John Nissen wrote....
"My claim is that we've f***ed up the planet, through putting a collosal pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere, and now geoengineering has to be used to get out of the mess. Can you suggest any other way? "
1. We have NOT f****d up the planet; IT is more truthful to say that Our Dominant Culture IS undermining natural living processes, in practically everything it engages in, and that this process if continued will result not in the destruction of ALL natural life processes, but of all those currently being used as 'resources' by The Dominant Culture - and that even if all that is left, if that trajectory is maintained to it's denuement, is bacterial life, given a few million years, MORE life will emerge, and continue to build the basis for biodiversity and a fecund environment - Thats what nature does.
2. Without addressing the psychological core that drives the activity of The Dominanat Culture, there are neither technical nor 'magical' fixes of any kind that can help. That core psychology goes so deep that even though many people cliam to be 'eco' activists, their efforts are failing bcause they have failed to de-colonise their own minds and bodies of the internalisations of the Dominant Cultural Psychology. As Einstein mused, "one cannot resolve a problem from the same mind-set that created the problem."
More technical control does not resolve the problem of a dependency upon technical control.
2. CO2 is but one TINY part of the problem. And it's part of many other practices other than fossil fuel use...
To my knowledge there is NO-ONE in Government or the mainstream 'change' movement addressing the psychological realities underpinning 'civilisation' or looking at the psychological realities of the natural world..... Nature has a psyche, a bio-logic, and the intent can be seen by the results - left to her own devices, nature creates more life for ALL and builds fecundity (top soil) year on year.... and ALL natural living processes co-operate in this process.
Loads of people running around like headless chickens, swearing at each other about this tech-fix or that ideology or that belief system is unlikely to do anything other than boost a few egos, entertain a few cycnics, irritate a few leaders and very little else....
For example, in all the data and kerfuffle about fossil fuels and eco-fuels for cars, for example, NO-ONE has mentioned that the making of the vehicle itself causes ten times more damage to Nature, and to people who live within Nature, than ANY fuel use over the average life of a given vehicle.... and that damage is increased by making cars that cannot be easily maintained outside a specialist - try replacing a light bulb in a modern car...
It is easy to be distracted when one has yet to face one's own conditioning - and that is the KEY element in Hierarchical Societies ability to control others...
Ecology, and Bio-Logic start at home.....
Kindest regards
Corneilius
"do what you love it's your gift to the universe!"
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From: "Wright, Steve" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sun, 3 October, 2010 23:00:07
Subject: Re: A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization And How to Save It
Dear John,
500,000 people will die this year from small arms and light weapons, 250 million got infected by Malaria and WHO estimated 1 million died. Was there a world wide campaign to prevent these preventable deaths? Not quite because the massive structural violence encompassing food poverty was happening largely in the global South. Few are suggesting global engineering to deal with these real world problems now because they affect disposable people in far away places; most of the arms dealing is being done by G8 members and we will only get hot under the collar when global warming brings malaria to us.
So my short answer is that here is not just one climate change mess but a series of messes associated with a belief system of consumption and distribution which can not be technically fixed. The politics of the patterns of that consumption are rapidly changing. In the West, the poor will have to pick up the tab for the costs of casino banking, in the East the masses in Pakistan have few to dig them out of their flooded country...and further East the financial pole is shifting away from the Stock
exchanges of London and New York towards Shanghai.
All the while the drumbeat of assymetrical conflict chews into our economies, schools or aircraft carriers, alarums and excursions....
Within that context, the clarion call of an instant believable fix calls us like a siren to assuage our infantile feelings of helples ness against what appears to be tidal waves of social, political and environmental change.
The mistake in geo engineering philosophy is that everyone will believe my geo- engineering is for the gerater good whilst your geo engineering has hidden agendas... So who is going to trust whom? In any event the shockwaves coming from the other crises will filter through into mass migration - what collective agrements and financing in a recession will be devoted towards that?
But in the end I think you will be right. How does a starving frightened world face up to reality? Usually with xenophobia and a highly militarized fortresss mentality. We saw it in Iraq and Afghanistan where all the civilised taboos againt torture and murder of innocents were put to one side. I for one dont want to live in a corporately geo-engineered world and guess before my long life is done, I will end up on some barricade cursing the shortsigheted muppets who dealt us this fate...but I shall enjoy further debates with collegues on this site as our options narrow, hopefully planting trees that will outlive us.
Steve
From: John Nissen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Fri 01/10/2010 23:37
To: Wright, Steve
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization And How to Save It
Hi Steve,
But do you accept my challenge? My claim is that we've f***ed up the planet, through putting a collosal pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere, and now geoengineering has to be used to get out of the mess. Can you suggest any other way? Do you really want the situation to get worse and worse, because that's what will happen - and will continue to happen if all we do is to reduce CO2 emissions. I wish that this were not the case. But we have to face up to reality.
John