Happy Earth Day

In honor of Earth Day 2011, here's 350.org's Bill McKibben. "The only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds."

Enough

Will we choose to stay human, to pursue our happiness in the old unscientific way, in this engineered age? Bill McKibben hopes so. His Enough remains one of the best statements of a kind of Russell Stone-like humanist rebellion against the science of happiness.

generation 0

"Should This Be the Last Generation?"

I'm glad my parents did not seriously ponder that one. Peter Singer does, in his guest column for The Stone.

Bill McKibben went out on a limb a few years ago with Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families. Peter Singer goes him one better. How about none? Zero? What if we just let ourselves be the end of the human line? And what if, contrary to fact, everyone could be encouraged to join us in this mass species suicide?

I wonder what the Times's non-academic readers will make of the philosopher's dispassion towards the prospect of universal, self-inflicted euthanasia?

Thought experiment or not, I find it unsettling to weigh the very existence of homo sapiens (and of life in the universe, for all we know) in so coldly calculating a fashion. Singer does arrive at the right conclusion, but is this really the right way to get there?

I do think it would be wrong to choose the non-sentient universe. In my judgment, for most people, life is worth living. Even if that is not yet the case, I am enough of an optimist to believe that, should humans survive for another century or two, we will learn from our past mistakes and bring about a world in which there is far less suffering than there is now. But justifying that choice forces us to reconsider the deep issues with which I began. Is life worth living? Are the interests of a future child a reason for bringing that child into existence? And is the continuance of our species justifiable in the face of our knowledge that it will certainly bring suffering to innocent future human beings?

There are clear limits to the value of a calculus that tries to translate everything into a statement about the stipulated utility of separate individuals. These are good questions, but there are better ones. For instance: what is life going to make of itself, not just during my own brief stint on the ground but much further on?

And, how do we calculate the relevance of that eventuality? I don't know, but I do know we ought to give it some thought..

Eaarth

Bill McKibben in Monterey.

fuu-ture shock

The dawn blog is still slumbering, though it continues to register my tweets and "day-blog" posts (including this one) in its right margin, A glance at WordPress's so-called "support forums" shows I'm not alone, others have also mysteriously misplaced their "publish" option. I'll leave the geeks to their business, then. Fueled by sugar and starch and carbonation I'm sure they'll have us up and running over there again before you can say "gadget and widget."


So, here we are again this morning: sitting out back under the re-purposed port awning, birds in full voice all around, Old Sol peeking past the neighbors' gable, new possibilities pleading for recognition. After the rain and gloom of yesterday, this clear and magnificent dawn is especially reassuring.


Yesterday was stormy, so I didn't get to accept my student's invitation to attend the Laotian New Year festivities as his escorted guest. Rain check, please!


I did get to drive the Daughter Taxi, though, from Laser Quest to Love Circle to home to Love Circle... I really need to get that meter installed, I'm losing a lot of income running a free service. My wife insists this goes with the parental job description. I don't recall being quite so dependently mobile as a pre-driving teen, but then there's a lot I don't recall.

Didn't even get to enjoy many snatches of the Yanks-Angels game, after an inning or so the local weather team monopolized the airwaves with frightful satellite-tracking images and warnings that my responsible spouse took to heart. I'm a fatalist about weather, though about little else. Just don't ask me to duck and cover in the hallway, I'd rather be whisked to Oz.

I did find a few moments to spend with Bill McKibben's Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, which was officially released on Earth Day and just arrived in the mail. That's not a typo, the stuttering vowel signals that this isn't our grandparents' planet and it's not their "future" (or our grandchildrens') either. It's ours. What will we do with it today?

He's such a good writer, bearing such a sober message: the future is now.

So how did it happen that the threat to our fairly far-off descendants, which required that we heed an alarm and adopt precautionary principles and begin to take measured action lest we have a crisis for future generations, et cetera-- how did that suddenly turn into the Arctic melting away, the tropics expanding, the ocean turning acid? How did time dilate, and "100 or 200 years from now" become yesterday?

Good question. The good news is, he thinks we do have a future. A fuu-ture. I'm eager to talk about it in "Future of Life" in the Fall, and on the radio soon too. Stay tuned for programming details.

growth

"Epicurean" is not the first word that comes to mind when you think of Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and author. But he grasps the fundamental Epicurean point: perpetual economoic growth doesn't make individuals or societies happy. We need to re-think our national servitude to this "ideal." We need to revisit Epicurus's Garden.

Copenhagen

Just heard a wonderfully sobering exchange on the radio between Bill McKibben, author and environmental activist, and David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The points at issue: was Copenhagen the unmitigated disaster most of the world seems to think it was? Or is there a good spin to be put on gradualism, baby steps, and the maddeningly slow and weak political response mustered to the climate crisis to date? Did Obama come with too little, too late? Or did he save the day?

More pointedly: environmentalists had high expectations for Copenhagen. Are they right to be disappointed and discouraged? Should they keep their shoulders to the wheel? Yes and yes.

McKibben is the very voice of clear-eyed radical engagement, unblinking realism, and sweet reason. He rightly points out that even the sharpest politicians don't seem to grasp the uncompromising urgency of our predicament. A caller rightly pointed out that the issue is not the survival of planet earth, but the tenability of our continued human presence here. The more our leaders delay, the more irrelevant we become.

Political incrementalism is clearly inadequate to the challenges we face, but we must persevere. The alternative is too hopeless to contemplate.

another vital question

A few students have taken me up on my final essay suggestion: explore alternative responses to the Vital Question (as posed by William James): "What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"

It's a question about human nature, the possibility of progress, of our capacity for cooperation and kindness and compassion, and of many particular facets that James could not have imagined.

I'll be interested to see where people choose to take the question. One possibility is the biotech angle:

"Where will synthetic biology lead us?" asks Michael Specter (author of Denialism). Some think life's about to start making of itself a creator of brand-new forms of life-- not in the Wittgensteinian sense, but for real. What might await our form of life, at the other end of that rabbit-hole?

"If the science truly succeeds, it will make it possible to supplant the world created by Darwinian evolution with one created by us." O brave new world, that has such reasonable-sounding "biological engineers" as Drew Endy in it...

Thing is, this isn't really even "long-term" thinking,

the future is now.

Bill McKibben, for one, says "Enough!"

climate of untruth

Some people still don't believe there's a strong scientific consensus on the climate crisis. There is, rivaling our confidence in gravity. This is not "only a theory."

Yes, there are also dissenting voices to be found, somewhat misleadingly formatted here to imply much more division than the scientific community has in fact expressed. Al Gore's explanation of why there's so much public confusion about this, and how it amounts to nothing less than an assault on reason, is still compelling... and his 2006 TED Talk was sobering, persuasive,and funny. (What a great presidential candidate this guy would've been!)

Here are new Gore slides; here's Elizabeth Kolbert pointing out that many of us who are already persuaded have been less than honest with ourselves, talking more about taking action than acting; and here's what Bill McKibben's been up to:

"350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere." Here are some reputable sources reflecting the present state of unanimity on this issue:

• Hansen, James, et al. Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? Submitted April 7, 2008. NASA climate scientist James Hansen's paper about the 350ppm target. Hansen also writes: "The press and television, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus concerning global warming, give equal time to fringe 'contrarians' supported by the fossil fuel industry. Special interest groups mount effective disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about the reality of global warming. The government appears to be strongly influenced by special interests, or otherwise confused and distracted, and it has failed to provide leadership. The public is understandably confused or uninterested."

• Hansen, James, et al. Target Atmospheric CO2: Supporting Material. Submitted April 7, 2008.

• The IPCC 4th Assessment Report – link to the latest report by the Nobel-prize winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, supported by the world's leading climatologists.

• Baer, Paul, Tom Athanasiou and Sivan Kartha. "The Right to Develop in a Climate Constrained World: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework" - an important policy framework for how to mitigate climate change while ensuring an equitable path to development for the Global South.

• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - link to the official UNFCCC website with information about the UN climate policy process.

• NASA - scientific reports, interactive maps, resources for kids, and more

• RealClimate.org - a blog of climate science, written by climate scientists

• Climate Safety - a very useful new report about current climate science, policy, and solutions

1. Pew Center on Climate Change - helpful information about climate science and international policy

If all that doesn't persuade, maybe James Garvey's Ethics of Climate Change will. We read it in Environmental Ethics. The evidence it assembles, and the case it makes for more serious reforms than almost anyone is even talking about, is not easy to ignore... unless you choose to ignore it.

A note from Bill McKibben

Dear Friends,

It's rare that public humiliation and movement building come in one package, but my appearance on The Colbert Report last night was a bit of both.

The interview lasted all of four minutes, but I managed to make my pitch and survive the interview with at least 40% of my dignity intact. If you have friends who aren't necessarily inclined to earnest environmental preaching, this might be a good clip to send them as you try to recruit new activists for the big day of Climate Action on Oct. 24.

You can see my interview with Colbert--and pass it on to your networks--by using the link below:

http://www.350.org/billoncolbert

In the span of just a few years, Stephen Colbert and his Colbert Report have become institutions in the American media landscape. But interesting institutions--the show is comedy, and it's also slightly anarchic. Colbert is brilliant, and more than a little wild: it's not like going on normal, predictable television. That's the drama, and it's why people tune in.

It's also why I was a little more nervous than usual as my evening in the guest's chair approached. i can usually predict the questions I'll be asked--I've heard most of them before. But last night they were coming fast and furious, and out of left field. "What if I start 349.org?"

With a lot of help from friends who'd coached me and psyched me up, I got through just fine--and even made Colbert laugh when I inquired if his self-styled Nation wanted to join the 80 other governments that are backing our target. Best of all, it worked--our servers hummed with thousands of new colleagues.

We're enormously grateful to Stephen and his crew for helping us spread the word-now let's keep this movement moving!

Onwards,

Bill McKibben

"Pulling the Plug" (again)

Nice piece recently in Orion by Robert Michael Pyle -http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/466

He pulled his own plug, more or less. He still goes online a couple times a week, but not at home:

I know I am missing out on some wonderful exchanges and capabilities. But I already weep over all the indoor hours when I could actually be out, combing the moss for waterbears or contemplating the profound mystery of where people get the time to read blogs, for gods’ sakes—is it at the complete expense of books?

When we read the blogs, how much do we misread? And how much do we misrepresent ourselves when we write them? I recently had an unpleasant exchange with a friend in reaction to one of his blog posts, in part because the medium does not lend itself to nuance and in part because, it seemed to me, my friend was engaged in a sort of performance - not a genuine and sincere communication. He was busy constructing a persona, not engaging in a real conversation. It pissed me off, but in an instructive way. I blog, therefore I bloviate. We must all take care not to damage human relationships in the course of framing ourselves as clever and sophisticated cultural observers - an unintended but not unforeseeable consequence of this form of discourse. The electronic-human interface does not necessarily have to make us shallow persons. Blogging doesn't have to be superficial. But it sure can be.

Bill McKibben was prophetic about this, as about so much else. Our vaunted Information Age truly is an "Age of Missing Information." But rather than pull the plug in a literal way, I'm going to continue tasking myself each day to pull away from the keyboard and the email and the blogs in responsible moderation. Our evolutionary health and day-to-day sanity and civility really depend on our learning to do this.

Stewart Brand's new shade of green

Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog publisher (and instigator of Earth's first full-frontal photo portrait), online pioneer, former Merry Prankster, and free-thinking '60s icon, wants to know "where are the green biotech hackers?" He says we should -- and predicts that environmentalists soon will -- embrace nuclear power, genetic engineering, and biotech. He says population is not going to be a problem, nor will urban sprawl. ("An Early Environmentalist, Embracing New 'Heresies'," NYTimes, 2.27.07)

Is he nuts? I don't know, but after re-reading Bill McKibben's classic End of Nature in our environmental ethics class I'm struck by this Brand observation:

"My trend has been toward more rational and less romantic as the decades go by. I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism... It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind."

I have a lot of respect for McKibben, but I can't warm to his Deep Ecology version of romanticism according to which nature's meaning is her independence of all things human. When he urges that we remain God's creatures rather than aspiring to godhood ourselves, I wonder if there isn't a saner intermediate position: we don't have to be gods, to be responsible global citizens and effective caretakers of the planet (for a change). We are the part of nature that can -- but too rarely does -- think about how to clean up after itself. McKibben makes clear, in this book, in Enough, and probably in his forthcoming Deep Economy -- that he thinks we must rein ourselves in, stop growing, stop re-engineering the planet and ourselves, declare "halt!"

I'm with Stewart Brand on this: "you have to keep trying new things," like biotech, and sometimes you have to rehabilitate old ones -- maybe even nukes.