I AM A GENERALIST SAYS BOWIE

“I am a generalist!” 

Since Bowie's death last Sunday there has been a outpouring of stuff in the media and one was hoping that our finest writers would step up to the plate and deliver some eulogies and obituaries which combine style and insight. Instead by and large we got flatpack cliches and dull chronologies. It was if anything that could be said about Bowie had been said years before. The chameleon thing, constantly innovating etc. How awful to hear Cameron and other MPs jumping on the bandwagon with their meaningless schoolboy tributes. Most of the BBC coverage was also creepy, old-fashioned and a bit like listening to a straight aged uncle talking about hip hop.

So far the best overall obit I thought was Chris Salewicz's in The Independent. I liked Richard Williams original post on his Blue Moment blog and the inside story of the making of Blackstar by Andy Greene in Rolling Stone. 

Also enjoyed reading 'Bowie in Berlin' by Rory McLean who was assistant director on David Hemmings' movie 'Just a Gigolo' in which Bowie starred with Marlene Dietrich in her last film appearance. The title of this post comes from the quote below:

“I am a generalist!” he told me one day on the set, meaning he was a Renaissance man, skilled in different fields and mediums. “Then why are you most associated with rock’n’roll?” I asked. “It is only a front,” he laughed.

UPDATE: DAVID BOWIE'S LAST DAYS: AN 18-MONTH BURST OF CREATIVITY

But by far and away the most entertaining, insightful and fresh thing of all comes from a now defunct web mag called Grantland and was published on March 11th 2013. The previous June one of the mag's editors received a tip-off that Bowie was near death and it was decided that two writers Alex Pappademas and Chuck Klosterman should start a conversation on     e-mail about Bowie's legacy which Grantland would publish immediately after he died. 

The largely unedited text of their conversation stretched over seven months and reached 15,000 words. It was finally published under the title 'The Nobituary' the day before Bowie released his first surprise album 'The Next Day'. Reading it now makes it even more poignant. This is, to my mind, great journalism. Its exciting and original, irreverent, full of smart digressions and pin sharp insights. Both writers bounce off each others riffs and I just wish I could run all the best bits. Here's just a couple of edited extracts:

CHUCK K: 'For all those under the age of 45, Bowie was just there when you first became aware that popular culture was something to think about. He didn’t seem to be any age; it feels like he should subsist in static perpetuity. He was the first person to become a rock star in the era when rock music was not a new, radical, non-universal thing. He was working as a total original in an art form that was no longer limitless and undefined, and that forced him to be more intellectually creative than he already was. The fact that no one understood precisely what he was doing made him easier to understand, somehow. Bowie invented this insane state of being, and the planet just collectively thought, Yes. This is what we want. It’s like he was here just to do that (even though no one had asked for it, or even knew what to ask for)

 ALEX P: Yes. Every obit’s going to have the word “chameleonic” in the first sentence; he’ll go down in history, the way Madonna will, as somebody who continually and restlessly reinvented himself. 

He introduced the idea that an obviously contrived persona could be as much a part of the theatrics of rock performance as anything a rock star did physically or musically.

...with Bowie, the thrill was knowing that he was playing a part, that he obviously wasn’t from space or black or gay or the King of the Goblins, but that pretending to be those things allowed him to articulate what it was like to be David Bowie at the moment he was pretending to be them. And this spoke to people because everybody feels trapped by the dumb identity they were born with. 

 ,...this all seems totally routine now; it’s in the groundwater of pop. Your pretensions are your art. Everybody’s an avatar.....Bowie’s legacy is this much bigger and more far-reaching idea about the role of gesture in pop music, which has emboldened and enabled a ton of people who may not even consider themselves Bowie disciples.

CHUCK K: You write, “I always took for granted that Bowie didn’t have a fixed identity,” and — in an explicit sense — that’s obviously true. But sometimes I feel like he did. Yes, he constantly toggled through this menagerie of characters. But wasn’t his central identity inevitably the same? It was always some version of, “I’m a bizarre, forward-thinking, consciously artificial life force.” 

I think this is why he was better at these inventions than everyone else: There were unifying elements across all his constructions. They did not feel forced. He never became someone who didn’t seem like David Bowie. 

ALEX P: I thought that basically there would be nothing about his death, when it finally happened, that would change the content of any kind of obituaric writing about Bowie, y’know? I figured it was already kind of a closed case.

 I guarantee you that if the New York Times has an obituary or some kind of career-spanning post mortem David Bowie arts-section story on file right now, waiting for him to die, something fucking insane would have to happen for that story to change in a significant way....what would have to happen for a David Bowie obituary written today, in July, to be rendered not current? Bowie emerges from seclusion, decides that he’s not yet “said all he had to say” with Tin Machine, and cuts an album that critics almost universally agree is “at least as good as Low and totally better than Lodger“?

 There’ll be a hundred Bowie obits and Bowie remembrances, half of them probably also written before the fact, years before the fact, carefully composed in the heads of ex–guitar techs and Mojo freelancers whose three-week stint embedded with the Glass Spider tour left them with notebooks full of unpublished anecdotes (and also hepatitis B). People who never even knew Bowie have thought about what they’ll write when Bowie dies. '

There's so much more to enjoy.  Here's the whole thing.

:

PS: My favourite line of Chuck's:

'If Bowie was the architect of glam, Ronson was the dude pouring the concrete'

I also love Chuck's great piece on Lou Reed here

“What the music says may be serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analyzed, or taken so seriously. I think it should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. it should be the clown, the pierrot medium. The music is the mask the message wears — music is the pierrot and I, the performer, am the message.” 

- David Bowie 

From 'Quotable Pop' by Phil Dellio and Scott Woods

BOWIE AT GLASTONBURY 1971

This is Bowie at the first proper Glastonbury Festival in 1971. The photo is one of a set of three taken by Gaby Nasemann.

Known as Glastonbury Fayre, Bowie reputedly went onstage at dawn on the morning of the 23rd June.  

I worked on the pyramid stage for most of the Festival but I missed his performance. According to www.ukrockfestivals.com/glasmenu.html
Bowie performed a short solo set of the following songs:

Oh! You Pretty Things / Kooks / Changes/ Amsterdam/ The Supermen / Memory Of A Free Festival / Song For Bob Dylan

I say solo but the site records that he was joined briefly by a tripped out Scandinavian lady who felt like joining in much to Bowie's amusement. Julien Temple who made the Glastonbury documentary some years back saw Bowie's  performance but could not locate any footage of it.

The Generalist is pleased to announce that we have located the audio.

Barry Everitt was one of a group called Revelation Records who recorded the festival and put out the original triple vinyl package, beautifully packaged by the late legendary Barney Bubbles. In recent years he has been working with colleagues to try and reissue not only the original albums but also other material that has never seen the light of day before. Much of that material is mastered and rights have been obtained.

Barry  has the only known copy of the audio of Bowie's performance. He has already spent years trying to get permission from Bowie's people to release the tracks. This would be the key to getting the whole package funded and out on the streets.

Back in the day Bowie's record company or management did not want the tracks released because they were getting ready to promote Ziggy Stardust. They let Revelation use 'Supermen' on the album instead. 

The album notes include the following comment after David's track listing: 'The live tape recording at Glastonbury will remain in our vaults until the revolution.'

EXTRA: Another member of Revelation Records is John Coleman who writes:'David would have said yes to us using at least some of his '71 performance but his manager Tony De Fries said a definite NO. He got Angie on the case and she got in a cab from Beckenham to our friend's home studio in Shepherds Bush to collect the master tape. As I recall, whilst she was on the way, we did a high speed copy which she collected. The following week David promised me 'something else special' as his contribution to the album set. With my girlfriend Peta Wright I went down to Trident Studios in Wardour St and sat in the control room looking down on the studio until David noticed me and said ' Lets do 'Supermen' for John and the Glastonbury album'.

This is one of the important "historic" things in the GENERALIST ARCHIVE. This is the original proposal for the Glastonbury Festival - a seven-page mimeographed and stapled document. This where it all began. The opening text reads as follows:

Glastonbury Fair will be held at Worthy Farm, Pilton, near Shepton Mallett, from Sunday June 20 to Thursday June 24 - Midsummer's Day. It will be a Fair in the mediaeval (sic) tradition, embodying the legends of the area. There will be music, dance, poetry, theatre, lights and spontaneous entertainment. There will be a market, low-cost food and superior facilities. There will be no monetary profit - it will be free.

Man is fast ruining his environment. He is suffering from the effects of pollution, the neurosis brought about by a basically urban industrial society and a lack of spirituality in his life. The aims, therefore of Glastonbury Fair are: the conservation of our natural resources, a respect for nature and life, and a spiritual awakening.'

SEE PREVIOUS POST: ARCHIVE ROCK FESTIVALS 1969-1972

1966 FROM 2016

It would be fair to say I hold Jon Savage in high regard as do many other aficionados of music history, style and criticism. My June 2007 interview with Jon, which covers 'England's Dreaming', his seminal history of the punk movement, and his history of 'Teenage', can be listened to here: GENERALIST AUDIO. See also my excitable review of the Joy Division documentary, directed and shot by Grant Gee and written and researched by Jon. Brilliant.Also interviewed Jon about his research and script for the BBC Arena documentary on Brian Epstein. Here is a review of his latest book '1966: The Year The Decade Exploded' [Faber and Faber]

Jon Savage's new work, an elephantine (as in trumpeting) Everest (world's highest mountain) of a book could and should (on evidence from intro and index) be read as a grand monument to the 45rpm disc, the music it contained, and the effect that had on the youth and the culture.

'1966 was the last year,' writes JS, 'when the 45 was the principal pop music form, before the full advent of the album as a creative and a commercial force...'

 'I was attracted to 1966 because of the music and what I hear in it: ambition, acceleration and compression. So much is packed into the 45s from this period: ideas, attitudes, lyrics and musical experimentation...Condensed within the two- to three-minute format, the possibilities of 1966 are expressed with extraordinary electricity and intensity. They still sound explosive today, fifty years later.'

JS turned 13 in late summer that year: 'The 45s that I heard went very deep and, in many ways, that mixture of mainstream pop, hard mod pop, West Coast, soul and Motown has stayed with me as an ideal...it is to their resounding and unquenchable spirit of freedom that this book is dedicated.'

The 100pp reference section at the back of the book contains 90 pages of Sources and Index and a 10-page month-by-month discography of  single releases, which, Jon  suggests, the reader considers as a 'playlist that simulates the mix of music I heard on Radio Caroline South during 1966 and extends it with the intervening fifty years of knowledge.' Ace Records are putting out a double CD set of 50 of these tracks.

The book has 12 monthly chapters, the first eight of which pirouette around one single and one theme. The final four are more fragmented, reflecting, JS believes, 'the fragmentation of modernist time and the breakdown in the unitary pop narrative that occurred at that point in the year with the disappearance of The Beatles.'

Chapter 7 stands for others in its modus operandi. It's a hot July and Wilson Pickett has a new record out: 'Land of 1000 Dances', recorded that Spring at Rick Hall's Fame Studios at Muscle Shoals. 

This single was 'faster than any other dance tune of the time' notes JS and was 'one of those records that, through its very force, pulled the culture along with it, ratcheting up the intensity, matching and pushing the changing rhythms of the dances.'

The chapter takes us through the dance crazes, Chubby Checker, the arrival of the discotheque, the inside story of Tamla Motown, run like car factory where Berry Gordy once worked, the emergence of Stax and soul: 'Black American music was replacing the British invasion as the pop style to watch.'

But the towering figure was James Brown who stood up and made the link between the music and what, during that heatwave July, had become an explosive racial situation. The March Against Fear, riots, full-scale violence are documented here in detail. Civil rights was leading to the emergence of black power and its coded soundtrack. 'Dancin' In The Street' had many meanings.

JS records that, at one point in the March, Brown stepped up in front of a 10,000 strong crowd and 'wheedled, shouted, moaned, screamed his way through several tunes... and left the stage and the audience as dripping wet with perspiration and exhaustion as he was.'' This was his first public affiliation to the movement and 'the first time that a star of his magnitude had put himself on the line in this way.'

'1966' is built on testaments of the time, woven into a tumultuous tapestry. JS succeeds in inspiring us to re-investigate the music itself and effectively sets it within its social and cultural landscape, providing fresh insights. This valuable history is a narrative that refuses to fall into dumb cliche. It should inspire and encourage musicians, poets and activists alike. Will the music of our time find a way of addressing the mood and magnitude of our changing, turbulent world?

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Coincidentally, Faber and Faber are also publishing '1956: The World In Revolt' by Simon Hall. 

Geoff Jacobson in the Financial Times  review of this book concludes : 'Hall succeeds admirably in presenting 1956 as a year that belongs in the same revolutionary tradition as 1848 and 1968.'

The review starts with Antonio Gramsci's criticism of the way in which certain historical dates prevail over others in the collective imagination. Some years had formed, he writes, 'like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life.'

Simon Hall notes that historians have ignored Gramsci's views. Either Hall or Jacobson have put together this following list:

'The past decade has witnessed a fashion for histories that zero in on single years as turning points: 

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's 1492...when 'our world began'; Fred Kaplan's 1959, when "everything changed"; Mark Kurlansky's 1968, when the world was "rocked"; Michael Meyer's 1989, "the year that changed the world"; W. Joseph Campbell's 1995, "the year the future began"; David Anderson's 1789, a year that "shook the world", Mike Rapport's 1848, a "year of revolutions'; Victor Sebestyen's 1946, which "made the modern world" and Christian Caryl's 1979 which marked the "birth of the 21st century."

Out of curiosity, I tracked down Gramsci's essay on the Jacobin website:

Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s Day. 

That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern....They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates. 

They say that chronology is the backbone of history. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fundamental dates that every good person keeps lodged in their brain...And they have become so invasive and fossilizing that.... 1490 or 1492 are like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life. 

So the date becomes an obstacle, a parapet that stops us from seeing that history continues to unfold along the same fundamental unchanging line, without abrupt stops, like when at the cinema the film rips and there is an interval of dazzling light. 

That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the intensity of life and I want to plunge into animality to draw from it new vigor. 

No spiritual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though connected to the ones that have passed.

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We have a general problem which we need to address. Plastics are polluting our world and need to be replaced, preferably as soon as possible. The scale of plastic pollution is awesome in its magnitude and ubiquity. That means its everywhere. 

This post focuses on polystyrene.

Polystyrene is an ubiquitous chemical substance which comes in two forms: non-foamed and foamed. Polystyrene is hard and brittle and its best known everyday uses are for CD and DVD cases and disposable cutlery. The foamed form is used for insulation, food trays and packaging material. 

Do not burn Styrofoam or polystyrene. It is made using benzene, a known human carcinogen. Benzene is released into the air if the polystyrene is burned.
Polystyrene makes up a significant part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a slowly rotating collection of plastic in the centre of the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. There are 3.3 million pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the garbage patch. Over 8 billion kilograms of plastic ends up in our oceans each year, much of it polystyrene. These plastics don’t biodegrade, but rather break into increasingly smaller pieces, which can cause harm or death to sea birds, fish, turtles and other marine life.
Using as little polystyrene as possible, and recycling what you do acquire in a responsible manner, is one of the best things you can do for the health of our marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

Polystyrene is flammable and contains a multitude of harmful chemicals, making it one of the most challenging items to recycle or reuse.


and styrofoam, a brand name trademarked by Dow Chemical.






Polystyrene is the chemical name for Styrofoam, a brand name trademarked by the Dow chemical company. Polystyrene comes in two forms: foamed and non foamed. The foamed form is used as packing material for electronics, or as meat trays or insulation. In its non-foamed state, polystyrene is used to make disposable cutlery, CD and DVD cases and other hard plastic casings. 

DATA VISUALISATION: NEW YORK TALK EXCHANGE

'New York Talk Exchange' was a data visualisation project shown at MOMA in New York in 2008. It illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data from AT&T, that flow between New York and cities around the world. 

It shows how the city of New York connects to other cities, which cities NY has the strongest ties with and how those relationships shift with time. It also shows how the rest of the world reaches into the neighborhoods of New York.

See: video & visuals: http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/

THE OVERVIEW EFFECT

"Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension....Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth became plain to every [hu]man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose".

- Fred Hoyle. (1948)

The Overview Institute was established to spread the message of what they call the Overview Effect. This is their video and their words are quoted below. Just take 19 mins and 10 seconds out of your day to experience a profound change in consciousness. We see the fragile nature of our world, the inter-connectedness of all things. We have to start acting as a species.

     A Critical Time

'We live at a critical moment in human history.  The challenges of climate change, food, water and energy shortages as well as the increasing disparity between the developed and developing nations are testing our will to unite, while differences in religions, cultures, and politics continue to keep us apart.  The creation of a "global village" through satellite TV and the Internet is still struggling to connect the world into one community.   At this critical moment, our greatest need is for a global vision of planetary unity and purpose for humanity as a whole.'

The Overview Effect

'For more than four decades, astronauts from many cultures and backgrounds have been telling us that, from the perspective of Earth orbit and the Moon, they have gained such a vision.  There is even a common term for this experience:  "The Overview Effect", a phrase coined in the book of the same name by space philosopher and writer Frank White. 

'It refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.  

'From space, the astronauts tell us, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this "pale blue dot" becomes both obvious and imperative.  Even more so, many of them tell us that from the Overview perspective, all of this seems imminently achievable, if only more people could have the experience!'

STAR WARS MEMORIES

Do you want to know something about what it was like to have access to the behind-the-scenes world of the making of 'The Empire Strikes Back' ?

 In the 1970s, I and my colleagues produced the best selling poster magazine 'Star Wars Monthly' and I went to Hollywood and met George Lucas & visited Industrial Light & Magic. See me on the set of the Bog Planet with R2D2 and read more here: http://hqinfo.blogspot.co.uk/2005/06/star-wars-memories-of-galaxy-far-far.html

INNOCENCE OF MEMORIES

Nobel Prize Winning novelist Orhan Pamuk in front of the wall of cigarette butts featured in the new documentary 'Innocence of Memories' by Grant Gee.


It's Sunday lunchtime or thereabouts and I have just been to Brighton to see the latest film by Grant Gee called 'Innocence of Memories', which was being shown at the Duke of York's prior to a two-week run at the BFI in London at the end of January. It was a rerun, having been shown a week or so before but with a print that had no subtitles. The original audience was invited back for an 11:00 screening this morning but as it turned out there were only a dozen there - a real privilege. No reflection on the quality of the film I hasten to add at this point.

Grant and I have known each other since the early 1990s or thereabouts and worked on a short film together when William Gibson was in London promoting his novel 'Virtual Light'. I did the interview and Grant shot it. Its never seen the light of day but watch this space. From the same office in London they were handling Wim Wenders video for U2 and all of the above parties were hanging out together in Berlin.

Grant has shot many great short films, but is perhaps best known for his work with Radiohead: '7 Television Commercials' and the world tour film 'Meeting People Is Easy' [1998] and the stunning 'Joy Division' documentary, written by Jon Savage [2007]. After seeing this, I sat down and did a long interview with him which you can listen to on the Audio Generalist

He was also the cameraman on the documentary 'Scott Walker 30 Century Man' [2007] which must have required both courage and tact.  It is one of the strangest music docs you'll ever see - I mean recording the sound of a slab of meat being beaten in a proper recording studio and then sampling it! Difficult to get that out of one's mind.

Most recently he has won great plaudits for his beautiful, absorbing black and white reinterpretation of W.G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn'. Called 'Patience (After Sebald)' (2012) it traces W.G.'s journey through Suffolk in imaginative style. In most of his films, Grant works with Jerry Chater as Editor (who also deserves a big nod of appreciation).

Which brings us to 'Innocence of Memories' of which there is quite a lot to say as it is stunning, deep and many-layered.

It is certainly about Istanbul and the novelist Orhan Pamuk. Its about an intense love affair which is metaphorically encoded in a museum of objects, an affair played out in the novel that inspired its creation and funded by Pamuk's Nobel Prize for Literature money. Pamuk is Turkey's great living author [who, Grant tells me, lives only ten large apartments down the River Bosphorous from Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey's greatest living director, profiled a week or so ago on this blog. The two men have met only once]. They both have large desks and a big panoramic view of the river.

So there are voices in a narration written by Pamuk -  a man and a woman, who talk to us. The entire film is shot a night on the streets of modern-day Istanbul. Its a gliding camera that roams the street, picking up the rag pickers, taxi drivers and boatmen, following the dogs quietly (of which there are many), sliding through empty streets in a cab with one of Turkey's great actresses who has made 200 films and meeting Ara Guler, the Cartier-Bresson of Istanbul, who has spent his life documenting the city in thousands of memorable images. 

And all roads lead back to the Museum and the magic objects which document the couples' journey in space-time because that's another level and meaning of the film. As is, of course memory. In fact this film seems to encompass everything and draw it all together in the one  intense real-life building of great spookiness. There's an entire wall of cigarette ends in the Museum, every one of which, in the story, she had smoked and he had stolen from ashtrays and preserved, There is a rim of lipstick on each.

Pamuk himself appears on tv screens doing an interview (presumably a real one?) with a tv presenter asking questions. He can talk at great length and does, providing another level to the film,  about his life, how he came to write the book, how he had bodyguards and feared of being assassinated. As we roam the streets with the dogs, the TVs are everywhere, in apartment windows, restaurants, taxi booths.

Then we're in Gezi Park in Taksim Square, amongst the trees, which hold the memories of when it was  a favoured spot for lovers, once also the site of an old cinema that would show romantic films. There are also other resonances here. Short digression:

This one green space in the centre of Istanbul was threatened by government plans to concrete much of it over. As a result, in 2013, the Park was occupied first by a few hundred demonstrators who were violently evicted by police. This triggered a two week occupation of the Square by a massive protest movement. According to Wikipedia, 3.5 million of Turkey's 80 million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest. 11 people were killed, more than 8,000 were injured and 3,000 were arrested.

Then the camera goes back and back and we see the whole city, an ocean of lights. On other occasions, the darkness is filled with whirling white birds.

'Innocence of Memories' is an important film and a beautiful and imaginative one, that stands, like the city itself, on the edge of east and west, the past and the future. Its multiple resonances touch brain and heart. It throws a big rock into our own individual memory pool and leaves one full of ripples and challenging thoughts.

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PS: TWO GREAT QUOTES FROM A VARIETY INTERVIEW AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

Orhan Pamuk: “We are very attached to our buildings, squares, monuments, trees, parks because they trigger our memories. Only through objects we remember things, we experience them. Not just cigarette butts, salt shakers, or ashtrays in our daily lives, but trees, parks, buildings. They also make us remember. A city, if you live in it for 63 years like me, turns into a sort of index for everything pointing to our memories. But once these monuments and trees begin to be destroyed we feel first of all not a political but a very personal energy and anger to preserve them, like an animal. Like a dog who watches out for his womb. Because we want to preserve them. It’s something very instinctual. In Ghezi Park that kind of thing gained political dimensions, Erdogan mismanaged it, and a little green park become connected to a more secular anger with Erdogan. But anger against Erdogan is not only [about] the destruction of Istanbul. In fact that’s a minor thing.

 And what impression did the all the destruction and construction in Istanbul make on you, Mr. Gee?

Grant Gee: "I read somewhere the other day that by 2050 seventy-five percent of the world’s population will live in cities of greater than ten million, which I think is think is just extraordinary That’s going to be the main unit in which the world’s population will exit, so these megacities will just start communicating with each other. When you are in Istanbul you can just feel this seismic thing; the ground is shaking. It’s almost like you turn around and the characters on the street are changing. It’s very exciting and also very scary. The excitement of creation and the scariness of destruction. The two things are simultaneous. That’s why it’s so interesting to be there."

Footnote: Grant has written to correct the off-the- top-of-his-head statistics. Its correct that by 2050, it is predicted that 75% of the world's population will be living in cities; but 10% of the world's population will live in megacities, each  housing over 10 million people.

Official site of the Museum of Innocence: http://en.masumiyetmuzesi.org/

CATS AMONG THE PIGEONS

Right from the off, don't get me wrong: I like cats and birds

This post was triggered by a small item a few days ago in The International New York Times  about feral cats in Australia which, according to the latest genetic evidence, are the descendants of cats brought over by European settlers in the 19th century. 

There are now an estimated 20 million feral cats which prey on more than 100 of the country's native species and have, its claimed, helped drive at least 27 species to extinction. Government plans to cull two million cats met with an international outcry.

Brigitte Bardot called it "inhumane and ridiculous". Morrissey wrote: “We all know that the idiots rule the earth, but this is taking idiocy just too far. The cats, who keep the rodent population under control, will be killed in a ferocious manner, using Compound 10/80, which is a gut-wrenching poison of the most unimaginable and lengthy horror.

“The people of Australia would never agree to this – but of course they will not be consulted, because the Australian government as ruled by Tony Abbott is essentially a committee of sheep-farmers who have zero concerns about animal welfare or animal respect. The cats are, in fact, 2m smaller versions of Cecil the lion [the famous Zimbabwe lion killed by an American dentist.]

A spokeswoman for Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt said that feral cats were the biggest threat to more than 120 endangered species in Australia. “With around 20m feral cats in Australia and with each feral cat estimated to kill at least five native animals a day, they pose an enormous threat to our native species. The government has invested $4.1m in developing humane, target-specific feral cat bait called Curiosity. The toxin in Curiosity works in a way that is similar to the cat falling into a deep sleep and not waking up.”

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This reminded me of a piece by Richard Conniff from the NYT (22nd March 2014), entitled 'The evil of the outdoor cat'. Strong words indeed. He refers to 'the trend that is beginning to make outdoor cats as socially unacceptable as smoking cigarettes in the office or leaving dog droppings on the sidewalk.' He quotes population figures of 84 million domestic and 30-80 million feral cats in the US.

This figure comes from a three-year US Fish and Wildlife Service funded survey, published in the journal Nature Communications (January 2013) aimed at estimating the number of birds killed by predators, chemicals and collisions with wind generators and windows. 

About a third of the 800 species of birds in the USA are endangered, threatened or in significant decline, according to the American Bird Conservancy. 

The survey estimates that cats kill 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the continental U.S. each year and, incidentally, also 20.7 billion mammals — mainly mice, shrews, rabbits and voles. The survey uses the term "unowned" cats to refer to farm cats and strays and feral cats, which often live in  colonies.There are an estimated 300 outdoor cat colonies in Washington, D.C. alone.

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So what about the situation in the UK. According to 2015 figures from the Pet Food Manufacturers Association (PFMA) there are 7.4m domestic cats in 17% of households in Britain. The feral cat population of Britain, in a 2009 study by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in 2009, was estimated at 813,000.

To balance these figures out and to get a clearer picture of this emotional topic  let's turn to a reliable and up-to-date source The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB):

'The most recent figures are from the Mammal Society, which estimates that the UK's cats catch up to 275 million prey items a year, of which 55 million are birds. They estimate the  most frequently caught birds are probably (in order) house sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds and starlings.

 'Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease, or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds. 

'It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, We also know that of the millions of baby birds hatched each year, most will die before they reach breeding age. This is also quite natural, and each pair needs only to rear two young that survive to breeding age to replace themselves and maintain the population.

'It is likely that most of the birds killed by cats would have died anyway from other causes before the next breeding season, so cats are unlikely to have a major impact on populations. If their predation was additional to these other causes of mortality, this might have a serious impact on bird populations.

'Those bird species that have undergone the most serious population declines in the UK (such as skylarks, tree sparrows and corn buntings) rarely encounter cats, so cats cannot be causing their declines. Research shows that these declines are usually caused by habitat change or loss, particularly on farmland.

'Populations of species that are most abundant in gardens tend to be increasing, despite the presence of cats...Gardens may provide a breeding habitat for at least 20% of the UK populations of house sparrows, starlings, greenfinches, blackbirds and song thrushes, four of which are declining across the UK.

'For this reason it would be prudent to try to reduce cat predation, as, although it is not causing the declines, some of these species are already under pressure. Cat predation can be a problem where housing is next to scarce habitats such as heathland.' 

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The US survey quoted above estimated that wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually. See my extensive previous post on this subject: http://hqinfo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bird-collision-deaths-wind-farms.html

FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES: PUBLIC ENEMY NO 1

Just before the opening of the Paris Climate Change summit, the British government announced it was cutting support for wind and solar power. This abrupt change of policy has caused the collapse of many solar companies and has had a negative effect on green energy investment. It also puts an end to a home energy efficiency scheme.

Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist of the UN's environment programmes was highly critical. She told the BBC: "What I'm seeing worldwide is a move very much towards investment in renewable energy. To counterbalance that, you see the withdrawal of subsidies and tax breaks to fossil fuels. What's disappointing is when we see countries such as the United Kingdom that have really been in the lead in terms of getting their renewable energy up and going - we see subsidies being withdrawn and the fossil fuel industry being enhanced. It's a very serious signal - a very perverse signal that we do not want to create."

Other countries have also reduced their support for wind and solar - including, surprisingly, Denmark, a country of 5.8 million people, which was able to generate 40% of its energy from  wind turbines last year.  The budget cuts follow elections in June when the centre-left government was replaced by a rightist minority coalition. The cuts include less funding for the highly successful seeding programme for green technology projects. The Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program started in 2007 and distributed money to 88 solar, wind and geothermal energy projects - one in every four considered. Budget cuts mean this support will now only be available for one in eight projects.

PUBLIC ENEMY NO 1

Let's return to Ms McGlade's words: "we see subsidies being withdrawn and the fossil fuel industry being enhanced." Like you probably, I was unaware that the use of fossil fuels is widely subsidised. Hereby hangs a tale.

Without at present going into the history of how all this came about, we begin this story with an 2008 agreements at a summit meeting between the world's largest economies - the Group of 20. They agreed to start phasing out these subsidies and, according the International Energy Agency (IEA), they have made some progress. In 2014, the estimated worldwide fossil fuel subsidies were $490 billion, down from $610 billion, as a result of the agreement.

Last month the IEA identified the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies as one of the single most effective steps to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.. These subsidies, IEA's executive director Fatih Birol, are "Public Enemy No 1 in terms of sustainable development."

One the first day of the climate conference a quorum of countries, businesses and organisations called for 'aggressive action' to phase out these subsidies. "The huge sums involved globally," said Christiania Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, "could be better spent on schools, health care, renewable energies and building resilient societies.'

The simplest form of these subsidies is government spending to keep fuel prices low for their citizens. These direct subsidies are found mainly in the developing world and in oil-producing nations. In the US its different. They subsidise fossil fuel companies through various means including tax breaks and backing for exploration and production.

According to John Schwartz's piece in the New York Times the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have found 800 different ways in which rich industrial nations use taxpayers money to support the fossil fuel industries. 

Oil Change International describe themselves as 'a research, communication, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the coming transition towards clean energy.' They claim that governments are 'allowing fossil fuel producers to undermine national climate change commitment, while paying them for the privilege. The founder and executive director Stephen Kretzmann: "We have to stop using government funds to support the industry that is causing the problem.'

 The International Monetary Fund estimate the real cost as actually being $5.3 trillion - a figure that includes the costs of the effect these forms of energy use have on people's health, the environment and climate change. By contrast, the pledge given by advanced industrial nations to fight climate change is $100 billion a year by 2020.

There is another effect of using government subsidies to keep fuel prices low - it makes alternative energy sources less affordable. An 2014 IEA report on world energy stated: 'Fossil fuel subsidies rig the game against renewables and act as a drag on the transition to a more sustainable energy system.' 

In November this year a report by Oil Change and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) found that the G20 nations as a whole are responsible for an annual $452bn (£297bn) in subsidies.

According to Damian Carrington in The Guardian: 'The UK is alone among G7 nations in dramatically increasing its fossil fuel subsidies despite have already pledged to phase them out. We have paid out £5.9bn to energy companies in Britain, a further £3.7bn to subsidise production in other countries including Russian, Saudi Arabia and China.

One of the authors of the report Shelagh Whitley said: "The UK has been cutting back support for solar power and energy efficiency, arguing that the burden was too high. Our figures reveal that in spit of supposed budget constraints, the government is giving ever increasing handouts to oil and gas majors."

Sources: 'On Tether to Fossil Fuels, Nations Speak With Money' by John Schwartz (New York Times/5th December 2015)


'UK becomes only G7 country to increase fossil fuel subsidies' by Damian Carrington (The Guardian /12th November 2015)