Debunking Millenial Fears; the Green Perspective

Sorry for the absence (likely to continue due to needs of post-production on a short film) but I couldn't resist putting up the opening to an article which manages to combine two of this particular blog's likes in one: green topics + debunking the end of the world.

Entitled "The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb" by WorldChanging's Alex Steffen, here are the first few 'graphs:

"In thinking seriously about the negative trends in our future, we're severely hampered by the Hollywood idea of the Apocalypse. That idea, in turn, has deep roots in the millenarianism of monotheistic religions (in which there is an End of Days and it's coming soon) and of 19th Century social movements (there is a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and it's coming soon). Millenarianism has its own problems, not least of which is that people do horrible things to others in the name of clearing the way for their chosen perfect future. But for our discussion here, let's just confine our understanding of the credo to what it has done to our conception of the future.

"Believing in a millennial future, or even frequently telling stories of such futures, blinds us both to what history teaches us about collapses and to what we know about our present moment. It makes us bad at thinking intelligently about the future.

"This is a topic that could use careful consideration from a number of angles, but I have about 30 minutes to write today, so instead let's just list some of the futurist fallacies we tend to embrace because (whether we're consciously aware of it or not), we're applying a millennial lens to the events unfolding around us.

"1) The Apocalypse is coming. There is a tendency to believe that big, catastrophic and singular events are going to come and destroy everything: that the Bird Flu or whatever is going to suddenly happen and immediately life will be hell. (The funniest example of this is climate change in The Day After Tomorrow, where sea level rise is so sudden that water rushes down the streets of New York in great rolling waves.)

"2) The Apocalypse is forever. In disaster movies and such, people seem to lack the ability to regroup and rebuild. Sometimes a hero will -- usually by killing a monster/ warlord/ robot/Tina Turner -- win the chance for one small group to start over, but the implication is usually that the rest of the planet's a write off for the imaginable future.

But naturally, you want to read the rest. Be my guest... click here.

Doom-mongering, Eco-optimism and Green Cities

A very interesting debate is shaping up on green and eco-blogs in that warnings of woe and disaster are actually a huge disincentive when it comes to mobilising people to embracing sustainable and environmentally-conscious living.

What is it in the human pyche that is so drawn to the thought of its own doom, yet somehow thrives far better on the hope it so easily dismisses in favour of fear?

I know that I, personally, am functioning a lot better now that I am getting better acquainted with the burdgeoning clean technologies out there, and the willingness of so many different kinds of people to voluntarily re-structure their lives, their hopes for the future and their day-to-day needs to acknowledge the vital interdependence of everything and live more lightly on the earth.

Indeed, optimism and a willingness to see oneself connected to everything - in contrast to surrendering our privileges as part of confronting the exigencies of global warming and climate change - makes for a much more palatable combination, and is, thus, ultimately more of a motivation toward eco-positive living.

Speaking of interdependence, many of the posts at the WorldChanging site are dedicated to green cities and how living in community is better for us and for the environment.

You can't get much better than the unrelentingly thorough analysis entitled, "My Other Car is a Bright Green City," by Alex Steffen, which posits the following, amid weighing up the impact of suburban individualism, mobility and inefficient land use:

"I think whether or not green cars arrive, building bright green cities is a winning strategy: if the cars don't arrive, land-use change is clearly needed to save our bacon; if they do arrive, they might well fit quite nicely into the new fabric of sustainable urban life, and we're all better off for it -- the air's that much cleaner, the grid that much smarter, our economic advantage in clean technology that much greater.

"Most arguments against land-use change presume that building compact communities is a trade-off; that investing in getting walkable, denser neighborhoods, we lose some or a lot of our affluence or quality of life. What if that's not true, though? What if the gains actually far outweigh the costs not only in ecological and fiscal terms, but in lifestyle and prosperity terms as well? I think that's the case.

"I believe that green compact communities, smaller well-built homes, walkable streets and smart infrastructure can actually offer a far better quality of life than living in McMansion hintersprawl in purely material terms: more comfort, more security, more true prosperity. But even more to the point, I believe they offer all sorts of non-materialistic but extremely real benefits that suburbs cannot. Opponents of smart growth talk about sacrificing our way of life -- but it's not a sacrifice if what you get in exchange is superior."

I happen to agree, but then, I would, since I am definitely a city person, despite my love of nature - and I dream of a future in which urban communities are not merely better integrated with their surrounding environment and ecosystems, but which also change our collective way of thinking about life. Towns and cities, in other words, in which the natural world isn't kept at bay, in which people walk, cycle or take public transport from place to place and where neighbours know and look out for each other.

In addition, I dream of an urban simplicity that does not sacrifice technological advances - something Steffen mentions when he says:

Wired urban living might very well soon evolve into a series of systems for letting us live affluent, convenient lives without actually owning a lot of things. If cities are engines for creating social connections, walkshed technologies might be said to make those connections into tools for trumping the hassle of owning stuff with the pleasure of using stuff to get the vivid experiences and deep relationships we crave. If that happens, we'll have a major leverage point to work with.

You can read the rest of Steffen's intriguing analysis here.

Sea Levels Rising due to Global Warming? Get Thee to a Jellyfish House-ery

Just stumbled on the following from the excellent WorldChanging archives...

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006457.html

A Jellyfish House. Truly, as depressed as I am about our abuse of the planet and globalization's evils, I am equally amazed at humanity's innovation.

No doubt with the impending ingress of Pluto into Capricorn we're going to see a radical emergence of new physical structures (after the old ones are finally pronounced in need of burying) and not a moment too soon, given those melting ice caps...