We are a carbon based life form. Carbon, along with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, and other elements make up the building blocks of life that emerged from the primordial stew. Of course along the way came photosynthesis and millions of years of plants. Photosynthesis is a beautiful piece of biochemical machinery that uses sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to make complex hydrocarbons and the oxygen we breathe. Over hundreds of millions of years, coal, natural gas and oil was formed from the remains of plant and animal life built on photosynthesis. About 150 years ago we began to mine it in earnest. But what happens when it's gone?
PNCA is incorporating big questions like these into its programs. Not only are they provocative questions demanding address by artists, but artists may end up contributing original solutions to these greatest challenges as a species.
Richard Heinberg from the Post Carbon Institute provides a provocative view of the future as stored carbon fuels become more expensive and then are depleted over the next 150 years, beginning with oil. If we focus on climate change caused by burning all those stored carbon fuels, the time scales for radical change are shortened to less than 20 years. That's why there is unprecedented investment by China in cleantech. Heinberg builds on the work of the Sloan School's Jay Forrester. It's a hard topic to approach rigorously as the dismal science is notoriously inexact. But still, some thought needs to be given to future economic theory.
You can hear Heinberg's thoughts in a talk tonight. At PNCA www.pnca.edu 1241 NW Johnson 7PM Free
