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John Davis is a practicing architect in Ojai, California. He has taught Environmental Humanities at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and at Viridis Graduate Institute. He blogs on history and the environment at urbanwildland.org
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Thursday, October 10, 2019
The Green New Deal and Accursed Wealth The United States will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, create new 'green' jobs, invest in infrastructure and secure clean air and water, promote climate and community resilience and ensure 'access to nature' and a sustainable environment within an economic ideology that presumes a supine natural world.
Thursday, October 10, 2019The Green New Deal and Accursed Wealth The United States will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, create new 'green' jobs, invest in infrastructure and secure clean air and water, promote climate and community resilience and ensure 'access to nature' and a sustainable environment within an economic ideology that presumes a supine natural world.
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Sunday, February 24, 2019
Wildlife Corridors not High-Speed Rail coming to California The greatest threat to wildlife rangelands in California is the system of freeways that cross hatch its still substantial areas of wild habitat, isolate populations, and promote genetic fragmentation. As a top-predator, the mountain lion is key to the survival of Southern California as one of the most biologically rich natural landscapes in the world.
Sunday, February 24, 2019Wildlife Corridors not High-Speed Rail coming to California The greatest threat to wildlife rangelands in California is the system of freeways that cross hatch its still substantial areas of wild habitat, isolate populations, and promote genetic fragmentation. As a top-predator, the mountain lion is key to the survival of Southern California as one of the most biologically rich natural landscapes in the world.
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Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Ecological Beings Now the world, with the neurasthenic, metronomic gait of a zombie, continues to trudge towards the precipice over which its inhabitants, it seems, must plunge into a time of environmental feedback, where snow and ice melt produce permafrost methane release amplifying the processes that lead to a drowned and vastly diminished planet.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019Ecological Beings Now the world, with the neurasthenic, metronomic gait of a zombie, continues to trudge towards the precipice over which its inhabitants, it seems, must plunge into a time of environmental feedback, where snow and ice melt produce permafrost methane release amplifying the processes that lead to a drowned and vastly diminished planet.
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Saturday, November 17, 2018
Geographies of Violence in Southern California The carbon sequestered in over a quarter million acres of trees and shrubs and within the building materials of many thousands of structures has now been released to the atmosphere in these hellacious wildfires spread across California.
Saturday, November 17, 2018Geographies of Violence in Southern California The carbon sequestered in over a quarter million acres of trees and shrubs and within the building materials of many thousands of structures has now been released to the atmosphere in these hellacious wildfires spread across California.
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Friday, August 16, 2019
The Isle of White North Haven is powered by three gleaming (white) wind turbines, discreetly located on an adjacent island. They illustrate the uncanny ability of the rich to thrive in green, sustainable communities while the poor often remain in the polluted cities, suburbs and exurbs from whence wealth is extracted.
Friday, August 16, 2019The Isle of White North Haven is powered by three gleaming (white) wind turbines, discreetly located on an adjacent island. They illustrate the uncanny ability of the rich to thrive in green, sustainable communities while the poor often remain in the polluted cities, suburbs and exurbs from whence wealth is extracted.
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Friday, July 5, 2019
Joe Biden is a Collaborator Biden remains typical of the great, antediluvian Congressional horde. His complicity in furthering the oligarchs' agenda is well known. He was complicit in the passage of the racist Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994; complicit in Obama's canny retention of private health insurers in the mix of the Affordable Care Act; and complicit in the ACA's denial of health services to 'illegals'.
Friday, July 5, 2019Joe Biden is a Collaborator Biden remains typical of the great, antediluvian Congressional horde. His complicity in furthering the oligarchs' agenda is well known. He was complicit in the passage of the racist Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994; complicit in Obama's canny retention of private health insurers in the mix of the Affordable Care Act; and complicit in the ACA's denial of health services to 'illegals'.
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Friday, February 7, 2020
Global Plastic The first to be made, in 1907, was Bakelite, from coal tar, and was initially designed to replace shellac, sourced from Asian beetles, and used in electrical insulation. It was quickly developed as a key material in the burgeoning consumer goods market, used to encase radios, telephones and clocks, and made into housewares and jewelry.
Friday, February 7, 2020Global Plastic The first to be made, in 1907, was Bakelite, from coal tar, and was initially designed to replace shellac, sourced from Asian beetles, and used in electrical insulation. It was quickly developed as a key material in the burgeoning consumer goods market, used to encase radios, telephones and clocks, and made into housewares and jewelry.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Bernie and the Biotariat He does not promote tinkering with the arcane rules of the senate such as overturning the filibuster rule because he believes in a day when his movement will deliver a democracy no longer shackled to institutions born out of the eighteenth century.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020Bernie and the Biotariat He does not promote tinkering with the arcane rules of the senate such as overturning the filibuster rule because he believes in a day when his movement will deliver a democracy no longer shackled to institutions born out of the eighteenth century.
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Thursday, January 2, 2020
Bad Planet The climate action agendas proposed or enacted across the planet, including the Green New Deal, represent opportunities to replace, and potentially to expand energy use - and thus to expand the despoliation of ecosystems, human culture, communities and individual lives.
Thursday, January 2, 2020Bad Planet The climate action agendas proposed or enacted across the planet, including the Green New Deal, represent opportunities to replace, and potentially to expand energy use - and thus to expand the despoliation of ecosystems, human culture, communities and individual lives.
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Monday, March 16, 2020
Civilization Ruffled by a Perfect Epidemiological Storm Crises such as 9/11, Katrina, continent-spanning wildfires, and now Covid-19, that have so recently piled up across the globe, are not black swan events appearing out of nowhere - they are manifestations of this inherent fragility.
Monday, March 16, 2020Civilization Ruffled by a Perfect Epidemiological Storm Crises such as 9/11, Katrina, continent-spanning wildfires, and now Covid-19, that have so recently piled up across the globe, are not black swan events appearing out of nowhere - they are manifestations of this inherent fragility.
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Thursday, April 9, 2020
Freedom Virus Neoliberal ideology has now been laid bare by the Corona epidemic. It is impotent in a public health crisis because it promotes the financial starvation of government through lower taxes while simultaneously expanding military budgets both of which are inimical to the public good.
Thursday, April 9, 2020Freedom Virus Neoliberal ideology has now been laid bare by the Corona epidemic. It is impotent in a public health crisis because it promotes the financial starvation of government through lower taxes while simultaneously expanding military budgets both of which are inimical to the public good.
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Friday, May 8, 2020
Visions of a Post-Covid-19 World The extraordinary circumstances of a global stand-down as SARS-CoV-2 careens across the planet has given us, amidst the appalling realities of viral sickness and death, a momentary vision of a saner, healthier, and a cooler world.
Friday, May 8, 2020Visions of a Post-Covid-19 World The extraordinary circumstances of a global stand-down as SARS-CoV-2 careens across the planet has given us, amidst the appalling realities of viral sickness and death, a momentary vision of a saner, healthier, and a cooler world.
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Sunday, September 18, 2022
The Idea of America This country's attempts to improve conditions for the pursuit of our unalienable rights have fallen into the abyss. We are closing in on fifty years of an ideology that has systematically deprived much of the population of its baseline psychological, physiological, and material needs.
Sunday, September 18, 2022The Idea of America This country's attempts to improve conditions for the pursuit of our unalienable rights have fallen into the abyss. We are closing in on fifty years of an ideology that has systematically deprived much of the population of its baseline psychological, physiological, and material needs.
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Wednesday, August 5, 2020
The COVID-Interregnum As the statues have tumbled across the land there is an understanding that we will emerge from what might be called the COVID-Interregnum as a much-altered nation - our histories reimagined, and our values reconfigured.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020The COVID-Interregnum As the statues have tumbled across the land there is an understanding that we will emerge from what might be called the COVID-Interregnum as a much-altered nation - our histories reimagined, and our values reconfigured.
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Monday, February 10, 2020
Three Old White Guys - Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg America has been built on just enough democracy to ensure that the masses retain their Horatio Alger dreams - believing the myth of equal opportunity and the chance to strike it rich - but never enough to challenge the power of the wealthy.
Monday, February 10, 2020Three Old White Guys - Bernie, Biden and Bloomberg America has been built on just enough democracy to ensure that the masses retain their Horatio Alger dreams - believing the myth of equal opportunity and the chance to strike it rich - but never enough to challenge the power of the wealthy.
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Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Global Warming as a Tactical Weapon The environmental, social, financial and international violence perpetrated by the Trump government are tactical instruments of ideological coercion. Might not the far greater violence of global warming, or more explicitly of extinction, be used as a countervailing instrument of radical change?
Tuesday, June 18, 2019Global Warming as a Tactical Weapon The environmental, social, financial and international violence perpetrated by the Trump government are tactical instruments of ideological coercion. Might not the far greater violence of global warming, or more explicitly of extinction, be used as a countervailing instrument of radical change?
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Monday, January 21, 2019
A National Emergency The pretense that humans are in charge has finally to be abandoned. We await our fate possessing only crude materials of resistance and, thus far, almost no political will to emplace them.
Monday, January 21, 2019A National Emergency The pretense that humans are in charge has finally to be abandoned. We await our fate possessing only crude materials of resistance and, thus far, almost no political will to emplace them.
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Friday, September 13, 2019
The Four Storms of the Apocalypse - Katrina, Sandy, Maria and Dorian We now know that a massive increase in the burning of fossil fuels linked to the industrial revolution in Britain was initiated some time in the 1840's and has since resulted in epic population growth and growing prosperity together with extinction levels of carbon in the planet's atmosphere and oceans.
Friday, September 13, 2019The Four Storms of the Apocalypse - Katrina, Sandy, Maria and Dorian We now know that a massive increase in the burning of fossil fuels linked to the industrial revolution in Britain was initiated some time in the 1840's and has since resulted in epic population growth and growing prosperity together with extinction levels of carbon in the planet's atmosphere and oceans.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Oak In their conquest of varied terrain and climate the oak has acquired an adaptability based on small changes in their genetic code.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021Oak In their conquest of varied terrain and climate the oak has acquired an adaptability based on small changes in their genetic code.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2020
A Shared Perception of Harm - The Disruptive Power of Covid -19 Its colonization of humanity, having been previously confined to Asian bat populations, has enabled the pathogen to express itself dramatically in the form of a global pandemic.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020A Shared Perception of Harm - The Disruptive Power of Covid -19 Its colonization of humanity, having been previously confined to Asian bat populations, has enabled the pathogen to express itself dramatically in the form of a global pandemic.
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Sunday, July 18, 2021
Bear Canyon America's Great Basin which occupies most of Nevada, southern eastern Oregon and about half of Utah functions hydrologically like the Tibetan Plateau.
Sunday, July 18, 2021Bear Canyon America's Great Basin which occupies most of Nevada, southern eastern Oregon and about half of Utah functions hydrologically like the Tibetan Plateau.
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Saturday, August 20, 2022
And So It Is And so it is that a West that has oppressed and exploited so much of the world will become, in turn, oppressed and the exploited - it's ill-gotten wealth now concentrated in the grasping hands of the so very few will slowly over many generations be traded away to the global south.
Saturday, August 20, 2022And So It Is And so it is that a West that has oppressed and exploited so much of the world will become, in turn, oppressed and the exploited - it's ill-gotten wealth now concentrated in the grasping hands of the so very few will slowly over many generations be traded away to the global south.
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Sunday, February 6, 2022
Magic We can speculate that Upper Ojai was singularly experienced, understood, and revered as a deeply magical place.
Sunday, February 6, 2022Magic We can speculate that Upper Ojai was singularly experienced, understood, and revered as a deeply magical place.
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Sunday, January 16, 2022
Rain I have seen my first peony flower of the season, an early reminder of the revival of life that occurs in the chaparral with the arrival of winter's rain.
Sunday, January 16, 2022Rain I have seen my first peony flower of the season, an early reminder of the revival of life that occurs in the chaparral with the arrival of winter's rain.
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Thursday, October 21, 2021
The Ethics of Architecture Those who practice architecture's arts and sciences are engulfed within the Anthropocene, an epoch characterized by epidemic, species extinction, a human population ballooning towards eight billion, rampant destruction of habitat and most pernicious of all, runaway global warming.
Thursday, October 21, 2021The Ethics of Architecture Those who practice architecture's arts and sciences are engulfed within the Anthropocene, an epoch characterized by epidemic, species extinction, a human population ballooning towards eight billion, rampant destruction of habitat and most pernicious of all, runaway global warming.
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Friday, July 1, 2022
Life and Death A society's interaction with the flora, fauna and the landforms found in its environment can promote an understanding of the cosmic process.
Friday, July 1, 2022Life and Death A society's interaction with the flora, fauna and the landforms found in its environment can promote an understanding of the cosmic process.
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Friday, August 28, 2020
No Fire Without Smoke According to a report issued by Stanford University earlier this year climate change has resulted in the doubling of the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires while average temperatures have risen almost two degrees Fahrenheit and rainfall has dropped by a full 30%.
Friday, August 28, 2020No Fire Without Smoke According to a report issued by Stanford University earlier this year climate change has resulted in the doubling of the number of extreme-risk days for California wildfires while average temperatures have risen almost two degrees Fahrenheit and rainfall has dropped by a full 30%.
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Monday, May 17, 2021
In the Weeds of History After four years or more of bloviation focused on Trump, American democracy and the deep wounds of this country's colonial past it is time to return to the enchantments of the Urban Wildland except that there is no escape even in the hinterlands from the psychic toll of conquest.
Monday, May 17, 2021In the Weeds of History After four years or more of bloviation focused on Trump, American democracy and the deep wounds of this country's colonial past it is time to return to the enchantments of the Urban Wildland except that there is no escape even in the hinterlands from the psychic toll of conquest.
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Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Are we Moderns or Terrestrials? We are now witnessing the end-game of the Modernity project. Founded on rationality, emancipation and progress and devoted, ostensibly, to the welfare of all, it has been subverted by, "a dizzying extension of inequalities". This process of triage has created the so-called 'left-behinds' necessary as sacrificial populations that, ironically, support the elite practitioners of this economic and cultural discrimination.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019Are we Moderns or Terrestrials? We are now witnessing the end-game of the Modernity project. Founded on rationality, emancipation and progress and devoted, ostensibly, to the welfare of all, it has been subverted by, "a dizzying extension of inequalities". This process of triage has created the so-called 'left-behinds' necessary as sacrificial populations that, ironically, support the elite practitioners of this economic and cultural discrimination.
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Thursday, November 1, 2018
The Last History of the United States The words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"", from America's Declaration of Independence, stand as one of the finest historical examples of what Hitler, and later Goebbels, called the big lie. Hitler wrote in Mein Kamf, 1925, "that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata ...
Thursday, November 1, 2018The Last History of the United States The words "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"", from America's Declaration of Independence, stand as one of the finest historical examples of what Hitler, and later Goebbels, called the big lie. Hitler wrote in Mein Kamf, 1925, "that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata ...
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Sunday, June 6, 2021
Sisar Oak, walnut, bay, and sycamore shade the trail and as you begin to rise out of the canyon, Cottonwoods reach for the sky beyond the riparian canopy.
Sunday, June 6, 2021Sisar Oak, walnut, bay, and sycamore shade the trail and as you begin to rise out of the canyon, Cottonwoods reach for the sky beyond the riparian canopy.
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Monday, December 17, 2018
What World do we Seek? We are being asked to believe in the possibility of continued fossil-fueled economic growth while that phenomenon's miasmic specter of global warming threatens to destroy the productivity and habitability of vast swathes of the planet. And, we are being asked, now, to believe that the server farms that support Facebook run on fairy dust.
Monday, December 17, 2018What World do we Seek? We are being asked to believe in the possibility of continued fossil-fueled economic growth while that phenomenon's miasmic specter of global warming threatens to destroy the productivity and habitability of vast swathes of the planet. And, we are being asked, now, to believe that the server farms that support Facebook run on fairy dust.
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Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Burn Lands Even in the burn lands, the beauty of the hills, valleys, canyons and distant mountains remains. Bathed in the soft glow of early morning and evening light, it is transfixing. Scoured by cold north-easterly Santa Ana winds (in other seasons, the fire wind) the atmosphere is preternaturally clear, the landscape stunningly chromatic.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019Burn Lands Even in the burn lands, the beauty of the hills, valleys, canyons and distant mountains remains. Bathed in the soft glow of early morning and evening light, it is transfixing. Scoured by cold north-easterly Santa Ana winds (in other seasons, the fire wind) the atmosphere is preternaturally clear, the landscape stunningly chromatic.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2020
This is No Way to Live The change I want to see has already begun and is already manifest in a fearless resolve that quite simply - This is No Way to Live!
Wednesday, July 15, 2020This is No Way to Live The change I want to see has already begun and is already manifest in a fearless resolve that quite simply - This is No Way to Live!
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Friday, September 18, 2020
"Law and Order" vs. "Empathy and Healing" All hope of racial justice, income equality, climate action and the elimination of gender bias awaits the next revolution, not the result of this November's federal election.
Friday, September 18, 2020"Law and Order" vs. "Empathy and Healing" All hope of racial justice, income equality, climate action and the elimination of gender bias awaits the next revolution, not the result of this November's federal election.
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Friday, December 18, 2020
What Shall We Call It? There was no coup. American democracy worked as designed: it took the progressive energies unleashed in opposition to the Trump administration and entirely neutered them with the orderly election of the avuncular Joseph Biden, protector of the Empire, the military industrial complex, banking and finance..
Friday, December 18, 2020What Shall We Call It? There was no coup. American democracy worked as designed: it took the progressive energies unleashed in opposition to the Trump administration and entirely neutered them with the orderly election of the avuncular Joseph Biden, protector of the Empire, the military industrial complex, banking and finance..
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Thursday, June 4, 2020
Our History is Our Future WE citizens are remade as human capital: mini entrepreneurs whose only civic duty is towards pumping up the GDP. This is what our government demands of us and we would be foolish to expect more from it than further destruction of the public realm and further trivialization of the democratic process.
Thursday, June 4, 2020Our History is Our Future WE citizens are remade as human capital: mini entrepreneurs whose only civic duty is towards pumping up the GDP. This is what our government demands of us and we would be foolish to expect more from it than further destruction of the public realm and further trivialization of the democratic process.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2021
Fading to Sepia The country's humiliating retreat from Afghanistan is an indicator that this formerly imperious political and military power is now woefully inadequate to the task of combatting the exigencies of terrorism, religious fundamentalism, tribal solidarity, asymmetrical warfare.
Wednesday, September 15, 2021Fading to Sepia The country's humiliating retreat from Afghanistan is an indicator that this formerly imperious political and military power is now woefully inadequate to the task of combatting the exigencies of terrorism, religious fundamentalism, tribal solidarity, asymmetrical warfare.
