Spaceship Earth Research Articles

Whole Knowledge

Whole Knowledge

What are the possibilities for graphical presentation of decoupling? An example of economy-wide material flow indicators in the Czech Republic

Abstract The relationship between the environmental and economic domains has attracted researchers and politicians for at least several decades [Boulding, K., 1966. The economics of the coming spaceship earth. In: Boulding. K., et al. (Eds.), Environmental Quality in Growing Economy. Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Marylang; Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J., Behrens, W.W., 1972. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Universe Books, New York; Schmidt-Bleek, F., 1994. Wieviel Umwelt Braucht der Mensch? MIPS—Das Mass fur Okologisches Wirtschaften. Birkhauser-Verlag, Berlin, Basel, Boston]. The overall goal of sustainable economies is to reach a state where the general quality of life is growing while the environmental pressures go down [EC, 2001. A Sustainable Europe for a Better World: A European union Strategy for Sustainable Development. Commission of the European Communites, Brussels; EC, 2002. The Sixth Community Environment Action Programme. Commission of the European Communities, Brussels; EC, 2003a. 2003 Environmental Policy Review. Commission of the European Communities, Brussels; EC, 2003b. Towards a thematic strategy on the sustainable use of natural resources. Commission of the European Communities. Brussels; UN, 2002. Plan of Implementation of the World Sunnit on Sustainable Development. United Nations, New York.]. This phenomenon is called decoupling. To express decoupling, one usually aims to capture the mutual relation between an indicator of economic driving forces (most commonly Gross Domestic Product/GDP/, which is usually taken as a proxy of quality of life here) and an indicator of environmental pressure. When analysing decoupling, it is not quite clear how to proceed in terms of both selection of appropriate pressure indicators and presentation of decoupling. In this article, we focus on the issue of graphical presentation of decoupling analysis, particularly using economy-wide material flow indicators (EW-MFI) [Eurostat, 2001. Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts And Derived Indicators: A Methodological Guide. Eurostat, Luxembourg]. One of the most commonly used methods for graphical presentation of decoupling by EW-MFI is to plot time series of indexed values of these indicators and GDP in a single chart. Here, however, it is difficult or even impossible to analyse causes of the different decoupling for particular indicators—to do this we propose to analyse time series of their components. To show the contribution of the components to the overall decoupling of an indicator, we suggest expressing the weighted share of particular components in overall indicator decoupling. For that we have tested the direct material input indicator (DMI), which is also recommended by OECD for decoupling analysis [OECD, 2002. Indicators to Measure Decoupling of Environmental Pressures from Economic Growth. OECD, Paris]. The expression of the weighted share of the indicator components in indicator decoupling has proved to be especially transparent in the case of this indicator, because the DMI belongs to the least aggregated material flow indicators. Nevertheless, the proposed method of expression can also be applied to other material flow indicators, as exemplified by the domestic material consumption indicator (DMC).

Mathematical Lens: Spaceship Earth, Epcot Center, Orlando, Florida

Editors' note: Spaceship Earth is a geosphere and opened as a ride on October 1, 1982, at the Epcot Center in Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida. Visitors on the slow-moving ride are taken up into the geosphere and get a look at the history of worldwide communication. Sandra Argüelles Daire, Felix Varela Senior High School, Miami, Florida, took these photographs and submitted the questions.

Global indigenism and spaceship earth: Convergence, space, and re-entry friction

Since the 1990s, indigenous issues have come to occupy a consistent place in the Global Conservation Movement. In 2000 the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) published a position paper entitled Indigenous and Traditional People of the World and Ecoregion Conservation, which posited significant overlap between biodiversity and cultural diversity on a global scale. The most recent World Parks Congress (2003) was attended by 120 indigenous representatives. Optimistic observers have heralded these events as a convergence of the Indigenous Peoples’ Movement and Global Environmentalism. More cynical observers argue that it is an opportunistic political move by indigenous leaders and their western supporters to take advantage of conservation, or conversely a move by large conservation NGOs to present a ‘people friendly’ façade to capture larger sums of donor money. This article outlines the global historical and political trends that have brought together conservationists and indigenous peoples in the global arena and discusses the opportunities and problems created by this uneasy convergence.

The closed world of ecological architecture

This article explores how and why imagined and real environments in space came to serve as models for ecological design of earthly landscapes and buildings in the 1970s. It claims that life in space came to represent the peaceful, rational, and environmentally friendly alternative to the destructive, irrational, ecological crisis down on Earth. Spaceship management aimed narrowly at the biological survival of astronauts, an ethic which also came to dominate ecological design proposals on board Spaceship Earth. The result was a design programme which was at the expense of a wider aesthetic and social understanding of the human condition. The article reviews the work of leading ecological designers of the period, such as Ian L. McHarg, John Todd and the New Alchemists, Alexander Pike and John Frazer, Brenda and Robert Vale, Ken Yeang, Phil Hawes, and others. It situates their projects in the perspective of ecological research methods of the period and puts forward an understanding of their thinking in the context of space exploration. Today's challenge is to escape the intellectual space capsule that ecologists have created for environmentally concerned architects.

Rendering climate change governable: From biopower to advanced liberal government?

This article generates a theoretical framework for analysing the politics of climate change on the basis of Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality. Foucault does not limit the exercise of power to sovereignty, but introduces discipline, biopower, liberal and advanced liberal government as alternative configurations of state and power. The article argues that the ways in which climate change is rendered a governable entity are best understood before the background of a shift from biopower to advanced liberal government. It will be argued that climate change was first rendered governable by biopower, which justified global management of spaceship Earth in the name of the survival of life on Earth. Since the mid-1990s, climate change has been captured by advanced liberal government, which articulates climate change as an economic issue that requires market-based solutions to facilitate cost-effective technological solutions. A governmentality analysis asks which visibilities, fields of knowledge, practices and identities this ‘global climate regime’ is actually producing, rather than assuming that what it does or is supposed to do is known. In that way, the ways in which programme failure has already been built into the very formation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol can be identified.

CME-geometry and cosmic-ray anisotropy observed by a prototype muon detector network

We analyze the cosmic-ray anisotropy observed by a prototype network of muon detectors during geomagnetic storms associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The network currently consists of multidirectional surface muon detectors at Nagoya (Japan) and Hobart (Australia), together with a prototype detector at São Martinho (Brazil) which has been in operation since March, 2001. In this report, we analyze the anisotropy recorded in both the muon detector and neutron monitor (the Spaceship Earth) networks and find significant enhancements of cosmic-ray anisotropy during geomagnetic storms. Following the analysis by Bieber and Evenson [Bieber, J.W., Evenson, P. CME geometry in relation to cosmic ray anisotropy. Geophys. Res. Lett. 25 (1998) 2955–2958] for the neutron monitor data at ∼10 GeV, we also derive cosmic-ray density gradients from muon data at higher-energy (∼50 GeV), possibly reflecting the larger-scale geometry of CMEs causing geomagnetic storms. We particularly find in some events the anisotropy enhancement clearly starting prior to the storm onset in both the muon and neutron data. This is the first result of the CME-geometry derived from simultaneous observations of the anisotropy with networks of multidirectional muon detectors and neutron monitors.

Introduction to ‘spaceship earth’

Introduction to ‘spaceship earth’

Tessellating the Sphere with Regular Polygons

Spherical geometry can be used to entice students into a deeper understanding of Euclidean geometry. Determining which regular spherical polygons tessellate the sphere is another motivating topic that is accessible to high school students. The most recognizable tessellations of the sphere are found on balls, such as soccer balls, volleyballs, and golf balls. Even Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center in Disney World involves tessellation.

Spaceship Earth Observations of the Easter 2001 Solar Particle Event

The largest relativistic (~1 GeV) solar proton event of the current solar activity cycle occurred on Easter 2001 (April 15). This was the first such event to be observed by Spaceship Earth, an 11-station network of neutron monitors optimized for measuring the angular distribution of solar cosmic rays. We derive the particle density and anisotropy as functions of time and model these with numerical solutions of the Boltzmann equation. We conclude that transport in the interplanetary medium was diffusive in this event, with a radial mean free path of 0.17 AU. The high time resolution of the Spaceship Earth network and the fast particle speed permit accurate determination of particle injection timing at the solar source. We find that particle injection at the Sun began at 13:42 UT ±1 minute, about 14 minutes before the first arrival of particles at Earth, in close association with the onset of shock-related radio emissions and ~15 minutes after liftoff of a coronal mass ejection (CME). Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that solar particles were accelerated to GeV energies on Easter 2001 by a CME-driven shock wave.

Why we need a strategic plan for “spaceship earth”

The title of Alley’s book says it all: The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future (Princeton University Press, 2000). One of the world’s leading climate researchers and chairperson of a recent National Research Council study of climate change, Alley concludes that we have been enjoying an unusually benign and stable climate pattern during the past few millennia. While our species was busy developing agriculture, industry and large-scale societies, we were blessed with a rare window of ecological opportunity; climatic turmoil has been more the rule:

Population goals and ecological strategies for spaceship earth

The last century has seen extraordinary growth in human populations and economies. This growth has imposed huge and ever-increasing pressures on Earth's ecosystems, prompting fears concerning the integrity of their life-supporting functions and the high rate of extinction of species. Quite simply, ecological degradation threatens the interests and possibly the survival of future human populations. By the criterion of ecological sustainability, and given our current consumption rates and technologies, Earth is now overpopulated. In such times of great and threatening change it is important to reconsider human goals and enabling strategies. A fundamental goal is the sustained quality survival of human populations. Achieving this requires new paradigms of understanding and management, especially the realization that the human economic and social spheres are dependent on healthy, functioning ecosystems, and that most forms of growth are unsustainable. Socio-economic development must become ecologically sustainable with the maintenance of Earth's life-support systems assuming priority. Developing integrated ecosystem management, cutting consumption, and negotiating optimum population sizes would be useful. This paper discusses these issues with emphasis on the Australian situation.

Stumbling Our Way Toward a World-Wide Democratic Government: Globalization and Sweatshops - Nonzero: The Logic of Human DestinyRobert Wright 2001, New York, Vintage Books, 435 pages, $15 paperback, ISBN 0-679-75894-1 - Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising AsiaNicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 377 pages, ISBN: 0-375-40325-6

Stumbling Our Way Toward a World-Wide Democratic Government: Globalization and Sweatshops - Nonzero: The Logic of Human DestinyRobert Wright 2001, New York, Vintage Books, 435 pages, $15 paperback, ISBN 0-679-75894-1 - Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising AsiaNicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, 377 pages, ISBN: 0-375-40325-6 - Volume 13 Issue 3

Geology: from an Earth to a planetary science in the twentieth century

Abstract Since the opening of the Space Age, images from spacecraft have enabled us to map the surfaces of all the rocky planets and satellites in the Solar System, thus transforming them from astronomical to geological objects. This progression of geology from being a strictly Earth-centred science to one that is planetary-wide has provided us with a wealth of information on the evolutionary histories of other bodies and has supplied valuable new insights on the Earth itself. We have learned, for example, that the Earth-Moon system most likely formed as a result of a collision in space between the protoearth and a large impactor, and that the Moon subsequently accreted largely from debris of Earth’s mantle. The airless, waterless Moon still preserves a record of the impact events that have scarred its surface from the time its crust first formed. The much larger, volcanic Earth underwent a similar bombardment but most of the evidence was lost during the earliest 550 million years or so that elapsed before its first surviving systems of crustal rocks formed. Therefore, we decipher Earth’s earliest history by investigating the record on the Moon. Lunar samples collected by the Apollo astronauts of the USA and the robotic Luna missions of the former USSR linked the Earth and Moon by their oxygen isotopic compositions and enabled us to construct a timescale of lunar events keyed to dated samples. They also permitted us to identify certain meteorites as fragments of the lunar crust that were projected to the Earth by impacts on the Moon. Similarly, analyses of the Martian surface soils and atmosphere by the Viking and Pathfinder missions led to the identification of meteorite fragments ejected by hypervelocity impacts on Mars. Images of Mars displayed landforms wrought in the past by voluminous floodwaters, similar to those of the long-controversial Channeled Scablands of Washington State, USA. The record on Mars confirmed catastrophic flooding as a significant geomorphic process on at least one other planet. The first views of the Earth photographed by the crew of Apollo 8 gave us the concept of ‘Spaceship Earth’ and heightened international concern for protection of the global environment.

A comparison between conventional and integrated water resources planning and management

Air, land and water are the three fragile components of the Spaceship Earth. These three components are highly integrative resources and therefore, must be properly planned and managed in order to ensure adequate public health, food supplies and transportation. The quality of life is directly dependent on how well these resources are planned and managed for sustainable development. The above three resources are highly integrated and thus the need for multi-purpose water resources planning and management. Multi-purpose water resources planning and management also emerged as a result of an increase in competing and conflicting water uses and due to rapid population growth and rising expectations of a better life.This paper discusses the conventional and integrated water resource planning and management approaches for sustainable development. The author agues that, both approaches if implemented very well are geared to deliver the same end results ‘sustainable development’. However, the paper concludes that, both approaches have failed to deliver the end results due to a missing link. This missing link in both approaches is the institutional framework that coordinates water resources planning and management responsibilities and activities at all levels of government.

Markets, Politics, and Globalization: Can the Global Economy Be Civilized?

A great deal of nonsense has been written and said about globalization in recent years. Some has come from political right, some from political left, some from business and political leaders, some from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and people in streets. The term globalization has become so slippery, so ambiguous, so subject to misunderstanding and political manipulation that it should be banned from further use, at least until there is precise agreement as to its meaning. In particular, those involved in economic and political policymaking and debate must clarify their meaning and their messages in this sphere if they are to be taken seriously. The term globalization confuses two discrete phenomena. The first is shrinkage in space and in time that world has experienced in consequence of technological revolutions in transport, communications, and information processing. Although these developments have not affected all countries or people uniformly, world has for many become a much smaller place. References to our village or spaceship Earth or, more prosaically, the global economy capture reality that actions and decisions in one part of world have greater impact on other parts of humanity and do so with greater speed than was experienced in years past. The behavior of world's interrelated twenty-four-hours-a-day financial markets typifies this trend. This new globalization has bred more detailed and up-to-date knowledge of people's activities. But income and wealth imbalance have also created totally unbalanced information flows and what C. P. Snow has described as ultimate obscenity: rich sitting in comfort of their living rooms watching other people starve on color television. This new technology-driven globalization is new reality to which we all are trying to adapt. And there truly is no escape from it. The second usage of globalization relates to matters of human policy choice-the degree to which one mindlessly submits oneself to surrounding external forces. Individuals, firms, governments, and NGOs all have choices. While globalization in first meaning is a fact, and it may constrain some choices, it does not totally foreclose them in way that many imply. One cannot argue--in sense of being for or against globalization--with globalization as fact, although one can like it or dislike it. To equate globalization with external liberalization and full reliance on global marketplace magic, however, is logical confusion and quite misleading. It is certainly convenient for those pushing an external liberalization agenda to be able to depict it as an inescapable concomitant of globalization fact. But globalization (the fact) and external liberalization are logically quite distinct. Globalization (the fact) will proceed more quickly if all countries externally liberalize-that is, open to world-their goods, services, and factor markets, including their labor markets. Liberalization enthusiasts, as they preach virtues of full and free mobility of capital, are generally reticent about discussing latter. The trend toward external liberalization in recent decades has undoubtedly accelerated pace of globalization. This recent association of externa l liberalization policies with technology-driven fact of globalization has contributed to deplorable logical and terminological confusion to which I have referred. External liberalization policies involve political, economic, and social choices. The effects of liberalization and opening up are not agreed and uniform for all places and times. [1] The challenge--both at national and global levels-is, through conscious policy choices, to make new globalized system work for maximum human welfare. The task before us is to make globalization functional, to civilize it. There are few, if any, reputable developing country analysts or governments that question positive potential roles of international trade or capital inflow in economic growth and overall development. …

Your Private Sky: R. Buckminster Fuller, the Art of Design Science

Bucky was one of the most revolutionary technological visionaries of this century. As an architect, engineer, entrepreneur, poet, he was a quintessentially American, self-made man. But he was also an out-sider: a technologist with a poet's imagination who already developed theories of environmental control in the thirties (more with less) and anticipated the globalization of our planet (think global - act local). This visual reader documents and examines Fuller's theories, ideas, designs, and projects. It also takes an analytical look at his ideology of technology as the panacea. With numerous illustrations, many published here for the first time, as well as texts by Fuller and the editors. The publication presents Buckminster Fuller's creations as a dazzling expression of this unconditionally optimistic technocrat whose vision of driverless Spaceship Earth led him to examine the principles of maximizing effects in the most diverse sectors of design and construction.

Materials and the Global Environment: Waste Mining in the 21st Century

Sustainability is supposed to be the watchword of the coming century. Kenneth Boulding characterized the economic system of the 19th century as a “cowboy economy,” meaning that resources were essentially not a limiting factor. In contrast, he noted that in the future we must prepare to live in a “spaceship economy,” adopting Barbara Ward's famous metaphor of “Spaceship Earth.” In a spaceship, all materials must be recycled (or discarded into space).

Markets, Politics and Globalization: Can the global economy be civilized?

great deal of nonsense has been written and said about ization in recent years. Some has come from political right, JL jl some from political left, some from business and political leaders, some from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and people in streets. The term globalization has become so slippery, so am biguous, so subject to misunderstanding and political manipulation that it should be banned from further use, at least until there is precise agree ment as to its meaning. In particular, those involved in economic and political policymaking and debate must clarify their meaning and their messages in this sphere if they are to be taken seriously. The term globalization confuses two discrete phenomena. The first is shrinkage in space and in time that world has experienced in consequence of technological revolutions in transport, communica tions, and information processing. Although these developments have not affected all countries or people uniformly, world has for many become a much smaller place. References to our global village or spaceship Earth or, more prosaically, the economy capture reality that actions and decisions in one part of world have greater impact on other parts of humanity and do so with greater speed than was experienced in years past. The behavior of world's inter related twenty-four-hours-a-day financial markets typifies this trend. This new globalization has bred more detailed and up-to-date knowl edge of people's activities. But income and wealth imbalance have also created totally unbalanced information flows and what C. R Snow has described as ultimate obscenity: rich sitting in comfort of their living rooms watching other people starve on color television. This new technology-driven globalization is new reality to which we all

Australian Cosmic Ray Modulation Research

AbstractAustralian research into variations of the cosmic ray flux arriving at the Earth has played a pivotal role for more than 50 years. The work has been largely led by the groups from the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Division, and has involved the operation of neutron monitors and muon telescopes from many sites. In this paper, the achievements of the Australian researchers are reviewed and future experiments are described. Particular highlights include: the determination of cosmic ray modulation parameters; the development of techniques for modelling ground-level enhancements; the confirmation of the Tail-In and Loss-Cone sidereal anisotropies; the Spaceship Earth collaboration; and the Solar Cycle latitude survey.