If there was something that you really believed and knew that if acted upon it could save humanity, what would it look like to dedicate your life to this cause? What if you were wrong? What if people criticized you for it? Would it still matter? You would never know whether you were right until you knew. Over the past week I’ve been thinking a lot about climate change. What sparked this current thread was a news story I read about Dan Bloom and his plan for the climate crisis. He has dedicated himself to this project in a vulnerable and uninhibited way. Dan Bloom’s idea is to prepare for the looming climate disaster by building Polar Cities. I totally geeked out on the idea of Polar Cities and I was able to interview Dan Bloom about himself and his plans.
Tell me a little about yourself. How did you become interested in climate change and polar cities?
I was interested in climate change and global warming before 2007, in other words from 1971 to 2006, just as a normal newspaper reader, aware of the situation, but not deeply aware, nor very concerned, just normal low-frequency awareness from newspaper and magazine articles I had read from college graduation in 1971 to life in the real world of the early 21st Century. THEN one day, I read two articles in the newspaper here in Taiwan: one was about the upcoming IPCC report on climate change, released in February 2007, and then two was an interview with James Lovelock the UK scientist who said that in his view in the future, there might be only “breeding pairs in the Arctic” to continue the human species after global warming “events” cause mass migration north and mass die offs of humans, from a population of 10 billion to maybe just 200,000 left. When I read this, I had a eureka moment, I woke up at the moment. At first I was depressed. I wrote a long essay on my blog about how things are really screwed. But after re-reading what I wrote, which was basically depressing and sad writing, I woke up again and said to myself: Hey, you can’t go around moping about and feeling sad for the world, try to do something positive, something to give you and others hope. So I visualized humans living in polar cities in the northern areas in the year 2500 or so, and that is how I began this quixotic adventure. Via the blogosphere. And 12 months later I found an artist, in Taiwan, where I live, Deng Cheng-hong, who agreed to make some illustrations for me, on commission. I paid him for his work and two months later he gave me these amazing illustrations. He is genius. In fact, his visual images have made this project leap off the page and into people’s imaginations, so all credit goes to him. James Lovelock has seen these images and said to me via email: “It may very well happen and soon.”
Are polar cities your response to the climate crisis?
Yes, this project is my personal response to the climate crisis, my small contribution to the ongoing global discussion. It’s my way of taking part in what I think is a positive way in the debate.
Are the aims of polar cities to accommodate a lucky few or all of humanity?
The aim of the polar cities project is to accommodate all of surviving humanity, in an open democratic humanitarian way. These cities are not just for the lucky few or the rich or the powerful. My philosophy and aim is to start planning for these adaptation cities now, in 2008, so that by the time we need them, humankind has figured out how to make them open and democratic. But if things get really bad in the future, out of a world population of maybe 15 billion people in 2500, there might be only 200,000 survivors. In that case, these people will be the lucky few. Or unlucky few, some might say. But they will be the breeding pairs who keep the human species alive for many generations inside these polar cities and then come out and repopulate the Earth again when the time is right. The polar city era might last 100 years or 1000 years or even 10,000 years. So these polar cities are lifeboats for humankind, for the human species, not just for the lucky few. I have no children, so there is no personal intent here for me. I am doing this because I have compassion for the future. A deep compassion for the future, and this is now my life’s work. Unpaid. On my own time. On my own dime. My contribution, in a small minor way, to the ongoing debate, pro and con, about climate change.
In a recent Guardian article, James Lovelock is quoted as saying “Enjoy life while you can” in regards to the climate crisis. Do you see ideas like recycling and carbon offsetting as useless?
Lovelock is my mentor in all this, and that recent Guardian interview was very insightful, I thought. I agree with him on many of the things he said. However, he is 88 and I am 58, so being 30 years younger I still have more hope and optimism that we can solve this climate crisis problem with real solutions. So yes, recycling and carbon offsetting are important ideas and I agree we should implement them as best we can, and do all we can NOW to try to mitigate global warming in the here and now. I have not given up hope. I still think we can solve this Long Emergency, but there will have to be some sacrifices.
Is technology part of the problem?
It is a part of the problem and a possible solution to the problem, too. My fingers are crossed. I hope someone can come up with a technological fix for the climate crisis. That is where my hope lies. Yes, but in the case that worst come to worst, I feel that polar cities can be our lifeboats to get us through a long period of northern life, maybe for 30 generations of humans.
The polar cities have been likened to fallout shelters, how would you respond to this?
I never thought of polar cities as fallout shelters. But we could call them global warming shelters. Lifeboats. I see them more as lifeboats. The cold war mentality of fallout shelters is not really appropriate for polar cities. But headline writers have wild imaginations and I appreciate all headline writers attempts to grapple with these issues.
Do we need a sense of impending disaster to give ourselves something to work towards?
You are right. Yes, we need a real deep sense of impending disaster to wake us up. Lovelock and Hansen and others are important in issuing wake up calls to humanity. I am just a soldier in the trenches launching my polar cities idea as a non-threatening thought experiment to wake people up in another way, visually. I remain an eternal optimist and I wake up every day full of energy to fight this climate crisis. This IS the fight of humanity, all humanity. We need all the ideas we can get.
Matthew,
Merde! This is a very nice package, the intro and the interview, good questions you asked, and I hope those who come across this on the Internet find some inspiration, one way or another, pro or con polar cities. Some people have asked me when I think we might need polar cities, and in order not to appear as if I am invovled in scaremongering or doomsaying (which I am not; I remain an eternal postive optimist!), I have said that maybe, just maybe, humanity might need these polar cities in the year 2500 or so.
Most people think I am being too generous with that date, and quite a few scientists in the field have emailed me over the past 12 months saying “2500” is wrong, it is too far distant, “the troubles” will happen much much sooner than that. OUCH! DOUBLE OUCH!
So we might need them in 2121 or 2323 or 2424, who knows. I still think we won’t need them, if at all, until at least 30 generations down the road. Again, this is all mere speculation, not a prediction. Dr Lovelock seems to think the “end”, whatever that is, will happen much much sooner. But I think we still have a long long time to go.
So the important thing now, while just contemplating the very concept of polar cities, is to act individually in our daily lives to lessen our carbon footprints, change our lifestyles to less consumerist “burn! slash! consume!” economies and many other ways that activitists around the world are talking about.
We need to listen to the scientists. They are on the front lines. The summer Arctic ice is melting. There is concern. But it’s a drip drip drip process, it happens so slowly, in very small increments. In our own lifetimes, here and now, there is not much to worry about. Life will be fine for another 30 generations, I feel.
But while we have time and energy, why not “plan”, even in a thought experiment kind of way, for what might come later. Like the Boy Scout motto says “Be Prepared.” That’s my thinking, too.
But I remain optimistic. Fingers crossed. Check back with me in 10 years…
And once again, huge props to Deng Cheng-hong, the artist in Taiwan who came up with those amazing “blueprints” of what a polar city MIGHT look like. MIGHT. Nobody knows for sure. That 1959 cartoon from the Chicago Tribune is cool, too.
Thank you, sir, for blogging about polar cities in such a positive life-affirming way. !!!
By coincidence, a blogger in London posted this today, too:
“Arctic Ice and Polar Cities”
http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/arctic-ice-and-polar-cities/#comment-419
WebPosted on March 4, 3008
by Robert Kyriakides in the UK
In 1997 152 nations agreed that the Arctic region would be an international territory. The countries bordering this region – Russia, The USA, Canada Norway and Denmark (through Greenland) agreed to limit their control to 320 kilometers from their coats. In June last year the then President of the Russian Federation, Mr Putin, laid claim on behalf of Russia to much of the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole.
Since then all these countries have been studying undersea geology and investing in geological surveys to see whether they can also extend their territorial claims, because if they can show that their country’s continental shelf extends into the arctic they can also lay claim to some of the arctic.
Now, every one of the nations bordering the Arctic has planted flags on ice or land – the traditional way of claiming undiscovered territory, and increasing patrols around “their†land.
What has changed in the last ten years? Well, whatever your views about climate change may be, the arctic region has warmed up, with both the sea warming and the ice cover reducing. It does not take much imagination to realise that the frozen wastes of the arctic may soon yield not only habitable land but also their underlying mineral and fossil fuel wealth.In the summer of 2007 the ice in the Arctic sea was only 4.92 million square kilometres which was 400,000 square kilometres less than the previous low measured in 2005.
On average the arctic has lost 10% of its ice every decade, although the area of ice does shrink and grow each year, the trend is definitely for less and less ice to cover the Arctic sea. As you would expect, average temperatures are increasing but the increase in the Arctic region is about twice the rate in most of the rest of the world.
Less ice means warmer temperatures. Ice reflects back about 60% of solar radiation. When it melts and becomes sea only 10% is reflected back. Unfortunately, the ice will probably melt more quickly than we expect and that will mean the loss of an important eco system, the loss of some species of animals. These things are bad.
However, there will also be opportunities that come with the loss of ice, and that may include survival. One thinker, Danny Bloom has suggested that we might well find survival of our species in polar cities.
His idea does not of course seek to address global warming, but sets out a possible blueprint of what we may have to build if the climate changes radically. You can see what his ideas may look like here: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/ .
Of course while much of the Arctic region, if the ice melts, will be covered in water, there will be land; there will be islands and land once the ice has gone which might be habitable. Whether they will be habited largely depends on what life is like on the rest of the planet.
In the meantime we have to cope with what we have. We need to burn much less fossil fuel; we need to regenerate the forests, stop wasting resources, stop polluting and try to minimise the effects of the harm we create, so that as a species we create less harm.But most of all as a race we must use our imagination and our creativity to solve the problems that our imagination and creativity generate.
http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/arctic-ice-and-polar-cities/#comment-419
Matthew,
A blogger in the UK posted this today, too:
“.…However, there will also be opportunities that come with the loss of ice, and that may include survival. One thinker, Danny Bloom has suggested that we might well find survival of our species in polar cities.
His idea does not of course seek to address global warming, but sets out a possible blueprint of what we may have to build if the climate changes radically. You can see what his ideas may look like here”
: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com/ .
http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/arctic-ice-and-polar-cities/
Got this email today from a reader in Florida of your post:
“Dan ,
I”m interested in the local enviroment around the polar cities. The 1959 cartoon shows domes surrounded by ice while presumably the rest of the world is a desert. Wouldn’t a more likely event be arctic zones with
tropical temps with general populations filling them?”
Answer: yes, of course. The cartoon was a 1959 sci fi cartoon in a Chicago newspaper.
NOTE:
[The January 25, 1959 Chicago Tribune ran this picture of the “Polar City of the Future” as a part of the Closer Than We Think! series.
As Alaska joins the union, more rapid development of the vast open spaces of that new state can be expected. Experts are already studying the problems involved in creating the population centers that will be necessary for tapping the hidden-wealth of the area and building the defense outposts that may be required.
One possibility would be to construct arctic cities under great domes of transparent plastic or glass, where springlike temperatures could be maintained. Such domes are already in use at the Glasgow Central Station in Scotland and at a big downtown plaza in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
How would isolated polar cities, ringed by icebergs and mountains, be supplied? Our armed forces have a solution — the dirigible. Recently, the Navy told how its blimp ZPG-2 successfully flew food and other supplies to an ice island team of scientists only 500 miles from the North Pole.]
http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/06/closer-than-we-think-polar-city-1959.html
http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/arctic-ice-and-polar-cities/
A blogger in UK posted this analysis today, too.
Harmonic convergence!
nice job! very good questions.
i like to think of how polar cities would be organized. especially with such advanced planning, it could be incredibly efficient, and there would be all kinds of architectural/aesthetic things to try that have never been done before.
the whole thing could be like one well-researched kinship garden!
Alisha
Ilove your comments! You are on the right track, what we need to do, in a collective way, is address these questions of how to organize such polar cities, how to govern them administer them, guard them, defend them, grow food for them, find fuel for them, find transport for them, find communication tools for them to other polar cities scattered around the world, a list of 100 questions come to mind. Please contribue:
1– 100 questions for polar cities in the future.
http://100qest101.blogspot.com/
RE: “i would like to think about how polar cities would be organized. especially with such advanced planning, it could be incredibly efficient, and there would be all kinds of architectural/aesthetic things to try that have never been done before. ” YES YES YES! GOOD THINKING! I LOVE IT! (DANNY)
“the whole thing could be like one well-researched kinship garden!”
PLEASE TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF KINSHIP GARDEN. IT IS A POWERFUL TERM. DID YOU COIN IT. I LOVE IT. TELL ME MORE. EMAIL ME
[danbloom at GMAIL]
I see now. Interestintg concept to apply to polar city planning. Thanks for the insight, Alicia!
DANNY
RE:
”What is Kinship Gardening? And Why Do It?”
Excerpted from Dr. Mushroom Kapuler
To give us insight into the fabric of life. The mosaic puzzle of living organisms has a deep internal pattern. This pattern is similar amongst all living things, especially between plants and animals. Using the history of generations to organize gardens is a way to generate visions into the higher order structure intrinsic to life.
To preserve a broad and deep sampling of plants by establishing gardens that maximize diversity. The idea is to explore the fabric of life by planting gardens that have as many different kinds of plants as possible. Thus we achieve several things simultaneously; conservation, diversification, education, exploration and discovery.
To establish sanctuaries that are harmonic subsets of the world flora. The destruction of habitats continues worldwide at an inconceivably rapid pace. The more we explore, the more we destroy. The result is the loss of whole communities of organisms. Our gardens can become alternative environments for the refugees from the struggle for the Earth. By using kinship layouts we develop new possibilities for growth, survival and success.
Promoting peace through permaculture, one seed at a time.
Funny, how some journalists work. When I sent some news about polar cities to a freelance writer for Wired magazine, he replied:
“Sorry for not repling earlier. I’m slow on email sometimes. A lot of it comes in.….. I like the polar cities idea. It’s obviously very cool.….. But it came
out last year, you know? Any updates or new renderings or something?.….
I’d love to write something with some new bits to the idea.….”
So I sent him a personal note with Matthew’s new post with the Lovelock information, and this Wired reporter wrote back, somewhat nastily:
“I don’t think I want to be on your distribution list. No offense,
but I don’t need that much polar cities in my life.”
So you see, it’s an uphill battle getting the mainstream media to pay attention, even scant attention, even footnote attention. Thank God for the Blogosphere!
Another reporter in DC wrote to me today, re the same feeling: “.…good luck
with your polar cities project. I doubt that ”fear, denial, or politics have
much to do with scant press coverage” so far. More with news
judgment. One needs more than a good idea to get a news splash, sometimes.
Luck is part of it. Also, it helps to have clear evidence that the idea is
gaining traction from donors, major institutions, etc., to set it apart
from the myriad other wild ideas out there.”
So without a name attached to this news story, such as Richard Branson or Bill Gates, or top scientists at a top university with PHDs after their names, the mainstream media does not want to touch this story with a ten foot pole. I understand. It’s very interesting.”
Yet another journo said to me: “Thanks, Dan, but I will pass on your story. .… the
main reason for not doing a story is that your idea hasn’t passed a
“seriousness” test — that is, being taken seriously by someone who could
place it on a path to fruition.”
SMILE.
Thank God “patience” is my middle name!
- Danny
Now someone familiar with kinship gardens explains the term for me:
“I recently read about kinship gardens somewhat by accident. They are gardens mapped and designed so as to maximize biodiversity and keep rare plant varieties alive.
Plants are planted according to family, so they are nearest to the plants they are related to.
Plants are also strategically arranged for cross pollination–certain plants cross pollinating create stronger genetic varieties, others lead to weaker ones.
There is a lot of research going into mapping kinship gardens and they are supposedly a very powerful way that home gardeners can combat the erosion of biodiversity.”
Thank for that email! It’s a useful term for thinking about planning of polar cities, too. Cool!
A really good resouce for global warming issues, both pro and con, is at DOT EARTH blog at the New York Times website, written by Andrew Revkin. I visit there daily.
Today, one comment says: (re the continuing debate in the media and in society at large over whether (weather) global warming is really happening or just a hoax)
“I totally understand the imperative of journalistic fairness. But to repeatedly air the opinions of these doubting Thomases is an uninteresting, uninformative overdulgence of that principle. It is like debating the merits of isolationism after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The world is responding to our prolonged inactivity on the topic. It’s time to move on this issue.”
“Human nature at work. We resist doing anything involving uncomfortable change or sacrifice unless we’re pushed to do so by something even more uncomfortable. So the human race will probably not get serious about climate change until the consequences are so severe and obvious that the needed remedies become less painful (but only in comparison). This will probably happen in about a century. Expecting really meaningful progress on the issue prior to that implies that one expects human rationality, cooperation with shared sacrifice for a long-term goal, and belief in science will trump simple short-sighted self-interest and maximization of short-term gain. Can anyone think of a previous time in human history when such a thing has happened? I can’t!”
— Posted by Robert Francis at doT earth today
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/the-never-ending-story/#comment-15741
Juliam who is 43, said in her post at NYTimes:
“I do not own a car and haven’t owned a car since I was 22, I walk everywhere even during the long months of winter, I eat meat only once a week if that, I shop very little and will not have kids or own pets.
And, I know that we humans, and other forms of life, over the next couple hundred years will crash and burn as a result of Global Warming.
The Earth will survive, the environment will refresh itself over millenia, life will evolve again (maybe). Humans are arrogant to think that we “can†or “should†survive indefinitely. Why should we?
So why do I live as I live? Why not just say “f— it†and live high on the hog considering we are going to hell in a handbasket?
Because to me: it doesn’t feel right to live as a voracious consumer.
I have been a greedy pig at times: and I didn’t enjoy living like that. All the driving around, buying everything, stuffing my face and consuming left me feeling fat, heavy, miserable, unhealthy and depressed.
And I was leaving a long wide wake of stink behind me.
I feel better in so many ways, living light. I also get to work less, since my whole life is cheaper to support. I only have to work 6 hours a day. My life is so much less stressful compared to others I know “in the rat raceâ€.
I read, walk in the park, paint, hang out, talk with my friends: do things that are free and don’t create all that many CO2 gasses. I stopped flying around the place in airplanes. I don’t even watch TV any more.
I’m only 43.
It’s too bad that we are destroying the environment. It was a beautiful place, the world, and we wrecked it. What ignorant idiots we really are.
“Education†has been so overrated. We didn’t learn much that was useful, after all, did we? Our schools and universities could have taught us how to live in tune with nature.
Despite all the studying, learning, degrees, academia, info, research and everything all hi-tech and hi-speed: the world is a worse place.
We are too busy shopping for gadgets and squabbling over territory and resources to bother with sustainability. Our educations, sadly, were based on “earning money†and “competing with the Jones’sâ€. What a drag. Now we’re all addicted to earning and competing. And few of us “get ahead†anyhow. After all the earning and competing, most of us are in big debt. What a con. What a waste.
Us humans are not good for Earth. Collectively, we kill and destroy everything. The natural environment will breathe a sigh of relief when we are gone, or almost gone. ”
— [Posted by ”Julia” at John Tierney’s blog at NY TIMES.com ]
Matthew,
I redid a few things today in order to make this “idea” more understandable to readers. I still get a lot of misunderstanding from readers, so here is a new way to look at this:
PRESS RELEASE
Green blogger uses “polar cities” as educational tool
to raise public awareness about global warming issues
CYPERSPACE — A lone blogger in Taiwan is using the Internet in a novel way to help raise awareness about global warming.
Green media activist Danny Bloom doesn’t believe humans will ever have to live in so-called “polar cities” (a term he coined in 2006), but he is using a series of computer-generated blueprints of a polar city as an educational tool to help raise help public awareness about the climate crisis.
Created by Taiwanese artist Cheng-hong Deng, the polar city images have appeared on hundreds of websites and blogs around the world — in English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French and Chinese, Bloom, a 1971 gradute of Tufts University in Boston, says.
The 58-year-old green activist says he is using the Internet in a novel way to get his message across.
The message? “If we don’t actively tackle the very serious problems that confront the world now, in terms of global warming, then there is a possibility that future generations might have to take refuge in such polar cities. I never want to see these polar cities become reality. So the images Deng has created for my project are meant to be a warning about global warming.”
Bloom says he has shown the images to internationally-acclaimed climate scientist James Lovelock in Britain, who is known for his pessimism and doomsaying about global warming. Lovelock told Bloom by email: “It may very well happen and soon.”
“I hope polar cities are never needed for survivors of global warming in the far distant future,” Bloom says. “These images are meant to be a wake-up call for those who are still sleepwalking through the climate crisis.”
Bloom emphasizes that he has no agenda, political or scientific, in terms of solutions to global warming, and says that he just wants to participate in the global discussion about climate change in his own personal way. “I am just using Deng’s images to sound the alarm, a visual alarm.”
He says that his Internet campaign, which began a year ago with a letter to the editor of several newspapers in North America and Europe, has had the result he is looking for.
A young blogger in Tahiti saw the images, blogged about them in French, and said that while he found the polar city blueprints to be fascinating, they made him just want to work harder in his daily life “to help fight the climate crisis so that the worst case scenarios never happen.”
POLAR CITIES BLUEPRINT:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
It is very unlikely that mankind will cut their emissions so fast and drastically that either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming will be avoided.
According to Dr James Hansen of NASA, any feasible planetary rescue plan must include a method of removing CO2 from the air.
The last severe global warming episode, 55 million years ago, ended when ocean life kicked into high gear and removed the excess CO2 from the air over tens of thousands of years.
I suggest the low cost, highly scalable, and technologically feasible method of removing CO2 from the air called “biosequestration.” We can improve nature’s ability to remove CO2 from the air.
See my blog at http://www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod for more information. According to Dr James Lovelock, when the CO2 concentration in the air reaches 500 ppm, we will rapidly return to the hothouse climate of 55 million years ago when most life died. If that happens, the few survivors will be sentenced to the prison of Polar Cities for generations.
“We now have evidence from the Earth’s history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds…we have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air…and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die.” (The Revenge of Gaia)
“But getting billions of humans to make serious cuts in CO2 emissions anytime soon may be even less realistic politically. As Dr. Lovelock and Dr. Rapley write: Processes that would normally regulate climate are being driven to amplify warming. Such feedbacks, as well as the inertia of the Earth system — and that of our response — make it doubtful that any of the well-intentioned technical or social schemes for carbon dieting will restore the status quo. What is needed is a fundamental cure.” (New York Times, Oct. 1)
“A rapid cutback in greenhouse gas emissions could speed up global warming…because current global warming is offset by global dimming — the 2–3ºC of cooling cause by industrial pollution, known to scientists as aerosol particles, in the atmosphere.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/29/eaclim129.xml
“Last time Earth suffered a carbon-induced fever, it was the oceans that helped saved the day…the last severe global warming episode 55 million years ago was accompanied by several thousands of years of ocean plant life kicking into high gear…unfortunately, this process is slow and thus lags the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere…“
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/26/global-warming-ocean.html
A post elsewhere on the Net says:
http://blog.apocalypse.org/2008/01/23/the-new-beachfront-properties/
Humor department:
“The New Beachfront Properties…”
Looking for good property values in the post-apocalyptic world? Florida beaches will probably be gone, so you’ll need to head further north — way north, according to Dan Bloom, whose concept is to build “Polar Citiesâ€.
Look for the first to open in Norway in 2012 — yes, that should be a ding for all you 2012 enthusiasts, because that makes as much sense as any other 2012-doomsaying.
But: will they have Starbucks?
And more humor here:
“The World Is Doomed, Head For The Hills”
Dan Bloom thinks the world is screwed. Who is Dan Bloom you ask? Some scientist or expert on global warming? No, he’s a writer that doesn’t own a computer and lives in Taiwan teaching English. Proving it doesn’t take a scientist to believe Mother Earth is packing up her bags and calling it quits. Dan is also the one that came up with the idea for these awesome Polar Cities.
Basically he thinks that in no longer than 500 years (and possible way sooner) the world’s population will be decimated and only a few hundred million people will survive in these specially-designed cities in the Arctic.
Well damn, Dan, way to put a damper on my usual ‘Get Drunk and Watch The Price Is Right’ Friday ritual. Screaming at the idiotic contestants really lost its luster with this depressing news. Oh my god you better bid $601 or I swear I’ll kill you! Oh you lost? Really? Well maybe it’s because YOU’RE A BONEHEAD ASSCAP AND DIDN’T BID WHAT I TOLD YOU TO. Jesus the people are stupid today. It’s like half-wit vs. quarter-wit day on The Price Is Right. I bet these are the same morons responsible for destroying the damn planet. God I hate them so much.
A few more pictures of the conceptual cities after the jump, in case you’re building a sweet Habitrail for your gerbils and want to use them for reference.
[and then he shows a photo of a Habitrail cage for hamsters. Who knew?]
http://journalistambiental.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/polemica-sobre-as-cidades-polares/
This one is in Spanish!
”Polêmica sobre as cidades polares”