RECORD HEAT and wind and fire displace nearly one million Southern Californians. Record drought in Atlanta leaves the city with just a few more months of drinking water. Arctic ice shrinks by an area twice the size of Texas in one summer. And all over the world — including where you live — the local weather borders on unrecognizable. It’s way too hot, too dry, too wet, too weird wherever you go.
All of which means it’s time to face a fundamental truth: the majority of the world’s climate scientists have been totally wrong. They’ve failed us completely. Not concerning the basics of global warming. Of course the climate is changing. Of course humans are driving the process through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. No, what the scientists have been wrong about — and I mean really, really wrong — is the speed at which it’s all occurring. Our climate system isn’t just “changing.” It’s not just “warming.” It’s snapping, violently, into a whole new regime right before our eyes. A fantastic spasm of altered weather patterns is crashing down upon our heads right now.
The only question left for America is this: can we snap along with the climate? Can we, as the world’s biggest polluter, create a grassroots political uprising that emerges as abruptly as a snap of the fingers? A movement that demands the clean-energy revolution in the time we have left to save ourselves? I think we can do it. I hope we can do it. Indeed, the recent political “snap” in Australia, where a devastating and unprecedented drought made climate change a central voting issue and so helped topple a Bush-like government of deniers, should give us encouragement.
But time is running out fast for a similar transformation here.
A CLIMATE SNAP? REALLY? It sounds so much like standard fear-mongering and ecohyperbole. But here’s proof: One of the most prestigious scientific bodies in the world, the group that just shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for its climate work, predicted fourteen months ago that unchecked global warming could erase all of the Arctic Ocean’s summertime ice as early as 2070. Then, just two months later, in April 2007, a separate scientific panel released data indicating that the 2070 mark was way off, suggesting that ice-free conditions could come to the Arctic as early as the summer of 2030. And as if this acceleration weren’t enough, yet another prediction emerged in December 2007. Following the year’s appalling melt season, in which vast stretches of Arctic ice the size of Florida vanished almost weekly at times, a credible new estimate from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, indicated there could be zero — zero — summer ice in the Arctic as early as 2013.
Five precious years. An eye-blink away.
So the Arctic doomsday prediction has gone from 2070 to 2013 in just eleven months of scientific reporting. This means far more than the likely extinction of polar bears from drowning and starvation. A world where the North Pole is just a watery dot in an unbroken expanse of dark ocean implies a planet that, well, is no longer planet Earth. It’s a world that is destined to be governed by radically different weather patterns. And it’s a world that’s arriving, basically, tomorrow, if the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School has it right.
How could this be happening to us? Why is this not dominating every minute of every presidential debate?
Actually it’s the so-called feedback loops that have tripped up scientists so badly, causing the experts to wildly misjudge the speed of the climate crash. Having never witnessed a planet overheat before, no one quite anticipated the geometric rate of change. To cite one example, when that brilliantly white Arctic ice melts to blue ocean, it takes with it a huge measure of solar reflectivity, which increases sunlight absorption and feeds more warmth back into the system, amplifying everything dramatically. And as northern forests across Canada continue to die en masse due to warming, they switch from being net absorbers of CO2 to net emitters when forest decomposition sets in. And as tundra melts all across Siberia, it releases long-buried methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more powerful than even CO2. And so on and so on and so on. Like the ear-splitting shriek when a microphone gets too close to its amplifier, literally dozens of major feedback loops are screeching into place worldwide, all at the same time, ushering in the era of runaway climate change.
“Only in the past five years, as researchers have learned more about the way our planet works, have some come to the conclusion that changes probably won’t be as smooth or as gradual as [previously] imagined,” writes Fred Pearce in his new book With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change. “We are in all probability already embarked on a roller coaster ride of lurching and sometimes brutal change.”
GLOBAL WARMING is no longer a hundred-year problem requiring a hundred-year solution. It’s not even a fifty-year problem. New data and recent events clearly reveal it’s a right-here, right-now, white-hot crisis requiring dramatic and comprehensive resolution in the next twenty to thirty years, with drastic but achievable changes in energy consumption required immediately. But even a near-total abandonment of fossil fuels might not be enough to save us, given how fast the planet is now warming.
So the rising whisper even among many environmentalists is this: we might also have to develop some sort of life-saving atmospheric shield. In a controversial but decidedly plausible approach called geo-engineering, we could do everything from placing giant orbiting mirrors in outer space to seeding the atmosphere with lots of sulfur dioxide, basically becoming a “permanent human volcano.” More on this in a moment.
But first, if there’s any good news surrounding the sudden and unexpected speed of global warming it is this: it’s nobody’s fault. New evidence shows that we were almost certainly locked into a course of violent climate snap well before we first fully understood the seriousness of global warming back in the 1980s. Even had we completely unplugged everything twenty years ago, the momentum of carbon dioxide buildup already occurring in the atmosphere clearly would have steered us toward the same disastrous results we’re seeing now.
So we can stop blaming ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal and the father-son Bush administrations. Their frequently deceitful lobbying and political stalling over the past twenty years didn’t wreck the climate. The atmosphere was already wrecked well before the first Bush took office. These staunch conservatives simply created a “solution delay” that we can — and must — overcome in a very short time.
The tendency toward denial is still very much with us, of course. From this point forward, however, there can be no hesitation and no absolution. In a world of obvious climate snap, any obstruction, any delay, from any quarter, is hands down a crime against humanity.
AMID THE SUDDEN need to rethink everything a.s.a.p. comes another piece of good news: the clean-energy solutions to global warming grow more economically feasible and closer at hand with each passing year. Europeans, with a standard of living equal to ours, already use half the energy per capita as Americans. If we just adopted Europe’s efficiency standards we’d be halfway to fixing our share of the problem in America.
We can’t do this? We can pilot wheeled vehicles on Mars and cross medical frontiers weekly and invent the iPhone, but we can’t use energy as efficiently as Belgium does today? Or Japan, for that matter? We can, of course. Wind power is the fastest growing energy resource in the world, and a car that runs on nothing but prairie grass could soon be coming to a driveway near you.
But to achieve these changes fast enough, the American people need a grassroots political movement that goes from zero to sixty in a matter of months, a movement that demands the sort of clean-energy policies and government mandates needed to transform our economy and our lives. We need a mass movement of concerned voters that “snaps” into place overnight — as rapidly as the climate itself is changing. Skeptics need only remember that we’ve experienced explosive, purposeful change before — quickly mobilizing to defeat Nazism in the ’40s, casting off statutory Jim Crowism in a mere decade.
What just took place in Australia could be seen as a dress rehearsal for what might soon happen here in America. The underlying factors couldn’t be more similar. A historic drought (similar to current conditions in the U.S. Southwest and Southeast) with an established scientific link to global warming had become so bad by 2007 that 25 percent of Australia’s food production had been destroyed and every major city was under emergency water restrictions. The conservative incumbent government, meanwhile, had denied the basic reality of global warming for a decade, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. But voters were increasingly traumatized by the drought and increasingly educated. (Proportionally, twice as many Aussies watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth as Americans.) Against this backdrop, Labor Party candidate Kevin Rudd made climate change one of his topmost issues, talking about it constantly as he campaigned toward a landslide victory. It was good politics. The electorate had snapped into place and so had Rudd. His first official act in November was to sign Kyoto and commit his nation to a major clean-energy overhaul.
That time must come soon to America. November 4, 2008, would be a nice start date. And when we go, we must go explosively. Voters, appalled by the increasingly weird weather all across America — weather soon to be made worse by the bare Arctic Ocean and other feedback loops — must finally demand the right thing, laughing all the way to the polls over the recent congressional bill requiring 35 mpg cars by 2020. By 2015, we need to have cut electricity use by at least one third and be building nothing less than 50 mpg cars. And constructing massive and graceful wind farms off most of our windy seacoasts.
That’s our snap. That’s our glorious feedback loop, with political will and technological advances and market transformations all feeding off each other for breathtaking, runaway change.
BUT WILL IT BE ENOUGH? As inspiring and unifying and liberating as this World War II–like mobilization will be for our nation, it sadly will not. Getting off carbon fuels — though vital and mandatory — won’t steer us clear of climate chaos. We’ve delayed action far too long for that tidy resolution. Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for up to a hundred years, and there’s already more than enough up there to erase all the “permanent” ice in the Arctic.
This leaves us with a huge decision to make. Either we fatalistically accept the inability of clean energy alone to save us, resigning ourselves to the appalling climate pain and chaos scientists say are coming, or we take one additional awesome step: we engineer the climate. Specifically, human beings must quickly figure out some sort of mechanical or chemical means of reflecting a portion of the sun’s light away from our planet, at least for a while. Whether you’re comfortable with this idea or not, trust me, the debate is coming, and we’ll almost certainly engage in some version of this risky but necessary tinkering.
First of all, forget the giant mirrors in space. Too difficult and expensive. And all those lofty notions of machines that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere? At best, they are many years away, with significant cost hurdles and engineering challenges still to be resolved. More likely, we’ll engage in some combination of cruder efforts, including painting every rooftop and roadway and parking lot in the world white to replace some of the Arctic ice’s lost capacity for solar reflectivity.
After that, all roads pretty much lead to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. In 1991 that volcano erupted, spewing enough light-reflecting sulfur dioxide and dust into the atmosphere to cool the entire planet by one degree Fahrenheit for two full years. Could humans replicate this effect long enough to give our clean-energy transformation a chance to work? Can we artificially cool the Earth, using sulfur dioxide, even while the atmosphere remains full of greenhouse gases? Several very smart climate scientists, including Ralph Cicerone, current president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, think the idea is plausible enough to investigate thoroughly right now as a possible “emergency option” for future policymakers.
Ironically, we could “harvest” ample supplies of sulfur from modern coal-burning power plants, where it is a byproduct. In liquid form, sulfur could then be added — ironically, again — to jet fuel, allowing passenger aircraft worldwide to seed the atmosphere per scientific calibrations. In theory, we could even use powerful army artillery to shoot sulfur canisters into the atmosphere. But supply and delivery would likely be less of a challenge than the inevitable side effects, including an uptick in acid rain. And then there are the unknown and unintended consequences of subjecting the atmosphere to a multidecade or perhaps multicentury Mount Pinatubo effect. We would need an urgent research effort to assess the possible negative impacts of this process so we can devote resources to ameliorating at least the anticipated outcomes.
But the answer to the question Can human beings artificially cool the planet? is almost certainly yes. That answer, I realize, poses a terrible conundrum for conservationists like me who understand it’s precisely this sort of anthropocentrism and technological arrogance that got us into the mess we’re in. But like it or not, we are where we are. And I, for one, can’t look my ten-year-old son in the eye and, using a different sort of ideological arrogance, say, No, don’t even try atmospheric engineering. We’ve learned our lesson. Just let catastrophic global warming run its course.
What kind of lesson is that? I’d rather take my chances with global engineering and its possible risks than accept the guarantee of chaotic warming. As respected climate scientist Michael MacCracken has said, “Human beings have been inadvertently engineering the climate for 250 years. Why not carefully advertently engineer the climate for a while?”
SO HERE WE ARE, stripped of exaggeration and rhetoric, and hard pressed by the evidence right before our eyes. Our destiny will be decided, one way or another, in the next handful of years, either by careful decision-making or paralyzing indecision. We stand at a crossroads in human and planetary history. Or as my southern grandfather used to say, “The fork has finally hit the grits.”
Try as I might, I truly can’t imagine the Arctic Ocean completely free of ice by 2013, nor can I extrapolate all the appalling implications, from the end of wheat farming in Kansas to more record-breaking heat waves in Chicago. It truly is a terrifying time to be alive. But also exhilarating. As the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”
The part of the picture that I can see is our own snap. I can see potent political change coming to America with our nation passionately joining the Kyoto process. I can see layers and layers of solution feedback loops that follow. I can see national policies that freeze and then quickly scale back the use of oil, coal, and natural gas. I see multitudes of Americans finally inspired to conserve at home, their money-saving actions feeding and amplifying the whole process. I then see consumer and governmental demand unleashing the genius of market systems and technological creativity, accelerating everything until we as a society are moving at geometric speed too, just like the climate, and suddenly our use of dirty fuels simply disappears.
Snap!
I can see my son coming of age in a world where the multiplier benefits of clean energy go far beyond preserving a stable climate. No more wars for oil. No more mountaintops removed for coal. A plummet in childhood asthma. A more secure, sustainable, and prosperous economy. Although there are surely dark times ahead, I can see him living through them, living deep into the twenty-first century, when most of the lingering greenhouse gases will have finally dissipated from our atmosphere, allowing an orderly end to the geo-engineering process.
Best of all, I see spiritual transformation ahead. We simply cannot make the necessary changes without being changed ourselves. Of this I am sure. With every wind farm we build, with every zero-emission car we engineer, we will remember our motivation as surely as every Rosie the Riveter knew in the 1940s that each rivet was defeating fascism. A deep and explicit understanding of sustainability will dawn for the first time in modern human history, moving from energy to diet to land use to globalization.
We will know, finally, that to live in permanent peace and prosperity we must live in a particular way, adhering to a particular set of truths about ourselves and our planet. To borrow from the great architect William McDonough, we will finally become native to this world. We will have lived through the climate threat, evolved through it, and our new behavior will emanate from the very core of our humanity.
Comments
Wow! Very powerful piece – I have to go back and read this more than once. Thanks for the insight!
(And kudos on your name as well 🙂
Michael
Thank you, Mr. Tidwell. I feel hopeful and it’s been a long time.
Carolyn
I wish I could be as upbeat as the previous comments, but frankly, I’m appalled. This sort of “RAH! RAH!” approach to using yet more of the “tinkering” (what a benign word, what a truly screwed up outcome!)that indeed, got us here in the first place is, I believe, truly off-base. While I agree we need to mobilize the population faster than yesterday, and that any obstruction to addressing climate change is absolutely a crime against humanity, why in the world would we encourage more coal-fired plants in order to reap their sulfur dioxide, so we could then seed it into our atmosphere?!?
Are you nuts? A “little more” acid rain???
Since we’ve hardly even begun to determine what kind of lethal fallout there is from the fiasco of GMOs(oh gee, thanks, Monsanto, you’re right, it really is better living through chemistry!)why in the world would we expect better from something like this?
I am horrified that Orion would publish this.
I agree with Julianne on the acid rain concern. I am apalled that the author completely ignores the potential CO2 output of China and India and the looming explosion of automobile use – NY Times Sunday April 20, 2008 – 2 billion automobiles on the planet in 10 to 20 years up from a billion today. Maybe, $300 per barrel oil will be enough to stop global warming.
I agree with Julianne’s opening statements, but I’m very glad Orion has published this. It’s a very dynamic, forceful example of motivational writing. Altho I don’t agree with Tidwell’s ideas or methods of persuasion, I’m glad Orion has made such strong writing available for thoughtful readers’ study and debate.
I agree that the rate of change is sufficiently alarming to warrant a big response, but sulphuring up the atmosphere sounds like another cure that’s as bad as the disease.
There are a few important things Mr. Tidwell’s article doesn’t address: 1. Unlike Australia, the US doesn’t have a candidate who grasps the importance of the warming issue. 2. Population: If the planet has not already exceeded its carrying capacity for human life, it soon will, at this rate.
3. In the scramble for solutions, we must not forget to focus on adaptation too.
Very good article, should be read by all concerned with future of our planet. Time is running out, time may already have run out. Tim, I wonder if you have heard about my idea of polar cities for survivors of global warming in year 2525 if none of the fixes work. I fear the worst. We need to also discuss adaptation strategies if all else fails. Which it looks like all else will fail.
See here:
http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
Surely you jest . . . bio-engineer the atmosphere? . . . more acid rain? No-one is to blame? Spirtiual transformation? Oh blither, oh blather. The entire article makes me cringe. The planet will survive quite nicely, I do believe. Humans may have to start over from the beginning, however. Sheesh . . .
I understand that Julianne is “appalled” by Tidwell’s article, “horrified” that Orion would publish it, and wonders aloud whether Tidwell is “nuts.” Unfortunately I didn’t catch her notion of just how she would “mobilize the population faster than yesterday.”
But I also understand her failure to show us the way out of the dilemma that we all face. I confess that my own crystal ball does not reveal any shining solution that will spare us decades or centuries of mayhem and despair. The only thing I do see that gives me any hope, frankly, is that some transformative vision may be emerging from the present and future wreckage, an entirely new vision around which humanity may be able to gather. But I do not see any way of avoiding the wreckage. The question is can we mitigate the damage at all?
Anyone who has the courage to try to grasp our situation in its entire global complexity, face the tragedies that are befalling us and our earth-brethren, and grope for solutions that have even a shred of compassion in them, is doing good work. Thank you, Mr. Tidwell. You did well.
I found your article bracing, especially the theme of the “snapping” pace of climate change. It’s the kind of image and language we need to introduce into the debate to counteract the slumber-inducing tone of so many articles that project certain “possible” effects into the future — by 2050, say, or by “the end of the twenty-first century.”
Shooting sulphur into space, of course, should show us how tragic our situation has become, and is one more symptom of the hubris that brought us to this point. If there is any “Rah! Rah!” cheering in Tidwell’s article, it is not about the joys of engineering a climate-fix for the entire planet, it is the idea that we are even capable, at this late date, of snapping awake from our suicidal, ecocidal sleep-walk.
I hope he’s right. Meanwhile, Julianne, I am truly interested in what your mobilizing vision would be, because I believe each of us carries, somewhere within us, a piece of the puzzle.
Paco and others, thanks very much for your additional responses, thoughts and insights re: Mr. Tidwell’s article, which if nothing else, has certainly been stimulating for discussion.
And I do have thoughts about a number of things I perceive as being important to pursue in the face of what is truly the catastrophe of climate change, *and* I’m also on a time crunch for dashing off to work. >;-) I look forward to responding more fully later today.
I am always amazed by the people who clamor about the environment in one breath, then talk about the effects on their offspring in the next. Do they see no correlation? In nature, a given population of organisms will mate and breed and increase in numbers until such time as they outstrip resources and habitat; then the rate of breeding drops off and the population reduces until such time as adequate resources and habitat would support growth. For some reason, otherwise rational human beings think this does not apply to them. In no population of organisms should every individual of the population reproduce, and yet even now humans are worried about birth rates (that great good green Europe) and infertility (at least according to my health insurance policy which does not have true parity for mental health which may soon be epidemic, perhaps as a new diagnosis, say Climate Panic Disorder). The planet will survive. Perhaps as a barren rock, perhaps as a rock in a ball of vapor, perhaps as a habitat for “lesser” species, say invertebrates on “down.” I can envision any number of outcomes that do not include a future for humanity. And I do not think this is a bad thing. The planet has survived other extinctions and new habitats and life forms emerged. I am comfortable going the way of the dinosaurs. It saddens me that we’re hell-bent on disregarding and destroying the other beings on this planet as we struggle to sustain the world we’ve created.
There are two ways this discussion can go. One is the mitigation route, and we should check out everything there is in that file cabinet, yes.
The other way is the adaptation route, and we need to seriously shift gears and go down that road, too. But most people are interesting in mitigation, or, conversely, end of the world who cares?
But are there so few comments about polar cities as an adaptation strategy? Why is it that nobody wants to see future generations survive, even if they have to live in northern refuges for 100 or 1000 years? Why is nobody looking at this route, too?
Denial? Fear?
Hi Danny,
I apologize for not having responded to your “polar cities as adaptation” strategy. I had some problems with it. First, look at a globe. The broadest portion is at the equator, the narrowest portion is at the poles. Do you propose transporting the population, say, of Sâo Paolo, Brazil, to the North Pole, and to hell with Mexico City, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, etc.? Or do you propose to elect representatives from each major urban megatropolis, with concessions to the suffering rural areas, to occupy these polar cities? Or is it, as the French say, “sauve-qui-peut”?
Assuming the entire equatorial belt is on fire, so to speak, and the temperate areas of the globe are devastated by drought, flood, insect infestations, etc., etc., who will support and feed the lucky few who inhabit your polar cities? Serfs? Slaves? On what basis, in other words, will those cities survive? Fishing? The ocean is dying. Hunting? The animals are practically gone. Agriculture? By that time will there be enough order to permit the placid cultivation of those northern “soils”?
There may well be polar cities in the not-too-distant future, but I fear they may come about not as a result of a grand, planned adaptation to a global “rough patch,” but out of sheer desperation. The pre-conditions for your polar cities are too grim to behold for any extended period.
In The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock speculates that we may be able to support half a billion souls in those polar cities, or better, refugee camps. This was his estimate of the number of people a climate ravaged planet could support. In other words, no matter which way you measure it, it’s not a pretty picture. Which is why I appreciated Mr. Tidwell’s effort to inject a little “juice” into his readers.
Many thanks for your concern. Something may yet come of all this palavering.
Paco
Hello Paco,
Thanks for your good comments and feedback. I agree with you that the so-called polar cities scenario won’t be a pretty picture in year 2500 or so, maybe sooner, maybe later. Lovelock says sooner. I say 2500 just to give people “time” to think about this.
But let me explain a few things, which many people seem to get confused about when discussing the idea of polar cities:
Your post above inspired me:
1. Polar cities will not be at the poles per se, it’s just a name that has a certain punch to it, but these polar cities will not be at the North Pole. But in a warmed world, say 2500 or so, most of the tropical, subtropical and temperate zones will be uninhabitable, not only because of the temperatures, but mostly because of lack of food and fuel. And rising sea levels.
So as people migrate north en masse, they will leave Africa and Mexico and USA and France and Germany and Asia, and move up slowly to northern areas along the Arctic Circle dotted line on our maps. Some of these polar cities, perhaps administered by the IPCC or another UN agency, or by individual countries, will be in Juneau, Alaska, or Fairbanks, or Churchill Canada or Whitehorse or Yellowknife and Ellesmere Island, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, even Oslo and Longyearbyen, Sweden Finland, Russia.
But not at the poles, just in northern regions. They won’t be called polar cities then. Who knows what they will finally be called, but they will be safe refuges for survivors of global warming’s disaster events. There might be 200,000 people only, as Lovelock has suggesteed, or maybe 10 million people, we have no idea. But certainly all 10 billion people of 2500 cannot survive what will happen.
The thing is this: whatever we call these safe refuges, and whenever we need them for “breeding pairs” (in Lovelock’s famous words) to continue the human species in northern retreats until they can come back down to repopulate the Earth …. should not some agencies start talking about this possibility now, and planning and designing and siting them now? That is all I am calling for, with my proposal?
That a certain amount of time and energy, maybe just one percent, go into planning worst case scenario ideas for ADAPTATION retreats, so that we can rationally discuss how these “polar cities” will be governed, administered, defended, guarded, protected, fed, fueled, powered, educated, given medical care and mostly importantly: WHO will be allowed in?
I don’t have the answers. My entire project is set up to ask questions, and allow people around the world to answer them. Do you think we should spend any time at all discussing so-called polar cities, or “human population retreats”, now, so as to avert the Mad Max Meets The Road scenarios that many think they see coming down the road?
Mitigation won’t work, IMHO. Giving up is senseless IMHO. So why don’t we put more time now into thinking about various adaptation strategies, while there is still time, and there is still plenty of time.
What worries me, ever since news of my polar cities idea hit the blogosphere and MSM over a year ago, with a New York Times blogpost on March 29, is how few people have responded to my call for airing this issue in public.
There seems to be denial and fear and depression about the very idea of polar cities. Why? It’s just an idea. Nothing to be afraid of. But it seems most people DO NOT want to talk about this at all.
So the two paths now seem MITIGATION IDEAS (fixes) so we can continue our wonderful consumer lifestyles in our SUVS and second homes at Cape Cod, and exotic vacations in Nepal and Patagonia ….or END OF THE WORLD DIE-OFF IT’S ALL OVER scenarios.
But a third way is : ADAPTATION strategies, no? Shouldn’t we at least be talking about them, in a soft, rational tone of voice, even as a mere thought exercise?
It’s the amazing “silence” about polar cities that baffles me. I’ve had people write some very nasty emails about the idea. Some very top people in the scientific field have told me shut up. WHY?
Paco,
A few notes:
1. “Do you propose transporting the population, say, of Sâo Paolo, Brazil, to the North Pole, and to hell with Mexico City, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Tokyo, etc.?
ANSWER: I think there will be mass migrations north, so shouldn’t governments be planning and talking aboht them now? Just as a plan, so as to avoid the Max Max scenario and the sauve qui peux result? [Maybe some agencies like CIA are already planning all this, secretly? Did you read the AGE OF CONSEQUENCES report last year?]
2. “Assuming the entire equatorial belt [AND USA LOWER 48] is on fire, so to speak, and the temperate areas of the globe are devastated by drought, flood, insect infestations, etc., etc., who will support and feed the lucky few who inhabit your polar cities? Serfs? Slaves? On what basis, in other words, will those cities survive? Fishing? The ocean is dying. Hunting? The animals are practically gone. Agriculture? By that time will there be enough order to permit the placid cultivation of those northern “soils”?”
ANSWER: GOOD QUESTIONS!!!!!! WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT THEM NOW AND PLAN REACTIONS…
3. “There may well be polar cities in the not-too-distant future, but I fear they may come about not as a result of a grand, planned adaptation to a global “rough patch,” but out of sheer desperation. The pre-conditions for your polar cities are too grim to behold for any extended period.”
ANSWER: WHY ARE THE PRE-CONDITIONS SO ”GRIM” TO BEHOLD? Please answer this…. or explain to me, thanks
4. “Many thanks for your concern. Something may yet come of all this palavering.”
ANSWER: I hope so. I am doing this polar cities project out of a concern for the future, and I don’t even have any children of my own. I just care. I can accept that many people will die in some scary future scenario, but I cannot accept that all will die. So even if only 10,000 hardy lucky souls survive in polar cities in the north and maybe Antarctica too, even if only 5000 people survive, it’s better than no survivors. So I remain optimistic and hopeful. I see people coming out of these polar cities, after 1000 years or so, and re-populating the Earth again. Albeit under very different “circumstances” — no SUVs, no computers, no printing presses, no civilization: just huts and campfires and crops and animals for food and transportation.
Paco
I learned a new word today: ”palavering”. Thanks.
The writer makes the usually rare point in environmental arguments that to confront this problem would mean that humans would have had to pass through a spiritual catharsis. This suggests that the problem in not just physical/technological, that somehow our spiritual “wrong-headedness” is at the root of the problem. “Spiritual” suggests concerns not just for physical survival, our “means,” but also the “ends,” i.e. identifying a purpose for life once our physical needs have been met. But we have been functioning under an extreme consumerist model that holds as its rewards such concepts as “luxury” or “the American Dream”… in other words, in lieu of identifying any purpose beyond physical comfort and pleasure, we have asked double-duty of our means, that they also function as life-goals (e.g. bigger house, faster or more comfortable car, etc… a pattern with no end in sight).
How does this comment help with the problem? Maybe it doesn’t, since we seem to be at such a desparate point. But at least let’s not kid ourselves that spraying the atmosphere with sulfer, or painting everything white, is anything more than treating symptoms. If we could somehow solve the problem with giant mirrors only to support more gluttonous consumption, that’s precisely the type of unenlightened society not worth saving. So let’s hope that what the writer implies will come to pass: as we save the planet, we find (and save) ourselves.
David
Good post!
Paco and others:
News today: WASHINGTON (AP) – Human beings may have had a brush with extinction some 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.
NOTE: So if we got down to 2000 once before, due to climate conditions, it could happen again, just 5000 people maybe, but they can bounce back, too. IF we make plans NOW. (Even if we don’t make plans, they will bounce back anyways……SMILE……Human beings are resilient, they don’t need polar cities plans at all. They can do it and will do it by themselves, by hook or by crook…..but planning doesn’t hurt)
Three years ago, as a botanist, I noticed my native plant communities dying. I thus looked up the NOAA weather station at our local airport in Ellensburg. The graphs from the mid 1900’s showed temperatures commonly reaching 20 to even 30 below zero. Temperatures we never even heard of today. The call this winter a cold winter but we never even hit zero. People are so short sighted. I talked to a friend Dr Haard at Fourth Corner Nurseries and he wrote an article on our data. You can google the nursery and go to the articles section. There are two articles on global warming. And we reported SERIOUS 20 degree change ALREADY!
Nobody would listen to us.
At the time, everyone was saying 10 degrees of warming over the next 100 years. I was screaming “WE HAVE 20 DEGREES OF WARMING NOW!”.
It is clear in the NOAA data for most inland areas. The last 20 years we have gone up 20 degrees. And the data shows we are getting hotter faster.
I think it is too late. I am an ecologist and I look at the extinction of the dinosaurs which we believe was the result of castrophic climate change (asteroid strike). We are faced with about the same thing as our plants cannot move north fast enough with the warming temperatures. If we want to even hope of saving the earth, we should be shipping thousands of pounds of palm tree seeds north to Alaska. I am NOT kidding. The plants cannot adapt this fast.
During the ice ages, temperatures changed 10 or 20 degrees over thousands of years. Now we have 20 degrees in 10 or 20 years.
The plants will not live through that and only very primitive algae that can transport long distance on currents or the wind will survive… if anything will be able to survive at all.
It is my professional opinion that we have already screwed the pouch. ANd the elite know it. That is why they are ripping off the American people. They are all gathering wealth for the big move north buying properties like mad.
All you have to do is look at the property records for the last 10 years in northern Canada. Look who has been buying the land up…
Quite frankly, those people are the same ones that caused this problem and profitted off it both then and now. And I hope the native people hunt them down as they move north like the invasive species and the worst of humanity that they are.
It would be better if that gene pool of expressed greed did not survive (if humanity will survive at all).
Ken Boettger
Ellensburg, WA
I really regret my last comment in the post above. My apologies.
Not very Christian like. If we are to survive, we have to learn to love and deny our inner selves (greed, selfishness, etc). And I guess I will make the first step in that direction by apologizing here…
-Ken
Hi Danny,
Thanks for the reply. Your example — that the human population may have shrunk to 5000 or so people 70,000 years ago, but we bounced back BECAUSE WE’RE SO RESOURCEFUL — gives me scant comfort. Compare the circumstances now with then. A reduction in the human presence on the planet, from our current six and a half billion to a few thousand, or even a few million, would amount to a catastrophe beyond our imagining. Call it “the end of civilization,” if you will. I understand that, from a biological standpoint, the human presence on earth has recently reached a level of toxicity — for other forms of life as well as ourselves — without parallel in the history of the planet.
I’m probably hopelessly romantic for thinking that there is some cosmic purpose implicit in our presence in the universe. It has something to do with the advent of reflective consciousness and the creative imagination. I can’t help believing that there is something more that we are meant to become, besides ragged scavengers on a dying planet.
You seem remarkably at ease with that possibility. Or am I misreading your position?
Best wishes,
Paco
My response, a debate, for Mr. Mike Tidwell, by Jenni M. Wenhold.
Mr. Tidwell’s article entitled “Snap Into Action for the Climate,” reminds me of the Apocolypse watchers who predict exact dates when Jesus will return. They look for signs and seasons all over the world and give dates as to when things are likely to happen. They look at the middle east. They look at Russia. They look at the fight for Jerusalem. They read the Bible over and over looking for clues. They talk about what is going to happen next and timelines. They are, for the most part, entirely wrong. The timing of Christ’s return is in God’s hands. And so, I would say the same about our Earth and climate change.
Climate change and the “snap” of Earth’s demise is in the hands of God, not in human hands. I believe it is biblical for God to care for our land and sky and it was given to human hands to care for animals and their needs (see the first 3 chapters of Genesis). God clothes the lilies of the field (Matthew 6). I am not saying that we cannot or should not take care of the earth that God has given us. After sin occured, by man in the garden of Eden, God put the oness on man to care for and eat from the land. As God said to Adam, “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it [the ground] all the days of thy life.” Next Earth day, plant a tree. Cultivate a garden. Pick up trash and recycle everyday.
Speaking of climate change though, Mr. Tidwell’s article states, “But first, if there’s any good news surrounding the sudden and unexpected speed of global warming it is this: it’s nobody’s fault.” He is wrong. It is our fault totally… and I’m not talking about the release of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past 100 years. This goes back over 10,000 years. Unfortunately, from the day Adam and Eve sinned, the ground was “cursed” (Genesis 3:17). To this day “the creation groans” (Romans 8) waiting to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption.” Global warming is REAL and is the climax of the symptoms that have been developing since the fall of man in Genesis.
So then, the real question I have for Mr. Mike Tidwell is this: What if it isn’t our job to stop global warming?
Environmentalists must have considered my next point… this is just the cycle of the earth. We cannot stop it. There has been an age, a time, for everything. Everyone knows the song… it’s from Ecclesiastes 3:
A time to be born and a time to die a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted
A time to kill and a time to heal a time to break down and a time to build up
A time to weep and a time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing
A time to get and a time to lose a time to keep and a time to cast away
A time to rend and a time to sew a time to keep silence and a time to speak
A time to love and a time to hate a time of war, and a time of peace.
I’ll relate this point to what Christ said about his coming back… a simile… like the “pains of a woman in travail.” Once it starts (and I can attest to this), it doesn’t stop (without a doctor’s intervention) until the baby is born. Just a thought coming to me just now, even when a doctor stops the contractions, you know they will eventually start up again. So, even if we were to have a “near-total abandonment of fossil fuels” or make a “life-saving atmospheric shield,” it’s not going to stop what’s coming, only slow the process down.
Going back to an age and time for everything. There was a Triassic age, and all those other ages in times past. This is the Present time/age. Job of the Bible asks “Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth?” Have any of the scientists considered that the humans’ days are numbered? Perhaps it is time for us to no longer be on the Earth. So, instead of finding ways to “engineer the climate,” why don’t we just let it be and let what is to come, come! Paul McCartney sang it best “speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
A few sentences from the end of Mr. Tidwell’s article before I go on [underlining intentionally done by me], “I can see my son coming of age in a world where the multiplier benefits of clean energy go far beyond preserving a stable climate… Best of all, I see spiritual transformation ahead. We simply cannot make the necessary changes without being changed ourselves… We will know, finally, that to live in permanent peace and prosperity we must live in a particular way, adhering to a particular set of truths about ourselves and our planet.”
So then, people say “leave the world a better place for your children.” Am I worried about my children or my children’s children? Yes, but only in a spiritual sense. As long as my children are raised believing there is a better way and God has provided that way, then I am in perfect peace about the environment and global warming. In Romans 8 Paul of the Bible is speaking to Christian believers, “Because the creature [or, creation] itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope…” The hope is what John of the Bible writes about in Revelation “and I saw a new heaven and a new earth…” A New Earth? And he also writes in the next chapter “and there shall be no more curse.” BUT how do we partake of this new earth with no curse. In Romans 10 it says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” That is all God asks for us to be a part of this new heaven and earth. Everyone wonders why John 3:16 is so important. You see John 3:16 written on shirts, billboards, tattooed onto people’s skin. John 3:16 has everything to do with climate change, global warming, and the eventual change of the earth as we now know it… “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” The truth is, we will not perish with the rest of the world in global warming. Instead we shall rise. We shall overcome! But, we MUST believe! God does love us and this world. His only joy is to see our complete happiness with Him, living in a world that is not corrupted by sin and destruction. A world that only He can provide for us.
“Snap into action for the climate,” if you must. I instead will wait patiently for the redemption of this world. I will endure painfully with the sin that is continuing this world’s demise, until the return of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Thank you for your consideration.
Paco
I am enjoying our conversation here, I find it instructive and useful, and I hope others here do, too.
To answer your question re:
YOU WROTE: “…I can’t help believing that there is something more that we are meant to become, besides ragged scavengers on a dying planet…..You seem remarkably at ease with that possibility. Or am I misreading your position?”
DANNY ANSWERS: You read my position very clearly. Yes, although I am also a romantic about life here on Earth [cue the music], I do not believe in any supernatural God or gods or any cosmic reason for our being here. Other than pure cosmic evolution and DNA genepools, pure random chance, the dance of the cosmos, and we are stardust, yes, and yes, Paco, I do believe we have more “evolving” to do in the far distant future, not so much growing a third eye or a six arms, but in terms of our conciouness of life and the cosmos, yes, I do believe we have more evolving to do mentally and spiritually, and maybe all this today — the global warming problems we are facing — is part of that mental, intellectual and spiritual evolution. And because I believe in this future evolution of the mind, I care deeply about trying to find ways to keep this human species going on Planet Earth.
I am comfortable with the notion that we might be ragged scavengers on a dying Earth for a while, in year 2500 or so, and this period might last for a 1000 years or more, but I have faith that we will bounce back once again to becoming civilized again, and perhaps that new chapter will indeed be glorious, far more glorious than where we are now: nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and all.
So yes, you read my feeling correctly, I am at ease with the Mad Max scenario coming down the pike, but I posit “polar cities” as lifeboats that can save us from utter utter raggedness. Cross our fingers, hope to God.
Do I contradict myself? Maybe.
And Paco, you helped me think things through a bit more clearly today when you asked me what “polar cities” are exactly:
Here is my response:
1. Polar cities are not located at the North Pole
2. Polar cities are not located “along the shores of an ice-free Arctic Ocean”, as the New York Times incorrectly phrased it in a blogpost on March 29
3. Polar cities are not underground cites made of glass and tubes, like these images sugggest to some (http://pcillu101.blogspot.com)
4. Polar cities are not cities at all (they are, rather, small villages and small towns, safe refuge communities of anywhere from 100 people to 4000 people tops)
5. Polar cities are not Gerbil Cities for pet hamsters, as one blogger joked (Google those terms)
6. Polar cities are not Habitrail tubes for humans, as another critic joked (Google again)
POLAR CITIES ARE:
1. future safe refuges built on high ground or inside mountain caves or caverns in northern regions of the world, from Juneau Alaska to Whitehorse Canada, and also Greenland, Iceland, Oslo Norway, Stockholm Sweden, Russia
— even Boulder Colorado and Quebec region
2. There will also be some polar cities in New Zealand, Chile, Patagonia, Ecudaor high mountains, Peru, also in Antarctica research stations converted to polar cities
3.Polar cities will be administered, governed and guarded by UN agencies, or individual governments where they are located
4. Polar cities for survivors of global warming in year 2500 or so will be democratically-run lifeboats that will *NOT* discriminate on admitting residents based on gender, race, nationality, IQ, EQ or religious belief
5. Polar cities are envisioned as ADAPTATION RETREATS to ensure the survival of survivors of global warming’s catastrophic events in year 2500 or so
NOTE TO PACO and others: DOES THAT MAKE THE CONCEPT MORE CLEAR? I hope so.
By the way, Mike, who wrote this very good essay that started this discussion off:
I sent this letter to TIME magazine, following its greeen edition about global warming. I doubt it will be printed in the magazine, since they get over 10,000 letters per issue and can only use 3 or 4 of them per issue, so here it is:
Dear Editor:
When America decided to go the moon, we witnessed a nation divert
huge resources into achieving that seemingly impossible goal, and we
succeeded. The world is faced with climate disaster in the not so
distant future,
so why are not proportionately huge resources being diverted into
developing solutions? Are we incapable of acting pro-actively and
collectively?
Danny Bloom
Tufts 1971
I roundly applaud Mike Tidwell’s communication of climate urgency while deploring his harebrained stab at “solutions.”
There has been considerable effort to understand how to sequester CO2 the way nature does it: in soils. If, along with zero emissions, we undertake grazer/grassland eco-restoration projects on half of the roughly 4 billion acres of devastated land worldwide, we can go back to the preindustrial CO2 of 280 ppm and possibly mitigate the effects of positive feedback loops.
For starters, check out http://www.holisticmanagement.org/ and http://www.carbonfarmersofamerica.com/.
Hi Danny,
I very much enjoyed your excellent, thoughtful — and sometimes humorous — replies.
I understand one of the Scandinavian countries is currently assembling a world seed bank, for precisely the survival purposes you outline in your project description. in the early nineteen-fifties Lewis Mumford used the phrase “saving remnants,” referring to small groups of people who would act as cultural seed-groups in the post-apocalyptic future. His immediate concern at the time was the destruction of civilization by nuclear warfare — which danger, we should note, has not diminished one whit — but he was also well aware of other ecological threats growing out of our mostly unconscious worship of all technologies great and small.
I find myself thinking often about that phrase, “saving remnants,” since I think it may just come to that — and well before 2500. (You must be an optimist!)
But because I’ve studied dreams and depth psychology for thirty-five years, I am still impressed by the transformative powers of the deep psyche. I’ve had several dreams over the years that show me a surprisingly different viewpoint from what I can achieve on my own. But, as I hinted in an earlier post, the images in those dreams show the “new” emerging from the wreckage of the “old,” and they even suggest that the destruction is being carried out by autonomous forces in the collective unconscious.
What the dreams have not said is how much wreckage there will be, or what the “timetable” is. As far as I can tell, much depends on people’s awareness and their ethical responses to what is happening. The importance of wakefulness should not be underestimated.
It is stunning to me to see how few people even want to think about the “intolerable” future you and I are contemplating. I still hear people saying that “global warming” is a natural climate fluctuation not caused by human activity. Amazing.
So, I applaud your conscientiousness and wish you great success in your project.
Thanks again,
Paco
Poor, poor Mr. Tidwell. He’s got it right. Partly.
First off, scientists have been RIGHT about climate change all along, and for much longer than Mr. Tidwell apparently has searched the literature. Articles published in 1996 and 1997 defined with utter clarity the relationaships between dissolved CO2 levels in the Greenland ice cap and historic temperature and climate fluctuations.
Second, that work and at least twenty years of preceding research demonstrated beyond doubt that climate shifts had been – and perforce could be – large. And very rapid, that is taking place in a period of decades down to years, and not over long stretches of centuries and millenia.
The data, the interpretations, and the conclusions were stark, incontrovertible. And who listened? Not non-scientists, for sure. Raising the topic at dinner was a sure-fire yawn-producer.
The other side of the coin, which Mr. Tidwell salutes but dismisses with a wave (and some entirely unsupported wishful-thinking scenarios for ameliorations if we follow his suggestions about adding sulfur and so on) is that climate also swung the OTHER way, from warmer to colder. And with equal swiftness.
All without human input, if we disregard the controversial but very likely influences from burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.
And, not geologically based, Mr. Tidwell politely refrains from noticing the steep up-ramping of energy release in developing countries. Ssssh. Wouldn’t want to seem impolite among the cocktail gentry…
A very spirited piece but we don’t have governmental system capable of such radical remedies. It would be nice to think society had the integral feedback systems that all other species need to survive but there is no indication of this. Moreover our democracies have economies which rely on ever increasing consumption – and this promise is renewed at every election.
Many of these responses seem insightful but being and old geek, I have to wonder what it is about us humans that we have such a long history of preferring pleasant lies over unpleasant facts. Remember Malthus, back at the turn of the nineteenth century? I became convinced that human history was about to reach a crisis of unprecidented proportions after reading Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb.” Both of these men made s strong argument that we need to control our number. Again, president Carter made it clear that world consumption of oil was not sustainable. We’ve had convincing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels would destabalize global climate since the 1950s, but no one made a serious proposal that we should reduce consumption till the last few years.
Well, no one knows the future, but as evidence continues to be compiled, several possible scenarios are coming into sharper focus, and none of them jibe with what economists, polititians and techno cheer leaders are telling us. What we have alwsys knows is now becomeing undeniable: the growth rate of our population is going to reach zero, with births equalling deaths, and we can be sure that the total population of the world will be much smaller than it is now. The growth rate of our economy is eventially going to be zero, and at a substantial reduction in total wealth. All of this will happen in the not-to-distant future. There really is a reality outside our heads.
It is too late to avoid The Crisis. We don’t even know what we will have to face. Evidence from ice cores and elsewhere tell us that climate has made many abrupt changes in the past, and one of the scenarios suggested by the ice data is that the sudden melting of polar ice can trigger sudden cooling, at least in some areas. In the face of all these uncertainties, I am concerned about our social response to crisis. Will be learn to cooperate more and form decentralized civil societies or will we follow leaders into wars, or plunge into chaos? I am as worried about us as what we face.
If a revolution can help us maybe we should get more curious about ourselves. We badly need another period of enlightenment.
Paco,
thanks for a very good discussion of all these issues, and thanks esp for the Lewis Mumford coinage of “saving remants”. I had not heard of that term before, and I like it. I will entered it into my conciousness as of today.
More later
Danny
if ever wish to chat offline my email addy is danbloom GMAIL
As I’ve gone about my work-a-day life since contributing early on to this conversation, I’ve found it percolating throughout my consciousness repeatedly… Only the most foolhardy among us would deny any longer that we have likely crossed the threshold of actively being in crisis on multiple fronts – the last 8 years of which have brought into high relief.
Between the redistribution of the wealth of the country (~$400Bn) from the middle and lower classes to the upper 1.0-0.5%, to the unemployment rates that are probably closer in real numbers to 13% (based on including those whose unemployment has simply run-out and who have been unable for years to find work), from statistics that 1 in 3 teens are now dropping out of high school and that 1 of the other 2 are either incapable of, or unprepared for, university-level work, to the clear evidence that climate change is progressing far more quickly than previously projected – truly, what are we to do?
As a many decade devotee’ of permaculture, I believe that the seeds of whatever salvation is to be had are to be found in its pursuit. Rather than tinkering with misbegotten ideas of seeding sulfur into the atmosphere, let’s instead (immediately, if not sooner) begin growing our own food. This is perhaps the single most radical move any of us could undertake, and the knowledge to do so is widely available.
It’s clearly possible to see that the diversion of food crops into bio-fuels is a huge mistake, and when large tracts of arable land are given to that, there is simply less available for growing the food that people need. Coupled with IMF & World Bank policies that have moved the many economies they’ve meddled in away from local horticulture that fed local populations into growing vast amounts of non-food crops for export, is it any wonder why the first step should be taking back both the right, and the responsibility, to grow our own food?
And clearly, from my own investigation, people across this country, and others, are wild to begin doing this. Google “edible estates,” “abundant yards,” or visit Vancouver BC’s website: The City Farmer (www.cityfarmer.info) and you’ll quickly see that people are finding ways to share their yards with their neighbors to begin growing food for themselves.
Or take a look at the website, On Day One, where people are suggesting what a newly-elected US President might consider doing on their first day in office. The absolute number one idea, as evidenced by the number of people voting on it, is that the President should convert at least some part of the White House lawn into growing food!
In the context of permaculture (ala’ Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Toby Hemenway, and many others), we would look toward the creation of elegant local ecologies (particularly at the scale of the back yard!) that support both ourselves and wildlife. Permaculture – which I think of as a means to implement an ecologically-oriented lifestyle on many levels, including the primary one of growing our own food – gives us the tools for conducting careful observation, retaining resources for reuse rather than exporting them to the landfill, reducing our reliance on petrochemicals that are killing us (your preference – the war in Iraq, pesticides that mimic hormone receptors, toxic emissions contributing to climate change, et al…) to instead using organic and sustainable inputs like compost, rebuilding the health of the soil, and using redundancy as a means to protect against failure.
Here’s another website that is a superb explication of the ideas of permaculture, the Bullock brothers’ farm on Orcas Is, WA. When you see what they’ve accomplished on 20 acres, and what they’re offering in terms of education to implement these ideas, it’s very hard to imagine doing anything else but…
http://www.permacultureportal.com/
****
Several years ago I went to a reading by Barry Lopez at Elliott Bay Book Store here in Seattle. It was a typical dark and stormy night, made magical however by a very large flock of starlings that were wheeling and screaming against that turbulent sky. Barry was on the sidewalk with the rest of us – transfixed for many moments at the sight. Later, during the Q&A;, a young man asked Barry – given the incredible rush of content that assails us every day, if not every moment, how did he decide “what to keep”? Barry responded that he felt it was important to “keep” those things to which we are attracted, without regard to the hegemony of ‘political correctness’ – whether it was a pink and turquoise sunrise in the desert, the 3/4 view of a woman’s face as a bus rushed past, or the sight of a flock of starlings engaged in wondrous acrobatics against the clouds, wind and rain… He went on to say that he felt it was absolutely critical that everyone do this, because there would come a time in our culture when we would have need of every single thing that every person had “kept” in order to find our way to survival…
To the writer who earlier asked what my own ideas were to help address climate change, besides being appalled at the article we’re discussing (a good and proper question I’ve thought long and hard about!), I offer that while I do not have a corner on the market for *all* the ideas that will be required, here is mine to be considered amongst the rest.
Hi Julianne,
I’m glad that your work-a-day life finally permitted some time for additional reflection on the very important questions we’re all struggling with, and, further, that you found the time and energy — I might even say “passion” — to reply in depth.
I suspect that this whole process — i.e., this discussion we’re having — is more important than any of us can even guess. You mentioned Barry Lopez, the flock of starlings and Barry’s response to the question someone asked him. In his response, I think he was following a deep line of thinking — or feeling — or intuition.
Jung once said that “wisdom” amounted to “following the deeper currents of libido.’ When Lopez advised people to “keep what attracted them,” it seems to me he was saying the same thing Jung was. And when Matthew Fox said that, according to Thomas Aquinas, you don’t change people through guilt, you change them through “pleasure,” he was essentially saying the same thing: Find what attracts you, follow the deeper currents of libido, learn who you really are, and then find the courage to follow that pattern and what it demands of you.
It seems to me that you are doing that already, Julianne.
In another of Jung’s writings pertinent to this discussion, he said, “What is the fate of great nations, after all, but a summation of the psychic changes in individuals?”
How can we change the world if we ourselves don’t change? How can others care, if we ourselves don’t care? How can we expect to mobilize others “yesterday” if we can’t mobilize ourselves today? These are questions I sweat over every day.
Perhaps you read my reply to Danny Bloom’s excellent posts on Page Four of this discussion, in which I referred to some dreams I’ve had that shed a light on the future. I would like to tell you — along with Danny or any other readers who are following this discussion — one of those dreams. (Perhaps you’ve had dreams of your own that pertain to this?) In the dream:
A group of worshippers marches into our living room. They are separated by partitions, like an egg carton, so that they are separate and yet related at the same time.
Led by a woman, they are looking for a place to “worship.” They do not belong to any sect or creed, but are bound together by love, in particular, by a common love of beauty, purposefulness, meaning, etc. The woman leader looks at the room and decides this is an appropriate place for them to pray. They all look down at the large oriental carpet on the floor and admire its beauty, then drop to their knees and begin to pray. Even though they pray together, simultaneously, their prayers are individual.
When they are done praying they all get up and walk around the room, admiring the various antique, hand-made artifacts and art objects. [End of dream.]
To me, Julianne, this is what I call a “wisdom dream.” It came to me from who-knows-where? I do not regard it as a personal possession, but rather as a cultural — or even natural — phenomenon, rather like Barry Lopez, on the one hand, or the starlings, on the other.
I don’t know if you, or Danny, or any other readers of this discussion, have ever gone to the trouble of studying your dreams, but consider this: Every hour of the day, as the planet spins on its axis, half of the planet is in darkness. Within that continuous wave of darkness, most people are sleeping and therefore, at least a portion of the time, dreaming. Even if only one percent of the dreams occurring at night — one out of a hundred — fell within that “wisdom” category, with a population of six and a half billion souls, that would amount to 65,000 wisdom dreams per night. (Please check my math.)
I can’t help but wonder what what would happen if we could tap into that continuous, nightly wave of wisdom which, I have to say, resides within each of us, as our birthright.
Of course, most of us neglect, ignore or despise our dreams. But the day may be approaching when, in our increasing desperation, we might discover that the visions and images that will finally mobilize us in large numbers, possibly leading us to to a viable future, lie within.
Please don’t misunderstand. When I say “within” I’m not talking about an egotistical or narcissistic point of view. Quite the opposite. I am saying that there is very little, or even no, separation between you and the starlings, between Barry Lopez and the stars, between me and the frogs. When Thomas Berry speaks of the “earth community,” he speaks the truth.
When I anticipate a wider human response to the world within — in particular, the creative agency of dreams — it is very much within the context of the world without. I have had experiences that tell me that the boundaries that we have been taught exist between “inner” and “outer,” are in fact specious.
If you will indulge me, Julianne, here is one last dream, a recent one, and short:
“New Age = the Coming Birth of the Unconscious.”
This dream surprised me, because I see so much “unconsciousness” all around me that I take it for granted as always having existed. How, then, can it be “born”?
I understood the dream to refer to a rising awareness of the driving force of the unconscious in our lives and hence, to a potential awakening to the importance of dreams, which are, after all, the speech of the unconscious. I would even go further and say that through dreams we can actually hear the speech of the earth — if only we have ears to hear.
Your most recent post –along with Danny’s and others’ — must have required a prodigious effort, which is why I spoke of your “passion.” This touches me deeply, because it suggests that not all humans are in thrall to the gigantic, systemic distractions that pull us away from our human tasks.
I sincerely hope that you continue to find ways to express your passion and goodness. May there be more like you.
Thank you so much, Julianne.
Paco
we haven’t yet approached making a serious push toward cleaning up our carbon in the u.s., and yet i suspect we will see such debates and limited skirmishes on easing sulfur emissions, for instance, well before we have initiated a carbon tax on all property owners or instituted serious industrial reform.
the reason? people are always more willing to let others clean up their messes with promised technological salves than simply change their lifestyles.
i do expect and yearn for the greening of spiritual/philosophical systems as your article predits, but it will be hard won. respect for the earth’s global systems via acknowledged human ignorance and restraint in the field could be our first step toward being absorbed into this new relationship.
Like all other megatechnic interferences with the environment to date, deliberate or accidental, Tidwell’s favored geoenengineering scheme would almost create intractable secondary problems. Some of these problems would be foreseen, others not. One of the already-foreseen results would be severe damage to the ozone layer, as discussed just a few days ago in the journal Science (“The Sensitivity of Polar Ozone Depletion to Proposed Geoengineering Schemes,” April 24). I’ve made a PDF of the article available (for personal and educational sharing only) at
http://www.larrygilman.net/misc_documents/geoengineering_sulfur_SCIENCE.pdf
Re Australian action prior to the Australian Federal Election at the end of 2007 that led to the Kyoto signing, please see the link to youtube video re the “HALT CLIMATE CHANGE NOW” community human sign on Sandringham Beach, Earth Day 22 April, 2007.
Regards,
Tim Forcey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0exzYINYmV4
Dear Friends of the Orion Community,
Do you think the time will ever come when government officials stop employing every ruse under the sun to protect the selfish interests of over-consumers and hoarders, and start by choosing to do the right thing?
Life and human institutions like national economies are utterly dependent upon the Earth for existence; but too many of our leaders view the Earth as some kind of thing to be manipulated, dissipated, and ravaged secondary to their adamant practice of a religion called Endless Economic Growth. This clear and obvious object of their idolatry is the soon to become unsustainable expansion of the leviathan-like, global political economy. What a colossal sham. What a shame. What a shambles for our children to confront.
Always with thanks,
Steve
To Jef on April 24:
Why does everyone seem to forget that Homo sapiens has been the most deadly life-form this planet has ever known?
If we do not work to end or reverse climate warming, we, humanity, will likely die and take many or all other life-forms with us. It is the neglect of the severity of our impact on the earth which has gotten us into this fix. My regret is that we have willingly destroyed huge pieces of this earth in the pursuit of wealth and ease. Having acted irresponsibly in the past does not allow us to act irresponsibly by standing by and watching the planet “survive quite nicely.” I, you, and all humans owe it to my children, your children, and all earth-bound life to work toward reversing the damage.
Having just plugged into this thread today, I’m glad to see others as appalled as I am about this article and Orion’s publication of it. I am especially glad to hear Juilanne’s recommendations as to where we should be putting our energy. Concepts like re-engineering the atmosphere, and like polar cities, miss the point entirely. It is up to us, each one of us, acting individually and responsibly. Humans have created huge institutions that have enabled all the damage to take place, and we must learn to reclaim our role as biological species and work individually and collectively in small, self-supporting groups. We must learn to grow our own food from the resources immediately around us, provide our own shelter and medical care, etc. When humans learn to do this (and as one trying to make this transition in my life I can attest it is very hard to do, for most of the survival skills we need to know we have been kept ingorant of) then things like migration will happen as needs dictates.
The real spritual awakening that Mr. Tidwell yearns for will happen not when we build more (fuel efficient) cars or more (wind) farms, but when we learn that we can stop building cars and power plants completely, and survive, as have the vast majority of humans throughout history, quite nicely.
Thanks for the interesting conversation.
I fully accept the reality of climate change and I believe that we must take appropriate actions to reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. However, I found the sense of breathless panic and exaggeration in this article quite offensive. The statement highlighted in the red box is an illustration of what I mean. The author suggests that a world where the arctic ice is fully melted is no longer planet Earth. How does he feel about planet Earth as it existed in previous geologic periods? Paleoclimatic data indicate that the Earth has experienced large fluctuations in average global temperature in past eras. Was this not planet Earth? The whole of civilization falls into an interglacial period. These periods last about 10,000 years, and that time period has nearly passed. Without human induced climate change, the Earth might be headed for another period of glaciation. Would that not be Earth? The bottom line is that Earth will abide. The author’s vision seems very anthropocentric to say the least. This leads him to suggests that we can fix the situation by “tinkering.” I am not at all enthusiatic about efforts to “tinker” with the climate in order to lessen the impact of global climate change. I don’t believe we understand the climate well enough to undertake such experimentation! This is another example of human hubris.
Greetings Orion readers,
I come to this conversation with sincere concern and compassion as we struggle with unsettling news each day.
The natural systems we have depended on for so long are stressed, as is humanity.
Let’s not arrogantly seed the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide.
The earth may do the job for us.
Writing in New Scientist magazine, Bill McGuire, professor of geological hazards at University College in London, said: “All over the world evidence is stacking up that changes in global climate can and do affect the frequencies of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic sea-floor landslides. Not only has this happened several times throughout Earth’s history, the evidence suggests it is happening again.”
http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/earthquakes.htm
The latest scientific discipline to enter the fray over global warming is geology. And the forecasts from some quarters are dramatic – not only will the earth shake, it will spit fire. A number of geologists say glacial melting due to climate change will unleash pent-up pressures in the Earth’s crust, causing extreme geological events such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. A cubic metre of ice weighs nearly a tonne and some glaciers are more than a kilometre thick. When the weight is removed through melting, the suppressed strains and stresses of the underlying rock come to life.
/2004/08/040803095217.htm
The earth abides…perhaps we can honor its way of adapting to our species.
Good point, Paco. IT COULD BE that the Earth will take care of the Earth in its own way, that somehow the very Earth itself will find a way to shut down global warming in such a way that the worst case scenarios that some have imagined (and I plead guilty here!) will not come true, and the Earth will abide, yes.
It could very well happen that way, too. I have thought about that possibility, too.
We should be prepared on all fronts, just in case. But good post, sir! Yes yes yes.
To Paca and Danny,
No no no no, geology was FIRST into the climate-change fray, BEFORE the climatologists got to it. It was geologists studying ice cores from Greenland who uncovered direct evidence of temperature fluctuations and climatic variation, and of the rapid changes that had taken place, historically.
The rest, the dramatization of seismic activity as regional tectonic loading changes with melting of ice is something that will happen. Is happening. Has happened all along. This is hardly new, either.
The tone of the posts, and especially that of the about.com article, may sell page views but it is misleading.
Or is it better to panic now…
Troll
it is better to panic now, than to panic later. it will be too late to panic then. panic now. but gently, in measured tones. stay in control. but yes, panic now.
Cutting emissions is a weak (and very expensive) mitigation strategy. Besides, it is very unlikely that a rapidly growing population and world economy will cut emissions so fast and drastically that either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming will be avoided:
I know of no realistic person who thinks carbon dioxide emissions are going to do anything but grow. Most European countries are not meeting their emissions goals, and of the ones that have, it’s because their economies are collapsing. In the United States, this notion that we’re going to reduce our emissions by 80 percent is pure fantasy. –Pete Geddes, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, 2 April 2008
“I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t: we may not be able to stop global warming. We need to begin curbing global greenhouse emissions right now, but more than a decade after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, the world has utterly failed to do so. Unless the geopolitics of global warming change soon, the Hail Mary pass of geoengineering might become our best shot.” –Bryan Walsh, Time Magazine, 17 March 2008
“I no longer care much about the science of global warming. To me, the central question, and the one that few are willing to discuss in depth, is: Then what? Fossil fuels now provide about 85% of the world’s total energy needs. Even more important is this corollary: Increasing energy consumption equals higher living standards. Always. Everywhere. Given that fact, how can we expect the people of the world — all 6.6 billion of them — to use less energy? The short answer: we can’t. The developed countries of the world can talk forever about the virtues of solar panels and windmills, but what the energy-poor need most are common fuels like kerosene, propane, and gasoline” –Robert Bryce, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence
Hello thoughtful Orion folk,
I have a copy of the big coffee table book “Planet Earth” by Alastair Fothergill (also on DVD). It is a spectacular book, but for a time I could not look at it because each time I did I got angry or sad that we have largely messed up such amazingly adapted species and beautiful places.
Yet I have to take some solace in the fact that we have lived at a time to see the height of biodiversity and functioning systems. Our technology allowed us to go places, take pictures, and engage in science and observation as never before. I am so thankful that I have seen wolves and grizzlies in Yellowstone; humpback, right and minke whales in the Atlantic; porpoises and beluga in the Saint Lawrence Seaway; wood storks and roseate spoonbills in Florida; a catamount in Vermont; and so much more.
I am just as thankful to KNOW the about the 2 million species on earth and to wonder about the possible 3 – 100 million more that I will never see but may exist — at least at the moment.
The knowledge of this amazing world is such a gift. And daily I try not to let it be my curse.
I look at this beautiful book and sometimes I have a good cry and sometimes I celebrate the fact that earth has had a good life — just as we say about 90 year old uncle Jeb at his funeral.
No living organism is meant to live forever.
I am not saying what we’ve done is okay. We could have done a much better job of being stewards of the earth. I just happen to think that the human species is not cracked up to be what a lot of people think it is. Yes, we have created works of art, amazing music, wondrous cathedrals, poetry, functioning civilizations, and much more.
But perhaps we are an evolutionary experiment that didn’t make it past the high school lab. (Harsh?) Species evolve and face extinction for any number of reasons. But there is only one species that could be admonished that “they should have known better”. Somehow our violent, greedy nature just got the best of us.
So we should celebrate the fact that we had a 2.5 million year old picnic on earth with great joy, expanses of knowledge, wonderful inventions, cultural diversity, spiritual blossoming, amazing biodiversity, and …well name your experience. And at the same time we struggled with plagues, dark ages, wars, societal collapses and somehow were are still at it, on the internet right now discussing our basic humanity and it’s future.
Thus the paradox of what it means to be human.
Best to all,
Paca
(not to be confused with Paco ☺
PACA
good good post. Yes, the paradox of what it means to be human at this time in human history (and herstory)…….we’ve got a good 500 more years to go……how to savor it? how to prepare for the end? 30 more generations maybe….
For now, life is won der full!
Yes, Paca, a 2.5 million year picnic on the grass…..dreams! inventions! Elvis Presley! Brigitte Bardot! We need to give thanks and be grateful, and then start the long slog to prepare for what is coming down the pike, slowly, drip by drip, generation after generation, 100 200 300 400 500 years from now……. there are still some more good things to come I feel. but in the end, the end is nigh…… SIGH
Danny (Post 46)
Panic (noun):
Sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior.
(Oxford English Dictionary)
Is THAT what you really mean?
….and please (further to Danny!) my name is Troll 005-1/2. Respect, huh?
Hello, Ron (Post 42),
I have heard others argue, as you do, that “Paleoclimatic data indicate that the Earth has experienced large fluctuations in average global temperature in past eras.”
Somehow this is advanced as a reason to downplay the “breathless panic and exaggeration” that so offends you in Mike Tidwell’s article.
Are we supposed to dance with joy upon hearing about these geological precedents? Or lie down and wait for the waves to sweep away our houses and cities just because “it happened before” some 80 million years ago?
What troubles me about your formulation is that — unless I misunderstand your intent — I cannot feel the ethical core in your position. Where’s the outrage? Why so complaisant? It is certainly true that “earth will abide,” either as a barren rock with rotten seas or as a teeming swamp crawling with who knows what new species?
But yes, in the long run, nature will prevail.
Frankly, I feel more sympathy for Paca’s posts 43 and 48, because at least she is expressing a human response and concern for the damage we’re inflicting on ourselves, our plant and animal brethren and, in some strange way, upon the very chemistry and geology of the planet itself.
Outrage, grief, remorse, sadness, tenderness, etc., may be “soft-minded” responses to the cruel facts of geological time, but they strike a resonant chord in me.
We should have known better, but we didn’t.
The tragedy is that now we do know better — we can see and understand more than we ever did — yet still we proceed as if hypnotized by all our gadgets. Our heads nod before the television screens, and we laugh at the commercial “messages” designed to perpetuate our slumber.
I am no more enthusiastic about the geo-engineering fantasy than you are, especially if it is carried out in the same arrogant Promethean spirit that got us into this mess in the first place — the march of progress, man’s dominion over all creeping things, conquest of nature, etc.
I agree with you that, if we let it go so far as to shoot reflective mylar blankets or canisters of sulphur into space in an effort to do a technological “fix,” it will be one more example of our titanic hubris, yet another sign that we’ve blown our chance.
I would rather see a sudden, widespread shift in our awareness — a Tidwell “snap,” so to speak. So far, of course, the signs are not good. It seems that we WILL live on a hothouse planet. Millions — or billions — WILL suffer and die. We WILL take millions of species down with us. Whether we survive in sufficient numbers to form the nucleus for a second run at “civilization,” time will tell. Danny’s “polar cities” allow for this possibility, but I woul hardly call it a happy prospect.
I have a feeling, though, that a human-caused global die-off may provide a strict enough discipline that the human survivors may just learn to love this beautiful home that Paca already mourns.
I don’t know if it’s “too late” or not. But it does seem clear that we don’t have much time to dither.
Let me know if I’ve misread you, Ron.
Paco (not to be confused with Paca 🙂
Here’s what i have done:
i got rid of my car
i don’t use air conditioning
i grow veggies
i don’t have cable
What else can YOU do?
i cry about the polar bears too.
Dear Miss Volare:
What do I do? Here:
I don’t drive my car
(Prefer my bicycle)
I don’t use A/C
I eat veggies
I HAVE broadband data links
(Note the plural)
I READ THE LITERATURE
concerning polar bears – and much, much more
YOU need to do that too. Everyone.
Then you must vote. Before you do that you – we all – must open informed, probing discussion of all such issues.
Or else we die in our miserable garden scrubs. Neither the polar bears nor god will cry.
Panic is bad. Reading the literature is good. An earlier post – to take but one example from this discussion – referred to climate cycles 80 million years ago. Doubtless there were, that long ago. But the misquote of geologic literature points towards the malaise of irrationality, and, frankly, ignorance.
The base in the geologic data is that from Greenland ice cores. That information has been widely published over the past 20+ years. It refers to a time span of the most recent 120 THOUSAND (and not MILLION) years. And it defines very clear periods of climate warming and cooling, which includes the ‘Little Ice Age’ within the past 500 years.
We are now emerging from a longer than normal (in the context of these data) cool period.
Those are facts. We may deal with them. Or not.
The end-time believing people may reinforce a certain personal security in doomsaying. I have my doubts. Once again, reading the record: we’ve been here before.
We must – MUST – take many kinds of action. Considered action. Those who hang out on this discussion, too.
So. What do YOU do? Again?
To Bob Tyson, aka Troll 005-1/2 (Post 55), with respect.
I just visited your photographic website and was very impressed with the quality, poignancy and sensitivity of the photos. I assume you took them. Very well done. You might increase the time, however, that each image remains on the screen. The images deserve to be taken in, and the lap-dissolve sequencing moves along too fast.
Thank you, also, for your correction of my “80 million year” mistake. To be honest, I was simply reaching for a number that would convey geological scale, not trying to be “scientifically accurate.” I don’t regard numbers as the final determiners of value. To me they are images, more than anything.
For this poetic infraction you reduce me with your comment: ” . . . the misquote of geologic literature points towards the malaise of irrationality, and, frankly, ignorance.”
I confess, your honor, guilty as charged. I am irrational in many ways, and ignorant on many counts.
But I have to reject your charge of “malaise.” I could just as easily say that the worship of numbers is an irrational malaise. Or was it my earlier references to dreams — in all their blatant irrationality — that aroused your pique?
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the amazing discipline and dedication of the scientists who took the Greenland core samples and managed to measure the CO2 content in the bubbles. The endlessly quantified data that reveal our global dilemma in its many aspects, actually enable us to estimate the degree of crisis we face.
But the greatest problem is ultimately a crisis of imagination. How indeed can we “mobilize” as a species to meet the environmental challenge, without a profound and sudden activation of the human imagination? The “irrationality” you find so loathesome will actually play a crucial, if yet undetermined, role in the awakening of humanity. Paradoxically, it was our vaunted reason and our scorn for the “irrationality” of the past that led to our worship of numbers, our view of the universe as a dead machine, and permitted the full expression of our rage against nature in the ethos of exploitation.
Numbers are important, yes. Rationality is important, yes. But as soon as we address the problem of motivation — the sine qua non for any effective global response — we move into the realm of moral, ethical, religious, spiritual, aesthetic and philosophical concerns that must take into account the whole person.
Is this too much voodoo?
Sincerely,
Paco
P.S. Paca, where did you go?
I’ve continued to watch this conversation with great interest, although I’ve been sidelined with a nasty case of whooping cough; during this period of my own personal malaise, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the two things which seem, to me at least, to be at the heart of our current dilemmas…
(1) what Paco refers to as our ‘titantic hubris,’ this ongoing worship of technology as our savior, and (2), what I think of as not just a ‘crisis’ of imagination, but in fact, a failure of imagination…
There are very many things about technology I can, and do, appreciate – but how often we seem to forget that technology in and of itself has no regard for humanity, integrity, compassion? These are the elements that feel to be missing from this equation. Some of our greatest scientists have certainly recognized this:
Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-Swiss-U.S. scientist.
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) American nuclear physicist.
This act of doing things because we can, without regard to *why* we are doing them, or *what* the impact could or would be to our fellow travelers on this planet is so terrifically short-sighted. And now that most of what happens in our culture is driven by corporations – whose overarching rationale might be characterized as ‘profit at any cost’ – is it any wonder we willingly narcotize ourselves into passivity and denial so as to avoid the breaking of our hearts were we to awaken to the real truth of this soul-less and miserable existence?
Technology is not, in itself, evil, but it is heartless. Its definition: the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area, certainly doesn’t speak of the horrors of Hiroshima, or the many follies of the foolish.
One might say it is appropriately devoid of the kinds of passions that so easily lead us astray. But at the same time, it’s a traveler on the same path as “I was only following orders…”
There is no moral compass resident in technology, no guiding ethic, rather it is, quite specifically, amoral… And this is precisely why putting technology in the lead, blindly following because we can, rather than asking the question, “should we?” will always take us to that precipice of ‘titanic hubris’ of which Paco spoke so eloquently.
And this is what brings us to that ‘failure of imagination.’ The failure, I believe, is that of not insisting that technology be yoked in tandem with humanity and compassion, the bedrock of what it means to be human… According to Merriam-Webster, compassion is a sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. How different would our lives be if that single concept were at the foreground of our consciousness?
We’ve allowed ourselves to devolve to the level of the amorality of our technology, and it will require every shred of imagination we possess to step away from that position. I truly believe that nothing less than re-inhabiting our own humanity, as fully as we possibly can, will suffice in finding our way through the perils now on our threshold.
Hi Julianne,
I’m glad you’re well enough to re-enter the conversation. A beautifully written piece (Post 57). I agree with everything you said. The only thing I can add is to focus on the very last sentence:
“I truly believe that nothing less than re-inhabiting our own humanity, as fully as we possibly can, will suffice in finding our way through the perils now on our threshold.”
I agree entirely. The question is whether we are so far enmeshed in the technological web we’ve created that we no longer know ourselves? And if we do re-discover our humanity, which portion will it be? The highest? Or the lowest?
The answer to this question, of course, depends on the quality of the individual doing the re-discovering. Theodore Roszak (Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society, 1978) points out that cultural creativity has always been the province of a minority. With a planet of nearly seven billion, the size of that minority has to be larger than ever, if its influence is to be felt.
What you and I might regard as our common human birthright — compassion, for example — is actually an achievement. Even those who adhere to traditional religions have no guarantee that the old dispensations — for example, law (among the Jews) and faith (among the Christians) — will vouchsafe to them the blessings of compassion. It remains a personal achievement, now more than ever, and often in spite of the fulminations from the pulpit.
So it’s a paradoxical task: it’s up to individuals to reach deep enough within to connect with their basic humanity. “Humanity” itself cannot do it. Only individuals can.
We may be in the throes of discovering a new dispensation. But it will not be based on prescriptive law, nor on blind faith, as in the past: the new dispensation for the future will be based on experience.
Paco
mitchell@cybermesa.com
Dear Paco,
Thank you for your compliments (Post 56) for my photographs. Sorry they move too fast – you can always hang out for another round; or soon (geologically speaking) the rest of the website will be revamped so that those that invite you in will lead on to the rest.
I think your points about imagination and – if this doesn’t move beyond the sense of what you wrote – passion are crucial. If anything I wrote seems to say otherwise it only shows how amateurish a writer I am.
But, and this is a big ‘but’ – this thing called technology can’t be made a bogey-person so easily; nor can, as you seem to be saying, ‘numbers’.
‘Worship of numbers’ (you repeat the phrase twice) and numbers as ‘final determiners of value’are, neither of them, what I would drive for in looking to understand the dilemma in which we find ourselves. But I bet you have a ‘reaction’ of some kind if you reach for your wallet and it – along with a certain ‘number’ of tokens of buying power – are missing. Or the pilot of an airplane in distress, who goes ‘by the numbers’ to restore control and stability.
If anyone can show me the ‘bright line’ that separates domestication of livestock, development of the arch, celestial navigation, perspectival representation, and the invention of the calculus from ‘technology’ I will be pleased to be shown the way.
That is why the real theme of my previous post (55) was that of being fully informed, especially with respect to technical issues.
And basing decisions, above all decisions with political consequences, on that breadth of knowledge. And not only.
So Paco, how much voodoo is enough?
Moral, ethical…. philosophical… and the whole person, of course. And if the roof leaks? Put out the fire! Then we can start talking.
Hm. Just remembered: science (along with its handmaiden, technology) is part of philosophy.
While I’m agree as to we have to fix this, and there is no time. If sulfur is an answer, do we know the side effects of putting this in our air and what impact this will have on our plant, animal and human life? While I know that the snap effect would be worse, we just need to be prepared on the chain reaction effect of putting this in our air. We will need to educate and prepare all humans to take action, farmers, ranchers, zoo keepers and those out in the middle of no where, what about tribes in remote locations of the world that don’t understand any of this. How are we going to educate them?
I agree is time for a drastic change in our idea and it has to start on top, the government and it needs to start here with us, but like everything it’s all about politics and really, money, money talks. The big guys that have all the power behind the scenes as to why changes haven’t already taken change. If convert to electric cars, then the oil companies would be hurting, but they will just have to open up companies that build batteries instead, and car manufactures will need to move on to electric car technology.
Then the war of oil would stop, then it would move to other resources, but that’s another topic. While there are other sources, it can not be water, since we already are lacking it and it will become a high price ticket item one day. But no one can live without it and it grows our food supply.
So what’s left, well as you said wind, but also solar, I live in the southwest, where there are more sunny days than rain, here out of all places we should have everything solar, including cars.
That is where research needs to go, and the government should encourage that with tax credits and so on, not totally educated in the subject, but last I heard we don’t have incentives as California those or use to. The government needs to make companies make this product more affordable to the average citizen, I would love to be able to have a solar panel and be able not to have the electric bill that I have and be able to pass on the electricity to assist in the cause, but I can’t because is to hard to make ends meet as it is.
But if I could take the money I spend on electricity and purchase a solar system then eventually it will pay for itself and would cut cost. I’m sure there are upkeeps, but they should make a reliable product that will last. That is why the government needs to regulate it. But again, politics talk, like the gas pricing, in Arizona there seems to be always a broken pipe that makes the prices go up every summer, and gas stations close down the day that it’s even announced to save the gas for the next day when the prices go up and yet there are no price regulations on gas, funny that issue can’t be resolved even though it is such a big topic at least there.
As I’m a big fan of doing good for the green cause, and actually I think it should be law to recycle our waste, I can also understand the how it’s hard for some of our population.
Not all of us have great incomes and are leaving pay check to pay check and can’t afford to pay extra for another trash can to recycle. I know this from experience, I’m a single parent household due to divorce. I think the government needs to take a stand and make the cities, towns, maybe place trash bins so those that can’t afford to have their own bins can recycle by taking it down to a larger community one. This will cause would be a great cause, and it would not cost them anything, they just have to involve a recycling company.
Well let’s of hope for a change, and somone taking action, let’s do it together.
Juxtaposing this article with one I just finished reading here at Orion, titled “The Gospel of Consumption”, raises some interesting points for discussion.
I fail to see how the world’s elite, convinced as they are about the supremacy of the almighty dollar, will yield to the idea anytime soon of reduced consumption. This concept does not exist in their world and without it the policies of our government (the elite, monied business crowd) will not and cannot change towards anything that resembles a contraction of economic activity.
For the elite and the ruling class to get onboard of any ship named “sustainability”, there has to be a buck in it. The alternative, for the ruling class to lead the way towards environmentally sound policies, or even to be forced along by the population, is a pipe dream.
Additionally, according to my college biology prof, all species follow a bell curve of population over time. The species starts off, establishes a steady-state population with a slight growth rate upwards, but fairly steady. Then something in the environment allows for the population to climb at an astronomical rate, such as Mr. Tidwell mentions about the Canadian beetles. From no beetles to a large population rapidly. Eventually, the trees will no longer provide food or shelter for the beetles, or the climate will get too cold or harsh for them, or something else, and they will die off in huge numbers. As will we, my friends. The curve has an upswing, a rapid peak, a sharp decline, and the good news for ours and all species, a relatively long gentle downward slope towards eventual extinction.
It could be global warming and it’s consequences that gets us over the top of the spike into the one-third remaining population part of the graph, but if it’s not that it will be something else, nuclear war over scarce remaining resources, accidental release of some contaminant or agent, etc. etc. If Mr. Tidwell’s idea to pump chemicals into the sky doesn’t take off, something else will. Of course, the idea borders on lunacy as do any that require more of the same. The Homeopathic approach to any technological problem only makes it worse.
Moreover, we as a species here in the West have come to resemble the Star Trek alien species The Borg- half-machine half-human creatures devoid of any feeling or humanity, only subservient automatons in an Economic SpaceCube.
The popular uprising required to change the entire way of life of entire western societies, the will to do it has been stripped by alpha-wave brainwashing (television and mass media). The aformentioned article tells of the resulting Borg-like world we now live in, with the entire rest of the world clamoring to emulate as soon as possible, with a little help from Halliburton and Coca-Cola. The Gods MUST be Crazy!
To me, it’s not about hope or pessimism, it’s about nature, the will of nature . We are not immune to this force. We have out-stripped our sustainable resources and are now living on borrowed time, of which we have little if Mr. Tidwell is correct in his geo-climatic conclusions.
i think she is right the change must happen now.i my self am pagan and i know for a fact that pagans help nature in many ways b/c it is embeded in us to perserve nature b/c that is what my religion is about not just magik but also nature. if people would not let their religions hold them back there could be a change. and im not saying you have to be pagan to help nature every one can and every one should. if they want to survive. i agree with julianne on the acid rain also how could that be ignored if were the reason it is produced b/c of the polution factories emitt to make that things that make it were we can live comfortble. id rather live with out such comforts and survive then have them and be destriyed
Bob Tyson (aka) T 5.5
Hi Bob,
Many thanks for the intelligent, well-written response to my Post 56.
Interestingly, I agree with everything you said in your Post 59.
It occurs to me that we are trying to wrap our heads around the most comprehensive problem that humanity has ever faced. Just imagining how to determine the scale of the problem, in all its stunning complexity, and then asking the right questions, is a daunting task.
It’s a bigger challenge, in a sense, than figuring out “The Theory of Everything.” The physicists can keep pursuing their “elegant” theory, and if the solution escapes them for decades, for centuries, or forever, it doesn’t really interfere with their quest per se. But even if they do arrive at The Theory of Everything, they still will probably have very little to say about how to deal with the practical, ecological, political, emotional, economic, ethical, philosophical dimensions of the global crisis. Of course, a comprehensive Theory of Everything will certainly play a PART in the new cosmology that’s developing, and the new cosmology — with all the number-based science it implies — must sooner or later form part of the foundation of the new world-view that we so desperately need.
That’s the problem we’re all facing. We’re trying to deal with a troublesome future that is calling for new ways of acting, thinking, seeing, feeling, relating, imagining, etc., but we’re trying to do that on the basis of the same attitudes and viewpoints that led to “the troubles” in the first place. We can’t expect “more of the same” to get us through — it can only get us into a deeper mess than ever. That’s why the idea of sulphur bombs in space evokes such disgust in many Orion readers.
It’s not surprising, then, if occasionally we lock horns over words, or overreach in our efforts to express ideas for which no developed vocabulary really exists. I come from a psychological, therapeutic, dream-oriented, musical and artistic background. I count on images that come to me spontaneously from the depths of the psyche. You come from a scientific background, I gather, and count on the accurate treatment of precise numbers. Both of these perspectives are valuable in themselves, and in my opinion they MUST eventually reach some accomodation, if not common ground, if we are to succeed in our evolutionary task. The coming together will require as much art as science, autonomous images as much as numbers.
So, what it boils down to is that I’m groping in the dark. I cast about for ideas, images and insights that will enable me, first of all, to avoid losing myself in the turbulent sea of facts, data and information we’re all swimming in. In addition, my quest for images is not just personal. I am simultaneously searching for the healing formula which, my experience and temperament have convinced me, is emerging from the “unconscious.” If it were a matter of conscious productions alone, we would have long since invented the secret recipe we are so deeply hungering for.
In your own way, I know you want to do the same, which is why I appreciate your thoughtfulness and concern. Your “solutions” will differ from mine, of course, but “truth is a concert of many voices.” What is certain is that the crystallized forms we have created, and which are slowly strangling the planet, need all the solvents we can apply, as soon as possible. Therefore we must pool our “solutions.”
There is an old alchemical saying about fixing the volatile, and volatilizing the fixed. We need both. We need to fix the volative ideas buzzing around in our heads and pouring through our fingers in our dreams. But we also need to volatilize the fixed forms of our institutions and modes of thought, to free up the energy needed to meet the challenges ahead.
I apologize for taking so long to respond. I didn’t realize you had answered my last post (thank you, Orion).
Take care, Bob
Paco
P.S. Can you convert you photo website from an automatic lap-dissolve format to a click-when-you’re-ready format? I don’t know anything about it.
Also, can you set it up to allow comments?
CORRECTION:
We need to fix the VOLATILE ideas buzzing . . . .
Perhaps the human community could more effectively snap into action for the climate if so many of our leaders did not abuse human intelligence and ingenuity by choosing to adamantly idolatrize the endless growth of the global political economy.
Science, reasoning and common sense are being twisted and subordinated to conform to whatever thinking serves our leadership’s intentions to promote the politically convenient and the economically expedient, in the course of its worship of soon to become, unsustainable economic growth.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
I am grateful for those who write the “in your face” books about the realities of climate change because they are telling us what we need to hear said out loud every single day.
My concern is that I am not hearing the solutions spelled out clearly enough to pull our collective heads out of the sand and create the political will to turn things around. Every time some idealogical or corporate flunkie says global warmng is a hoax it gets reported on the evening news as if it were real science and the people sigh with relief and go out and buy more SUVs and all sorts of other soothing consumer toys.
Every time I hear more equivocation I want to scream. We do not have time for this. No global mogul needs to make more money. Progress is not consumption. It is not big and red and it not a very tall building. Progress is coming up with ways to live on earth together with all the other creatures in health and peace and with intelligence. We need to stop putting little boys or girls with something to prove to daddy in the seats of power, and start cleaning up the mess TODAY. We need to make it very clear to our candidates and ourselves that there is not time to waste. Politics as usual is not going to get it done.
When I was a child some 50 plus years ago I learned in school that the rain forests were like the lungs of our planet and was totally convinced that no one would tear them down because no one would be so stupid to tear out his or her lungs. I was wrong.
Sandy Olson,
You said it so well.
RE:
“When I was a child some 50 plus years ago I learned in school that the rain forests were like the lungs of our planet and was totally convinced that no one would tear them down because no one would be so stupid to tear out his or her lungs. I was wrong.”
50 years ago Danny Bloom too:
http://bloomsinthenews.blogspot.com
Hi folks,
I’m glad this conversation is still active. I have been keeping track best I can.
On a good day:
my carbon footprint is next to nil,
I enjoy this beautiful earth,
I do my “good work” in conservation, and
I am able to “process” the increasingly hard news.
The Hubble photos are very grounding and reassuring. Humans define life in terms of water based biology.
When I glimpse at the universes, I see all kinds of other ways of defining life and death– galaxies, nebula, death stars, star births!
Cosmic dust that I am.
On hard days, I cry myself to sleep in earth’s arms.
xoxo, Paca
Hi Paca,
I thought we’d lost you, with your dwindling carbon footprint. I missed your input.
I’m trying to track the archetypal changes that are taking shape in the unconscious, mostly via dreams. I know this is a minority viewpoint, to say the least, but nevertheless I believe that any change on a conscious, human level will be short-lived if it is not supported by the deeper psychic currents within us. It seems to me we’re in the throes of a world-wide shift in fundamental attitudes. This in itself is a major crisis, and amounts to a collapse of the old vision that sustained us for many centuries. At this point, we don’t know what the critical features of the new vision will be, but it is certain that it will be different from the old.
I just picked up a copy of a book by Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet, published in 1978. It has so many pertinent points that are relevant to our situation today, that I would say it was ahead of its time. I’d like to quote from it, if I may. You may appreciate this, if you haven’t already read it:
“Once, so we have been told by science textbooks since our school days, the Earth was barren rock and vapor. Then her lethargic chemicals were somehow touched with life, and, at last, the planet “peopled” — as spontaneously as a tree bears fruit in season. All this, the long natural history of the Earth, is treasured up in us. The salt of ancient seas can still be found in our blood. The rhythm of the moon is echoed in the cycles of the female body. The remembered shapes of our evolutionary ancestry are recapitulated in every human embryo. In some sense that blends science and myth, vision and history, we were mothered out of the substance of this planet. Her elements, her periodicities, her gravitational embrace, her subtle vibrations still mingle in our nature, worked a billion years down into the textures of life and mind. Even our queer, alienating consciousness rises out of some uncanny potentiality of her elemental stuff. Can a few generations of urbanization and a century or two of scientific skepticism really be enough to cut us off forever from the sense of vital reciprocity between ourselves and the planet that was once the universal knowledge of our race? I think none of us who have experienced even a glimmer of that living continuity should find it hard to accept that our destiny is tied to the need and the will of the Earth. Perhaps what we lack is only the courage to speak what we know.
“How, then, could we now pass into an era of acute ecological emergency, as terrible an emergency as the planetary biosphere has ever known, and not feel the tug of that reciprocity upon us — a deep organic remembrance, a warning, an instruction? But how would we expect the Earth to issue such an instruction? Would we expect it to roll down from the skies — or be proclaimed to us by a goddess who rose from the sea? Surely, we know that the web of nature is spun more subtly than that. The instruction would come to us in the one language most capable of transforming our conduct: not as a command from above or beyond, but as a moral idea realized from within. Just at the planet thinks through us, so we, in our thinking, may draw upon themes and images as ancient as the planet’s own star-burst birth.”
Roszak wrote that passage just over thirty years ago, and, I am convinced, it will still be relevant many years from now.
I just inaugurated a new blog, a week or so ago, in the hopes that I could engage a few hardy souls in exploring the deeper processes that underlie our conscious efforts. I invite you to visit it, Paca, just in case you might find something that speaks to you. The biggest problem I find with blogs, by the way, is that they start at the end, with the latest post, instead of the beginning. I suppose it’s part of the new paradigm. I belong to the generation characterized by what Neil Postman (Technopoly) calls the “typographical mind.” I think in terms of books, where you start at the beginning. Call me old-fashioned, if you will.
Hope to hear from you again.
Your “tocayo,”
Paco Mitchell
My new blog:
http://heronnotebook.blogspot.com
Paco
Tidwell, you should be ashamed of writing such rubbish. For all our sakes please do your homework, and limit yourself to actual facts rather than populist rant. The climate is changing, slowly, as it doees naturally, and we need to adapt to such changes not try to stop a planetary change which is primarily natural. Monumentally stupid ideas like seeding clouds with sulphur or dumping tons of iron filings into the sea will have unintended effects and are most likely to fail at what they are intended for and create new probl;ems not foreseen by their idiot inventors. Please, people, do your home work and find out the actual facts, not this speculative rubbish.
To Paco, Post 63, among others.
I appreciate that I’m late to respond, and that I haven’t had the time to follow your later posts, nor to follow up at your blog, as you’ve noted you’re posting.
Perhaps the best I can do is to acknowledge and respond to the tone, as much as to the substance, of your post. Which is that I ‘agree’ or perhaps better said, also carry in me, the yearning you express to understand our own natures, and to discover the path to right action. You point towards a mystical search, if I might say it, through dreams and imaging.
My message here may not ‘wash’ with this audience. Indeed it may be fruitless to propose it, as I have, and would continue to do. But what it comes down to is this: as deep as one may go into the unconscious, into the refreshing and re-creative depths of the mind and our intuitive resonances with the worlds around us (plural intended), we also, if there is indeed a difference, have little choice but to mind pragmatics, quantitative and material actualities.
Who crosses a busy street on whim or instinct alone, but also checks to see what’s coming his way, first?
My earlier point had to do with my worry that dialogue based on vague, inaccurate ‘imagery’ of science and technology serve no one. Hence my correction to lines in an earlier post of yours.
I see it again in another message, Post 71, where MikeF writes, ‘…do your homework, and limit yourself to actual facts… The climate is changing, slowly, as it doees naturally…’
Limit ourselves to the facts? Perhaps ‘limit’ is too ‘restrictive’ but by all means we need to be educated to the facts, to know them and be able to work from them towards both practical solutions and spiritual, informed inner positions.
MikeF also has stretched the facts by the way. The ‘facts’ are, based on the Greenland ice core measurements, that the climate has at times warmed, and cooled, VERY rapidly, not ‘slowly’ as his lines state. We are presently in a warming phase. AND the level of CO2, AND the actual, observed rates of climatic warming suggest, if they do not prove, that the contemporary situation IS different from passages of time previously seen.
And of course it IS that present collision of actual events that triggers the ‘panic’ counseled in this article. And which rouses me to remind one and all: panic is not the answer, while considered, informed decision-making IS.
It’s quite popular to dismiss an issue as ‘easy’ by saying ‘It’s not rocket science, you know.’ Well, maybe it IS rocket science, or something close to it. I watched the JPL scientists and engineers husbanding Phoenis to its successful Mars landing the other day and enjoyed immensely their pleasure at a job done well. Deserved pleasure.
As a former middle-school science teacher – and as a practicing fine artist – I am frightened much by the scientific-technical illiteracy of our whole culture. AND by our artistic-humanities illiteracy. Both.
We need to understand rocket science, and we need to know our history and our literatures, if we are to use what we understand for our own good.
That’s what I ‘dream’.
Hi Bob,
Good to hear from you. Thanks for the reply.
Decades ago I taught Foreign Languages at a small boarding school in rural Hawaii. A Stanford classmate of mine taught Marine Biology at the same time I was there. We were motorcycle buddies, and rode our bikes all over Parker Ranch and, on one memorable occasion, up to the summit of Mauna Kea. There were only two observatories on the summit in those days (mid-60s).
As you can imagine, he was well-schooled in science, as I’m sure you also are. One night we had an argument that lasted over two hours. We must have resembled two medieval scholastics arguing points of theological doctrine. The gist of our disagreement was this: He argued that the universe was ultimately knowable in every respect, given, of course, enough equipment, enough colossal budgets, time for experiments, etc.
I found this to be a hideous prospect, outrageous in its arrogance and presumptuousness. It seemed to me that the scientific point of view had lost its moorings and, in some practical sense, had gone crazy — driven from below by some titanic myth. I don‘t mean that my friend was crazy. He was and is a decent, well-respected scientist. He was like a brother, after all. But I felt that the path he advocated, if given the free rein he imagined it warranted, could only lead to disaster.
And what was my contrarian position? Simply that the universe, in ALL its aspects, was ultimately unknowable, that there was a MYSTERY surrounding human consciousness and its artificial constructs, that would ultimately remain UNKNOWN, and this was as it should be.
Of course, looking back on it, my friend and I were just slinging bull, and both of us were full of it. A real bull session. That was forty-two years ago. Looking back on it, and having learned a lot since then, I find that we were both being true to our individual temperaments, and were bound to clash.
A few years ago I tried to engage him, as a scientist and an old friend, in a discussion of global warming. Curiously, he almost dismissed it because, as I understand it, he didn’t want to become “depressed.” He made a joke about his inland house eventually becoming situated on “sea-front property.” I didn’t think it was funny. Our correspondence dwindled to nothing.
What am I supposed to think when a very well-educated, brilliant scientist — a marine biologist, no less — can’t carry on a discussion about the planetary crisis because he doesn’t want to become “depressed”? That we can only engage the “facts” that don’t depress us? Or that we’re not supposed to factor the subtleties of the human psyche into our equations?
The “myth of objectivity” is one of the more lethal aspects of the modern world-view. Somehow we must find a way to take emotion, fantasy, imagination, projections, etc., etc. — in short, the human psyche — into account as we deal with the “facts” that are piling up on our shores like so much jetsam following a tsunami.
I hope you know that I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE your most evident intelligence and caring. I agree with you that attention to both sides of this conundrum is required, that we have to deal with what you called “pragmatics, quantitative and material actualities.” Of course we do.
But we’ve been doing that for centuries now, and it still hasn’t prevented us from piling up an enormous imbalance on the scale of power-to-wisdom. I don’t have to tell you toward which side the scale is overbalanced.
The calm, rational approach — what you called “considered, informed decision-making” — is a tremendous accomplishment in human history, something we would forfeit only with disastrous consequences. But it’s not enough. Something more is needed. And insofar as I can read the symptoms of the day, it is needed FAST. That’s why I appreciated Mike Tidwell’s article (with apologies to Mike F. who considers the article “rubbish”), since it moved the dialogue forward with the image of climate “snap.” Tidwell even saw fit to imagine how the body politic might respond with a snap of its own, something I have been hard-pressed to envision. Any such shift in people’s attitudes, on a widespread basis, can only occur as a result of psychological change, since the attitudes themselves are nothing if not psychological.
Hence my hope. Hence my despair.
Don’t forget, calm rationality is a rather specialized psychic function, underpinned by irrational moods, emotions, motives and fantasies. The scientists at Alamogordo — just like your Mars landing group — also stood back and savored their “well-deserved” pleasure upon seeing the fruit of their labors, with the detonation of the first atom bomb over the New Mexico desert. The pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, avowed decades later that he had “slept like a baby” ever since. But I would like to see his dreams.
Rationality is no proof against unconscious motivations which, as often as not, subvert the conscious aim. Too often, the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Show me the person who doesn’t cast a shadow.
Nor has calm rationality prevented a host of psychopaths from taking control of government in recent years, with who knows what dire consequences still to unfold. In most centers of power, at least in America, it seems that those in control could care less about what we are talking about.
As for the “panic” that you ascribe to Mike Tidwell, I don’t see it. What I see is the s – – t hitting the fan — pragmatically, quantitatively, materially and actually — while most of us seem to be sleepwalking to oblivion. A few years ago — according to an aerial survey — some forty-five million piñon pines in New Mexico alone died as a result of a borer beetle infestation. That was just one year in a three-year die-off. The devastation extended all the way to Alaska. I understand that this year enormous tracts of forest in Canada are succumbing to beetles. Everywhere you look, the evidence is plain, and it is accelerating at a breath-taking place. Given a choice, I have to side with Mike Tidwell and his “rubbish,” and take issue with Mike F. and his fantasy of slow, natural change.
I don’t pretend to have any “answer” to our dilemma, but I am convinced — by temperament, I admit — that no real solution will ever be brought into play without the cooperation of the deep psyche.
Best good wishes, Bob, and thanks again for your reply,
Paco
Dear Paco,
I think we come to a parting of the ways, although I’m not entirely sure why. You seem to move the goalposts with each exchange, in terms of re-framing the discussion. And in mis-quoting, misunderstanding, or just not knowing vital facts. For one, it sounds false to me to say that the Manhattan Project scientists at Alamagordo ‘…stood back and savored their “well-deserved” pleasure upon seeing the fruit of
their labors…’ In fact, in this example, the story I have heard over and over is that those people were well-prepared for something that might go horribly wrong in that instant – and with the anguish, not pleasure at all, that if it did go ‘right’ – that is as planned – then it foretell a future of something that would be – horribly wrong.
For my money that is not at all what goes on in a project like Phoenix. Those men and women, it seems to me, may take genuine pride and pleasure in completing a complex task, and in the further search into those very mysteries of the universe.
Which makes me want to complain that it is you who seem to think that science has a kind of hubris, that it’s goal is knowing ‘everything’. I’m not at all so sure, have never been. There’s plenty of mystery to go around and to keep us all busy – for a very long time. Paul Valery (not a scientist but a humble philosopher): ‘The world is always more interesting than any of our ideas about it.’ You haven’t heard me say we’ll get to the absolute bottom of things through science. But you seem to believe that scientists think so.
Oddly enough I, too had a biologist Stanford classmate from the 60’s. He, too has been discouraged by the state of affairs he observes around him. Maybe this is characteristic of biologists? But I can’t tell. Your exchange was long enough ago that the global climate cycling cards we now have from Greenland weren’t yet on the table. Even so, I can well imagine. There’s ample room for worry.
Tidwell did, actually, speak of panic. Else this discussion never would have been. Right?
I disagree with you, Paco. What we need is MORE science, MORE rational thought. Along with – intuition, dreams. Always have. It’s been a millenial slog to get here, and the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, to say nothing of the Enlightenment, earned their names. I fear we are backsliding.
Hi Bob,
It’s too bad you feel we have reached a parting of the ways. I’ve enjoyed our exchange, in spite of the mutual frustration born of differing points of view. I’ve looked forward to your responses, because at the very least I could count on them to be intelligent, well-crafted and carefully thought out. If you and I can’t agree on an area of solid accord, with all the good will in the world behind us, then how are 6.65 billion souls (or more) supposed to reach anything approaching the necessary consensus?
In the early fifties Lewis Mumford called for “unconditional cooperation” on a global scale Many other contemporary writers have called for something on the order of a “Manhattan Project” to deal with the global environmental crisis. How exactly is that to be achieved — and with the alacrity of a “Tidwell snap” — if large numbers of individuals don’t crank up their sense of urgency, look at the scientific data that exist in abundance, and along the way subject themselves to the criticisms of opposing viewpoints?
Your point of view holds up practical reason as a guiding value — “What we need is MORE science, MORE rational thought.” And though you add, almost parenthetically, that somehow dreams and intuitions are permissible, rather like a “refreshment,” still you worry about a regression to “the malaise of irrationality.”
My point of view, of course, RELIES on dreams and intuitions. I would say “What we need is MORE dreams, MORE intuition. Along with science, rational thought.” Dreams and intuitions constitute my guiding values. But note, my approach to these irrational data requires a very, very careful discernment — not a scientific approach, to be sure, with electrodes and charts, but something more poetic, more visionary. Call it “mystical,” if you must, if by that term you mean a cultivation of inner vision, or a perception of the Other through direct experience, intuition or insight.
I share your worry about the regressive tendencies afoot today, but I see them as much among hard-boiled politicians, Pentagon planners, corporate titans and SOME scientists as I do among the religious “ministries,” New Age “bliss-ninnies, TV pundits, etc. When Dick Cheney said that the American life-style is “non-negotiable,” he proved himself to be a destructively regressive force every bit as dangerous as a cult of rattlesnake handlers in the Deep South. Is he a rational person? You tell me. If the answer is “yes,” then we are in deep trouble indeed. But if the answer is “no,” and you can tell me wherein lies his irrationality and whence it derives, I predict we will find ourselves smack in the midst of “psychology” and all its messy reality.
With many thanks and best wishes.
Your cantankerous friend,
Paco
Dear Paco,
My disagreement with you arose in your dismissal of science, although your latest post confuses me. Now you say dreams and intuitions are – merely – “refreshment. I had understood it that for you they are instead the be all, end all, without which nothing else; and that science and technology are to be rejected or profoundly distrusted. I didn’t sense in your words an understanding of the rigorous testing and questioning – the philosophical basis – that underlie scientific research and intellect. Nor have you acknowledged, in science, the dream-components. Maybe you know the story of the chemist who uncovered the ring structure of benzene, in a dream about snakes?
Life may just have to be so odd. I am a geologist, by training and a career of direct experience; and artist. (BS – geology 1969; MFA – photography 1986; Stanford.)
We require both parts, sciences and humanities. Eh? Your rejection of technology and of scientific understandings, made explicit in several of your posts, and echoed by others were my prompt to contribute here. I consider that rejection to be a terrible mistake. As citizens we have a moral and practical duty to embrace the sciences, and with vigor. Else how stack firewood for winter, provide gymnasium for acrobat-ist, conservatory for singer?
You, and others, active here and elsewhere, best express and uncover what is important from dreams and intuitions when you focus on that realm. Counsel: leave the other stuff alone along the way, drop the side-trip to bash what you would avoid. This too will deepen focus.
(Aside: I’m profoundly unconvinced that there actually ARE two separate worlds, one of the soul, another of the scientist. I’m not here to make that argument, but to stress that pressing the holy work in every sphere really matters. As does dialogue that connects the one into the other.)
I could be more curious of your journey as you’ve noted it, but your strong term ‘RELIES’, as it appears stressed, in caps, clearly expresses your elevation of the inner realm and your exclusion of science. That worries me. I return to my silly example, upon what do you rely when you cross a busy street?
An artist colleague wrote me from a residency in a colony to marvel at the support and ease she found there to focus her attention completely on her expressive work.
‘It’s as if art were all that mattered.
And perhaps it is,’ she wrote.
Perhaps so.
to paco i did not dismess science and to some of the others who had something to say about my commett i dont know what you guys are talking about
Hello Lathan,
I was intrigued by your post (77), but I have a couple of questions for you, spurred by some of the comments in your earlier post (62):
1. “to paco i did not dismess science”
Excuse me. Did I say you did?
2. “i myself am pagan . . . my religion is about not just magik but also nature”
Perhaps you could tell us more about your religion, Lathan, since “paganism” is a long-abused term and doesn’t have a very reliable definition at present.
I assume you don’t mean that you follow a pre-Christian religious practice, sacrificing to multiple gods, etc., the way an Eyptian, Greek or Roman might have done in the past. My guess is that you have disaffiliated yourself from contemporary Christianity, Judaism, Islam, even atheism, and have chosen to “worship nature” instead.
If this is correct, it certainly would amount to an advance over the exploitative attitudes currently dominant. I am curious what form your worship takes, how many fellow worshippers you are in contact with, whether there is a church or liturgy attached to your religion.
These are not idle questions either, since I believe we are in desperate need of a deep renewal in terms of our feeling about the Earth, the way we imagine our position in and relationship to nature, and so on.
3. “it is embeded in us to perserve nature”
I am very interested in your opinion, and especially your exerience, of how it is embedded in us to preserve nature. Personally, I agree with you, but I would like to hear your version. In fact I hope your opinion prevails, in the long run. But as I look around at how doggedly we humans cling to our destructive habits, I find myself wondering to what extent the will to destroy nature is not also embedded in us, a selfish, careless element that we seem to be scarcely aware of. I cherish the hope that it’s just a cultural residue of the past two or three thousand years — a bad habit of negation — that will be swept away in a massive turnabout soon to happen.
What IS that destructive element? Where does it come from? Why have we grown so complacent when faced with its consequences? How much of it is cultural or historical, how much of it is in-born? To answer these questions requires not just historical knowledge, but self-knowledge as well. That’s perhaps the essence of what I’m trying to say — though apparently not too successfully — to my friend Bob Tyson.
Hope to hear from you, Lathan.
Paco
P.S. Bob, I’m still working on a reply to your last post (76). Apologies for the delay. Many demands on my time lately.
Academics, jeez! ☺
I am not sure all this parsing is necessary. Dare I say I see more agreement than disagreement here. Let’s focus on the common ground. If Orion readers can’t come together —-we’re truly in trouble.
We have a left brain and a right brain and the part that connects the two is the source of our creativity. We need both.
Science and emotions
Logic and art
Math and dance
Mind and heart
Intellect and feelings
Conscious and subconscious
Waking reality and dream reality
“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.” — Rachel Carson
Joanna Macy, an incredible teacher and mentor (a lifeline for me) wrote in her web letter recently. She was responding to a question about what was important to her at a gathering of folks at Findhorn. Her reply “The earnestness and the intention of the people stir me greatly. The willingness, the sense of unpanicked urgency. The deep goodwill. The dancing. The humour. That these folks are all doing it for the love of it without seeing the results of their own actions. That they are freed from continually computing our chances of success.” http://www.joannamacy.net
This is my hope: I aspire to do my work on behalf of the earth for the love of it, knowing my actions may not bear fruit in my lifetime. I seek freedom from the self-doubting, guilt-ridden “bargaining” attempts to make my poorly-evolved mind somehow process our predicament. I embrace humor. I will spend time each day loving nature and let go of trying to calculate our chances of success.
That’s my intention. I will let you know how it goes.
I find the grief cycle so helpful at this time. In fact, I joke (not) with friends that I go through the cycle several times a day sometimes. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
In acceptance (at the moment), Paca
ahhh, Paca, such eloquence! Thank you! “That these folks are all doing it for the love of it without seeing the results of their own actions. That they are freed from continually computing our chances of success.” – this is to me the very nub of it all.
We simply have to rise to the challenge of greeting each day with as much grace as we can muster in any given moment, and doing the work that must be done because we are in love with the earth.
As a very dear friend once told me, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else does – it only matters what I choose to do, and that I do so from a place of integrity and intention, choosing my actions because they are in alignment with my values and for no other reason.
*This* is the place where we share common ground. Not that our values are all the same, but in the act of possessing them at all. If we are true to ourselves, respectful of others, and apply ourselves to the tasks that are required of our own beliefs, that’s really all there is.
It’s akin to Victor Frankl’s realization in the concentration camp that everything – except his attitude of how he met the day – could be taken away from him. That is always what remains within our control. We don’t need to convince one another that science/logic are better, or that dreams/metaphysics are closer to nature.
We need only hold on to our part – ala’ Barry Lopez’ concept of “keeping that to which we are attracted” – knowing that it is not encumbent on any one of us to have either all or the complete answer.
Julianne, Thanks for your grounding words.
I read an essay by Derrick Jensen recently where he drew the distinction between hope and love. It was in Orion. I have some friends who worry about me when I say I feel hopeless. They think I’m done for.
Jensen: “Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth. Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate situation.
…..I want to accomplish something in the real world.
Why? Because I’m in love. With salmon, with trees outside my window, with baby lampreys living in sandy streambottoms, with slender salamanders crawling through the duff. And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don’t determine whether or not you make the effort. You don’t simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn’t cause me to protect those I love, it’s not love.”
Derrick is offering an embrace of our emotional complexities as humans. As a life-long conservationist and activist, I sometimes find myself laughing and crying in the same breath. My range of my emotions can be truly staggering. I don’t think it is a form of mental illness (?). It is a response to pathetic, preposterous, absurd, shameful, desperate — yet entirely laughable —- situation into which we have put ourselves and this earth.
I do not use the word laughable lightly. I use it to point out that as cosmic dust, if we can step back for a moment and not take our humanity quite so seriously perhaps we CAN have a good belly laugh. It doesn’t me we laugh anything off. It means we give ourselves a break. We choose our attitude. And if Victor Frankl did it, certainly we can.
Laughter and light-heartedness are the antidotes to the real nemesis in all this: Fear.
Love, laugh, cry, laugh some more — and do whatever we can for what we love. Haha!
And just like we teach our children: honor all feelings. We can argue facts, science, the relative value of the left and right brains. But we can’t argue each other’s feelings.
As you say, Julianne, not all our values are the same but we are all in this together in how we process them. Our work is in helping one another greet each day with grace.
With love and laughs to all contributors, Paca
Excellent reference to Derrick Jensen’s words, Paca! I’m familiar with that particular passage, and I heartily agree – I have also come to believe that “hope” as most of us so often experience it is far too passive a response, and it dangerously lulls us precisely because it requires nothing of us.
In much the same way that there is confusion in our understanding of “freedom” and “license,” wherein freedom carries with it a cognizant responsibility of the impact of our actions while license is the toddler’s response – I’ll do what I want because I want to, the rest of you be damned – there is this confusion between “hope” and “love.”
Love is a verb of action.
Derrick quite rightly identifies that in saying: “And if you love, you act to defend your beloved. Of course results matter to you, but they don’t determine whether or not you make the effort. You don’t simply hope your beloved survives and thrives. You do what it takes. If my love doesn’t cause me to protect those I love, it’s not love.”
And as Emma Goldman so succinctly summed up that value of laughter and the need to hold on to it while we are doing the work which demands so much of us, “If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
Perhaps our most profound task at hand is to be rigorously attentive to the continual necessity of grounding ourselves by those things which infuse us with joy.
Several years ago I went through about a 3 year stretch that felt to be a personal re-enactment of Inanna’s descent to the underworld… and about halfway through it (not knowing, of course, at the time how far along in the process I might be) I realized if I didn’t take some active steps to address my attitude I was in danger of becoming hardened and embittered.
The process I came up with is something I’ve come to think of as the “Discipline of Joy.” >;-) There are only two requirements: (1) I have to do it every day, and (2) I must overtly acknowledge to myself those things which bring me joy.
What I discovered was that joy resides in the smallest and most mundane of actions – a good cup of tea with a friend, playing with my beloved cat, the satisfaction of making my gifts for others, the appreciation of the quality of the light in the late afternoon. And what I also realized, after being persistent in this practice over time, was that it came to sustain me more fully than I could have ever imagined. The cumulative effect of both “noticing” and “appreciating” brought me to reside in a place of “gratitude.”
The thread that runs through all of these – freedom, love, gratitude – is personal responsibility. An awareness of the impact of my actions on others informs my freedom; the responsibility of working to defend my beloveds defines my tasks; the remembrance of gratitude for all that brings me joy keeps me humble – and getting up to start all over again each day.
Paca, I echo your love and laughter to all,
Julianne