Tuesday, August 1, 2006

multipolitan environmental engineering



For a long time, I've claimed that humanity is increasingly prevailing in nature (intelligence of Earth) as a post-national lattice of metropolitan areas—expressing a post-classical legacy of the city-state (by which the transitory nation-state has always been anchored—Paris, London, New York, Berlin, etc). In fact, I argued this in the early 1990s, before Jürgen Habermas coined the notion of "postnational constellation."

Today, Los Angeles, London, New York, Seoul and 18 other cities joined forces in a project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by pooling financial resources to that end. (Thanks, Bill Clinton.)

Such multipolitan activity signals a keynote of postmodern (postnational) humanity.


Sept. 1

And this week, California leads the way for the U.S.