I am glad he did. This is one of those pieces that looks at the big picture of Environmental depredations.
The author is Mr George Monbiot and the venue is The Manchester Guardian. The title is
Let's face it: none of our environmental fixes break the planet-wrecking project / All of us in the green movement are lost before the planet's real nightmare: not too little fossil fuel – but too much"The article seems to say that technology is the enemy, because for every problem there is someone with a more sophisticated technological solution. In Mr Monbiot's view, a solution which does even more damage to the environment.
All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.And that is his bottom line.
On the other hand, we are a species that uses tools and creates new options. Thus, for us, technology is the way out. It is who we are—that and opposable thumbs.
The key take-away for me is that when there is talk of climate change there is not talk about what it means in terms of humans and possible futures based upon changes in climate. Climate change is not the end of the world. I doubt you can even see the end of the world from there. It is, however, about adaption, and that is what we as humans are good at. Lets talk about the problem and if it is a problem and what hedges we need in case it is a problem. Let us talk about adaptations needed by us to cope with the range of possible futures.
The loss of much of Boston to rising sea levels would be a terrible thing. To just give up because of it would be a tragedy.
Regards — Cliff
2 comments:
I think that one needs to consider some of the positives of having much of Boston exposed to a more aquatic environment. The Big Leak won't have to be maintained any longer. More waterfront from which the filthy rich and MA legislators can purchase for beachfront homes.
The environmental doomsayers are, I am afraid, going to be a day late and millions of dollars short (primarily because Algore will have spent them on personal property acquisitions/upgrades). We will most likely all be carbon-based dust, wiped out by antibiotic resistant bugs......a doom much more probable than drowning prematurely in glacier water.
Moreover, given the quest for personal comforts and someone else's expense, I don't see a public much energized about doom tomorrow. "The End Is Near" has almost no cachet for folks today. Near? OK, we'll deal with it when "near" is "here."
Our societal mindset about things portended more than a few hours hence is embodied in one of my favorite cartoons.
Two dinosaurs are standing on a grassy hilltop looking out over a valley filling with rising water. An ark is bobbing along the horizon. One dino says to the other, "Oh crap!! Was that today?"
I don't imagine 3 feet are going to make as much difference to Boston as they will Venice and various other lower-lying locations, but I'm looking forward to the economic redistribution of some key beachfront locations.
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