A huge problem is that we have a large amount of energy being required from existing ecologically sensitive and aware people who are finding themselves pulled toward protecting and supporting their brothers and sisters, “who they HAVE SEEN”* (see note below) . The result of this is that we expend all this energy for this “fake crisis” (I call Continue Reading
David Wallace-Wells’ own description of the subject of his new book, at the end of the opening from which I have been quoting: “What follows is a kaleidoscopic accounting of the human costs of human life continuing as it has for a generation, which will fill up the planet with only more humans—what ongoing global warming spells for public health, Continue Reading
Just one more of those things that infuriates me about we as a people of the earth: “Slow-walking action on climate, another paper found, will cost the world $26 trillion by just 2030.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. 33). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition. And we have people saying “It costs too much! That’ll wreck the economy! ” Bigtime, deadly B.S.
So, in a paragraph soon to follow the pieces I just challenged, regarding how they seem to be unaware of the “baked in” effects of 1 or 2 decades ago, he writes this: “Carbon hangs in the air for decades, with some of the most terrifying feedbacks unspooling over even longer time horizons—which gives warming the eerie shimmer of an Continue Reading
Wallace-Wells follows that notion I just “cautioned” about, with another not so helpful notion: “We found a way to engineer devastation, and we can find a way to engineer our way out of it—or, rather, engineer our way toward a degraded muddle, but one that nevertheless extends forward the promise of new generations finding their own way forward, perhaps toward Continue Reading
Here’s a notion that Wallace-Wells forwards in his book and to people who ask him about “hope” in the face of his “bleak picture”, which I think paints a false picture: “No matter how out-of-control the climate system seems—with its roiling typhoons, unprecedented famines and heat waves, refugee crises and climate conflicts—we are all its authors. And still writing.” Wallace-Wells, Continue Reading
(Forgive the length of this, but this began as a reply to a comment elsewhere, and turned into a much longer train of thought) A movie called “The Book of Eli” was about a man, in a post apocalyptic world protecting the Bible he obtained/salvaged from an evil despot who sought the book in order to use it to solidify Continue Reading
“The United Nations established its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, signaling to all the world a scientific consensus about the problem. Since then, we have done more damage, knowingly, than we did over preceding centuries, in ignorance.” This needs to be realized, so we can get a grasp on the recognition that causes us to ask: “What the Continue Reading
The final sentence of the previous quote from the Wallace-Wells book provides a good explanation of why I think we need to utilize and “recover” an ancient purpose of the apocalyptic genre: “There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology—and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. Continue Reading
