Prison Profiteering

Encapsulated in the idea that walls provide security is the concept of fear. Fear is one of our four base reflexes, along with reflexes governing reproduction, violence, and foraging, it is the second half of the "fight or flee" instinct. Fear is a constant, society is sick with it, the fear that some day the walls will not withstand the rising tide of alienated rabble. One type of barrier is the division between the "haves" and the "have-nots." In the case of homeless people, and the prison populace, or the ghetto, the projects, and the trailer park, the wall is an income gap. It is as tangibly geographical as a line in the sand, and as impassable as a moat full of crocodiles. As long as certain areas are designated as "poor" they will serve as sites for dangerous activities: polluting industries and landfills crowd these minimum security prisons for the disenfranchised lower class. Actual prisons are common to poverty stricken areas as well, in fact they are welcomed., since the jobs are comparatively safer than elsewhere in the vicinity and city traffic stimulates local business.
     The necessity of confining somebody who has little or nothing to loose is as essential to the system as the complementary need to direct the movements and actions of the well-to-do. Just as long as there are clearly designated destitute people, there will be methods for quarantining them. So called "respectable folks"  is an unbelievably ironic term, because the bourgeoisie are fleeced like sheep, whereas the poor are as wolves, feared..
     A tourist trap is a model for any city, with some destination(s) as bait in it's center and impoverished regions around the industrial zones. To travel along the perimeter is difficult, as suburbs are disorganized. and public transportation wanting. Middle class families, the holders of fairly lucrative jobs like medical specialist or construction foreman dwell in these outlands, wasting fuel in the rat maze on their daily commute to and from work. In less wealthy nations the wall that separates the city from the countryside is a slum, either way, it is difficult to navigate through. All in all the whole matrix acts like a prison, a debtors prison...
    

Why Green Cities?

                Cities are a cancer on the Earth. Like cancer they grow exponentially.  From space, satellite images show that this growth pattern strongly resembles that of cancer. They also create carcinogenic pollution. Our mother is on her deathbed, and is in dire need of a cure in this eleventh hour. The majority of the world’s population is urban, a population that recently toped seven billion (Gale).  The demand for resources to support the inner city inhabitants is rapidly outpacing the supply. Furthermore, excessive carbon emissions from energy production, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation, (all to supply these tumor like growths) is wreaking havoc on the all-important climate. Record temperatures, acidified seas and rain, bleached reefs, devastating tornados in unprecedented numbers, loss of pack ice and tundra, extinctions on a comparable scale to the “Great Dying” of the Cenozoic period: these problems and more stem from the runaway greenhouse gas effect of copious carbon dioxide and methane by-products of globalized supply chain infrastructures for the metropolitan plague.

At this point, the carbon emissions, urban heat-sink (heat trapped by blacktop and concrete), and deforestation have already begun a potentially terminal avalanche of destruction. As temperatures continue to climb, rainfall drops off. While there is more evaporated water in the atmosphere, which can create increased snowfall, precipitation overall, especially in the summer and tropics, is decreased. The ensuing droughts provoke photorespiration: a defensive reaction in plant life, which begin to close their stomata in order to conserve water. This leads to a buildup of oxygen in the leaves, and plants so affected switch from consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, to consuming oxygen, and producing carbon dioxide. Obviously the widespread switch to photorespiration would be a devastating turn of events. When other factors, such as the diminished capacity of the oceans and soil to absorb carbon are considered, the overall diagnosis is grim indeed. At the recent climate conference in Durban, Africa, Keith Allott, Head of Climate Change at WWF-UK, said: "Governments have salvaged a path forward for negotiations, but we must be under no illusion - the outcome of Durban leaves us with the prospect of being legally bound to a world of 4C warming” (Beament). The efforts of global leaders to address this issue have ineffectual, at best, with this latest attempt in Durban ending with little actually accomplished after most of the representatives backed out. Following the failures in Kyoto and Copenhagen it becomes clear that an international agreement is unlikely. However, more than a thousand mayors of US cities have signed onto the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, committing their cities to abide by the terms of Kyoto (Gale).

The remedy for city spawned climate change will have to be very holistic. Technology for better, more fuel efficient, means of transportation exists, for both metropolitan buses and railways, and for personal vehicles. The problem of logistics must be stressed and local commerce encouraged over imports that waste vast amounts of energy, at high environmental cost. Green-houses and roof-top gardens can provide an ample supply of produce. Fisheries can ensure safe and easy seafood. Free-range livestock can organically fertilize fields if rotated, and pose no risk of adverse health effects. Room for pastures or fisheries in proximity to the cities supersedes suburbs in importance, and should be zoned as farmland instead of lawns and pools. Renewable energy can be harnessed from wind and ocean currents as long as they still follow historic patterns. Also the sun, biomass, and geothermal power is available everywhere. The closer the source is, the less the loss is.

It is said that these changes will require too much capital, and that money could be better spent on projects that will generate more profits for the wealthy. The cheap solution to the inevitable food, housing, and energy shortages of a population explosion is nuclear war. Monitor those free radicals.

Suc-ceed

When you break it down phonetically the word is so much more graphic. The derivation is from the feudal days of monarchies: the heir of the hierarchy inherited power from his paternal parent. The process of succession after the ruler's death persists in both the modern word, and it's connotations, which are masculine and elitist, as well as resigned to death. In other words the concept of success is a very static one, entirely based off of a medieval caste system. The metaphorical "white picket fence" is a screaming reference to fiefdoms, where serfs were tied to their land, even the word landlord persists, unchanged. I don't even want to get into the eugenic implications, but it cannot be avoided when you consider the fact that the power structure was hereditary in Europe, where all the ruling families or "blue bloods" were white. All in all I find the notion of success as taught by our societies institutions to be sadly chauvinistic, not to mention defeatist. While the aspiration may serve some function as temporary motivation for acquiring whatever level of success, whatever level of the caste system you have the sense of entitlement to attain from a young age, once "successful" the drive dies. Education serves as an indoctrination to ensure that the next generation of serfs are only capable of preforming their required duties, and that they are content to toil away their lives in maintaining the social status they used to dream of having. How hard to conceive of fantasies beyond the confines of the "American" dream. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Metropolis: Cancer of Society

From an ecological viewpoint, any urban region is a desert that harbors a hoard of ravenous javalinas. Ones that have air conditioning, S.U.V.s, and huge carbon hoof prints. Cities take and take from the world's resources without providing anything of environmental merit, but a habitat for pigeons, rats, cockroaches, and maybe an alligator or two. As the urban heatsink and emmisions raise average temperatures and the ungodly amount of daily waste is dumped in the oceans, planet Earth is losing her fight against these malignant tumors. There must be a drastic change; the planet needs treatment.
Two options come to mind. #1 make towns and cities greener by breaking from globalism and the concentric ring urban design so that the surrounding regions aren't confined to funneling all of their land's resources toward high population densities for profits, at terrible cost to ecosystems. Urban farming with multistory greenhouses has been atempted in London, and is being planed in Hong Kong. Peoples Park in  Oakland is an example of a functioning community garden.#2 Bomb them off the map. Hydrogen fusion bombs are very destructive, and much less radioactive than a nuclear power plant core meltdown. If the cities so delt with were across seas the fallout would be of negligable consequince. Closer targets could be eliminated with mustard gas or anthrax. Any long term impacts could be waited out in a bunker stocked with T.V. dinners, guns, and porn.