Monday, June 7, 2010

The Smartest Conversation Yet on Climate Crisis

Last night four authors talked about the Climate Crisis. All had written books on the subject. When people have a shared language and knowledge base, the conversation can go much deeper. It was the smartest conversation yet on the climate crisis that I've heard.

Listening to the conversation felt theraputic, healing, affirming, because it made me feel not alone in my head with these terrifying visions of climate apocalpyse. I think about the climate crisis a lot and I sometimes wonder if I'm not just getting myself hot and bothered. (It would be pleasant to become a Climate Denier and hit the snooze button and shake of the nightmares.) So it felt good to know that smart people who write books are also freaked out, that I'm not the only one shuddering with visions of the death of the Biosphere, that the basic contours of my understanding of the climate crisis are correct.

The Northshire Bookstore brought together Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert and two others. Someday soon I will post a link to the audio of the event.

I want to be having a conversation on this subject, with people this smart, four nights a week. Can some TV producer please manifest a Climate Crisis Roundtable?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Sociopathic Oil Companies and Runaway GMO algea

What do the BP oil spill and the recent announcement of a scientist creating a living cell have in common?

A dangerous threat to the Commons, our shared life here on earth.

Just as BP throws up it hands and says, 'we don't know how to fix it', someday the GMO algea may get loose in the ocean and out compete normal algea, creating a disrupted oceanic ecosystem.

A scientist is pulling the most productive algea components out the algea DNA, and creating a super algea that would be useful in producing fuel. Now, I'm not a super scientist or anything, but it doesn't take alot to see where this one would go into the dickey weeds. It gets loose, it out-competes, disrupts the ecosystem, spreads a mad red tide across the planet, and so on...

our Commons, our shared earth, is a shared valueable treasure, and individuals and corporations don't have the right to disrupt it just for their own greed or desire for scientific fame.

Corporations aren't people, they don't die or feel empathetic pain of others, and one of humanity's great challenges is figuring out how to put humans in the driver's seat instead of faceless corporations. The other great challenge is to learn to handle our super scientific powers and place them in the context of a breakable ecology and a useful morality.