Wake Up and Smell the Permafrost

In preparation for 5/5 I've been putting signs up around LA and the Bay Area all week, and I'm sure a few of them lasted until today.  The one above stayed up over six lanes of I-80 for at least three days, while the one below was up for at least five. Over 110,000 cars passed by them each day.

(Click on photos for better view.)

The sign above only stayed up for a few hours in Berkeley, but whoever took it down apparently just needed the bungees and left it behind so I was able to rehang it in San Francisco:

Permafrost is the ancient organic matter in the northern hemisphere's tundra that's been kept frozen for the last 11,000 years and is now, thanks to global warming, beginning to thaw. As it thaws out it releases CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, making the temperatures rise even more, speeding up the thawing process and creating a feedback loop which may well be unstoppable.

The only solution I've been able to come up with so far would be to cover the tundra with vinyl or plastic sheeting and vacuum out the methane before it gets into the atmosphere. This would require the manufacture and placement of thousands of square miles of plastic sheeting - a massive international effort unlikely to happen among governments who so far can't even agree that there's a problem.

In the meantime I'm using cardboard, paint and the freeway system to try and get people thinking. Signs are cheap and easy to make. Kind of fun too, once you get into it... just tracing and painting. Each of these photos represents three or four hours of work.

Any place you can see while driving is a place you can put a sign that'll be read.  Just about any fencing you can see can become a billboard just by attaching some cardboard and paint with a couple of bungees.  

And it's a hell of a lot of fun.

Irvine

Richmond

Santa Cruz

El Cerrito

Los Angeles

Oakland

More info at Freewayblogger.com

I've hung 323 signs since January 1st without any problems from authorities. Please send any questions, comments or slogan suggestions to freewayblogger - at - yahoo - dot - com

EcoTour Marin/Sonoma

"It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do." - Moliere

 "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers." ~ Thomas Pynchon

"He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough." - Laozi

 "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt 

 "The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Franklin Delano Roosevelt

 "When we talk to god, it’s prayer. When god talks to us, it’s schizophrenia." - Lily Tomlin

 "All great truths begin as blasphemies." - George Bernard Shaw

YTD - 308

Some Economic Signs

 "Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of

scum on top." --Edward Abbey

 "Affluence creates poverty." - Marshall McLuhan

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed." - Herman Melville

 "The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich." - John Berger

 "Power in America today is control of the means of communication." - Theodore White

"The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles." - Plato

 "Silence is the ultimate weapon of power." - Charles de Gaulle

 YTD - 300

LA Quotes

“Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings." - George Carlin

 "Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too..." - Henry Miller

"The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles." - Rick Riordan

 "In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing." - Will Rogers

 "When they show the destruction of society on color TV, I want to be able to look out over Los Angeles and make sure they get it right." - Phil Ochs

 "Half the people in Hollywood are dying to be discovered and the other half are afraid they will be." - Lionel Barrymore

"Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeles's land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air." - Alistair Cooke

 "Los Angeles makes the rest of California seem authentic." - Jonathan Culler

"Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder." - William Faulkner

 "Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles." -Frank Lloyd Wright

YTD - 292

EcoTour Sacramento

 "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -Theodore Roosevelt

 "It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them." - Alfred Adler

"There are no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish something." -Thomas Edison

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -Alan Kay

 "On the other hand, you have different fingers." -Steven Wright

 "This species has amused itself to death." --- Roger Waters

YTD - 282