Usually, I try to avoid the smugness Europeans like to pretend they don't indulge in, and had been grateful for the moderately more effective response by the EU towards the credit crisis.
I had also been happier with the greater concern - comparatively - that Europe had shown towards global warming and its related bag of terrors, than some other developed countries.
But I was disheartened, to say the least, to see the following posted on the New York Times website today:
European Nations Seek to Revise Agreement on Emissions Cuts
"BRUSSELS — Fears of a sharp worldwide economic slowdown are threatening a hard-won European plan on climate change that European leaders hoped would set an example for the rest of the world.
At a rancorous summit meeting this week of the European Union’s heads of state, several Eastern European countries and Italy said they might no longer be able to afford to slash greenhouse gas emissions as envisioned under a broad plan agreed upon last year and would need some concessions from other countries in the bloc. That agreement called for the union to reduce such emissions, linked by climate scientists to global warming, by 20 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020.
The plan — hailed by the former French president Jacques Chirac as “a great moment in European history” — goes beyond the Kyoto Protocol, which requires industrial nations bound by the treaty to reduce the emission of global-warming gases by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
After the outline was agreed to last year, the countries began working on detailed proposals for how they would reach the goal for emissions cuts, which essentially meant figuring out how much of an economic burden each nation would bear. France, which holds the rotating presidency of the union, had hoped to win approval for a more detailed agreement in December.
While some countries had already begun worrying about how much they were being asked to contribute to hit the emissions reduction goal, the economic downturn increased their concerns."
Read the rest here.
And if you're in mind to get an astrological perspective of the rather gobsmacking changes we're living through, check out the humour, insight and analysis at the wonderful Astrotabletalk blog, run by Dharmaruci.
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Solar Solutions, Green Collars and Eco-(Un)Friendly Takeaways
Time for some green stuff, to satisfy the eco-concerned out theah - which includes me, good people - so I figured I'd do an extra-verdant melange of emerald bits n' pieces tonight.
Being resident again in Cyprus, the island of my birth, after many years abroad, it is a joy to take for granted the abundance of sunshine, light and heat during most of the year (though, right now, we're in the midst of severe drought, so as much as I am a Sol-worshipper, I dread the consequences of our near-bone-dry reservoirs and dams). However, what would please me even more would be even greater investment in solar energy technology on the island.
If we could use solar power for (unfortunately vital) desalination of water, it would add to be a considerable energy saving, not to mention, ultimately cheaper for the tax-payer, since Cyprus has no oil or gas reserves of its own, and must ship them in - a process, in itself, that pollutes the environment, to say nothing of the CO2 emission from the vast amount of power required for the desalination process.
In the US, one individual who is really pushing solar solutions - not merely to promote environmental responsibility in light of global warming, but also to boost inner cities' standard of living and create jobs in "green construction and alternative energy" - is Yale-educated lawyer Van Jones, the Oakland, CA-based human-rights activist.
Byran Walsh's TIME magazine article entitled "Bring Eco-Power to the People" has this to say of Jones:
You couldn't create a better advocate for the green-collar movement than Jones. A Yale-educated lawyer who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, the magnetic Jones moves easily between worlds, at home preaching to inner-city high school students or mixing with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But everywhere Jones goes, he repeats a simple message. "Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work," he says, and solve two pressing problems--pollution and poverty--at once.
For the environmental movement, embracing Jones' message means recasting global warming not just as an existential threat but as an enormous economic opportunity. It's a narrative that is particularly resonant with low-income workers who are likely to bear the short-term economic burden of cutting carbon only if they believe there will be a personal payoff for them in the long run. Says Jones: "They need to see green in their pockets."
The rest of the article can be read: here.
On a related note (well, 'related' in the sense that it's another area in which to heed the need for green) just how environmentally sound can we grade our takeout or takeaway receptacles as being?
Elizabeth Gillian, writing for chow.com broaches the topic thusly:
Your food can’t go everywhere exposed to the elements; it needs packaging. Unfortunately, that packaging often takes massive amounts of energy to create, and much of it doesn’t properly decompose. We’ve rated some common carriers on a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (good).
The usual suspects follow with their pros and cons re. eco-friendliness, with some (styrofoam) being predictably on the more culpable or virtuous (edible containers made from food) end of the scale, while others (aluminium foil) falling surprisingly somewhere in the middle.
For those of us who, for a range of reasons, consider dinner (or lunch - or even breakfast) prep to be speed-dialing the nearest Thai place for some green chicken curry delivery, the green-or-not low-down on transporting eats to your home in all its depressing glory can be found here.
Being resident again in Cyprus, the island of my birth, after many years abroad, it is a joy to take for granted the abundance of sunshine, light and heat during most of the year (though, right now, we're in the midst of severe drought, so as much as I am a Sol-worshipper, I dread the consequences of our near-bone-dry reservoirs and dams). However, what would please me even more would be even greater investment in solar energy technology on the island.
If we could use solar power for (unfortunately vital) desalination of water, it would add to be a considerable energy saving, not to mention, ultimately cheaper for the tax-payer, since Cyprus has no oil or gas reserves of its own, and must ship them in - a process, in itself, that pollutes the environment, to say nothing of the CO2 emission from the vast amount of power required for the desalination process.
In the US, one individual who is really pushing solar solutions - not merely to promote environmental responsibility in light of global warming, but also to boost inner cities' standard of living and create jobs in "green construction and alternative energy" - is Yale-educated lawyer Van Jones, the Oakland, CA-based human-rights activist.
Byran Walsh's TIME magazine article entitled "Bring Eco-Power to the People" has this to say of Jones:
You couldn't create a better advocate for the green-collar movement than Jones. A Yale-educated lawyer who founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, the magnetic Jones moves easily between worlds, at home preaching to inner-city high school students or mixing with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. But everywhere Jones goes, he repeats a simple message. "Give the work that most needs to be done to the people who most need the work," he says, and solve two pressing problems--pollution and poverty--at once.
For the environmental movement, embracing Jones' message means recasting global warming not just as an existential threat but as an enormous economic opportunity. It's a narrative that is particularly resonant with low-income workers who are likely to bear the short-term economic burden of cutting carbon only if they believe there will be a personal payoff for them in the long run. Says Jones: "They need to see green in their pockets."
The rest of the article can be read: here.
On a related note (well, 'related' in the sense that it's another area in which to heed the need for green) just how environmentally sound can we grade our takeout or takeaway receptacles as being?
Elizabeth Gillian, writing for chow.com broaches the topic thusly:
Your food can’t go everywhere exposed to the elements; it needs packaging. Unfortunately, that packaging often takes massive amounts of energy to create, and much of it doesn’t properly decompose. We’ve rated some common carriers on a scale from 1 (bad) to 5 (good).
The usual suspects follow with their pros and cons re. eco-friendliness, with some (styrofoam) being predictably on the more culpable or virtuous (edible containers made from food) end of the scale, while others (aluminium foil) falling surprisingly somewhere in the middle.
For those of us who, for a range of reasons, consider dinner (or lunch - or even breakfast) prep to be speed-dialing the nearest Thai place for some green chicken curry delivery, the green-or-not low-down on transporting eats to your home in all its depressing glory can be found here.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Hot Dollars to fight Climate Change...
Dot Earth - the New York Times' climate change/environment/green issues blog by Andrew C. Revkin has a great new post about "Paying the Cost of Climate Change". Here follow the opening paragraphs:"Peter Barnes, a founder of Working Assets, the fund making “socially responsible” investments, has long studied various bills and proposals for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide to limit global warming. He sees fatal flaws in every one. So he has come up with a new formula that he says uniquely addresses the most inconvenient truth about climate policy: It will be expensive.
"As he put it recently: “Fighting climate change is going to cost all of us money. That’s because the price of dumping carbon into the atmosphere must, necessarily, rise. Whether the price rise is prompted by a tax or a cap makes no difference — we will all pay more.”
"He proposes a “cap and dividend” system that charges a rising fee on sources of greenhouse-gas emissions (to propel a long-term shift away from such pollution) and returns the revenue to citizens, rich or poor, through a direct payment not unlike the checks that Alaska residents get every year from fees paid to the state by oil companies."
You can read the rest of Revkin's post (not to mention responses to the 'cap and dividend' idea) here: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/paying-the-high-cost-of-climate-control/index.html?hp
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Earth Guardian for Future Generations?
"What do you owe someone else’s great-grandchildren?
"How do we apportion responsibility across time for dealing with multigenerational impacts, like the human contribution to climate change, and multigenerational tasks, like transforming how we harvest and use energy?"
As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I tend to read the online edition of The New York Times a fair deal. This evening, outlined on the paper's excellent eco-blog - dot earth, I came across the following inspired proposal for the next US president to appoint a “legal guardian of future generations” to consider the impact of policy choices on citizens yet unborn.
You can read the post here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/does-the-future-need-a-legal-guardian/index.html?hp
"How do we apportion responsibility across time for dealing with multigenerational impacts, like the human contribution to climate change, and multigenerational tasks, like transforming how we harvest and use energy?"
As I've mentioned in an earlier post, I tend to read the online edition of The New York Times a fair deal. This evening, outlined on the paper's excellent eco-blog - dot earth, I came across the following inspired proposal for the next US president to appoint a “legal guardian of future generations” to consider the impact of policy choices on citizens yet unborn.
You can read the post here:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/does-the-future-need-a-legal-guardian/index.html?hp
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Goodbye to All That, or 2012 and the End of Time
I may as well confess that one of the reasons I've made a commitment to keep writing this blog is a profound fear of death.
I'm not quite as unhinged as when Tennyson undertook the mammoth 17-year task of writing In Memoriam A. H. H to come to grips with the passing of a very dear friend of his - and to keep from going mad from grief - but the sheer, animal fear on the bad days, and the duller-but-still-persistent existential malaise at the thought of annihilation, has fallen like a shockingly effective sound blanket - heh, couldn't resist the filmmaker allusion - on the buzz and hum that was my former drive for living.
It's rather hard to live well and to feel strong enough to tap whatever wit, passion or courage for adventure and growth one has if one is busy struggling, every day, with the idea that time is running out.
And it seems to be running out very quickly. And I go back and forth on this doom-laden stance, sometimes retreating to a more hopeful position, other times swinging back to preparing for the end.
But how did all this begin? Well, some months ago, I had finally signed up for a correspondence course on Astrology. The problem is, the course is offered by a mystery school whose founder and supporters are, as I write this, preparing for a cataclysmic disaster the like of which will render 90 percent of life on the planet dead. To wit: they're preparing for pole shift - as in the shifting of the earth's axis, not to be confused with a shift of the planet's magnetic poles - and are warning those who visit the site and are open to the thought of the end of life as we know it, to resettle in latitudes greater than 65 degrees North.
Effectively, that means within the present Arctic circle.
As I have understood it, this planetary event is meant to occur on December 21, 2012, at the end of the Mayan long count or 'calendar', after which 'life' will continue, but only those evolved enough to survive the energy shift - which is apparently the true cause of the pole shift - and who, presumably, have relocated to the Arctic circle in time - will be around to experience it. The rest of sentient life will physically perish and be reincarnated into other worlds of a lower energy vibration - suited to their level of spiritual evolution.
In this scenario, what I fear most is dying of fear or somehow surviving to find people closest to me dead and a new stone age beginning.
Now, there are other sites in the New Age blogosphere that argue the labours of 'lightworkers' of every kind from around the world has 'ameliorated' the prophesied changes to the lesser (though still deadly to many) natural disasters we are currently dealing with, and that the earth's changes are a mirror of the true transition - the heightening in spiritual consciousness - that all of life - including humankind - is experiencing.
Some also argue that the material world is not what we think it is, but a common dream/illusion we are choosing to participate in.
Still others believe we are living in the 'end times' apparently foretold in the sacred writings of several religions and faith traditions, not least those of indigenous peoples, the Bible, and those who claim to be in touch with the earth's spiritual masters - the mysterious Heirarchy.
This camp believes that, on December 21, 2012, those who are evolved enough to endure living in the fifth dimension - or, at any rate, on some sort of multidimensional plane where linear time no longer exists - will be taken up to other levels of existence, some versions have the process aided by far more evolved aliens in spacecraft (the New Age version of the Biblical 'rapture') - while the rest of humanity will undergo the dreaded Tribulation mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelations - which apparently entails physical phenomena such as land masses disappearing (eg. much of Southern California and New York) extreme volcanicity, earthquakes and ultra-powerful winds. Meanwhile, the moon will disappear temporarily and all will be pitch darkness.
After the end of these terrors - which in some versions last about a week, but the timing is sketchy - those fortunate few who 'ascended' before the calamity will be returned to rebuild the earth and usher in a new golden age.
Now, ordinarily, a sceptic like myself would have rejoiced at the mention of aliens - not because I don't believe there aren't other inhabited worlds out there - but because my mind just sort of shuts down at such a quasi-comical, Sci-Fi B-movie-plot-sounding scenario.
I might also have taken heart from all the New Age blogs writing about the apparent new generations of spiritually-evolved and highly-gifted kids (the Indigo, Crystal and Rainbow children) being born to assist this incredibly powerful transition to a new Earth and new spiritual plane.
And then there's the fact that several discount the idea of the Mayan long count being an actual numerical calendar - arguing that it was meant to be symbolic, and not actually chronologically linear, not to mention that many such folks also believe the 'true' Mayan count comes to an end on October 28, 2011.
However.
Somehow, deep, deep within, I fear our collective annihilation just the same. It could be just that I am supremely sensitive to suppressed Collective fears (actually, I am - no doubt about it) and that we're all experiencing the despair borne of the enormously impulsive, savage, fundamentalist and commercially greedy era of Pluto (bringer of death and transformation) in the sign of Sagittarius (the Higher Mind, religion, Truth with a capital 'T', philosophy, higher learning, restless travelling and reckless optimism).
It could be all of the above and the fact that I have desperate-for-security Saturn in Cancer, which has also recently been rattled by the transit of Mars in Cancer (currently retrograde and heading back into Gemini) opposing Pluto at the end of Sadge and about to enter Capricorn towards the end of January 2008 AND the fact that my growing interest in Baha'i has led me to learn of Abdu'l-Baha's prediction of a calamity such as "to make the limbs of men quake" that must be endured before a new age of unity and peace can begin.
At any rate, even if we're not going to be wiped out by pole shift in 2012, as of now, we're sure as hell plunged up to the neck in crisis with the mounting danger of climate change and the potential collapse of civilisation as we know it, given the increasing demand on shrinking resources. Can we all work together to stop the grim countdown that the eco-crisis seems to portend?
I don't know.
What I do know is that I have to find a way of breaking through the sheer paralysis from fear when I contemplate famines, droughts, heightened earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, savage wars over life-sustaining territory and a million different ways to die - or survive on a planet that could prove hostile in ways unimaginable to someone born and raised in the privileges of the Developed World.
At any rate, if this really is a countdown to some catastrophe from which few shall escape with their lives, I pray I may be used to help and heal people and be as creative as I can. I had great hopes for my life, but of late I have had to entertain, more and more, the idea that I am truly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. 'I' have, more and more, ceased to exist. At least the old me, that used to want fame and a successful film career and professional respect.
How can I be important when innocent babies are born to the torment of life in a Darfuri refugee camp or the open air concentration camp that is beseiged Gaza or the ravaged, war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan or a million other places where people live in poverty, anguish, hunger, suffering and despair.
I should rejoice in the knowledge, then, that I am truly insignificant. And yet, there is a part of me that wants to live. To live expressing my highest, most wise, most compassionate, most creative self, for however long or brief that might be. May I choose wisely as time thunders to 2012, and may I be receptive to being used by God in service to others, however it best pleases the Universe.
Funnily enough, having mulled over these thoughts as I took my walk today, Christmas day in the West, once at home, I stumbled on a poem I apparently wrote October 22, 1999, and had completely forgotten about. It's rather rough - a sonnet of all things (Petrarchan for those who care, though it slips up in the sestet to rhyme cdcdcc for some reason...) that I must have intended to return to and refine, but put out of my mind instead. A strange synchronicity, given that it reads:
Stopped Time
There are those words that are far better stored
within the heart than uttered by the tongue.
And if such occult hymns are muted sung
impatient ears must hearken to the bawd,
whose music both offends and pleases, poured
brazen from more wanton lips. For naught, young-
er and less experienced notes softly hang
in unrequited hush, to be ignored.
I may grow lean, grey-pallored, dull of eye,
abbreviate my steps, speak slower yet,
but age, which brings me greater wit, will play
not winter on these pipes. Still green, bereft
of voice, I wither on and on, to be
love’s stoppered vial, in dumb eternity.
If, beyond 2012, I am alive, I will have been reborn, indeed. Become 'immortal' one might say, since, as far I can make out, you can only die once in any given incarnation! Either way, it will be a very interesting countdown to my 37th year - particularly as Pluto inches towards my natal Moon in Capricorn.
A profound death and resurrection awaits.
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