and, mostly, as aerial shots, look nothing like what they depict. They come across as abstract art – hence the title of the exhibition. On the whole, however, they are not art, they are a record of environmental destruction. There are a few exceptions where the extraordinary patterns actually record profuse wildlife habits such as the landscape around Cadiz in Southern Spain (above left).
Like most artists Burtynsky has a team working for him. The drone technology he uses relies on an expert to make them fit-for-purpose. For example, high altitude photography creates a challenge to get sufficient lift to get the drone in the air (there is a part of the upstairs gallery that reveal his methods, equipment and projects).
By far the most interesting galleries show the scale of the impacts on the landscape of mining – whether it be the scars of the opencast mines themselves, or the spoil heaps or tailing ponds. With the possible exception of coal, the ores and minerals are not neatly packaged by nature for extraction. They require significant refining, often with toxic chemicals that tend to be dispersed into the natural environment. At scale.
So, anyone with a diamond may well have contributed to the large deposits of “waste” displaced to find diamonds. The picture (above right) is of the Wesselton Diamond Mine, Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa (2018). If readers look closely a conveyor belt can be seen on which the tailings are transferred to the pond.
A metal that we hear so much about for the necessary electrification of our world is lithium. There are a number of extraction methods for lithium; however, one mine in the Atacama Desert in Chile (left) pumps up a liquid from beneath a salt flat into ponds. The ponds are exposed to the sun, the liquid evaporates and the lithium carbonate is then harvested, before being processed. And then there’s agriculture.
Do readers ever go to the supermarket and see that broccoli or some other vegetable is from Spain and think, “ah, that’s fine”? Well, maybe it is not fine. Burtynsky shows the true scale of such operations and their impact on the environment (right). The greenhouses on the Almeria Peninsular harvest between 2.5 and 3.5 million tons of fruits and vegetables annually, including “out-of-season”. These greenhouses require huge amounts of precious water along with a heavy use of chemicals. Climate change is making the water situation more difficult.
I could go on. I have one last thought. Scale is a problem for us as humans. Burtynsky has taken some revealing pictures of people at work (left) of particular alarm is a picture showing people working in a chicken processing factory in China (everyone wears pink, left). The scale here is twofold really. First, the people. The thought of 8/10 hours per day chopping up chickens is hard to comprehend. We try to present work as something that offers meaning to humans and the opportunity to work with others and exchange ideas, thoughts and stories. There is not much of that going on in this factory. And then there is the chickens. The sheer scale of this one factory tells of the huge number of chickens slaughtered daily to keep these people employed (and presumably fed).
This is an exhibition at scale. Bigger than I thought it would be. It took about 21/2 hours to get through and that included a 30 minute film at scale (worth the visit, for sure). It is thought provoking. There’s a big chalk board to write one’s thoughts – mostly about human stupidity. And then there is a shop in which visitors can contribute to the further exhaustion of finite resources. I had a poster in my hand. And then I put it down and left.
Nothing in this exhibition is human scale. Arguably the Bechers’ work in the 1960s was a little more human scale. Spencer Tunick’s work is by definition human scale.
If readers want to know more about extraction, I suggest Ed Conway’s book, The Material World.
Banksy’s artworks
Filed under: Art, Environment, Politics | Tags: art and climate, Banksy, Islington
Leave a comment Gio Iozzi asks, why does it take an artist to expose the assault on our urban trees? This in light of Banksy’s latest addition to his portfolio recently found in Finsbury Park, London. It is an interesting work, and slightly different from his usual work, as it requires a significant prop. A tree. The tree is special because it has been “pollarded” – severely pruned in normal parlance. It has been pollarded because, according to the Council (the owners of the land on which the tree stands) it was diseased. It is a cherry tree, and they do not, it seems, respond well to radical pruning. There is also a question of whether diseased trees need to be pruned or felled. Many of us are a little diseased, but we do not lob off all of our limbs to deal with it. Or at least not as the first option.
It seems that Banksy, whoever he is, saw the opportunity to provide this sad tree with leaves by painting them – or spray painting them – onto an adjacent side wall. Viewed from one angle, the tree looks healthy and with full plumage. And like all Banksy artwork, there’s a message.
Art is there for the receiver to interpret, even if the artist provides the artwork with their own meaning. So we take liberties – rightly – with interpretations. So let us interpret this widely. This is a dual statement about the state of our urban trees and about climate change. Urban trees are under threat, just at a the time when we need them most. Our cities are getting hotter. Trees provide shade, for sure. But they also cool the air. Even diseased ones. So much urban landscape is devoid of trees. Devoid of ways of cooling and, increasingly, draining.
More broadly the onslaught against the planet’s forest ecosystems is relentless. The cutting and burning of the Amazon has slowed, but not stopped. Forests elsewhere in Indonesia and Africa are also in retreat. In Brazil particularly to provide land and feed for cattle. So not only do we lose carbon-capturing trees, we also increase our emissions through bovines, notorious methane producers. All because we want to eat large quantities of beef.
In response to Iozzi’s opening question about artists, I respond simply by saying, it is what artists do. It is why they are an essential part of the democratic process. Throughout history artists (not all, for sure) have made statements about society, power and morals. Degenerate art in Nazi Germany was degenerate for a reason. Artists have been subtle sometimes in their representations. Messages that eluded the censors because they were unable adequately to understand what they were actually looking at. Even Picasso, not known for his political statements, produced his masterpiece, Guernica, to say something to the perpetrators of the destruction of the Spanish town in 1937. Famously when asked by a Nazi Officer at his Paris studio whether he had “done” this painting, his reply was “no, you did this”.
To add value to the picture and to the metaphor, Islington Council put a protective fence around the work, but within 48 hours it had been defaced. I am pretty sure that Banksky was smiling. I rest my case.
Original picture source: https://twitter.com/IslingtonBC/status/1769722470355828821/photo/1
The Garrick Club
The Guardian’s recent exposé on the Garrick Club in London is troubling. It took a data breach for us to know who the club’s members are.
Not only is this a “gentlemen’s” club, it is also an elite club where state/government policies are discussed and made. As a man I do not have the resources to join and even if I did, I think it is unlikely that existing members would nominate me. I could at least try; but if I was female, it would be harder despite David Pannick KC’s best efforts to justify its existence. There is, argues Pannick, nothing in the language that bars women – even the word “gentleman” seemingly has a defence. Here is Pannick quoted in the Guardian article: “[t]he term ‘gentlemanly’ is plainly being used here in the sense of the meaning ‘[o]f a pastime, behaviour or thing’ that is ‘of high quality; excellent’”. I’m not about to buy that. It is not surprising that lawyers can offer such a defence as we discover that a large tranche of senior [read influential] figures in the profession are members. Many environmental campaigners, for example, have found themselves judged by them. And that raises bigger questions about the profession itself.
Picture: By Cambridge Law Faculty – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxB59qEi6i0, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104993515
Fossil fascism
Filed under: Environment | Tags: Andreas Malm, climate change, climate change ad nationalism, Climate change denial, climate scepticism, Fossil Capital
Comments (1) 
When I came to write my textbook on business strategy in the age of climate change, it was not until I had read Andreas Malm’s book, Fossil Capital that I felt I had a proper foundation. Malm’s thesis was relatively simple: the mechanisation underpinning the industrial revolution did not need to be a fossil-driven revolution. Water would have done (I understand why that is contested). But, the capital owners saw a number of benefits (to them) of steam power (fuelled by coal). Many of the early mills in the North of England and Scotland required the owners not only to build factories, but also villages for employees (one example, Saltaire, West Yorkshire (right). Villages with schools, sports, places of worship, etc. These were expensive, they also promoted labour power. The steam engine was not geographically hidebound. The fuel could come to the factory rather than the other way around. More expensive, maybe, but the plutocrats no longer needed to provide housing and labour power was neutralised.
This realisation enabled me to frame my book in terms of the continued burning of fossil fuels as a choice. It did not need to be that way in the past, and it does not need to be that way in the future. We can have a zero carbon economy. We choose not to.
Many writers and thinkers may have stopped there, but Malm is driven. He followed that up with a book about climate and Covid and, controversially, enlightened us on how to blow up a pipeline. In between all of that, Malm, along with the Zetkin Collective, wrote an extraordinary book entitled White Skin, Black Fuel about the relationship between climate change denial/scepticism and fascism. It is like his earlier book, Fossil Capital rather sprawling. Readers need to persevere, it is easy to say that it is too difficult. Malm takes us through time and space locating as he does the origins of fascism, its contemporary manifestations (Europe, North America and South America) and, crucially, why fascism and climate scepticism/denialism are aligned.
Consider this (which I had not done before), why has no far-right party ever endorsed renewable energy? Indeed, why do far-right parties commit to dismantling renewable energy installations, particularly wind? Now this is only a small part of the book, but for me it is the most intriguing and the one that augments my own understanding of the challenges ahead – maybe not absolutely for my generation, but certainly for anyone under 50.
Malm’s plausible hypothesis rests on an understanding of ultra-nationalism (he takes close to 260 pages to tell us what that is). Let me stick with nationalism, the sense that the homeland and its authentic peoples should be prioritised over so-called invaders, immigrants, alien faiths and, basically, anyone with a dark skin. Not only prioritised, but cleansed. We see it in today’s politics. Fossil fuels, argues Malm, fit a nationalist narrative. The is “our” oil. It is independent and we use it for our own development and wellbeing. Of course, oil usually belongs to oil majors that trade it in global markets, so that argument is flawed, but it is surprisingly potent when it comes to electioneering/power grabbing. The sun and the wind cannot be appropriated in the same way even though it provides energy security that no fossil fuel can match (in terms of availability and price). I hear readers now asking, what about countries that do not have a store of fossil fuels in their territory, why are nationalists in those countries so opposed to renewables?
Malm is clear. Colonialism and whiteness! Particularly rich whiteness. For it is the rich off the back of colonial exploitation that have so much to lose from decarbonisation. Their assets are sunk – literally – in the ground. Their lifestyles are high carbon. They fly so much more than most of us, and often in their own planes. Carbon is so much a part of who they are that to decarbonise is to lose their very identity. And what is more, decarbonisation (for them, a Marxist plot) is to enforce an unfair (to them) equality. How else do we explain a global carbon budget that is shared between countries representing some element of fairness? For example, the USA and Europe (particularly the UK) have a tendency to deny historic emissions, and cannot countenance coming down to the level of developing countries. How fair is that?
Malm argues that such an approach by the right (not even the far-right) can be traced back to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the loss of a tangible enemy – communism – that imposed equality in places where it was the dominant ideology. (Arguably not, as the Soviet Leadership and acolytes seemed not to be too constrained in their consumption.) To prove the point, Earth Day (22 April) is the the birthday of Lenin – no coincidence. So, those proclaiming a climate crisis and the need for action became the new targets of the right. Denialism and then a rejection of mitigation (cutting carbon emissions) in favour of a West-friendly adaptation (the West/North is better able to cope with temperatures of 2, 3 and even 6 degrees of warming so much better than other less-developed regions). Malm is thinking about people like Jordan Peterson and William S Lind. The attacks on Greta Thunberg feature in the analysis, too. The picture of her wearing an antifascist “Allstars” t-shirt, for critics, was proof that she was both Antifa and in the pocket of George Soros.
There are some other interesting elements to this approach. Denialists do not present counter evidence (largely because there is none), rather they present their narrative over and over again. The more it is repeated, the more it is liked and re-tweeted, the truer it becomes. Repetition is key. Our media tend to allow them to repeat their lies at will and without challenge. With this in mind, argues Malm, if one can lie about climate change, anything can be successfully lied about. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the lies carry more currency. That is partly because white people, increasingly turning their territories into fortresses, will survive it longer than people of colour in vulnerable countries.
This is not the end of the book at all. The race discussion occupies the subsequent chapters. But just like Fossil Capital, perseverance pays off. The reader is rewarded with insights (you do not have to agree totally with them). Malm has plenty of critics. By goodness, though, he does a lot of heavy lifting for us.
One Gallery, climate messages
Filed under: Art, Environment | Tags: David Hockney, LS Lowry, Paul Nash
Leave a comment I recently went to Tate Britain in London. The gallery is home to many of my “friends” – a strange idea, but I always relax when I see the images in the flesh, as it were. In recent times, however, I have visited galleries with very different intentions. I want to know how – and if – art delivers a climate message, either by chronicling environmental decline or in championing its salvation. Both are true, of course.
On this visit, March 2023, I set myself the challenge of cataloguing one gallery (one gallery and bit, to be honest) for its climate message. Here is what I found.
Of course, LS Lowry has a story to tell. I always remember Brian and Michael’s song, Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs (no women for some reason). I even bought that record. But revisiting Industrial Landscape (left) I noticed other things in the picture not seen before (that is the beauty of art, there is always something new in the familiar to see. There are not too many people in this image – a few in front of the houses and along the central street leading to the factories. I see the trains on the viaduct and the barges on the aqueduct (if I see it correctly). What was new was the colour of the chimney emissions. They are not just sooty, they are toxic red, particularly those in the background. I wonder!
Slightly earlier (1937) the work of Peter László Peri. Peri does not paint, he uses stone to represent urban life. His rush hour incorporates one of my favourite images, that of the double-decker London bus. The image is effectively carved from a block of stone coloured in a rudimentary way; for example, copper red and earth brown. It is orderly and very English. On the one hand it looks like a depiction of the daily drudge of travel to-and-from work. But Peri sought to represent positively industrial society, so perhaps the woman climbing to the top deck of the bus represents progressive views about woman and work? There is also the cyclist taking on the diesel bus and wider traffic.
It is perhaps not surprising that Peri chose stone – he had been a apprenticed brick layer as well as a student of architecture in his birth city of Budapest, Hungary. Moreover, he was associated with the Constructivist movement dedicated to representing modern industrial society formed in Germany in 1915.
Peri arrived in England in 1933 – he was not in any way popular with the Nazis being both Jewish and a Communist.
Cliffe Rowe’s picture, Street Scene (left) depicts a pram (presumably for the health benefit of the baby inside) outside a terraced house. There is a woman sat of the step knitting (oddly revealing her underwear) and a man in shorts reading a newspaper. How typical this was, I do not know, but it seems to be a scene of aspiration. There is street lighting. Net curtains. In 1930, Rowe travelled to the Soviet Union and stayed for 18 months. He was impressed with the Soviets’ use of art to support the working class struggle; though he may have been taken in simply by propaganda. That said, on his return to England he became a founder member of the Artists’ International Association (along with Peri) which used art to oppose fascism.
Predating both of these artists was Winnifred Knights. Her picture The Deluge (1920, right) has a very contemporary interpretation. Men and woman either flee or resist rising water in a representation of the Biblical flood in Genesis. Clearly a contemporary interpretation – or translation – is climate change and rising sea levels. Not an act of God, but an act of humanity against itself (and all other inhabitants of the planet).
To see what we forfeit in the industrialisation of economies, we can draw on some of the more conservative images of the period. Frederick Cayley Robinson’s Pastoral (left) is a good example from the gallery. It depicts a family and a flock of sheep by the waterside. A child holds a lamb as a symbol of rebirth. It is rural idyll in the post WWI world. It is rural, but not idyllic. There is only a windmill as a concession to technology – enough to enable this simple life. Of course, it is not where we ended up.
My penultimate choice is work by probably my favourite artist, Paul Nash. Nash was greatly affected by his experience of WWI. On my visit for the first time I saw Landscape at Iden (1929). His geometric shapes “blend” with the landscape, and in this case with felled trees. The felled trees are interpreted to mean lost souls in the war. The snake on the fence is easy to miss. It can represent evil, for sure (it was a serpent that tempted Eve to eat the apple), but pharmacies use the symbol of the serpent to represent healing. In Nash’s work it could go either or both ways, I sense. Whatever they are meant to represent, war, through history, has impacted on the natural environment. Despoiling it with armaments, clearings and extraction. I have not entirely convinced myself that this picture is translatable, but his pictures always leave me feeling understood.
I’m going to take a liberty with my next choice – reinterpreting a living artist, David Hockney. His picture The Bigger Splash (1967) is a representation of the water’s response to a dive into a pool. I have always seen Hockney’s California period as a reflection of unreality (Hockney admits his splash is not realistic) – the good life that comes from industrial society that is endured by others, particularly in the industrial Eastern USA. I feel vindicated inasmuch as when Hockney returned to the UK he bought a house close to where I was brought up in East Yorkshire. Those images are most certainly about the land, its plants and change.
Summer 2022: the €9 ticket holiday – 2
Filed under: Environment, International, Museums, Race, Railways, Travel | Tags: art and climate, Berlin, Dresden, Elblᶏg
Leave a comment Art
Holidays often feature art – why would they not? In this journey we’ve been to Berlin, Elblᶏg and Dresden. The latter two are provincial cities with their own take on what should be shown and what not. And how.
Elblᶏg surprised me. The art is everywhere in the public realm. Seemingly in 1965 a number of artists were commissioned to make art and place it just about everywhere in the city. Examples of the work are below, but what it does to a place is interesting. In some cities the art would be defaced, damaged or vandalised. I saw none of this. 1965 – that’s 57 years! I assume that the art reflects the town and its people. Most of the artwork is made of steel, yet compelling. Maybe no one notices it, but it is there.
In Dresden, art has a very different role. Dresden celebrates its kings or “electors” The Residenz – effectively the palace of the elector August the Strong (apocryphally he can snap a horse shoe by his brute strength). He was strong, but probably not in this sense. His art collection – or treasures – illustrate just what constituted his ego. There is no question that most of the objects in the galleries are exquisite. I simply cannot imagine how most of them were decorated. Some of them were linked to what was probably 17th Century high technology such as clocks. The example on the left is a roll-ball clock. The ball is rock crystal and it rolls down the tower. It takes exactly one minute. Inside, seemingly, another ball is raised “emporgehoben” (whatever that is supposed to mean in reality) which moves on the minute hand. Saturn then strikes a bell, and twice a day the musicians raised their wind instruments and an organ played a melody. It is an extraordinary piece; but somehow I prefer time keeping to be a little simpler, at least in its reporting.
The jewels are one thing, the ivory is quite another. I have to say I’ve never seen so much carved ivory in one place. It is quite sickening. The carving is amazing, however. Take this frigate (right). I do not know how many elephants died for this piece, but everything apart from one feature is obscene. It dates from 1620 and bears the signature of Jacob Zeller. Of course the frigate is supported by the carved figure of Neptune. The sails are not ivory, nor the strings. But there 50 or so small human figures climbing those ropes. They are extraordinary.
There is an ivory clock to rival the jewelled example above. But quite the most sickening is to carve an elephant from ivory (left). There’s a receipt for its purchase in 1731. It is actually four perfume bottles hidden the castle turrets. What gets me particularly is the failure of the gallery to say anything about the exploitation of nature. These are simply curated as exquisite objects of great value.
It was not only elephants from the natural world that were exploited. Here is something I absolutely did not know, coral was a material for artists and treasures in this period. The bizarre figure on the right is seemingly a drinking vessel in the shape of the nymph Daphne who metamorphosised into a tree (coral) to escape Apollo’s “harassment”. It is not just one piece, there’s lots of it in this gallery. Not a word about how the coral was gathered and where from.
But there’s more. There are some deeply troubling figures of black people. I am not going to upload the photos of a sedan chair occupied by an ivory Venus and carried by “Hottentots”. Venus is attributed to court sculptor Balthasar Permoser (1738 or so) and the figures to court jeweller Gottfried Döring.
I left this gallery feeling troubled and dissatisfied with the curation. They must do better.
The Albertinum is another gallery in the historic centre of Dresden. There is some interesting stuff here. Sculpture is not usually my thing, but it has a number of examples of art that was deemed by the Nazis as “degenerate”. For example, Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s “Kneeling Woman” (1911, left) which is quite extraordinary, but obviously too extraordinary for the Nazis. Then oddly there is a piece by Barbara Hepworth, Ascending form Gloria, 1958). Odder still is a decorated wooden crate ascribed to Jean-Michel Basquiat (I am probably wrongly describing it). There are a couple of contrasting pieces by Tony Cragg – a wooden abstract sculpture and a cube made up of compressed rectangular objects ranging from lever-arch files to old VHS video players.
The upper floors are full of fine art. Again, keeping to the theme of degeneracy, climate and perhaps art that captures some of the potential consequences of unchecked warming, I start with Ernst Ludwig Kirschner’s Street Scene with Hairdresser Salon (Straβenbild vor dem Friseurladen, 1926). Kirschner was part of a group of artists known as the Brücke Group. Like many art movements the members were all against “old establishment forces” and following artistic rules. The bright colouring is an example. So shocking were the paintings that they could not be purchased by the City. Eventually, they became accepted and acceptable, only to find them labelled as degenerate in 1937.
What was not degenerate was Hermann Carmiencke’s Holsteiner Mühe (1836, Holstein Mill). I choose this because water was a natural source of sustainable motive power. The steam engine was arguably introduced to break the collective power of labour and because the water resource ultimately could not be shared by the direct owners of capital.
Finally from the Albertinum I selected Wilhelm Lachnit’s Der Tod von Dresden (1945, The Death of Dresden). It is, of course, a reflection on the human suffering arising from the second-world war. The climate crisis will bring its own deprivations and a fight for resources. We will see these times again, I fear.
A quick word on Dresden. The historic centre was essentially rebuilt from 1985. Many of the historic buildings were left as shells and rebuilt using plans and authentic materials. It was an exceptional achievement and good on the eye; the Semper Opera House, for example (above left). But this is not a city preparing for rising temperatures. Whilst there are green spaces, this central area is totally devoid of natural shade. The new centre around the railway station is largely concrete-based retail. Could be anywhere.
Meanwhile in Berlin, we visited the Nationalgalerie. I was taken by the work of Adolph Menzel. He obviously earned his money painting portraits of rich men, but he also had much to say about contemporary issues of the time – the mid 19th century. He is, by definition, a contemporary of Turner. And Menzel’s picture Die Berlin-Potsdamer Eisenbahn (1847) has some similarity to Turner’s Rain Steam and Speed which dates from 1844.
Menzel also painted a number of factory scenes – Flax Spinners, dangerous women’s work. The only safety equipment is clogs on their feet.
Contrast this image with that of his painting Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Groβen in Sanssouci (1850-52). This depicts Frederick the Great playing the flute with a small ensemble and aristocratic audience. It takes place in a grand setting. At night with candles galore as illumination (expensive, if nothing else). It is incongruous. Those flax spinners will not be consuming high art at this hour, for sure.
The industrial revolution and the ruling (plutocratic) elite play their distinct roles in the journey to the current climate crisis. Images of trees being cut down are visual reminders of how the natural environment is the source of all exploitable resources. Constant Troyon’s painting Holzfäller (1865, Woodcutter) is a great illustration of this. Though I am sure this is not the actual meaning of the painting. Trees were, of course, felled well before the arrival of the industrial revolution for shelter, housing and agriculture. What is significant is how the deployment of technology turned it into a truly industrial process. Watch how trees are harvested in modern times as though they are bowling pins, to understand how the pace of destruction has increased.
There is one other theme here, to share. And that is “otherness”. Mihály Munkácsy’s 1873 painting Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Camp, right) expresses it well and nicely contrasts with Menzel’s Woodcutter (I note and am aware that both Zigeuner and Gypsy are pejorative terms. The Nazis, we remember, committed genocide against this group. Hence the word Zigeunerlager is particularly troubling. The correct term is Der Roma). That very same landscape lost to the axe is potentially a place of refuge for nomadic people. These are people who are seen as being rootless (and stateless), where in actual fact probably the opposite is true.
Book Review – Barnabas Calder, Architecture From Prehistory to Climate Emergency
Filed under: Art, Environment, History, Housing, Religion | Tags: architecture, Barnabas Calder
Leave a comment Regular readers will know that I have much regard for the work of Andreas Malm. His book Fossil Capital was influential in my thinking about how to reframe my teaching of business strategy at my university. It tells the story of our addiction to fossil fuels. It posits the idea that it did not need to be so; the addiction arose primarily from the owners of capital using technology to outflank organised labour on the one hand, and competitors on the other. Organised labour was quite powerful in the British mill towns of the 18/19 Centuries because of the static nature or source of motive power – flowing rivers. Steam, generated by burning coal and heating water was so much more flexible and, what’s more, the owners could be confident the government would intervene to crush organised labour when called on. But equally, water was a shared resource and the owners proved themselves to be unable to agree how to share it.
Calder has made me think again in his extraordinary book (right). Calder is a historian of architecture, but very particular kind. In every building he sees energy. In the prehistory it is in the food that provides the energy to build shelter. In later periods of human advancement – particularly in respect of agricultural efficiency and yields – excesses meant that labour could be siphoned off by kings and emperors to build the great vanity projects of history such as the pyramids, the Parthenon, etc. With the advent of fossil fuels, not only was more labour displaceable from the land, but the building materials themselves were innovated as well as construction techniques. That bundle of stored energy found in coal and oil liberated architects, builders and clients. Later they were aided and abetted by information technologies that were able to do the calculations that legions of humans could not realistically handle (Calder offers the example of the challenge to realise Jørn Oberg Utzon’s vision for the Sydney Opera House and the pioneering work of Ove Arup crunching the necessary numbers).
The first part of the book examines culture, energy and architecture interesting pairings. Greeks and Persians; Rome and the Song Dynasty – different places, different times. Though he also uses this technique for the 20th Century in comparing New York and Chicago (chapter 9 – good value even if one does not read the rest of the book – difficult to keep Donald Trump out of the mind, however). In all cases through history, powerful men are deliberately trying to outdo one another. Rightly, we are constantly reminded about infrastructure, bridges, water supply and sewerage.
What are some of the curiosities? I learned (always a good indicator of a worthwhile read) from prehistory, Dogon village houses (Mali, left) have low height forcing occupants to sit. This specifically prevents men from fighting one another. Uruk (in modern-day Iraq) is perhaps humanity’s first city. Not everyone worked the land and hence specialisms developed – bronze casting, currency and writing. The transformative agricultural technology was animal-drawn ploughs and, of course, irrigation. We are talking 5000 years ago. 2000 years ago, 172 men pulled crafted stones of 58 tonnes with a lone individual throwing water to keep down the friction. Though 200 tonnes was not unheard of as manageable by human strength – though the men needed to be fit and, crucially, well fed.
For the Parthenon, Calder tells us why the columns are not evenly spaced (of course, Doric order!), reveals that it bends upwards to the middle, there are other distortions too (entasis) and that these are a deliberate manifestation of intellectual debate and democracy prevalent in Athenian society.
I learned about opus incertum (random), Opus recitulatum (standard square bricks), opus latericium (like a brick wall – rectangular fired bricks that overlap, right). I did not know about Roman concrete and that the Pantheon’s dome is made of it and that it gets lighter as the dome extends so that the whole structure does not collapse. It is impressive, notes Calder, that it has survived 1900 years!
Not surprisingly, religious buildings feature highly in the prose. There is a chapter on mosques and some insights on the architecture of what is now Istanbul (the text is not limited to Istanbul, there is an extensive section on the Great Mosque of Damascus – the initiative of Caliph al-Walid I c705-15 and the mosque in Timbuktu c1320, the product of Mansa Musa’s great wealth as emperor of Mali). I have visited the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, as well as the near-adjacent Sultanahmet Mosque (also known as the Blue Mosque), a private enterprise that, on cost grounds, sourced materials much closer to home than the builders of its neighbour. For Christian buildings (notwithstanding the Hagia Sophia’s regular changes of denomination), Calder discusses the 13th Century cathedral in Bourges, so big that it breached the city walls and so tall it reached to what we would now identify as 10 storeys high. To the locals living in tiny dwellings shared with animals the internal cleanliness, order and light, Calder says, would have seemed astonishing. But Cathedral building was not immune to ego – the next one needed to be bigger: Notre Dame, Reims, Amiens and Beauvais (left) all bigger than the rest. Though there were limits, Beauvais repeatedly collapsed under its own weight.
Next on Calder’s list is the impact of plague on European civilisations. Bubonic plague devastated populations in the 5th and 6th centuries leading to reduced cultivation and construction. With no surplus, building returned to basics and bricks were no longer fired. The Black Death did wonders for pay rates and educational opportunities. There is room, too, for the Renaissance, the Vatican and the Reformation. These are gems for readers of this blog to explore without my help.
Into modern times, and into territory that is really Calder’s heartland, modernism and concrete. There is rightly an extensive review of the work and life of Le Corbusier (asa Edouard Jeanneret). His influences included Giacomo Matté-Trucco’s Lingotto factory (Fiat’s manufacturing plant in Turin with its roof racing track, right). Le Corbusier was quite a self-publicist, it seems like he sold more books about his architecture and the attendant vision for concrete, steel, glass and electricity), as he did design buildings. I certainly did not know how awful the buildings were to occupy. Concrete and glass enabled a very particular spacious and well-lit living and work spaces, but with no insulation and relatively poor heating, the houses had serious condensation problems. It is not surprising that one famous building – Villa Savoye – ended up as a barn after its occupant-family fled the Nazis. Nor was I aware that the beautiful Bauhaus building in Dessau was similarly afflicted by intense heat loss rendering it totally unsuitable for its use as a workshop. Le Corbusier is, however, celebrated for his Unitè d’Habitation in Marseille – a huge block of 337 flats with a row of shops half way up. It’s founding principles as a community with its roof garden for children is visionary and only possible because of new building materials and the fossil fuels that generate the energy to make cement from limestone and steel from iron ore (Calder gives us the figures to demonstrate their consumption). The Barbican in London was a later manifestation of this principle.
My own alma mater – the University of East Anglia – gets a mention for its Ziggurat-shaped student accommodation (which was my home for some of my university career) for its modular design and manufacture. Concrete remained in the 60s the building material of choice for the new inclusiveness captured in school and university buildings. It is true, the building I studied in was one continuous block of concrete. Magnificent it was, too.
And so to conclusions. Calder is clear, we need more renovation of failing properties. Demolition might be a viable business proposition using current measures, but the energy needed cannot be justified in a carbon-reducing world. Calder does not find too many exemplars. Even buildings like the Blomberg HQ in London falls far short of being sustainable. Calder introduces us to the Cork House in London. Built from cork as the name suggests. But its limitations are such that it cannot accommodate current and future needs for buildings.
On his own sustainability, Calder tells us early on that some of the buildings he writes about he has not actually visited, to do so would have been to make the carbon problem worse. This is a brave statement and one that sets a standard. Modern technology gives us unprecedented virtual access to so many cultural artefacts, sufficient to be a scholar and produce work of this quality. If your summer is short of reading, this is 20 GBPs well spent.
Book Review – Super Charge Me: Net Zero Faster by Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers
Filed under: Book reviews, Environment | Tags: book review, climate change, Super Charge Me
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If you have a spare evening, buy this book and join the conversation between two wonderful dinner guests, Eric Lonergan and and Corinne Sawers. That said, I’m not sure that you’d get a word in edgeways, even if you wanted to. I suggest just listening and learning.
In the first instance, the format spooked me. It genuinely is written as a dialogue. The two conversationalists flesh out their arguments – they do not challenge one another, rather they develop one another’s points – or invite further development: “go on…” says Sawers, to avoid a cliff hanger. Unless one is paying absolute attention, it is not clear who is speaking, such is the mutual expertise revealed in the exchanges. The book can be read in one sitting.
This is not, be rest assured, one of those “I’ve read this so that you do not have to” reviews. I have been known to write these. Readers are invited into a conversation that needs full engagement (my copy has plenty of page markers for future reference, top left). In addition, if we are in luck, the shelf life of this book will be short. If we, our governments, and the global community more widely, make the transition, the book will have served its purpose and become a cherished museum exhibit.
I’ve reviewed some other books – Alice Bell’s wonderful, Our Biggest Experiment, for example – that reveal how we got to where we are. What we could have done; how we could have avoided the precipice that humanity has now perched itself upon. Those perspectives inevitably lead to despair and inaction. Lonergan and Sawers are future-oriented. There is little dwelling on the past. They discuss a bright future: one that is fair and safe. Readers do not even have to have that much knowledge about climate change because a couple of to-the-point sentences – to paraphrase Douglas Adams – “avoid all that mucking about in hyperspace” and gets readers up to speed. There is no time to waste. It is just better to start using the language of Super Charge Me straight away: appropriately-named EPICs (extreme positive incentives for change) and Mini Musks (those intractable problems – aviation and cement, for example).
What are EPICs? They are extreme because moderate does not change behaviour. They are positive because the behaviour change cuts carbon emissions. They incentivise (never think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives, says Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s long-standing business partner, p172). It is all about change. In particular, change that reduces carbon emissions.
But what are they in reality? I have been led astray, it seems. It has been known for me to advocate carbon taxes. My dirty vehicle is taxed – the vehicle licensing cost is high for that reason and it costs more for my on-street parking than for cleaner vehicles. But I still have it. The incentive to ditch is not sufficiently extreme. I’ve learnt recently, that keeping it is potentially better for the environment than buying a new electric vehicle, thanks to a recent BBC show, Sliced Bread. But this is the wrong thinking. I should not be replacing it, I should be using a substitute. I do not because there is no incentive provided by the relative price of that substitute. For example, to visit my family tomorrow using the train would cost me £153. Even with the high price of fuel, my dirty vehicle could do it for half that cost, and I could take two people and unlimited luggage (it is a van) with me. The substitute, if I read the authors right, needs the EPIC treatment by Government. It is their job to fix the relative price and provide the incentive to switch. More generally, it may need investment in infrastructure to do it (more trains/capacity), a change in work practices allowing slower and shared commutes or fewer and, ultimately, a change in the norms of behaviour – actually it is a bit passé to drive a dirty white van rather than take the train. What, no photovoltaics on your roof?! Etc.
These are obviously EPICs for individuals, but there are EPICs for states. EPICs are responsible for the collapse in the cost of solar/photovoltaics and wind power. My new favourites that are going straight into my curriculum are captured in the Green Bretton Woods and Green Trading Agreements. The institutions of the Bretton Woods post-war agreement include the IMF and the World Bank. In the context of the transition, Lonergan cheekily says that “I am not sure that the World Bank is up to the task” (p144), but credits the designers of the post-war economic system with bestowing upon the IMF a “magic power” that was apparently leveraged in the banking crisis of 2008 and more recently in the global response to Covid-19. This power is manifested in a “special drawing right” (SDR). Readers can discover the magic for themselves, but I would entirely concur with Lonergan that the designers of the Bretton Woods institutions covered all bases insightfully and provided utility well into the future.
Thanks also to the conversation, I now also know about Export Credit Agencies (they’d somehow passed me by). These agencies mitigate credit risk for banks lending to low-income countries. The authors argue that they can be repurposed towards carbon-reducing investments. They have served the fossil-fuel industry well in the past and can serve transition economies well, too, into the future.
The book also provides an strong argument for countering the “stranded assets” challenge. Stranded assets are long-lived assets that, if economies transition to net zero with haste, will lose their value and become redundant before their time. Shareholders will lose money. It is true, they will, but it is not really an argument against stranding them if it makes the difference between a liveable and non-liveable planet. Rather, the losers will be an energy elite who have made lots of money from the carbon economy in the past. Being an elite, they are so few in number and the impact overall is small. There is about $4 trillion locked up in fossil-related assets. A lot to us, but small in relation to overall assets in the global economy.
Be prepared to be (re)educated about how money is created, interest rates, why China is cleaner than it may seem, how to stop free-riding, leveraging state borrowing capability, why inflation is good (within reason), contingent carbon tax, sovereign wealth funds, border taxes and why activism is not futile. And trees.
An evening well spent. And no one noticed the food was vegan.
Easyjet and climate change
Regular readers know that I have been a major customer of easyJet over the years. So much so that they enrolled me on their frequent flyer special privileges list, known as Flight Club. However, when I could, I took the train; but this was rare, because most of my flights were for weekends only. I did not have two days to commit to travel and still work. I was not alone in this; at least ten of the people at the front of the boarding queue were weekend travellers with family in Munich. We were familiar to one another.
When Covid struck, easyJet took most of their aeroplanes out of service. The British Government compounded the whole thing by forbidding Britons from leaving the country unless they had a funeral to attend or, oddly, some property to sell!
When borders opened up again, easyJet’s flights remained few in number. But post-lockdown, many things had changed, not least my ability to work more flexibly and hence take the train more often. It takes about 11 hours or so to make the journey from London to Munich, connections permitting. I am hoping that I never need to fly this route again. The train is way superior.
But easyJet’s CEO, Johan Lundgren, is looking forward to services returning to pre-Covid levels for the summer. With the requirement for PCR and LTF tests being removed to enter the UK, mobility becomes easier and cheaper (both tests are expensive because they are only valid if undertaken by a private company/laboratory). The implications for aviation returning to pre-Covid levels are significant. Aviation contributes about 3.5 per cent of annual emissions of greenhouse gases. That does not sound much, but with a diminishing annual global carbon budget, that is 3.5 per cent the planet could do without.
Lundgren has an answer (of sorts). He claims that, whilst we are waiting for hydrogen-fuelled planes in 2035 (promised by Airbus), we can offset carbon. He does not tell us how the company is offsetting. Though the website states the following: “we offset all the carbon emissions from the fuel used, by supporting projects that protect against deforestation, plant trees or drive the uptake of renewable energy. These projects either avoid the creation of new carbon elsewhere, or directly remove carbon from the atmosphere.”
Offsetting is a flawed concept. The company knows it. Why else would they state on the website that it is not a long-term solution? The principle is that we calculate how much carbon dioxide is emitted per flight and then match that with something that absorbs or compensates that amount of carbon dioxide. Compensation takes the form of investing in solar and wind energy and projects that prevent deforestation.
The most obvious offset mechanism in the absorption category is provided by trees. Unfortunately, even if trees are planted to offset the emissions, many more trees are being destroyed to enable cash crops to be grown, particularly palm oil and soya, despite offsetting funded by airlines such as easyJet. The Amazon is under hourly attack sanctioned by the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro. He is not the only one.
I calculated that to offset the emission caused by 100 desktop computers, we need to plant nearly 5 football pitches of trees per year to absorb the carbon. Imagine that scaled up to airlines. Just see how many aeroplanes are in the air currently – February when volumes are low and even lower because of reduced demand and capacity (right).
Offsetting by planting trees is not credible. What about carbon capture? Well I, probably stupidly, pay to sequestrate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by a company called Climeworks. Climeworks charge US$1100 per tonne to sequestrate carbon dioxide. From my understanding, a round trip flight from London to New York (economy) generates 1.8 tonnes CO2. The price to sequestrate, therefore, becomes $1980 (€1680) on top of the ticket price. In the case of easyJet, a low-cost airline is unlikely ever to offset in this way, even if the capacity to do so existed.
There is another problem with Mr Lundgren’s approach. It is echoed by climate change deniers. And that is, there is a technological fix (hydrogen powered planes) just around the corner, or 2035. Even if easyJet can offset its emissions, I’m pretty sure the rest of the aviation industry will not. And the chances of Airbus delivering planes to all airlines by that date, is unlikely. Moreover, Airbus is working on planes that are ok for short haul, but not feasible for longer flights. There will remain a gaping hole in the carbon neutral aeroplane portfolio. We might ask, also, whether the airports will have in place the infrastructure to service these new planes. In addition, Boeing is going for biofuel and retrofitting existing planes. These are not carbon neutral and threaten to contribute to deforestation because the fuel needs land on which to grow.
There is one more dimension to Mr Lundgren’s arguments. While train travel is feasible – albeit with extended journey times – Mr Lundgren indicates that the European rail networks are insufficiently developed and have capacity constraints. Unlike with airlines, it is not possible just to commission a new aeroplane to meet demand. New trains and supporting infrastructure take time.
All of these airlines – but many more companies besides – are looking for business-as-usual when that is simply not possible if we are to stay within the planetary boundaries. The world has changed. It has heated up. Mr Lundgren, your planes have to stay on the ground.
easyJet plane Pic: Adrian Pingstone
Be informed 
