What Do You Think Today?

[Avatar]

Out for a walk yesterday on a coastal path - a lonely but not unfrequented spot popular as it is with locals and dog walkers - I came across a four inch or thereabouts square rock in the path where on the flat upper surface some wag had written in black felt tip marker he words God Eats Shit.

Graffiti is the voice of the people.

--A

[Skyweir]

Graffiti can totally suck lol

Arguably tis a fact that no such omnipotent being exists to object to the Neanderthal abuse.

[peter]

I think Neil de Grasse Thysen (sorry Neil if I got the spelling wrong) in his series *Cosmos* described the effects of co2 build up in the atmosphere of a planet and if you think we can survive that well, sorry kids but dream on! It may be possible to stop the process and put it into reverse - but I doubt it; certainly none of us have it in us to make the necessary changes. Our cruel fate is that we have the knowledge of where we are going, but not the power to prevent it. We each have to deal with this in our own way.

[Skyweir]

But what of the technology that converts CO2 from the atmosphere?

[peter]

Yes - sorry for my unnecessarily pessimistic view of our position in the last day or so guys! Probably just a reflection of where I was coming from more than one based on actuality.

Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks, and all that.

O

[Avatar]

Nothing wrong with pessimism. In a sense, it's absolutely justified. We will all die.

--A

[Savor Dam]

We will all die.

Some day, in some way...but not just yet!

[peter]

Well oddly enough, that's where my pessimistic thinking ends. I have come via a long journey to a place where although I agree we will all die, I think that the story we are all part of is simply so much bigger than we can comprehend that the transition that we see as death is of itself (in relation to this story) of minor significance.

But in the current context must remind myself to "Write a hundred lines Peter!"

I must see the glass half full........

I must see the glass half full........

I must see the glass half full........

[Skyweir]

Yup we all got us days where we just go .. meh we are all fucked and the world is going to hell in a handbasket

And then .. maybe not Today the glass is half full and who knows tomorrow it might be full to overflowing

Life is like a box of chocolates, ya never know whatcha gonna get. Or so says Forrest Gump

And just to add insult to injury .. I think this is an amazing world and I just love it. My world is fairly small but it is beautiful I sometimes find it hard to appreciate the naysayer perspective .. cos its not in my line of sight.

My world is lush and green, filled with colour, health and vibrance.. clear skies, beautiful air, clean water, sun, trees, etc etc

I suspect your worlds are arguably similar

[peter]

Greta Thunbberg is important. Sufficiently important that it is right and proper that she jet around the world calling our politicians out for their failure to grasp the nettle of climate change and environmental degradation.

Emma Thompson is important. Sufficiently so that it too is right and proper that she break her busy schedule to fly in from the US to join with the Extinction Rebellion protestors in London to help spread the message as well.

The doctors, lawyers and professionals who were arrested, glued to bollards and chained to railings in said protests are important too. Important enough that they can justify the use of the SUV's and people carriers they need in order to dispense the essential services they administer to a grateful society.

No, when it comes to actually making the sacrifices, actually doing the nuts and bolts stuff that will make all the difference to the future pathway of the on going calamity that is climate change it is the unimportant who will have to be forced, by law or economic means, to shoulder the brunt of the changes, to take as it were, one for the team. This of course is only right and proper.

But it does occur to me that just perhaps, there might be a fly in the ointment of this satisfactory way og going forward, one slightly overlooked consideration. That is, it does not tend to be the people roaming the plains of Africa, or come to that who live in the council estates of the UK, that are the ones who leave the big carbon footprint stomped all over the world we live in. To be honest, they don't have the SUV's - they're fortunate even to have a car at all in most cases - they don't take the flights and they don't have the big under-occupied houses that soak up fossil fuels as fast as yo can pull them from the ground. In fact it would be fair to say that in terms of energy efficient usage vs income by very necessity as well as simple economics a pretty inversely proportional state of affairs exists; the higher the one, the lower the other.

Hmmm.......

Just thought I'd say.......

[I'm Murrin]

That's a pretty bullshit argument, peter, that serves only to distract from the actual problems. Individuals are not significant enough for their behaviour to particularly matter in these things; it's the larger systems and industry where changes are most needed.

[peter]

Now this of course is the second classic 'get out of jail free' position that we take to justify not actually doing anything ourselves to help redress the situation of the human contribution to climate change.

The It's all the fault of industry! position.

Thus is responsibility neatly sidestepped and the onus to deal with the problem moved neatly into someone else's corner, be it Government, Industry or whoever and we ourselves are spared the hard graft of actually doing anything of true significance ourselves.

[I'm Murrin]

Nothing we do as individuals is of true significance, peter.

[peter]

In this we are in complete agreement Murrin.

[Avatar]

Depends.

Of significance to whom?

--A

[Orlion]

What is true? What can be true? What qualities does that thing have to possess to be true?

After all, if we are speaking of something akin to authenticity, something that is authentic would naturally be fleeting. To then say that something is inauthentic because it does not meet impossible standards would be kinda making the distinction pretty much worthless.

[peter]

The question is, given all this what is the right approach, the right balance if you like, that an individual or family unit should strike, between putting ones entire life into shutdown (abandoning ones car except for the rarest of forays - or altogether, never flying again, only buying food with a near zero food-mile footprint and cutting out all red meat, reducing ones home power consumption to near zero by installing all renewable energy powered amenities or going cold and reading books by candlelight). Or, alternatively, taking the position that if this can be fixed it has to be done so from a distance, and that any action that any one household takes is wasted effort given the huge worldwide scale of the problem and the limited actions of countries elsewhere to apply the same measures, so one is effectively sacrificing ones one bite of life in attempting to fight what is already a lost cause?

The easy answer is to make small sacrifices here and there - use your bike etc except at weekend, limit your red meat consumption and turn your thermostat down to 19C - but the reality is that this simply isn't going to cut it. It might make you feel better, but in truth it's wasted effort, so you might as well do nothing.

[Avatar]

Yeah...not gonna happen.

--A

[Skyweir]

Funny I rarely eat meat .. but DO enjoy meat from time to time. My thermostat when I used reverse cycle heating is never higher than 18C. I live in a remote idyllic location with unsealed dirt roads and very often have to offroad on large properties.. cross creek and rivers at times and I do this by 4WD .. but I do all the things I can feasibly do to reduce my carbon footprint. Im not doing EVERYTHING I could do but that is by deliberate choice and tenability.

I am able to manage as far as practicable my own little microcosm. Its no great hardship to me .. in fact I purposely dont engage in activity that would cause me hardship.

And if after all I do .. nothing changes .. the planet is hit by a meteor or fries its circuits through global warming ... so be it.

If everyone is simply conscious of what they do and how they do it ... EVEN better .. and if we humans manage to turn the tide of calamity ... so be it.

Each and everyone of us are on the clock and our days are numbered .. our time is finite. WE are each drawing closer to our inevitable end.

Is this ideal? I dont know, nor could I say .. in truth .. but is it enough? Only you can say for you. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow... what would climate change mean for you?

Youd be dead .. no longer an issue for you. But if you live your life in a way that makes you and yours happy .. you have already succeeded for you.

What about future generations? If we each do what we can and the generations that follow do the same .. I dont truly think it matters. Your progenitors may also be hit by busses .. we just dont know, nor can we see the future.

I trust in science and will defer to their input. But even scientists cant mobilise a global population. So we are left with our individual microcosms .. and if we do what we can to look after them .. again we have succeeded imv.

If the planet explodes .. I dont think it will .. I truly believe like others, that the planet itself will survive us .... but if it .. perchance does explode or gets hit by a meteor .. so be it.

Its unlikely that could be prevented ... unless of course Bruce Willis and whats his name Ben Affleck et al are still alive and can change its trajectory.

[peter]

But what of climate change denial? Is there still a feasible argument against man made climate change out there or is belief in this direction akin to membership of the flat-earth society? I mean, the path America seems to be taking at least implies that there is pretty significant numbers of people, if not experts in the field , that simply don't buy that the situation is as bad as we are led to believe. The administration certainly doesn't seem to think so. If there is a credible possibility that the mainstream position is overblown, or we are led to believe so, then we are bound to make a different odds assesment in respect of what degree of drastic measures we adopt (or don't) in our attempt to 'make a difference'.

By the time you factor in both the chance that the science might be wrong (I don't know - I'm not an expert and some people who apparently are say it might be) and the likelihood that any attempts to make a difference by cutting out stuff that I do in my daily life will be futile in the face of inactivity across the wider globe and industry etc.......

.........then there doesn't seem to be much point left in trying to do anything anyway?

(This approach just seems simply to be wrong somehow, but I equally simply just can't seem to put my finger on where!)

But I just want to quote in full a short review of the book The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells that appeared in my magazine The Week this week.

A calm and almost detached account of the possible, indeed probable horrors that await the world in which [our] grandchildren will live, as a result of the global warming which is well under way. "It is worse", runs the opening sentence, "much worse, than you think".