Getting out of winter blues...
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
(5.10 p.m. transit Berlin, Germany to L.A., USA)
I am sitting 10,000 meters above ground between London and L.A. on a Virgin Airline flight. Pondering what will happen if the endless ice-capped ocean below me starts to melt away over the next decade. Well, sea levels would rise enough to swamp away both cities. But what about Snoop Dog and fresh beats from Dr. Dre? Tinseltown could move up to Pasadena hills and cruise downtown in speed boats. Bloods and Crips would convert their hummers inside Compton waters. Tupac look-alikes would pose as pirates taxing adventure tourists for insufficient horse powers. Strange fantasies...
While the greenhouse debate takes place in Bali and I wonder if carbon capitalism with trade-offs is being thought of as the only possible alternative in a generation of guilt-ridden politics. No vision, no mission. What if America`s and China's elite decide to go green?
I need to check his facts regarding the environment during my 4 weeks of facts and fiction. It’s a fly on the wall documentary that I named OBAMANIA - generation X strikes back. It can derail any moment just as our planet can, but it has one central question: What has our generation to offer?
At take off from London a stewardess mumbled about passengers can do their bit to save the planet too. I did not pay attention, too tired, too ignorant and sleepy. But seeing all this ice and vastness of vacant land beneath me, makes me remember as I travelled across the deserts in Africa and North America ten years ago. I was overwhelmed by the beauty and scale of our planet. Abundance of space, freedom and undreamed imaginary possibilities...
I ask myself what could be achieved if one venture capitalist gets the idea to mine and sell the melting sweet water in the arctic regions as bottled drinks? The poor and marginalized peasants and nomadic peoples would have to trade in their carbon footprint for cash to buy water. Maybe they would invest in sweet water stocks on Wall Street via their mobile phones in the back of their sub-Saharan make shift yards, battling for cash-flow via pay-pal before border controls battle them. Free market economy will regulate climate disaster and save us all. Yeah, right.
I love to read in-flight magazines, they are so off the hook from what I would normally read. Bloomberg magazine features Arnie Schwarzenegger as green governor of California. I imagine how he saves the world with a Mexican start-up. A joint venture that brings migrant workers on mules across the border to L.A. to cut down carbon (CO2) emissions, allowing rich and ignorant Californians to drive more. No more problems with illegal immigrants - they could breed animals for eco game parks.
In the year 2020 the donkeys and horses re-introduced by Arnie could be frolicking about the re-cultivated forests planted to heal the millions of burned acres torched in wildfires set by the inhabitants of Tinseltown. Silicon valley CEO`s would live on farms and invest in eco-tourism for European and Chinese tourists. Cruises with catamarans and visits to adventure parks for the last hero species: eco warriors. Speciality treat: aged Hollywood stars in cocktail lounges begging to be photographed in front of their SUV’s.
I wonder what Obama has to say to all those fancy ideas about climate change. He clearly must have seen the effects of desertification and poverty on his journeys to Kenya.
Even if tree planting feels like a public relations exercise when considering the true scale of the problem. No cynicism allowed in his campaign.
In the meantime I ask the stewardess to tell me about the new Virgin trading scheme for CO 2. She kind of looks charmingly and innocently into my eyes. Says she will ask a superior to find out more. Maybe I should have not used a plane to make this trip. I could have used a cargo vessel from Hamburg instead or rented a sailing boat from a British millionaire businessman. But I have no network of friends in high places and had to take a last-minute flight in my manic fit of escapism and curiosity about politics and paradigm shifts.
Alternatively, I could have stayed in my studio apartment watching TV and getting depressed about climate pornography and the state of the world. As the taxi driver in Berlin explained me at 5.30 am this morning: in 1976 there was already talk about a change in temperatures and that the weather in Germany would be like in the Mediterranean. Not bad! I thought if it was really that mild during winter, nobody needed to escape any longer. I was 11 years old in 1976, but 31 years later I realize somewhere between the cold war, terrorism threats from custom officers and climate change, I have opted out of getting married or bringing children into this world. Settle down?
But then again, if I did not scrape all my savings together for this journey I would have never found out how confused I am. Returning to the States after 7 years, because of Barack Obama? What was the good point?
I have a loan with no interest and so bought the latest SONY XD CAM that records my confusion in HD quality for my unborn children over the next 12 month. I need to find out if I was still part of generation X strikes back...or just another hustler on the streets.
Its all about new ideas and visions, unless of course those concepts become too challenging for oneself. As I am daily bombarded by ideas, by my own ignorance looks for pleasure.
I realize that I participate in the exploitation of minerals and labour since centuries simply by living in the Western world. Through my ancestors’ connections I am grounded in a complexity of two worlds that a looming third world war (for access to oil, water and land) could collapse in one strike. Conflicts prevented by carbon trading?
There is a bug in the system that needs a fix and...we can do it in the mix.
Yo, check this: I just got explanation from a smashingly stunning brunette stewardess in a red skirt and luminous white blouse. She explains that I can pay money to offset my own carbon pollution's. (If I feel guilty of course. I don’t!)
I can find more information in the last pages of the “retail therapy” flight magazine, she says. And indeed just behind the onboard offers for duty free is an article. No thanks, I smile, and decline. She honestly understands, but damn I should have asked her to stay and chat with me a bit longer. She smelled heavenly of duty free perfumes...
My first interview is with Gris-Gris films in Encino - a suburb of L.A. I met Ron and Queenae 7 years ago while in Zanzibar with my graduation film. They have remained friends over the years and I will ask them about their feelings on Obama running for pres.