I picked up my new Wired magazine and immediately read their cover story, an inflammatory ‘environmentalists are full of shit’ piece. It really pissed me off. They end their series of anti-arguments based on facts focused around cutting carbon dioxide, with a “take it with a grain of salt" letter from the editor of Worldchanging.com. He basically says the article is a short-lens focus that could get us into even more trouble. Isn’t the damage already done with a cover like “Keep your SUV, forget organics and screw the spotted owl?” I suppose it would be okay if they were using it to get people reading but then dole out some actual wisdom inside, but they don’t.
Here are my reactions to the articles:
1) A/C is OK. Here they say it takes more energy to heat a house in a cold climate than it does to cool a house in a hot climate. Good point, but really do we want everyone to move to the Southwest? The area is already burgeoning and just beginning a mega-drought that could last up to 150 years, where are they going to get enough water to live? What about clamping down on cheap housing construction and passing ordinances requiring better insulation. We’ll all have to pay more per square foot but maybe it will have the doubly beneficial effect of making our houses use space more efficiently.
2) Live in cities. Yes, for the most part, urbanization is cool and better for the environment but they make an argument that exurbs are the same as living in a truly rural area surrounded by trees. People don’t live in exurbs to be closer to nature, they sprouted up because people (like in Los Angeles) couldn’t afford to buy houses in the city so developers bought cheap land 50 miles out of town in the desert and built affordable housing there. The article points a finger at lawnmowers (a product of the suburb/exurb) and I totally agree that lawnmowers are a waste of energy. But why not encourage people with land to plant trees and grow a garden to feed themselves instead of trying to get them to move to a city? Not everyone wants to live in an apartment.
3) Organics are not the answer. This one really burns me up. They say we should screw organic because it takes 25 organic cows compared to 23 industrial cows for the same milk and they put out 16 percent more greenhouse emissions. Are they f’ing kidding me? We should drink hormone-laced pus-filled milk from sick suffering cows for that differential? The only smart thing they say in this article, albeit stuffed in the middle, is that if you really want to do something for the environment, stop eating meat altogether. It’s true that we can’t go organic at our current rate of consumption but we (in industrialized countries) eat and waste too much food anyway. Instead, I think we should go organic 100% and patronize restaurants that serve reasonable proportions of quality food.
4) Farm the forests. The only good thing in this section is about culling dead wood out of the forests, it does prevent fires and with the climate heating up, we can’t afford the kind of fires it’s going to bring. But the rest of it, about becoming full time forest farmers and cutting down old growth trees is total bullshit.
5) China is the solution, not the problem. I agree! (See next post) China has become the number one producer of alternative energy solutions for export and use in their own country. Due to decades of rapid and untethered production and growth, their feet are now much closer to the proverbial fire than ours; they will likely find and implement environmental solutions quicker than us.
6) Accept genetic engineering. If I read one more thing about biofuel, I’m going to be sick. They just made the point that we should use more public transportation in the “move to the city” argument but now they’re talking about how we should embrace genetic engineering so we can grow more biofuel. They attack fertilizer and say nothing of chemical sprays, but fertilizer is necessary because of our addiction to monocrops (and profits). Thousands of years ago, farmers rotated crops and used trees and companion plants that naturally kept bugs away or attracted complimentary insect relationships (like worms) and enrich the soil to the benefit of certain crops. The author mentions Monsanto as some kind of wonder company here to save our lives. Monsanto is a chemical company that produces the world’s best-selling “herbicide,” a chemical that kills everything. They then got into the agriculture business producing 90% of the GMO crops on the planet, specifically engineered to resist their herbicide. Roundup kills everything except the crops they engineer. They are corporate bullies who use lawsuits and threats to wipe out local farmers. "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA's job." Unchecked, everything we eat will be engineered by Monsanto. If Wired really gave a shit about us and the environment, they’d do a full report on how they control our food supply.
7) Carbon Trading doesn’t work. I agree, good idea that needs improved.
8) Embrace nuclear power. There’s been a lot of talk that the only way we’ll produce enough energy for the billions of us on the planet in the future is from nuclear. They call it the cleanest of the fossil fuels because of the low emissions, uh, but what about the huge volume of nuclear waste produced? We already have tons of it buried in leaking containers under the ground in Washington and other states, we have no safe way to dispose of it and it remains toxic for thousands of years. Let’s focus on energy saving and efficiency before we make feeding our voracious appetites the top priority, eh?
9) Used cars not hybrids. Okay, I get the argument. New cars cost a lot of energy to make. If you’re driving a ten-year old fuel-efficient Toyota like my RAV, it’s better for the environment to keep driving it than to buy a new car. Except that my RAV will never end up in the landfill, there will always be someone waiting to buy it. They suggest (again, to be inflammatory) by the same logic you’re better off driving a Hummer because making a Hummer contributes less carbon to the environment (because of the nickel in Prius’ battery). They say nothing about the fact that cars in Europe are twice as fuel-efficient as ours and are the same as a Prius, which is why you don’t see hybrids there. It’s all a bunch of crap. We’re sold gas-guzzlers on purpose so the hybrids look good in comparison. While it doesn’t affect our carbon output, the quiet drive of the hybrids has many other benefits.
10) Prepare for the worst. Yes, things are going to get much hotter and much worse before they get better and we do need to accept that and prepare. They quote Stewart Brand who says, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" and suggest that we take over completely by using our technology to fix the things we've broken like helping birds migrate, for example. We're destroying their natural habitat, building over open spaces that break up long migration journeys, disrupting communication with our noise and killing them and their food with pesticides but the scientists are going to save the birds with assisted migration? Then again, they mention that Monsanto, who brought us Agent Orange, PCBs and Bovine Growth Hormone, will save us with genetic engineering. What is this issue sponsored by Bush and the chemical industry?
I agree we better figure out ways to adapt and continue to innovate but we are consuming and disrupting the natural order of the planet at an unsustainable rate and technology alone will not save us (or the birds). We need to continue to make our small but impactful changes like eating locally produced food, driving less, taking a tote the store instead of using plastic bags, planting trees and food in our yards if we have them, installing energy efficient appliances, using less energy by unplugging what we aren’t using, and continuing to pay attention, support innovation and demand responsibility from corporations and governments.
Here's the first part of a two hour-long show about Monsanto:
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Monday, May 19, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
Intelligence is in the mind of the beholder
There’s a fantastic article in National Geographic this month about animal intelligence, which apparently is a pretty recent concept. Alex, an African Gray Parrot, knows that what’s the same between a green cup and a green key is their color and he knows that what’s different is their shape. Betsy, a Border Collie, knows 15 people by name and can link photographs with objects they represent. The male African Cichlid, a fish with a brain the size of a pea, will disguise itself as a female to steal food from another male’s territory. The Asian Elephant sees itself in a mirror and will touch a part of its head with its trunk when it sees a spot painted on it that doesn’t belong. The Ring-tailed Lemur can repeat arbitrary sequences and gets better each time, learning how to learn.
Does anyone else find it astoundingly arrogant that humans came up with the idea of intelligence, defined its characteristics and then proceeded to assign an abundance of it to ourselves and claim that other animals are merely responding to a series of instincts, not really thinking? Our brains are the biggest so we must be the smartest! We also decided that many of these dumb beasts also don’t experience fear and pain; a tragic miscalculation for most animals we come into contact with.
We’ve spent even less time wondering if plants have intelligence even though they literally transformed a ball of lava and toxic gas into a lush paradise, making it possible for all of us to live here. In fact, I’d say we’ve spent far more time and money looking for intelligence in outer space, on the desolate moon and the red hot Mars, than we have on our own planet.
I blame the Bible and its story of Eden that teaches people we are God’s special creatures and everything else is here for our exploitation. Again, isn’t it unbelievably arrogant to assert a single creation myth? Every civilization that’s ever lived has boasted one just as glorious and awe-inspiring, many not resembling the one in the Bible at all!
In a discussion with a friend yesterday about our religious upbringing – he’s Irish Catholic, I was raised an atheist – I told him that after years of exploration and experimentation, I decided that I believe in nature. Every living thing on this planet is made of DNA, a blueprint to create all living matter. We still know so little (and yet claim to know so much!) that we’ve deemed 80-90% of our own DNA as “junk.” Which means, in yet another arrogant move, that we don’t know what it does so it must not do anything. Also interesting is that some creatures that we consider far simpler are made up of a lot more DNA. (In their universe, they must think they’re smarter than us because they have more DNA).
That we all share this incredibly complex code is proof enough for me that we are all part of the same thing. There is overwhelming evidence that each living being’s presence and activity on this planet affects every other living being’s experience. We are not living ON this planet, we ARE this planet and this planet is all of us; it changes constantly and always has.
If we really are the most intelligent creatures, shouldn’t we be able to figure out a way to stop global warming? In fact, we should be able to at least agree that a) we have a considerable impact on this planet and everything on it and b) we have choices as to what that impact is. I don’t think the majority of people have accepted those things yet. If they believed in nature instead of God, maybe they would.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in one of my PopTech! lectures talks about what he calls "epistemic arrogance," which describes how we focus only on what we know and what we think we know and ignore everything else, which as it turns out, is most things. It's the reason that we are lousy as forecasting everything. Our world, our brains, even our own bodies are far too complex for us to fully comprehend.
In another really good PopTech! lecture by Dan Gilbert, he says we aren’t equipped mentally to deal with global warming. He says we have an enormous capacity for change and can mobilize against a common enemy with swift force. The problem in this situation is defining the common enemy.
These are his four reasons that we will fail to do so:
1) It doesn’t have a human face. We’re obsessed with humans; we see their faces in clouds and other abstract objects. Global warming isn’t human enough.
2) We aren’t morally repulsed by it. It’s bad, it’s yucky but it doesn’t literally make us sick the way abortion, torture, the death penalty, child abuse and gay marriage do to some. Those are hot issues for a reason.
3) We tend to think about the future but live in the present. We can't react to that is going to happen in the same way as what is happening now, like ducking when someone throws a baseball your head. We have the capacity to recognize future threats but still lack the brainpower to react to them.
4) We react to relative change and, ironically, environmental changes aren't happening fast enough. We have enough time to adjust and think that drying coral, trees, and animals are the way things are.
President Bush had all of those things on his side when he took us to war:
1) A human face – Osama bin Laden
2) Moral revulsion – “freedom haters,” people who oppress women, blow themselves up and train kids to be killers
3) Present threat – 9/11
4) Relative change – laws passed to tap our phones, get our library records, detain people without cause, long lines at the airport
This ties back into my earlier post about how we just need better marketing and PR for global warming. But first, I might have to start the church of nature and start proselytizing!
Does anyone else find it astoundingly arrogant that humans came up with the idea of intelligence, defined its characteristics and then proceeded to assign an abundance of it to ourselves and claim that other animals are merely responding to a series of instincts, not really thinking? Our brains are the biggest so we must be the smartest! We also decided that many of these dumb beasts also don’t experience fear and pain; a tragic miscalculation for most animals we come into contact with.
We’ve spent even less time wondering if plants have intelligence even though they literally transformed a ball of lava and toxic gas into a lush paradise, making it possible for all of us to live here. In fact, I’d say we’ve spent far more time and money looking for intelligence in outer space, on the desolate moon and the red hot Mars, than we have on our own planet.
I blame the Bible and its story of Eden that teaches people we are God’s special creatures and everything else is here for our exploitation. Again, isn’t it unbelievably arrogant to assert a single creation myth? Every civilization that’s ever lived has boasted one just as glorious and awe-inspiring, many not resembling the one in the Bible at all!
In a discussion with a friend yesterday about our religious upbringing – he’s Irish Catholic, I was raised an atheist – I told him that after years of exploration and experimentation, I decided that I believe in nature. Every living thing on this planet is made of DNA, a blueprint to create all living matter. We still know so little (and yet claim to know so much!) that we’ve deemed 80-90% of our own DNA as “junk.” Which means, in yet another arrogant move, that we don’t know what it does so it must not do anything. Also interesting is that some creatures that we consider far simpler are made up of a lot more DNA. (In their universe, they must think they’re smarter than us because they have more DNA).
That we all share this incredibly complex code is proof enough for me that we are all part of the same thing. There is overwhelming evidence that each living being’s presence and activity on this planet affects every other living being’s experience. We are not living ON this planet, we ARE this planet and this planet is all of us; it changes constantly and always has.
If we really are the most intelligent creatures, shouldn’t we be able to figure out a way to stop global warming? In fact, we should be able to at least agree that a) we have a considerable impact on this planet and everything on it and b) we have choices as to what that impact is. I don’t think the majority of people have accepted those things yet. If they believed in nature instead of God, maybe they would.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in one of my PopTech! lectures talks about what he calls "epistemic arrogance," which describes how we focus only on what we know and what we think we know and ignore everything else, which as it turns out, is most things. It's the reason that we are lousy as forecasting everything. Our world, our brains, even our own bodies are far too complex for us to fully comprehend.
In another really good PopTech! lecture by Dan Gilbert, he says we aren’t equipped mentally to deal with global warming. He says we have an enormous capacity for change and can mobilize against a common enemy with swift force. The problem in this situation is defining the common enemy.
These are his four reasons that we will fail to do so:
1) It doesn’t have a human face. We’re obsessed with humans; we see their faces in clouds and other abstract objects. Global warming isn’t human enough.
2) We aren’t morally repulsed by it. It’s bad, it’s yucky but it doesn’t literally make us sick the way abortion, torture, the death penalty, child abuse and gay marriage do to some. Those are hot issues for a reason.
3) We tend to think about the future but live in the present. We can't react to that is going to happen in the same way as what is happening now, like ducking when someone throws a baseball your head. We have the capacity to recognize future threats but still lack the brainpower to react to them.
4) We react to relative change and, ironically, environmental changes aren't happening fast enough. We have enough time to adjust and think that drying coral, trees, and animals are the way things are.
President Bush had all of those things on his side when he took us to war:
1) A human face – Osama bin Laden
2) Moral revulsion – “freedom haters,” people who oppress women, blow themselves up and train kids to be killers
3) Present threat – 9/11
4) Relative change – laws passed to tap our phones, get our library records, detain people without cause, long lines at the airport
This ties back into my earlier post about how we just need better marketing and PR for global warming. But first, I might have to start the church of nature and start proselytizing!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Let's start a village
I'm going to do that mashup thing again where I look at a bunch of dots and posit whether they're connected. Here's the first dot. In the 1970's James Lovelock, a chemist and inventor, then working for NASA, published a radical theory: The earth is not a magically self-regulating planet that has always been and will always be, it is a living organism of which we are all a part. It was the first time people were asked to think about our role on this planet as something other than just beneficiaries of all it has to offer. In his latest book, "Revenge of Gaia," Lovelock declares that humans are doomed, global warming is irreversible and by the end of the century, over 6 billion people will die of droughts, floods, disease and hunger.
In an article in Rolling Stone, Lovelock talks about the ones who will survive by recalling a story about a fire on a plane. Everyone stayed in their seats as they were told, frozen, while the few that survived did so by crawling over their fellow passengers and climbing out the windows. The majority of people are going to stay seated during this crisis and die in their seats. It made me think of The Terminator and how Sarah Connor, knowing what was coming, started preparing herself for the fight ahead. According to Lovelock, there are only two ways to survive this - either by going primitive or by going super high-tech. I think it may be a combination of both but the people who can live in a more primitive way, by growing their own food and creating their own energy, will be at a great advantage.
Which brings me to the second dot. An article in National Geographic was talking about the shanty towns near Bombay and then a friend recalled the same story, something he'd witnessed in Mexico City. Enormous populations of people, hundreds of thousands, have built cities from the ground up, by themselves with no developers, no infrastructure, no government support. While poor, these communities are thriving. They have power, they have water, they've built industries and services, their places are clean and nicely kept and they are carbon neutral. These are the greenest cities in the world; everything is recycled or reused and there is no excess. If there is any kind of collapse in our energy supply or our economies, these communities will be impacted the least. Apparently one in six people lives in a squatter town and that number is expected to triple by 2050.
Then I heard one of the most exciting ideas yet in a PopTech lecture by Adrian Bowyer, a challenge to the concept of money. If every home had a small robot that could manufacture any item - a comb, a bowl, a fork - from a resin made of starch grown in the backyard (i.e. corn or potatoes) and those items went right back into the earth when we were done with them, would we have the same need for factories and therefore, money? He quotes science fiction writer Iain Banks who said that "money is a sign of poverty" to illustrate that we would be richer if we didn't need money at all.
Finally, I keep having a certain conversation with my friends about how disillusioned we are with work and its role in our life. These are people scattered all over the country who don’t know each other. They’re all about 30-45, some married, some with children, some homeowners but what we all have in common is that we grew up middle-class, we went to college and we have to work for a living. A rough illustration of who these people are:
- A single guy in D.C. who likes photography, traveling and Jazz. Works in film restoration, which he likes, but there's not much work and it pays very little.
- A recently married woman in North Carolina, about to have a baby, who works as a graphic designer. Loves designing but hates working all the time.
- A new mother and writer in Santa Monica who has to hire two nannies so that she can work when she'd rather spend the time with her baby but can't afford to.
- A single guy in Los Angeles who works a web producer. He loves computers so spends his time in front of one any way but continually has jobs that require 60-hour work weeks.
- A woman in New York working as a teacher whose job is so stressful, she couldn't do it without her live-in boyfriend helping with house work and daily chores.
- A single woman in San Francisco who has spent the last ten years pursuing a career but finds herself unfulfilled by the work.
- A bi-coastal young man, recently out of college, who's already frustrated with the fact that work takes him away from the projects he feels passionate about.
- A woman with a teenage daughter in the Bay Area who finds herself more motivated than everyone she works for and can't figure out how to dumb herself down.
- A single woman in Los Angeles who wants to help people in her native Cambodia but makes ends meet by working at an interactive agency.
We don’t have enough time to do what we enjoy because we spend our lives working and yet don’t make enough money to buy more time. In the jobs, we’re frustrated with others’ lack of commitment or in the company itself and feel that we deserve better. But in the pursuit of a better job in a better company we finally come to realize that work does not fulfill us enough to justify the time spent doing it. Most of us work to create or promote the sale of goods, goods that we use the money we earn to buy. By any measure, it’s not an efficient use of our time.
My friends are ready to quit this rat race of working and buying and are ready to move somewhere quieter, live a simpler life and grow our own food. The problem, I suppose, is that we’re all cultural people who need other people and art to stimulate us and aren’t really the kind of folk you find in rural towns. Back in April of 2007, I wrote that servitude sucks and that we've been duped because more "primitive" societies enjoy abundant free time. Now, it seems, I'm hearing the same thing from everyone: How do we get to a place where LIVING is what we spend most of our time doing instead of WORKING?
And connecting all these dots, I had an idea. A communal village of like-minded people. We want to grow our own food and learn to make our own energy and live without cars. We want to raise each other's children and imagine a society of the future and sometimes watch 30 Rock. Do you think it's possible? It would have to be in Canada, somewhere north that will be less impacted by global warming. I saw a fantastic photo in National Geographic (a similar one I found on the web is here) that shows a village in Israel, built to be egalitarian in that everyone has equal access to school, church, and other community buildings, in the center of town, but everyone also owns a piece of land, on the outside of town. It's limited as to how many people can live there, about 750, and everyone is independent and yet totally connected to each other.
It looks good. It looks real good. What do you think y'all? Ready to buy some property in Alberta?
In an article in Rolling Stone, Lovelock talks about the ones who will survive by recalling a story about a fire on a plane. Everyone stayed in their seats as they were told, frozen, while the few that survived did so by crawling over their fellow passengers and climbing out the windows. The majority of people are going to stay seated during this crisis and die in their seats. It made me think of The Terminator and how Sarah Connor, knowing what was coming, started preparing herself for the fight ahead. According to Lovelock, there are only two ways to survive this - either by going primitive or by going super high-tech. I think it may be a combination of both but the people who can live in a more primitive way, by growing their own food and creating their own energy, will be at a great advantage.
Which brings me to the second dot. An article in National Geographic was talking about the shanty towns near Bombay and then a friend recalled the same story, something he'd witnessed in Mexico City. Enormous populations of people, hundreds of thousands, have built cities from the ground up, by themselves with no developers, no infrastructure, no government support. While poor, these communities are thriving. They have power, they have water, they've built industries and services, their places are clean and nicely kept and they are carbon neutral. These are the greenest cities in the world; everything is recycled or reused and there is no excess. If there is any kind of collapse in our energy supply or our economies, these communities will be impacted the least. Apparently one in six people lives in a squatter town and that number is expected to triple by 2050.
Then I heard one of the most exciting ideas yet in a PopTech lecture by Adrian Bowyer, a challenge to the concept of money. If every home had a small robot that could manufacture any item - a comb, a bowl, a fork - from a resin made of starch grown in the backyard (i.e. corn or potatoes) and those items went right back into the earth when we were done with them, would we have the same need for factories and therefore, money? He quotes science fiction writer Iain Banks who said that "money is a sign of poverty" to illustrate that we would be richer if we didn't need money at all.
Finally, I keep having a certain conversation with my friends about how disillusioned we are with work and its role in our life. These are people scattered all over the country who don’t know each other. They’re all about 30-45, some married, some with children, some homeowners but what we all have in common is that we grew up middle-class, we went to college and we have to work for a living. A rough illustration of who these people are:
- A single guy in D.C. who likes photography, traveling and Jazz. Works in film restoration, which he likes, but there's not much work and it pays very little.
- A recently married woman in North Carolina, about to have a baby, who works as a graphic designer. Loves designing but hates working all the time.
- A new mother and writer in Santa Monica who has to hire two nannies so that she can work when she'd rather spend the time with her baby but can't afford to.
- A single guy in Los Angeles who works a web producer. He loves computers so spends his time in front of one any way but continually has jobs that require 60-hour work weeks.
- A woman in New York working as a teacher whose job is so stressful, she couldn't do it without her live-in boyfriend helping with house work and daily chores.
- A single woman in San Francisco who has spent the last ten years pursuing a career but finds herself unfulfilled by the work.
- A bi-coastal young man, recently out of college, who's already frustrated with the fact that work takes him away from the projects he feels passionate about.
- A woman with a teenage daughter in the Bay Area who finds herself more motivated than everyone she works for and can't figure out how to dumb herself down.
- A single woman in Los Angeles who wants to help people in her native Cambodia but makes ends meet by working at an interactive agency.
We don’t have enough time to do what we enjoy because we spend our lives working and yet don’t make enough money to buy more time. In the jobs, we’re frustrated with others’ lack of commitment or in the company itself and feel that we deserve better. But in the pursuit of a better job in a better company we finally come to realize that work does not fulfill us enough to justify the time spent doing it. Most of us work to create or promote the sale of goods, goods that we use the money we earn to buy. By any measure, it’s not an efficient use of our time.
My friends are ready to quit this rat race of working and buying and are ready to move somewhere quieter, live a simpler life and grow our own food. The problem, I suppose, is that we’re all cultural people who need other people and art to stimulate us and aren’t really the kind of folk you find in rural towns. Back in April of 2007, I wrote that servitude sucks and that we've been duped because more "primitive" societies enjoy abundant free time. Now, it seems, I'm hearing the same thing from everyone: How do we get to a place where LIVING is what we spend most of our time doing instead of WORKING?
And connecting all these dots, I had an idea. A communal village of like-minded people. We want to grow our own food and learn to make our own energy and live without cars. We want to raise each other's children and imagine a society of the future and sometimes watch 30 Rock. Do you think it's possible? It would have to be in Canada, somewhere north that will be less impacted by global warming. I saw a fantastic photo in National Geographic (a similar one I found on the web is here) that shows a village in Israel, built to be egalitarian in that everyone has equal access to school, church, and other community buildings, in the center of town, but everyone also owns a piece of land, on the outside of town. It's limited as to how many people can live there, about 750, and everyone is independent and yet totally connected to each other.
It looks good. It looks real good. What do you think y'all? Ready to buy some property in Alberta?
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Fear of God
A couple of different articles I’ve read lately have referenced Bill Gates as a philanthropist. But even though his contributions far outweigh that of say, Mother Theresa, she is widely recognized as a saint and he is not. Public perception, the theory goes, is not determined by actual contribution, but by the nature of the giver and their giving. One is a billionaire who created a monopoly in business and donates a portion of the massive profits, the other is a nun who lived with lepers and helped anyone who needed it.
Another article said that most people only contribute to very personal causes, that we are motivated by emotion rather than actual need. After 9-11, The Red Cross issued a statement that they had received more donations than they could deal with and asked the public to donate elsewhere. Still, the money poured in. But there are some people with a far more scientific approach to philanthropy. Their brains are configured slightly differently, making them more rational than emotional so that when they think of doing good, they think of how they can do the most good with the money they have. Bill Gates asked what were the biggest problems that could be solved – hunger and disease – and set to solving them.
I bring this up because in my daily observations of people, we are fickle, inconsistent and highly personal in our choices. Scientists have said that stopping global warming and other environmental disasters – like the impending shortage of potable water, melting of the polar ice caps, and the destruction of the seas and rainforests – would require a collaborative effort the scale of which has never been achieved by humans. (Ants, yes. Humans, no.) In other words, we need a lot more people with Bill Gates type brains.
On the bus home the other day, I was looking out the window at a blanket of scattered clouds engulfing the sky as the sun went down, and thought about how inspiring nature is. The primitives were right to be awestruck by its beauty and fearful of its power. Nature could squash us like a bug. Our few hundred thousand years on this planet is no assurance of our future durability. Greater beasts than us have lived ten times longer and disappeared.
What if we are, in fact, a virus on this planet like The Matrix says? Then surely nature will eventually unleash storms, floods, droughts, disease and whatever else she can muster to cleanse herself of us. And history tells us that she will succeed. To quote another trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, “Are you frightened? Not nearly enough.” If we were living in a primitive society, the pagans would know that we've angered the gods and better get busy appeasing them.
A recent piece in Wired says that we humans don’t like science because it makes us look dumb. We’re happier with our myths and primitive beliefs when science challenges us to doubt everything we believe and diminish our significance in the universe. According to the article, half of all Americans don’t believe in evolution! So doesn't it seem strange that scientists are leading the discourse on global warming and not religious leaders? Why isn’t the church calling us all gluttonous and greedy and calling for humble restraint in our decadent lifestyles, citing the rise in natural disasters as evidence? Clearly, God is not happy with us. Have you seen the air in China?
Shouldn't the church be lambasting us for our wanton disregard of nature, God’s most gracious gift to us? What use is modern religion if not to motivate masses of people to become environmental stewards? Why is it that liberal science loving types are dropping everything to change their lifestyle to reduce their impact - hybrid vehicles, cloth diapers, non-toxic chemicals, recycled goods - and the Bush loving conservative types are all calling it a bunch of phooey? Clearly, the solution to our environmental woes is to get the church on board and put the fear of God in these people! It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that the pursuit of wealth through constant rape and abuse of the planet and our fellow creatures isn't very Christian.
Another article said that most people only contribute to very personal causes, that we are motivated by emotion rather than actual need. After 9-11, The Red Cross issued a statement that they had received more donations than they could deal with and asked the public to donate elsewhere. Still, the money poured in. But there are some people with a far more scientific approach to philanthropy. Their brains are configured slightly differently, making them more rational than emotional so that when they think of doing good, they think of how they can do the most good with the money they have. Bill Gates asked what were the biggest problems that could be solved – hunger and disease – and set to solving them.
I bring this up because in my daily observations of people, we are fickle, inconsistent and highly personal in our choices. Scientists have said that stopping global warming and other environmental disasters – like the impending shortage of potable water, melting of the polar ice caps, and the destruction of the seas and rainforests – would require a collaborative effort the scale of which has never been achieved by humans. (Ants, yes. Humans, no.) In other words, we need a lot more people with Bill Gates type brains.
On the bus home the other day, I was looking out the window at a blanket of scattered clouds engulfing the sky as the sun went down, and thought about how inspiring nature is. The primitives were right to be awestruck by its beauty and fearful of its power. Nature could squash us like a bug. Our few hundred thousand years on this planet is no assurance of our future durability. Greater beasts than us have lived ten times longer and disappeared.
What if we are, in fact, a virus on this planet like The Matrix says? Then surely nature will eventually unleash storms, floods, droughts, disease and whatever else she can muster to cleanse herself of us. And history tells us that she will succeed. To quote another trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, “Are you frightened? Not nearly enough.” If we were living in a primitive society, the pagans would know that we've angered the gods and better get busy appeasing them.
A recent piece in Wired says that we humans don’t like science because it makes us look dumb. We’re happier with our myths and primitive beliefs when science challenges us to doubt everything we believe and diminish our significance in the universe. According to the article, half of all Americans don’t believe in evolution! So doesn't it seem strange that scientists are leading the discourse on global warming and not religious leaders? Why isn’t the church calling us all gluttonous and greedy and calling for humble restraint in our decadent lifestyles, citing the rise in natural disasters as evidence? Clearly, God is not happy with us. Have you seen the air in China?
Shouldn't the church be lambasting us for our wanton disregard of nature, God’s most gracious gift to us? What use is modern religion if not to motivate masses of people to become environmental stewards? Why is it that liberal science loving types are dropping everything to change their lifestyle to reduce their impact - hybrid vehicles, cloth diapers, non-toxic chemicals, recycled goods - and the Bush loving conservative types are all calling it a bunch of phooey? Clearly, the solution to our environmental woes is to get the church on board and put the fear of God in these people! It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that the pursuit of wealth through constant rape and abuse of the planet and our fellow creatures isn't very Christian.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Canada's golden era
There was a three-part series on NPR last week about global warming in Canada and the Arctic and all the business opportunities that are opening up because of the melting ice. It was the most bizarre thing. People are actually hitching their star to global warming and looking forward to the day when the ice melts? It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Are people really that short-sighted? Are they really not able to connect the dots? Or is it just massive amounts of denial that allow them to believe they'll be rich before we all burn up?
Here are some of the opportunities about to befall Canada:
1) A lot of animals are migrating further north. It's warmer now and has less development, perfect for wild animals like the cougar that are usually associated with the dry mountains of southern California. Americans could start taking safaris through the Canadian outback.
2) Apparently there are a lot of diamonds in Canada, and the potential for other valuable rocks like uranium. Mining claims are hot right now, kind of like the gold rush of the mid-1800's. Trick is, the owners of the claims won't know until the ice melts, but their ship is coming in they say in 50-100 years.
3) Speaking of ships, the ice melting is also opening up a huge opportunity for shipping to come through the Arctic circle instead of way down in Panama. A viable way to link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a least one developer is talking about building a port which will naturally lead to a bustling port town in what is now tundra.
4) I was thinking I should buy some lake front property. What is currently just a patch of snow will someday be beautiful green mountains and while everyone in Los Angeles is burning in a fiery inferno of smog, I'll be lounging by the lake in beautiful and balmy Canada!
5) Oil is already big business up north but relies on ice roads to get the heavy equipment up there. Not too long ago a truck driving valuable drilling equipment fell through a frozen lake and sunk. The clever engineers who can figure out a way to fly, drive or ship the equipment there can retire on the riches.
Here are some of the opportunities about to befall Canada:
1) A lot of animals are migrating further north. It's warmer now and has less development, perfect for wild animals like the cougar that are usually associated with the dry mountains of southern California. Americans could start taking safaris through the Canadian outback.
2) Apparently there are a lot of diamonds in Canada, and the potential for other valuable rocks like uranium. Mining claims are hot right now, kind of like the gold rush of the mid-1800's. Trick is, the owners of the claims won't know until the ice melts, but their ship is coming in they say in 50-100 years.
3) Speaking of ships, the ice melting is also opening up a huge opportunity for shipping to come through the Arctic circle instead of way down in Panama. A viable way to link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a least one developer is talking about building a port which will naturally lead to a bustling port town in what is now tundra.
4) I was thinking I should buy some lake front property. What is currently just a patch of snow will someday be beautiful green mountains and while everyone in Los Angeles is burning in a fiery inferno of smog, I'll be lounging by the lake in beautiful and balmy Canada!
5) Oil is already big business up north but relies on ice roads to get the heavy equipment up there. Not too long ago a truck driving valuable drilling equipment fell through a frozen lake and sunk. The clever engineers who can figure out a way to fly, drive or ship the equipment there can retire on the riches.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)