It's a moral issue
Great fun that Gore's movie "An inconvenient Truth" won an academy award. Well, if nothing else it's a good feel-good redemption for the "Inconvenient chads" in Florida 2000. President Bush has his 30% approval, and Gore smiles on with his new popularity and well-feed girth.
I just have a ringing still in my ears from his movie, even 8 months ago "It's a moral issue" (that we deal with global warming)
Well, I don't know what a moral issue MEANS, but abortion is also a moral issue - protecting babies or protecting choice, with fundamentalists on both sides.
So Gore's moral issue has fundamentalists as well I imagine - protecting the economic growth and protecting the future of the earth - and his fun example of a balance with gold bars on one side and the earth on the other. Gore has taken sides - says the earth is more important than the economy.
Well, NO he hasn't exactly said that, not absolutely. He admits the economy is important and can't be stopped, but really no problem, just tighten our belts a bit, and get a few new technical miracles and we can continue with something like what we've done in the past.
It would be MORE FUN if Gore would have said "It's a moral issue" to the fact the U.S. has under 5% of the world population and consumes something over 25% of the world's energy. SURE China is belching its way along to catch up with our CO2 consumption, and must exceed our production of particulates at least, but seriously the moral issue is that the world can not handle our current consumption while the rest of the world is trying to catch up.
No, it may be a moral issue, but really it's a political issue. WE can feel guilty for our excesses, but until the consequences affect us intimately we're not going to change. I mean not on some abstract invisible CO2 argument anyway. The silly right "CO2 is life" ads are unworthy, but the ads are not even needed really.
The political issue is how we'll prepare for more expensive, more dirty energy in the future as global warming and population rises stress local environments into time-bombs waiting to be triggered. The political issue is how to deal with a million refugees after each local crisis, whether water shortages in the Southwest, or hurricane flooding in the south, or whatever. I think about that sitting safely in the nation's refrigerator called Minnesota. I don't know what crises we have in store - perhaps slow drought anyway, and natural gas shortages under a bad winter perhaps, but we're pretty well holed-up here. I suppose economic failure is the primary risk - when the federal government finally blows out all faith in the future by excess borrowing.
There's innumerable "moral issues" that are reduced to mere "political issues" - how can a society respond to needed change to reduce long term costs.
I was just reading about a reformed environmentalist "Stewart Brand" who complains of the harm causes by excessive worry of other environmentalists - nuclear power and genetic engineering. He says environmentalists underestimate the resilience of nature and human systems to adapt to changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand
I don't disagree with his approach. I agree largely the environmental costs of coal are no lower than uranium. I can't be optimistic about the future of modern culture.
I am moved by our great successes, and possibility to predict the future - to measure 1C temperature changes over a century? That seems pretty subtle to me. I basically accept there are excesses within our monetary system that MUST lead to collapse, whatever is happening within the environment and availability of energy and resources.
It's a moral issue to be confident that the future of all good things rests on consumption patterns which must change, and that all incremental solutions seem to do nothing more than delay the day of destiny.
Raising children is a moral issue too. I wonder what advice to offer my girlfriend's oldest son, now 15, as he starts to stake out his place in the world. Do I admit my pessimist, admit that 4 years at the university might NOT be worth the 10 years of debt it now costs. No a moral issue might best be responded to by the conclusion that ignorance is bliss - until consciousness is ready for change, there's no value in honest knowledge.
And so Gore's optimism in "Can Do" spirit perhaps is the only useful response, however dishonest.
It is curious to question "Fatalism", my belief in inevitable failure. It is a pragmatic response. It's a nice illusion to believe in the progress of humanity, to imagine hard work adds to the sum total of humanity into an infinite tower of Babel to God. But knowing there IS lose and failure and unpaid costs out there waiting for us, I think Fatalism has a value - to lower our expectations of heroism and accept what pleasures the moment can bring. An ugly fatalism will accelerate the race to the cliff, but an ugly faith in progress can do that just as well. A softer fatalism merely takes the reality of the limits of time, and tries to delay the day of destiny - not delay by higher walls against the flood, but delay by seeing each day as unique. I don't know something like that. Basically fatalism is a BRAKE to ambition. I believe that. It is about finding a resting point.
I just have a ringing still in my ears from his movie, even 8 months ago "It's a moral issue" (that we deal with global warming)
Well, I don't know what a moral issue MEANS, but abortion is also a moral issue - protecting babies or protecting choice, with fundamentalists on both sides.
So Gore's moral issue has fundamentalists as well I imagine - protecting the economic growth and protecting the future of the earth - and his fun example of a balance with gold bars on one side and the earth on the other. Gore has taken sides - says the earth is more important than the economy.
Well, NO he hasn't exactly said that, not absolutely. He admits the economy is important and can't be stopped, but really no problem, just tighten our belts a bit, and get a few new technical miracles and we can continue with something like what we've done in the past.
It would be MORE FUN if Gore would have said "It's a moral issue" to the fact the U.S. has under 5% of the world population and consumes something over 25% of the world's energy. SURE China is belching its way along to catch up with our CO2 consumption, and must exceed our production of particulates at least, but seriously the moral issue is that the world can not handle our current consumption while the rest of the world is trying to catch up.
No, it may be a moral issue, but really it's a political issue. WE can feel guilty for our excesses, but until the consequences affect us intimately we're not going to change. I mean not on some abstract invisible CO2 argument anyway. The silly right "CO2 is life" ads are unworthy, but the ads are not even needed really.
The political issue is how we'll prepare for more expensive, more dirty energy in the future as global warming and population rises stress local environments into time-bombs waiting to be triggered. The political issue is how to deal with a million refugees after each local crisis, whether water shortages in the Southwest, or hurricane flooding in the south, or whatever. I think about that sitting safely in the nation's refrigerator called Minnesota. I don't know what crises we have in store - perhaps slow drought anyway, and natural gas shortages under a bad winter perhaps, but we're pretty well holed-up here. I suppose economic failure is the primary risk - when the federal government finally blows out all faith in the future by excess borrowing.
There's innumerable "moral issues" that are reduced to mere "political issues" - how can a society respond to needed change to reduce long term costs.
I was just reading about a reformed environmentalist "Stewart Brand" who complains of the harm causes by excessive worry of other environmentalists - nuclear power and genetic engineering. He says environmentalists underestimate the resilience of nature and human systems to adapt to changes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand
I don't disagree with his approach. I agree largely the environmental costs of coal are no lower than uranium. I can't be optimistic about the future of modern culture.
I am moved by our great successes, and possibility to predict the future - to measure 1C temperature changes over a century? That seems pretty subtle to me. I basically accept there are excesses within our monetary system that MUST lead to collapse, whatever is happening within the environment and availability of energy and resources.
It's a moral issue to be confident that the future of all good things rests on consumption patterns which must change, and that all incremental solutions seem to do nothing more than delay the day of destiny.
Raising children is a moral issue too. I wonder what advice to offer my girlfriend's oldest son, now 15, as he starts to stake out his place in the world. Do I admit my pessimist, admit that 4 years at the university might NOT be worth the 10 years of debt it now costs. No a moral issue might best be responded to by the conclusion that ignorance is bliss - until consciousness is ready for change, there's no value in honest knowledge.
And so Gore's optimism in "Can Do" spirit perhaps is the only useful response, however dishonest.
It is curious to question "Fatalism", my belief in inevitable failure. It is a pragmatic response. It's a nice illusion to believe in the progress of humanity, to imagine hard work adds to the sum total of humanity into an infinite tower of Babel to God. But knowing there IS lose and failure and unpaid costs out there waiting for us, I think Fatalism has a value - to lower our expectations of heroism and accept what pleasures the moment can bring. An ugly fatalism will accelerate the race to the cliff, but an ugly faith in progress can do that just as well. A softer fatalism merely takes the reality of the limits of time, and tries to delay the day of destiny - not delay by higher walls against the flood, but delay by seeing each day as unique. I don't know something like that. Basically fatalism is a BRAKE to ambition. I believe that. It is about finding a resting point.
posted by Ares Olympus at 3:33 PM
1 Comments:
I'm not much with solving moral dilemmas, but you might find the following book on nuclear energy, endorsed by Stewart Brand, to be of interest. "Rad Decision" is a novel on the topic, written by a longtime nuclear worker (me). There's no cost to online readers of "Rad Decision". RadDecision.blogspot.com
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