Peoples Geography — Reclaiming space

Creating people's geographies

Consciousness-raising car mischief; climate change resets doomsday clock

UPDATED WITH DOOMSDAY CLOCK ANNOUNCEMENT (appended below)

Serious fun combines with mischievous consciousness-raising with balloons on tail-pipes in a German green campaign. It comes heartily endorsed ;)

And wherever possible: Walk! Bike it! Use public transport! Car-pool! Make your own fuel!

Big Bang

Article PhotoToday we stumbled upon a guerilla campaign against CO2 emissions documented through a short sequence of photographs that speaks for itself. But to explain briefly, the German environmental group, BUND printed earth balloons that can be wrapped onto tailpipes, such that when the driver starts the car, the exhaust inflates the balloon. As it blows up, the message “The world can’t take any more CO2” becomes legible. And then comes the big bang: the balloon bursts, and hopefully the driver of the car gets a little wake-up call.

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Meanwhile …

The minute hand has been moved two minutes closer to midnight (file photo).

Doomsday Clock: The minute hand has been moved two minutes closer to midnight (file photo).

Climate change resets ‘Doomsday Clock’

Last Update: Thursday, January 18, 2007. 7:24am (AEDT) ABC News

Experts assessing the dangers posed to civilisation have added climate change to the prospect of nuclear annihilation as the greatest threats to humankind.

As a result, the group has moved the minute hand on its famous ‘Doomsday Clock’ two minutes closer to midnight.

The concept timepiece now stands at five minutes to the hour.

The 60-year-old clock, based at the University of Chicago and maintained by the magazine Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, serves as a monitor on the possible use of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

Midnight represents global catastrophe.

This is the fourth time since the end of the Cold War that the clock has ticked forward.

Professor Stephen Hawking suffers from motor neurone disease. Speaking through a voice synthesiser, he has explained why the clock has been moved again.

“We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age, in a period of unprecedented violence,” he said.

“Scientists have a special responsibility, once again, to inform the public and to advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces.”

John Hallam from Friends of the Earth Australia says a number of grave concerns have prompted the step.

“There has been contingency planning within the Pentagon for nuclear strikes against Iran and there have been a series of articles over the possibility of Israel undertaking nuclear strikes,” he said.

“Some of the psychological and political barriers to the unthinkable are being gradually demolished.”

Related:

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

DOOMSDAY CLOCK

Doomsday Clock - 5 Minutes

One comment on “Consciousness-raising car mischief; climate change resets doomsday clock

  1. servant
    18 January, 2007

    That’s too funny. You might get shot here in the good ole U.S. of A.

    My son assures me that alternative fuels will be developed in time to head off a world crisis. I don’t know if he’s working on a hunch or what, but he sort of has to say something like that being 20 years old.

    We’ll figure out something. Or not. : D

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Timely Reminders

"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley

"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.

"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"


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