[wordup] Viridian Note 487: We Are Winning

[Adam Shand]

If you haven't read any of Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design stuff before
this is probably going to be confusing.  It is worth a browse of the web
site to see what he's been up to since the first note.

My favorite part of the note (though not the most important) is this bit.

> (((When the brown alternative begins disappearing
> wholesale, when that's simply unavailable and we have
> to live Corporate Green, then green will not be sexy.
> No, Green will just be what there is.  Brown could not
> be sustained.  So Brown died.  Green will work better
> eventually, but when we first get it, the alpha-
> rollout of a sustainable world... man, is that ever
> going to suck.  I own some eco-chic shoes.  I had to
> stop wearing them because they were rotting right off
> of my feet.  It'll be like that, okay? Only more so.
> We're not gonna win pretty; we are gonna win kinda
> ugly, frankly == but we are winning.)))

As Brett pointed out in his email to me ... Bruce is rather gloating
about the whole thing. ;)

Adam.

Via: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight...>
Source:
http://www.viridiandesign.org/2007/01/viridian-note-00487-we-are-winning.html

Key concepts: Viridian Design Movement, climate change,
culture change, cybergreen, Bright Green, victory
conditions

Attention Conservation Notice:  The Viridian struggle
has met with success.  We are winning.

(((The boiled frog is jumping.  It turns out that a
boiled frog always jumps. To think otherwise was
a mere urban legend. The frog won't jump free from
its dire, life-threatening menace at the first effort,
but next year will be even hotter and scarier,
and the frog will jump harder. From now on, the frog
will jump all the time.  Further urging to jump will
not be required from the likes of us Viridians.
The frog has gotten the message. We are winning!)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39985/story.htm


(((Here is the first Viridian Note.  This is number 487.
I doubt we will ever reach 500 of these.  That won't
be needed: because we are winning.)))
http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt

(((The cogent quote from the  first Viridian speech,
eight years ago:)))

"Now let me explain to you why my 21st century design
movement is going to be a great technical improvement
over  all previous art movements.  Let me give you
a tour of its many unique and innovative features.

"Number One.   Perhaps most importantly, this
movement has a built-in expiration date.   The problem
with previous art movements is this unexamined
assumption that  they have discovered some eternal
cultural truth, and that  they will therefore go on
forever.   In point of fact, no  matter how much truth
they discover, movements never do last very long. (â€Å¡Ä‚„¶)"

"So, this is where our movement gets it built-in
expiration date.  The date is 2012, a date in the Kyoto
accords, when people are supposed to be engaged in a
serious decline in CO2 emissions."

(((We Viridians have beaten that clock. There is no
need to wait for distant 2012 to declare victory in
our war to make green trendy and to create
"irresistible demand for a global atmosphere upgrade."
Green will never get any trendier than it is this year.
The atmosphere upgrade is on the way.  That process
won't be pretty, but it's going to happen.)))

(((The 2012 deadline for  Kyoto is already a dead
letter, because Kyoto was far too weak and too slow.
We are going to see a series of monstrous efforts by
large  enterprises: private, local, state and national,
to save whatever can be saved of the previous natural
order.  The primary motivator of this effort will
be fear.   The climate is changing much more quickly
and more severely than anyone suspected it would.
A rapid, ruthless, headlong clean-tech techno-
revolution == in fact, a series of them == is
the only global option with a ghost of a chance to
save our smoldering planetary bacon.  That's coming;
it is under way.)))

((When the Davos Economic Forum steals your clothes,
there's no reason left to wear them any more.
We are winning.  The Great and the Good agree with
us.  They're more scared than we ever were.)))
http://www.weforum.org/en/knowledge/Events/2007/AnnualMeeting/KN_SESS_SUMM_19392?url=/en/knowledge/Events/2007/AnnualMeeting/KN_SESS_SUMM_19392

http://gaia.world-television.com/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2007/default.aspx?sn=19392&lang=en
<http://gaia.world-television.com/wef/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2007/default.aspx?sn=19392&lang=en>

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/3282

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005912.html

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1582504,00.html


(((Even traditional green campaigners are getting
smarter.  Not a whole lot, but some.)))
http://www.greenmyapple.org/buzz


**Breaking News**  (((not for us, but for others)))
"Ten Major U.S. Companies Join Environmental Defense
and Others to Endorse Mandatory Limits on America's
Global Warming Pollution. Watch press conference live
this morning on CSPAN at 11:30am Eastern."  (((These
companies are demanding carbon regulation in order to
punish their competitors.  They have a jump in going
clean,  and their competitors, who were stubborn and
fatally tardy,  will be destroyed. Not in a week, no:
but in five years they'll be deader than Enron.  They
have fatally misjudged the flow of events, they threw
a war-for-carbon and lost it, they have no friends
left and a million commercial enemies sharpening
knives...  they are doomed.)))
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/ct/Gp16sGE1hmuq/

"The companies involved in today's announcement are
well-known Fortune 500 corporations: Alcoa, BP America,
Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, Florida Power and
Light, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, Pacific Gas
& Electric, and PNM Resources. They have joined
Environmental Defense, the World Resources
Institute, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and
Natural Resources Defense Council to form an
unprecedented alliance == the United States Climate
Action Partnership (US-CAP)."  (((If you are Exxon,
what is your response when you see this?  Your PR
reaction is contempt.  Your private response is
anguish.  Fear, and a desperate attempt to muddle
and temporize.  It's not just that Viridians are
winning.  Denialists are losing.  Horribly.
We win.  They're toast.)))
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/ct/Gd16sGE1hm7C/
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/ct/Gp16sGE1hmuq/

(((Too late, Exxon.  Now, at last, you struggle to
move: but you made your bed of Procrustes and you will
be torn to pieces.  First, denial: you tried that
for years.  Then anger.  You'll try that, that will
be brief.  Then resignation... and at last you'll beg
for pity, but, although you're the world's largest
and most profitable corporation, you have brought
such fantastic suffering onto such vast hosts of
other people that there will not be a drop of pity
left for you.)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39815/story.htm

((("Corporate Green."  Get used to this.  It's what's
for breakfast, lunch and supper.  You're going to get
Corporate Green whether you like it or not.  Green is
is sexy as it's ever going to get, right now, 02007.)))

(((When the brown alternative begins disappearing
wholesale, when that's simply unavailable and we have
to live Corporate Green, then green will not be sexy.
No, Green will just be what there is.  Brown could not
be sustained.  So Brown died.  Green will work better
eventually, but when we first get it, the alpha-
rollout of a sustainable world... man, is that ever
going to suck.  I own some eco-chic shoes.  I had to
stop wearing them because they were rotting right off
of my feet.  It'll be like that, okay? Only more so.
We're not gonna win pretty; we are gonna win kinda
ugly, frankly == but we are winning.)))

http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2487
"This year's Greenbuild, the annual conference of the US Green Building
Council (USGBC), was all about two things:

"Green has gone corporate == and that's exactly what
everybody wanted. Past gatherings may have been
intimate affairs, but this year's event, in Denver,
was a full-scale trade show, with 13,000 attendees
walking around with tan totes emblazoned with Honda
on the side, lots of corporate-sponsored parties, and
a sold-out exhibition hall, with 700 exhibitors
hawking their green products. It left little doubt
that green, at least as it's represented by the USGBC,
isn't about the counter-culture anymore."  (((Because
it is not the "counterculture," it's the culture.
We are winning.)))

(((The leader of the British Tory Party is quoting
GBN futurist scenarios in the Financial Times.
Cameron is framing the climate crisis in terms of
immigration, national security and GNP.  Margaret
Thatcher's party agrees with us. We are winning.)))
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/49bca770-ab4f-11db-b5db-0000779e2340.html

(((Same goes for the Canadian conservative party.
Good luck "conserving" that Arctic ice, Mr Prime
Minister.)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39997/story.htm

(((Climate chaos in Europe.  This has been happening
year after year after year.  It will continue to
intensify no matter how it's spun by anybody.  It is
the new reality.  It is methodically destroying
the credibility, the options, the business, the
basic future of anybody who ever denied it.)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/39991/story.htm

(((Thank you, "Situational Science Man!"  You are
doomed.  You were a tissue of fraud.  You lose.)))
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db070114.gif

(((Watch yourself drown.  You are looking at people
here who will be seeking vengeance on the fossil
enterprise.  There are hundreds of millions of
them who are currently occupying some of the
most expensive real estate in the world, including
the capitals of Britain, USA, and Japan.  There is
no resisting the political, economic, social, cultural
effects of this.  Everything will change.)))
http://flood.firetree.net/

(((Geeks green out at the Energy Innovation Conference.
We Viridians always wanted 'em to do that.  Well, there
they go, then.  We got what we wanted.  We win.)))
http://www.energyinnovation.com/

(((Brazil, the ethanol Saudi Arabia.  Hello,
Brasilia Consensus.)))
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/40012/story.htm

(((The War For Oil becomes the War On Oil.
Except Bush can't wage that war, because he can't win
wars.  Somebody will win; just not Bush.  Bush has
tainted and destroyed everything he touched, and
since he was the poster-boy for anti-environmentalism,
it will thrive in his absence.  People do not yet
understand the awesome extent of the ruin Bush has
brought on himself and his supporters, but that will
continue long, long after his absence from power.)))
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20070123/cm_huffpost/039326

The many, many, net-based heirs and successors of the
Viridian Movement (1998-2007):
Worldchanging
http://www.worldchanging.com
Treehugger
http://www.treehugger.com/
EcoGizmo
http://www.gizmag.com/ecogizmo/
Hugg: User-Generated Green News. (((What,
huh?  Really?  Yeah.)))
http://www.hugg.com/
Celsias: "It pays to save the world."
(((What?  It does? No kidding?)))
http://www.celsias.com/
Vivavi: contemporary sustainable furniture.
http://www.vivavi.com/
Inhabitat: good design is green design.
http://inhabitat.com/
Sustainable Style: look fabulous, live well, do good
http://www.sustainablestyle.org/
Eco Design Lab: fashion + design for the ethical
consumer
http://www.ecodesignlab.com/
Jetson Green:
http://jetsongreen.typepad.com/
Ecogeek:  "EcoGeek monitors and explores the current explosion in
technology designed to mitigate our impact on the environment."
http://www.ecogeek.org/
Terra Rossa: Where conservatives consider a new energy
future. (((Huh? Yes, they do that.  Because otherwise
they have no future at all. These are three stages in
successfully changing culture:  "That's ridiculous,"
"it's true but trivial," "I always said so."  Terra
Rossa are Christian white-green albedo right-wing
greens.  Do you understand what this means?  The right
cannot go away.  The right you always have with you. When the right
steals your clothes, that means you win.
We Viridians have cruised through those three stages
in jig time.  We are winning.)))
http://www.terrarossa.com/
Evangelical Ecologist.  I don't know their slogan,
so I'll say "for maximum cognitive dissonance."
Look at that awesome blogroll of lunatics you've
never heard of.  I wouldn't trust these clowns
with a burnt-out match, but they're there because
they HAVE to be there.
http://www.evaneco.com/

(((Okay: did we do all this ourselves?  No, of
course not.  But it's a lot easier to get something
done when you don't bother to take credit for
doing it.  Do all these people we claim as "successors"
even know we exist?  Maybe not.  Likely not.  And
that's GOOD.  That means we win.)))

(((This isn't the first time I've seen this happen.
I remember when there was such a thing as "cyberpunk":
visionaries in the early 1980s writing farfetched,
daring stories that predicted that someday there would
be a world rather like the late 1990s.  We didn't
create that world, but it was obvious.  Now the prefix
"cyber" has gone away == not because it failed, but
because it is EVERYWHERE.  There is nothing left now
that isn't "cyber."  The "virtual" is going away, too.
The word "actual" is older than the word "virtual," so
when the one subsumes the other, the virtual vanishes
and becomes the actual.)))

(((We Viridians used to be a rather novel effort,
virtual activists in a cyber space: today there is no
other kind.  It's all the same.  There is no
such thing as a political, aesthetic, cultural,
literary, military, governmental or nongovernmental
movement without a digital component.  Such a thing
is no longer possible, such things no longer exist.)))

(((This means that it is becoming  necessary for
us to vanish.  Not because we are losing.  If we
were losing == like the Arts and Crafts movement
lost, like Modernism lost == then we could complain
for the next dozen decades.  Viridian is *winning.*
We threw a match or two, and less than a decade
later the planet is consumed in prairie fires.
The smart thing to do is to stop.)))

(((Then what happens?  There are two choices.  You
can attempt to seize control, or you can get out
of the way.  Oh wait, there's a third choice:
getting cold feet and apologizing for having won.
I didn't mention that option because that one
didn't occur to me.)))

(((We are winning because we were ahead of the curve:
we Viridians were an avant-garde who understood,
almost ten years ago, that something like this was
bound to happen.  That does not make us the proper
people to actually carry it out.  First, we don't
have the scale, the resources, or the ability.
Second, and let me be very clear to you here:
the primrose path to sustainability, even it is
construed as sexy, trendy and stylish,  will be
dark and thorny. Behind Corporate Green is its
darker, bloodstained cousin, Khaki Green, and we'll
be seeing a lot of that.  Sustainability will be a
comprehensive revolution in the tenor of daily life.
There will be blood on the hands of the people who
bring it about.  Not because they are bloodthirsty.
But because there is so much blood.)))

(((Genuine climate mayhem is underway.  It is
intensifying fast.  People are going to die: of heat,
of disease, freezing, starving, drowning and dying of
thirst.  Not in mere tens of thousands as they
did in the Paris heatwave, but in hecatombs.  We
have a global climate crisis.  A real one, not a futurist
speculation.  People are going to make agonizing
sacrifices in increasingly frantic  efforts
to ameliorate that and redress that crisis.  Then, next
year, they will discover that the situation
is vastly worse than then imagined, and the spillage
of blood and treasure and sacred honor that they
thought would surely help is a fraction of what was necessary.)))

(((Two thousand people on an email list
are not the masters of a global situation.  We're going
to be sucked into it just like everybody else is.
Nevertheless, we are winning.  And that's good news.)))

(((The climate crisis is in its Neville Chamberlain
phase right now.  People still imagine that a
concern with the climate is trendy, and that a judicious
head-nod here will mean peace in our time.  Those
people are not merely mistaken, they are delusionary.
They are nodding in disdain at the basic laws of
physics.  The human race has spent two industrious
centuries unearthing the planetary dead and setting
them aflame in the sky. There is hell to pay for
an affront like that, and it's all ahead of us in
this century.  We are in in 2007 and we are about
seven percent of the way into very, very deep and
very, very hot water.)))

(((Nevertheless, the frog will jump from that hot
water.  We are winning.)))

(((I wish, very much, that we were not winning
on those awesome and frightening terms, but we
are winning.  Our ideas are becoming mainstream ideas.
Our approaches and assumptions will be mainstream
approaches and assumptions. Our ideas are becoming
truisms. They are being absorbed at such a deep and
irrevocable level that they'll become cliches.
The victory condition for successful prophecy is
not prophecy.  It's cliche'. Viridian is becoming
cliched.  Our sensibility is becoming mainstream
sensibility.  And that is good news.)))

(((That means it is time to declare victory.
Further rhetorical effort on this line is not required,
and the cleverest activist tactic when you get what
you want is to take it and vanish into the woodwork.
A strutting triumphalism will only annoy people who
are doomed to end up thinking like us anyhow. So, the
sooner we can vanish and let them get on with the
hard, sweaty labor of jumping from a boiling pot,
the better off the world will be.)))

(((I am thinking hard about what comes next.  Some
different enterprise should build on this achievement.
It'll take me a while to understand that, but it should
be as far ahead of 2007 as Viridian was ahead of events
in 1998. Likely a little farther.)))

(((I'm good at thinking ahead: the track record shows
that my speculations, even the daffiest and most
sarcastic ones, do tend  to be crowned with some success.
Still, I tend to oversell my own foresight: Viridian shows
that events and developments that  I imagine
are twenty years out, are  only about eight or nine.
As a futurist, I'm clearly not  trying hard enough.
Next time, I'll try to take a bigger bite.)))

O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
JUMP, BOILING FROG
JUMP HARD AND FAST
GOOD LUCK
O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O