Green politics has come along way in the past ten years.
Barack Obama on revamping America’s energy use:
I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.
For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that’s going to be my number one priority when I get into office …
(via Frogblog)
I received a link from Amazon today touting a new book by Michael Hanlon:
Humankind is not doomed, we may be around for millions of years yet. We have already survived one of the most extraordinary planet-wide catastrophes - the Ice Ages. … The subject of the book is very much in the news at the moment - will we be wiped out by climate change, war or pestilence? Hanlon is saying something different, that the species will survive as the planet changes around us. This different point of view is refreshing, and some sections of the book are very controversial, which should get the attention of the media. Not only is humankind not doomed, but that we may be around for millions, if not hundreds of millions of years. We have already survived one of the most extraordinary planet-wide catastrophes - the great Ice Ages. Equipped with the simplest technology, Homo sapiens sailed through the great glaciations, and profited from them.
Except that the “news at the moment” isn’t simply “will we be wiped out by climate change, war or pestilence.” It is do we want to survive in such a world and what can we do to avoid these things?
The premise of the book is a red herring.
The 11th Hour is a documentary film, co-written and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, but don’t let that put you off. This is one of the best environmental documentaries I’ve seen and DiCaprio does a fine job.
Intermingled with a rousing montage of earthly images and audio, the backbone of the film is a series of interviews with over fifty politicians, scientists, and environmental activists—including Stephen Hawking and David Suzuki—who cleverly explain the complex bind we’re in, how we got here and how we might get out of it.
It’s a treasure trove of quotable dialogue, and after detailing the down right depressing situation we’re in and the obstacles we need to overcome, the most inspiring stuff comes in the last segment where we are presented not only with practical ideas and solutions for the future but with a whole new way of looking at our situation; this gem from Paul Hawken:
The great thing about the dilemma we’re in is that we get to reimagine every single thing we do. In other words there isn’t one single thing that we make or system that we have that doesn’t require a complete remake, and so there are two ways of looking at that. One is, like, oh my gosh, you know, what a big burden. The other way to look at it, which is the way I prefer, is what a great time to be born, what a great time to be alive, because this generation gets to essentially completely change this world.
If I was a filmmaker this is the film I’d like to make.
How many anti-capitalist climate change deniers do you know? Do they even exist? I presume there are at least some out there but the only deniers I personally know are also ardent advocates of market economics. Go through a list of prominent sceptics and you also invariably find within it a little club of market economy advocates.
Maybe they subconsciously realise what many don’t want to talk about; that climate change has happened under the market economy’s watch.
A rather unsettling story from the Independent today:
The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.
The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species.
I find it incredible that we’ve allowed ourselves to get to this point while continuing to use the same bankrupt ideas, the same leadership and the same greed-fueled economic system that got us here in the first place.
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