Hmpf’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  I've been reading Colin Beavan's blog, on and off, for more than a year, and I think Elizabeth Kolbert is selling him a bit short. In the time I've been reading his blog, Beavan has written repeatedly about the larger social implications of his experiment and has encouraged his readers to act as politically conscious citizens. He has encouraged, and (I think) participated in acts of civil disobedience and has asked his readers to contact politicians. He is also currently working on setting up a website and organisation that will help people to change their lives towards sustainability. No Impact Man may have started as one individual's gimmicky eco stunt, but it definitely seems to have worked as a consciousness raising exercise for Beavan, and that's an important step in the journey towards activism.

  The impression I get from his blog is that Colin Beavan understands that we need, not only individual action, *and* not only political action, either, but a fundamental culture change - and like so many of us, he is trying to work for that culture change as best he can. Conducting and publicising an experiment that shows people that a radically different lifestyle is possible, and may even make people happier than the current one, seems like a very valid approach. Not the only thing we should do, no, but it's good that a blog like that, and a book and movie like that, are out there.

  On No Impact Man, Elizabeth Kolbert, and the civic sphere posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Regarding the odds

  This is how I figure it:

  There may be a 99% chance that we're already screwed.

  But if we don't even try to do anything about it, then that becomes a certainty.

  A 1% chance of being saved is still infintely better than guaranteed catastrophe. On NASA: Another brutally hot year for the Siberian tundra posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 3 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  @ MAD MAC

  There's a difference between 'habitable for humans' and 'habitable for civilisation as it now exists'. (You probably noticed that I wrote: "I'm not equating the three things separated by slashes in the previous sentence, btw - I'm just listing them in the order of likelihood of their being threatened.")  

  Sure, a few million or even a few billion will probably survive even the most catastrophic potential outcomes (except if we get a repeat of the Perm-Triassic Extinction, but even then, with some preparation, it would probably be possible to build refuges for a few thousand or so)... But to me, even 'just a few' billion dead is quite apocalyptic enough. Mass starvation etc. certainly will not be very conducive to world peace, either... So, the observation that humanity will probably survive in some form, is not much consolation.

  Also, even if it could be assured that we, i.e. humans, would be able to deal with the impending changes just fine, there's still the issue of the rest of the biosphere that does not have culture and technology to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 1 month ago 31 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  @ biodiversivist: RE: hope

  Something I posted earlier today in the boingboing thread about this news (it's the latter part that concerns the issue of hope in the face of really bad odds):

  Seems to me as if the only truly reasonable reaction to this is, for each of us, to turn our lives around so as to reduce our personal emissions as much as possible, right now - and start to get politically active so as to get society to adopt that course, as well.

  Of course, that's for a definition of 'reasonable' which is based on two assumptions:

  1.) The survival of civilisation/humans/life on earth is a priority that overrides individual desires for unnecessary luxuries. (I'm not equating the three things separated by slashes in the previous sentence, btw - I'm just listing them in the order of likelihood of their being threatened.)

  2.) In a complex system which we do not fully understand, we should not be too ready to declare that 'it's over' and 'we're screwed'. As long as there are factors that aren't understood, there is hope. This means that giving up now is unreasonable, because only by giving up (and, by implication, continuing our lives the 'business as usual' way as long as it's still possible) do we condemn ourselves with absolute certainty.

  (Addendum: yes, I know that so far, all the previously ignored factors that were discovered made things worse instead of better. Even so, I would argue that hope is always better than, well, surrender, because only surrender guarantees defeat. The problem with this kind of really rather desperate hope is, of course, that it is a kind of hope that requires, hm, a kind of mental discipline, you could almost call it 'work'. It's not an obvious or easy hope, and thus may be difficult to reach for most people. I think I read just enough Tolkien as a teenager to 'get' this kind of hope. ;-)) On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 1 month ago 31 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Good idea about the news media, actually.

  Though I've just found the first article about it in a magazine here - apparently they're just lagging a few days behind Britain. But I can certainly write a few e-mails/letters to other papers.

  As for friends and relatives, though... I'm already blogging about this topic fairly frequently, and I don't get the impression that there's much headway to make, there. Not that my f&f are a particularly doubting bunch - they're probably more progressive than average - but whenever I do broach the topic in personal conversation, I get the impression that people are a) bored, b) fatalist, c) too stressed out by other concerns in their lives to really care/do anything. So I tend to avoid 'spamming' their personal e-mail accounts with this stuff - they all know they can get this kind of info from my blog on a semi-regular basis, if they want to seek it out.

  It would be easier, I imagine, if there were more concrete things I could suggest people do - something that would give them the feeling that they can actually get active about this. (Of course, reducing personal consumption/emissions is something to do... but to far too many people, that feels like effectively doing nothing - and they're not entirely wrong, because we do need change on a large scale.) On Methane releases from under the Arctic seabed could jeopardize GHG stabilization posted 1 year, 1 month ago 31 Responses