Upton Girl

This is Kate Upton:

What matters is that her uncle, U.S. Representative Fred Upton (R-Michigan), is co-sponsoring a bill in an attempt to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.

Someone wrote a song about it.  Like to hear it?  Here it go!

Also, Congressman Upton introduced the Video Game Decency Act of 2007.

World of CO2

We talk a lot about how our dependency on oil pollutes the environment and screws up our politics. But has anyone asked how the oil feels? World of Goo would like to know. This wonderful little game, which challenges the player to link little balls of goo together so they can overcome obstacles and find their destiny, touches on the environment, energy, corporatism, and commodity. The story has a light touch, so I don't know what the underlying message is or whether there is one. I think, though, that those goo balls would want us to understand them and not take them for granted.



In addition to whatever moral lesson one can find in it, World of Goo teaches the physics of bridge building. Since the game appeals to kids as much as adults, it may be oblique and simplistic as a physics tutor. But once you watch your half-completed bridge sway desperately under wind shear and its own weight, you'll quickly appreciate the importance of trusses and abutments.



The connected goo balls look at bit like molecular models, reminding me of another game. Way back when Octopus Overlords was Gone Gold, one of the website administrators, Joel Mathis, created a game called Atomic Bonds. This shareware puzzler gives you atoms to join with each other. You earn points and clear the board by forming complete molecules.



Like World of Goo, Atomic Bonds isn't a deeply realistic game and doesn't expect the player to have a scientific background. I'm not even sure what kind of "molecule" I'm trying to make in that screenshot. But one can see the educational potential of the game. What if one level of game had said "make benzene," or only gave you points for making cis instead of trans isomers? How about a power-up that allows you to form double and triple covalent bonds? The organic chemistry teaching possibilities are endless.

(If you'd like to play the 7-day trial of Atomic Bonds, which is the only version I have, please email me. I'll send you the 1.8 MB installer. In the meantime, I'll look into whether the full game can be made available.)

That brings me to environmental issues. With global warming being a hot topic of discussion, I think it's important for everyone on both sides of the debate to understand the science of climate change. Once people see how it works on a molecular level, they can better understand how natural and human activities contribute to it on a global scale. And what better way to teach the science than with a game that combines World of Goo and Atomic Bonds?

Such a game could give you various atoms (all squealing cutely) to link together and molecules to break apart. If you create a chemical reaction that yields a useful product, such as energy, you get points (or money) for it. However, if the chemical reaction also results in a greenhouse gas, that greenhouse gas molecule floats to the top and stays there. (There might already be some greenhouse gas molecules there to represent nature's contribution.) As the game goes on, you inevitably create more and more greenhouse gas molecules, thickening the layer at the top and causing climate change. Adverse environmental effects or regulators would compel you to invest your money in pollution control devices to reduce your impact and continue playing the game.

Plenty of other important chemical phenomena can be explored this way. Let's look at acid rain. You run a power plant that produces useful energy but emits sulfur dioxide. The sulfur dioxide molecules rise in the atmosphere and cause acid formation. If you're lucky, prevailing winds carry the acid far away and make it Somebody Else's Problem. If you're unlucky, the acid might rain down on your plant and damage it!

Green-minded software developers are creating games to educate and inspire us about environmental issues, and I will review some of these games in this blog. But I hope the developers don't miss the opportunity to explore what environmental issues all boil down to: science!

Confirming McCarthy

In a previous post, I'd mentioned how Senators Inhofe and Barrasso were delaying an EPA official's confirmation because of their opposition to global warming legislation. Yesterday, they lifted the hold on Regina McCarthy and allowed her confirmation as EPA's Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation.

What may have swayed them was a letter from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson conceding that the Clean Air Act was flawed for addressing global warming and lacked statutory flexibility for small sources of air pollution.

Those are interesting, but probably true concessions that didn't require a confirmation delay. Did Inhofe and Barrasso gain any ground by stalling the confirmation, or were they just putting on a show for their supporters? It will be interesting to see how they act during the country's new green movement and how Obama's EPA handles the daunting task of reigning in climate change.

Starflight: No Game Was Green Before

Spoiler warning: this article reveals story details from the Starflight games and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

Starflight enthralled me 20 years ago with a vast galaxy of perils and wonders to discover. As a child space captain trying not to get brutally killed, I probably overlooked the game's environmental message. The message is clear to me now in my eco-anxious adulthood, and I find it growing more relevant with each passing ice shelf.


You start the game trying to earn enough money to keep your ship profitable and your crew alive, but soon find that you have a bigger problem. Stars at one end of the galactic map are mysteriously flaring, wiping out all life on their planets. The phenomenon is spreading across the map and will hit your homeworld if you don't stop it in time.


When you finally look behind the wizard's curtain, you discover that the stellar flares are caused by the widespread use of Endurium as starship fuel. Endurium, the wondrous crystal that has allowed sentient races to reach the stars, means the death of those races if they continue to burn it.


The real-world parallel of Endurium is, of course, fossil fuels. Coal, petroleum and natural gas are wondrous substances hundreds of millions of years in the making. Incredibly rich in energy and easy to extract, refine, and combust, these fuels have helped humanity expand and develop very quickly. But extracting and refining them cause environmental problems locally, and burning them contributes significantly to global warming. The "stellar warming" in Starflight has exterminated some species and forced others to relocate; similarly, global warming may endanger many species on Earth and even displace human populations.


I asked Greg Johnson, a chief designer of the Starflight games, whether the environmental message was intentional. He replied that although it was, "that theme wasn’t as topical as it is today because we simply didn’t know as much about our effect on the environment." Despite its galactic scale and quirky aliens, Starflight could be the first, most prescient computer game about environmental impact.


By the time of Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, Endurium has been banned and replaced with a fuel called Shyneum. Shyneum is safer to burn but a lot more difficult to obtain, which is a problem comparable to our real-world struggle to find alternatives to fossil fuels. The new threat to the galaxy is an enormous sentient entity that mind-controls other races. Caught up in the drama of the story, I had wrongly assumed that this entity was merely cruel and vindictive. "We and the other life-forms were akin to infections inside of its vast body," Greg points out, "and it would take over entire sentient races and use them essentially as antibodies."


That sounds a lot like the Gaia hypothesis that envisions Earth as an organism, reacting to its inhabitants' actions as it attempts to maintain a surface equilibrium. This hypothesis comes up again in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri when the planet you've settled emerges as a rival faction to correct your environmental offenses. The way in which you resolve the Gaian threat in Alpha Centauri contrasts quite interestingly with the blazing outcome of Starflight 2, and I will write about its environmental implications in a later post about the Civilization games.


Even while you're exploring a planet in your little rover, Starflight demonstrates the importance of awareness and education to environmentalism. The local flora and fauna are not merely cute little icons. When you scan a life-form, the readout informs you about its size, shape, and behavior. More than just "flavor text," the descriptions indicate the creature's value and role in the local ecosystem. You can capture specimens and sell them to the scientists on your homeworld, but only once per species. These activities remind me of real-life zoos and exploratory activities such as safaris and scuba diving. We might be doing (hopefully minor) damage to habitats by satisfying our curiosity, but what we learn may motivate us to preserve biodiversity and take faster action against global (or stellar) warming.


Incidentally, there's a lot more money to be made in Starflight by mining than capturing life-forms. The richest mineral deposits, however, tend to be far from creature habitats. There are also lots of mineral-dense planets where there is no life to disturb. Perhaps, in the actual future, humanity will be able to satisfy its mineral and energy needs by mining the moon and asteroids, leaving our wildlife alone to flourish.


The Starflight games, like earth science, challenge us to unfold mysteries. In the process of doing so, we challenge our assumptions about our ecosystem and the effect we have on it. We are forced to realize that living here means curbing our other interests, and external threats may be rooted in our own actions. "In both games," says Greg, "I suppose you could say the strongest theme is the one of perspective. We start out assuming something else is evil, only to discover that we simply didn’t understand the perspective of the 'other.'" Only by seeing from the perspective of the other can we fully see, and save, ourselves.

Climate Change Heeldraggers

The EPA has proposed findings that may lead to regulation of greenhouse gases. And it looks like the Washington figures who will lead the fight against such regulation will be Senators James Inhofe of Oklahoma and John Barrasso of Wyoming.

In Senate floor speeches, Inhofe and Barrasso spoke on how climate change legislation would worsen the current economic crisis. Their language evokes a vision of a jobless American landscape, as if the Obama administration or the public would simply allow such a doomsday situation to occur. They express doubt in the scientific evidence of global warming, yet have not offered evidence to support their predictions of massive job loss and debt should greenhouse gases be regulated.

They have gone so far as to stall the confirmation of an EPA official over the issue, saying that they still have unanswered questions on how EPA action on greenhouse gases would affect industries. But since EPA hasn't even proposed a course of action yet, I think those questions would be more appropriately addressed during the drafting and proposal of climate change legislation. I'm sure there will be plenty of discussion and debate opportunities when that time comes since every state could be significantly affected.

The pressure to act on global warming grows every year, as does the evidence. Inhofe and Barrasso could serve their constituents in ways better than dragging their heels as the country finally gives in to the pressure. They can more precisely determine how greenhouse gas prevention programs would affect industries and prepare those industries for the changes ahead. They can find solutions that attain a balance, and perhaps synergy, between industrial production and greenhouse gas control. With their tactics of delay and denial, they are setting up their constituents to become unprepared opponents rather than participating partners in this new environmental movement.