While on a book tour recently, Bill McKibben made an interesting point in an appearance in Santa Barbara. McKibben -- a former New Yorker writer who wrote his first book on climate change back in 1989 -- told the crowd that to expect the Sierra Club and traditional conservationists to take on global warming with "the grammar of wildness" that John Muir drew from his life in the Yosemite Valley back in the 1860s was impractical and unfair.
He suggested that "we're all looking for the next metaphor" for global warming.
Yesterday Southwestern reporter John Fleck posted a good example of why: a list of stories published in recent months employing the "canary in a coal mine" metaphor. Many of these stories were terrific, including the very first one, from Corie Brown at the L.A. Times.
But it's clear: the canary metaphor is exhausted, perhaps dead. We need a new one. Suggestions, anyone?
Another coal plant bites the dust
Climate psychology in cartoons: clues for solving the messaging mystery
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David Roberts Posted 8:54 am
22 May 2007
grist.org
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Philip Small Posted 9:57 am
22 May 2007
Excerpted: "What has been spoiled through man's fault can be made good again through man's work. It is not immutable fate, that has caused the state of corruption, but rather the abuse of human freedom. Work toward improving conditions promises well, because it accords the possibilities of the time. We must not recoil from work and danger but must take hold energetically. Success depends, however, on proper deliberation. We must first know the cause of corruption before we can do away with them; hence it is necessary to be cautious during the time before the start. Then we must see to it that the new way is safely entered upon, so that a relapse may be avoided; therefore we must pay attention to the time after the start. Decisiveness and energy must take the place of the inertia and indifference that have led to decay, in order that the ending may be followed by a new beginning."
And if you follow the dynamics embodied in the details, I like the fifth line: "An individual is confronted with corruption originating from neglect in former times. He lacks the power to ward it off alone, but with able helpers he can at least bring about a thorough reform."
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Jones Posted 10:57 am
22 May 2007
I think the big issue is not getting people to understand what's wrong, but the feeling that it can't be all that serious, can it? The elephant in the room thing. Apart from us misanthropic environmentalists, most people want to believe that things will slowly and inevitably get better, and so have a hard time imagining a fundamentally changed world. Personally, I grew up with the fear of nuclear holocaust, and well, we waited that one out(?) and so now it feels perfectly natural to do the same with GW.
The "Nazi Threat" analogy provides an object lesson in the dangers of complacency and the real possibility of unimaginable catastrophic events actually coming true.
Of course, it's been overused as well, but I think that in this case it's much more a propos than with po-dunk dictators like Milosovich or Saddam Hussein.
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coffeemuses Posted 11:38 am
22 May 2007
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wiscidea Posted 11:53 am
22 May 2007
Our civilization is on the verge of collapse for almost every single reason Jared Diamond describes in his book, Collapse. But we just don't get it.
We have studied the past. We have identified why our predecessors failed. There are actually records of past catastrophes. We don't even have to come up with a best guess as to what happened.
But our political leaders refuse to learn from -- or perhaps even try reading just a little bit of -- what historians, archeologist, and anthropologists have studied. Indeed, the fools laugh at academics while the entire web of life unravels and our existence seriously threatened.
Does anyone have any ideas regarding how we can open our leaders' eyes to lessons learned from history? I doubt any of them believe that the Middle East was once lush. I doubt any of them believe that the city Petra was once surrounded by oak savanna and grassland. There a re many example of humans suffering when they abuse the natural world.
Perhaps the best metaphor -- drawing on Jared Diamond again -- is Easter Island. It was covered with enormous palms suitable for building shelter and boats. The forest allowed rain water to soak into the ground and support agricultural crops. But they slowly -- very slowly -- cut down the trees in a bizarre competition to see which tribe (or family group) could build the largest stone momument . After awhile, they no longer had trees large enough for building boats, so they could no longer fish. Then the soil started washing away. Then the trees were no longer large enough for shelter. They burned the rest to keep warm. The island, stripped of vegetation, did not recover. The human population plumetted.
Sadly, the survivors, generations after the process started had no idea how their ancestors lived -- it has all been figured out via archaelogy and other fields. As far as the survivors were concerned, Easter Island was always desolate. Jared Diamond described this a "creeping normalcy". It happen so slowly, each generation was unable to recognize that anything was wrong. This is where the metaphor fails. It is clear that something is wrong... and we still can't act.
My account is rather abbreviated and from memory. I highly suggest reading a few chapters from Jared Diamond's book is you want precise details.
Peace.
Forward!
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amazingdrx Posted 1:39 pm
22 May 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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SustainableGreen Posted 1:48 pm
22 May 2007
Assuming we have to have a metaphor, which I try to resist but nevertheless succumb to, the one I have used in the past is the reference to a bird which 'fouls its nest' and therefore has to move annually to continue. Another similar more directly human metaphor is 'spoiling the campsite', requiring that the tribe move, serially spoiling location after location, all of which initially offered food, water and protection. In fact, archaeologists deal with middens, piles of rubble and the waste of living, left by early man all over the world.
Extending this concept to the 'Earth as midden' for the global disposal of human refuse of all types, whether it is industrial, personal, agricultural, or the walking residue of the economic exploitation and rape of cultures, is an easy jump, when we point out such things as chemicals being found in ice cores and krill and throughout the food web thousands of miles from the point of production. We can actually see perhaps parallels of real middens in the form of ruined inner cities, so maybe the 'midden' concept is not too far off the mark.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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SustainableGreen Posted 2:26 pm
22 May 2007
I wrote my previous message without seeing Wiscidea's message, and I agree that there really need not be a separate metaphor--they all tend to break down at some point, anyway--and we are our own metaphor.
In fact, this is transcendently summed up by a 'possum:
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." -- Pogo
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:04 pm
22 May 2007
While we are suggesting readings, I would recommend highly Jennifer Price's Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America -- part nature book, part A Christmas Carol -- which is also about creeping normalcy. Price puts our attitudes towards nature in a historical context such that, extrapolating, she points to a dystopian future in which people get in touch with nature mainly by shopping in places like The Nature Store. Just as Easter Islanders forgot what it was like to live on an island with trees, Americans have lost the memory of the annual mass migration of passenger pigeons.
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Pangolin Posted 5:13 pm
22 May 2007
Today in my area we have had an all-day wind storm. In the middle of the afternoon seveal fires were started by people mowing dry grass when the temperature was 81 degrees and winds were 40 mph.
This is brush fire country and alert residents keep a keen eye on the flight patterns of fire bombers. If the fire bomber starts circling YOU, you run for your life. Everybody should know by now not to do things that spark on windy days. Every years somebody goes ahead and mows on a hot afternoon.
People insist on building houses on the side of brush filled canyons in California, on sand spits in North Carolina and on flood plains everywhere. Today the news was full of the rise in SUV sales.
As a race we are idiots. Nature bats last.
Put the Carbon Back
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Whiskerfish Posted 5:50 pm
22 May 2007
Works amazingly well.
Whiskerfish
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Billhook Posted 8:05 pm
22 May 2007
This may be heresy to those of us who've focuused on GW as the big one for the last few decades,
but it is the reality we face -
No rational effort to address GW can ignore global water insecurity, nor peak fossil energy production, nor fertile soil depletion.
In addition to these elemental stresses, there is also a comparable organic hazard, with novel pathogens evolving/appearing as a result of our conduct
(e.g. tropical deforestation, battery chicken farming, anti-biotic broadcasting, etc)
This suite of threats could be described in an update of an old metaphor:
Four Horsemen, & a Chicken -
being:
Earth (soil depletion)
Air (climate destabilization)
Fire (fossil fuels' depletion)
Water (aquifer & watercourse depletion)
and the Chicken - is about Battery Chicken Flu -
which is only one example of a potentially catastrophic modern contageon.
To get a handle on useful policy, an integrative metaphor is required.
"Four Horsemen, and a Chicken" is the best I've seen.
Regards,
Bill
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JMG Posted 3:00 am
23 May 2007
Billhook's list combining the four kinds of matter according to the ancients and calling them "horsemen" doesn't work as well for me. But the real ones seem to cover all the bases nicely:
War -- a natural result of collapsing resource bases throughout our history, particularly given our overpopulated state and the reality of what happens when huge waves of refugees go seek a place of refuge today.
Famine -- a natural result of drought and weather induced crop losses and of #3
Pestilence -- the natural result of climate change allowing disease vectors and crop destroyers to range in new areas where they have no natural predators;
All of which, singly and combined naturally cause
4) Disease -- which we will be increasingly challenged to deal with as people with no resistance to tropical diseases get them (and which also contributes to #2, as people are not the only ones to suffer from new diseases made possible through climate destabilization).
"An optimist is someone who thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist is someone who is afraid that the optimist is right."
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:25 am
23 May 2007
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:07 am
23 May 2007
Global warming
Peak oil (could also include other peaks, like natural gas, coal, and water)
Mass extinction -- seems to be a commonly used term, although I think ecosystem destruction might be more accurate, would include loss of soils
Globalization -- which would cover poverty but also the coming decline or even collapse of the U.S. dollar and economy because of the decline of manufacturing, could also include possible global financial meltdowns and housing bubble.
By the way, Richard Heinberg uses the metaphor of yeast in a bottle of grape juice, both eating all of their food source and emitting alcohol which eventually kills them -- although it turns into wine, so the end result is good.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 5:06 am
23 May 2007
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caniscandida Posted 5:24 am
23 May 2007
When it is applied to the observed decline in certain species, taken as evidence of the effects of global warming, which is of course predicted to have a number of bad effects on human beings, then the metaphor seems fine, and is in no way exhausted, meaning-wise. What I think John Fleck is getting at is that it is being used so often nowadays that it is becoming a cliche', too stale to be effective.
To be sure, the metaphor is far from perfect. For one thing, the coalminers are not especially concerned for the welfare of the canary, they are just exploiting it; but we (or many of us at least) by contrast are indeed very concerned for the welfare of endangered wildlife.
Also, the nature of the warning from endangered wildlife is more complicated and indirect. Take for example four animals of Arctic North America who are showing signs of being under unusual stress on account of global warming: the polar bear, the black guillemot, the caribou and the Arctic fox. These animals are in fact in trouble for different GW-related reasons. The range of the Arctic fox is shrinking, and it is being out-competed against by the red fox, which can now survive at higher latitudes. Caribou are beset by increased numbers of biting insects; predators are expanding their ranges during the calving season and the calves' first migration; rivers are flowing more strongly earlier in the season, making it difficult for calves to swim across. Both polar bears and guillemots are affected adversely by the increasing absence of ocean ice, but in different ways: the bears need it to bring them to the seals which are their favorite prey; the birds need it to shelter the islands on which they nest.
Moreover, the specific mechanism by which any of these animals is endangered is not a problem which will directly affect (most) human beings (though some Inuit have been complaining about weak and untrustworthy ice). Things are different than in that coal mine, where the very same carbon monoxide which killed the canary will kill the miners too, and in the same way, if they do not escape.
So perhaps it is indeed time to retire the canary.
Now, Bill McKibben seems to be searching for a different kind of metaphor, to illustrate a different phenomenon. It is not clear to me what he has in mind. But by a kind of synchronicity, there seem to be a number of impatient suggestions in the air lately, to the effect that traditional environmentalism either is not doing the job it is supposed to do, or is unable to keep up with the complexity of our present difficulties.
I like very much the suggestions of Billhook and JMG, as well as WiscIdea's reference to the lessons of Jared Diamond. And thanks to Sustainable David, for quoting the famous line from Pogo, surely one of the most creative and thought-provoking comic strips of all time.
As has been observed, no metaphor is going to be quite adequate. But in this context we might remember a timeless theme in ancient Greek religion, encapsulated in the inscriptions on the door of Apollo's oracle at Delphi: "Know yourself" (meaning, live within your limitations), and "Nothing in excess." One mythological figure who is a negative example, illustrating the bad things that result when we ignore that wisdom, is King Midas. He treated hospitably a follower of Dionysus named Silenus, who had got lost; when he returned him safe and sound to Dionysus, the god granted him anything for which he might wish. Midas foolishly wished that everything he touched should be turned to gold. For a few minutes he had fun touching things in his house and watching them be transformed into gold. But then he put his hand on his robe, and found himself enclosed in a heavy, stiff sheath. His cat leaped into his arms, and became a golden statue. His daughter ran to greet him, and the same thing happened to her. Finally, trying to eat, he quickly realized that he would helplessly turn all his food to gold even as he was lifting it to his mouth, and so he would starve before long. In terror, he cried out to Dionysus, and begged him to take away the gift.
In perhaps a similar way, it could be said that we are doing to ourselves what Midas did to himself: in our use of resources and quest for ever greater wealth, and by the very activities with which we have remade the world so as to enrich ourselves, we have in fact rendered the world deadly, to ourselves and to those we love.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Rune Posted 2:17 pm
23 May 2007
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HealthyKids Posted 3:08 am
24 May 2007
Rachel Carson ws a "Sentinel Lion." Rachel Carson had the courage, the confidence, the reverence for life, and the sense of responsibility to speak out during a period of widespread pesticide abuse and environmental degradation. Her book, Silent Spring, still has the transformational power to be the touchstone for a new wave of social consciousness and political urgency.
Rachel Carson inspires us to think of ourselves, not as whistleblowers, troublemakers, or canaries in the mine, but as guardians, steadfast sentries, and defenders of our community against the decisions that allow pollution to contaminate our air, water and food.
We can picture ourselves as the sentinel or guardian lion, the universal symbol of protection, alone or in pairs, at the entrances of cities, buildings, gates, bridges, museums -- guarding the treasures of our community. We are the sentries, gladiators, the "guardian at the gate," the sentinel lions working to inform and engage citizens in the work of aligning local practices with the Precautionary Principle and sustainability standards.
The image of the "Sentinel Lion" will help reframe (and reclaim) the goal of environmental advocacy from simple consumer activities, often limited to changing light bulbs, buying "green," and recycling, to greater citizen engagement at all levels working for government and corporate transparency and accountability.
The goal of advocacy is to foster a culture of Sentinel Lions who, like Rachel Carson, are motivated to take responsibility for the health of their communities and to work for sustained political and cultural change that prioritizes public health.
Celebrating Rachel Carson's Centennial
http://journal.rcn.net/RachelCarson2007
Ellie Goldberg, M.Ed.
http://www.healthy-kids.info
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cyberfarer Posted 3:18 am
24 May 2007
The buffet best illustrates our culture with regard to exhaustive consumption and resources. People belly up to a buffet to eat as much as they possibly can whether they are hungry or not or even to the very detriment of their own health. They will often take far more than they can personally consume leaving tremendous waste.
The Planet Earth Buffet represents a long line of generations to come waiting outside to have their turn, while the current generation, inside, exhausts the bounty available.
What makes the Planet Earth Buffet truly different, though, is that the waste from our plates and the toilet is tossed back into the kitchen to be remixed and served again making many sick but, nonetheless, happy to belly up again. The kitchen ingredients are finite while our appetites are infinite. And when the kitchen runs out of resources, the entire restaurant collapses in upon itself.
What is especially intriquing is that we know that what we are doing will exhaust the resources, destroy the restaurant, and leave the next generations with lives that will be brutish and short and, yet, we really don't care. Because, you know, I paid to belly up to this buffet and I'm going to get as much as I can. Now fuck off tree hugger.
Bon appetit.
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Trittles Posted 3:43 am
24 May 2007
Trittles
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Jamie Posted 4:47 am
24 May 2007
There was nothing the dinosaurs could do about that meteor, but the one we're dealing with here is of our own design, and we are (in theory) bright enough to deal with it. Maybe we need to call in a metaphorical Bruce Willis and his team of drillers to deal with this latest "meteor."
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sunflower Posted 7:08 am
24 May 2007
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Enviro-Education Posted 9:45 am
24 May 2007
"Don't worry about the planet, the planet has been fine for several billion years, you should focus on saving yourself."
People need to understand that it is not only canaries at risk.
Regards,
Professorlife
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caniscandida Posted 2:46 pm
24 May 2007
When we cease to worry about the canaries, the polar bears, etc., we have taken a powerful step toward self-zombification.
And when we try to justify ceasing to worry about the canaries, the polar bears, etc., we have boarded the self-zombification express.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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caniscandida Posted 4:26 pm
24 May 2007
please note, I quoted from your excellent comment in DR's "Carson nonsense" thread.
I like your point very much, and I admire you for praising Rachel Carson.
But I wonder if the image of the sentinel lion is quite right. Here in NYC, in front of the temple-like palace, on 5th Avenue, which houses the main collection of the New York Public Library, there are two famous recumbent stone lions, on either side of the great flight of stairs leading up to the entrance. They never move, they never budge, and we have no doubt that they would be of no use whatsoever in defending the library from an incursion of barbarians. And indeed one of them has been given the name of "Patience," and the other has been called "Fortitude": great and important virtues indeed, but rather passive ones.
Perhaps you can clarify your image? We certainly need our heroes, and I look to you to give us some.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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wiscidea Posted 2:01 am
25 May 2007
If we focus on really saving ourselves, we cannot help but save the rest of life on Earth as well. I think the Professor was implying that we are highly dependent on the current web of life.
Certainly, the Earth can take care of itself. Life in general will prevail, and eventually fill empty niches, even if vast numbers of species go extinct. It has happened before. Unfortunately, if someone happened to be a trilobite or a dinosaur or some other organism that once lived in every body of water or on every continent, but no longer exists, such remarks would not be very comforting.
We might be trilobites -- spectacularly successful (please consider reading "Trilobite!" by Richard Fortey), but doomed to complete extinction as a result of climate change. If they were sentient, they probably would have laughed at the notion that they could all disappear in a geological wink of an eye.
So if we really want to save ourselves, we have to save everything else that exists right now. We do not know -- and probably never will know -- what can be discarded without killing our own species.
Peace.
Forward!
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Kit Stolz Posted 8:21 am
25 May 2007
Yes, it's a true story. For more, see:
http://achangeinthewind.typepad.com/achangeinthewind/2007 ...
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caniscandida Posted 8:54 am
25 May 2007
I do not know Richard Fortey's book, but indeed, as you say, the trilobites were a remarkably successful lineage of arthropods, lasting from the Cambrian/Silurian to the end of the Permian.
Ditto the dinosaurs. One must realize that the very last of the non-avian dinosaurs, who died off in the Cretaceous/Tertiary mass extinction (65 mya), such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops, were closer in time to us than they were to the classic late-Jurassic dinosaurs (145 mya) such as Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and Allosaurus.
It is a matter of controversy, of course, but it seems that both the last trilobites and the last dinosaurs were done in by some extinction event that doomed very many kinds of animals. The terminal-Permian mass extinction was even more destructive than the terminal-Cretaceous extinction.
I am not quite sure I see how we are like trilobites. Jamie makes much more sense to me: We seem to be like the meteoric body which produced the Chicxulub crater, and is believed by many to have caused the Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction event.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GreyFlcn Posted 12:24 pm
26 May 2007
Obviously there's skeptics or more derogitory deniers, or denialists.
Now what do we call ourselves?
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jefferson Posted 12:22 pm
29 May 2007
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