Drumbeat: August 9, 2009
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Drumbeat: August 9, 2009
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69 comments | Comments can no longer be added to this story.
“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”
—James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy
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Tell me again which galaxy this guy lives in? The author of the article also disses all real scientists by calling him one.
My favorite Lomborg quote:
Ron P.
No, no, no. You don't understand. Lomborg never said all those things people will be bringing up from his books and interviews and articles. Nope. Never happened. He's always been extremely concerned about peak oil and climate chaos, among other issues, and has only (ONLY, I tell you!) been interested in finding the most efficient ways to deal with those problems.
Really.
Seriously.
And then he'll sprout wings and fly to the fairy city on the far side of the moon.
mine...
In its 2007 report, the UN estimates that sea levels will rise about a foot over the rest of the century ... sea-level increase by 2050 will be about 5 inches.
Thanks to this modest sea-level rise, and the possibility that developing countries will have the money in the future to protect their land with levees, he concludes, "a rich Bangladesh will lose only 0.000034 percent of its present dry-land area" (p. 48).
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/14/142514/357
No to mention further sullying the "e" word. I've been a lifetime environmentalist, but words get re-defined and one has to abandon them. Fer'instance, I think I also should be called a conservative, but that word has been appropriated by people who ain't.
The annoying thing isn't that some weasel would decide to be a bizarro-world enviro, it's that the regular world is so dang receptive to it.
Friday, I attended a conference at a local community college with the grand title: Repowering our Region: Building Profit by Being Green. The word "green" was mentioned so many times that the meaning was clearly lost. Also, the word "sustainability" was thrown out, with a brief attempt to define it's meaning from the newly appointed Director of Sustainability at the local state university. I'm afraid that the word "sustainability" has lost much of it's original meaning, judging by the day's presentations.
Going back to the late 1970's, there was lots of discussion about the concept called "sustainable development". Since then, the concept has been hijacked by the financial media, morphing into the often repeated phrase "sustainable GROWTH". Those of us who have followed the questions of Peak Oil and other limits to growth situations know quite well that growth is the problem as growth in real consumption must eventually stop and then begin to decline.
Yet, we now see the words we have so carefully used to discuss the problems have lost their meaning. Perhaps this is part of a planned effort to undermine the discussion before things even begin to reach the popular mind. How can we even begin presenting the problems to the wider audience beyond the academic world to reach the average person, when the words which are available can no longer can be used?
E. Swanson
Actually, the words we use make a big difference... unfortunately.
When planning an advocacy campaign, I try to create and define new terms to frame the discussions, and they have a definite half-life. It's necessary because those on the other side of the issue will have already worked to undermine the existing terminology. Then even after creating new terms, you'd bloody well best achieve your pre-defined objective before the definitions drift too far.
If a term has been around for a while, the odds are it's not useful for changing anything.
"peak oil" for instance is a great term; and it's past it's prime. It doesn't much matter what it really means if everyone who might care thinks they know what it means.
Fer'instance, I helped coin the term "dolphin safe" for tuna as a temporary stopgap; currently there are multiple NGO's which describe it differently, an oft-amended wording drafted by congressional committee, a version pushed by the US dept of Commerce, a still different version promulgated by the IATTC of which the US is a member, and another several versions in Europe. Various of these are subject to legal challenge, and some nations are trying to get the WTO to change it. Point is, the term "dolphin safe" is now robust, printed on cans around the world, but it means different things to different people. (In some places, it appears on cans which are exclusively caught with high dolphin mortality.) And this was predictable - and predicted - all the way back in '83, but trying to get most activists to think ahead is like herding cats. Without something like trademark and tight control, the words evolve in whatever direction serves disparate interests.
I the suggestion of trademarking a term has merit. State clearly the term, and its definition - and get it trademarked. Then if someone attempts to redefine it to mean something else, hit them with a trademark infringement suit.
Even better if you can get them to agree to a licence to use the term, similar to the way 'organic' has been hijacked from a perfectly good English word to something that can only be bestowed by a particular organisation.
I don't believe it is a planned effort to undermine, more like the normal response by our totalitarian economic system. Any deviant activity that threatens the central economic thrust is captured, redirected and brought back into line via commercialisation. Every time some previously non-commercial activity is monetised there is a monetary reward from the economic system to whoever achieves it. This is all it takes to undermine any human activity and bring into the realm of the totalitarian economic system that controls our lives.
"Sustainable development", "green living", "organic", "Permaculture", "survival" and even "collapse" have been or are in the process of commercialisation and redirecting people by stealth back into the economic system via consumerism.
Eventually, every individual will be totally isolated from the natural world and each other, all contact and communication with either will be through the economic system only (ie. will be paid for). Every attempt to be free and live life in a more natural and fulfilling way will be corrupted. Which all sounds very dystopian, but via the process of normalisation most people will never even realise it, unless they attempt some degree of freedom. Few make it.
Read up on the demise of 'The Big Green Gathering' here in the UK. It became too successful, so the authorities required it to jump through legal and security hoops at great expense that it neither needed or wanted, and then forced it to shut down two days before starting over administrative details, forcing it into bankruptcy. The police made secret that they did it because it was a threat to the established order. The event had an almost unique record of low crime and environmental impact.
Local councils seem to be turning into mini-authoritarian states in their own right, backed up by the police. It does seem that the tactic now being employed against loose coalitions of like-mind groups, that cannot be co-opted by traditional means, is to pre-emptively shut them down.
There's nothing that the State fears more than Anarchy (ie. self determinism) which undermines its authority and its ability to control. And the State is beginning to see ever more groups of people falling into that category (which includes Muslims).