“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, October 24, 2009

350

To mark today's day of action on global warming I decided to put on some drones and write this. I've been trying, of course, to disseminate, haven't we all, the idea that since neolithic times atmospheric CO2 has never risen above 275ppm (parts per million). The safe upper limit is 350ppm. Currently we are at 387ppm and rising by 2ppm per year.

Geneva was wonderful—high intellectual level, incredible conversations, extraordinary to share all the diverse research—thanks so much to Martin Leer and his crew. Apart from right at the end, when I was jumped on for having my nose in books. It's not the first time! Funny, because I was the one sticking up for science and the big picture (
Humanists so often seem to shoot themselves in the foot, so wedded are they to postmodern poetics...). But apparently, so I hear, non-Western people can't and won't and shouldn't give a hoot about global warming, so immersed are they in their lifeworld. Only rich westerners care. Which is bad, because it shows how alienated they are. And humans are forever and intrinsically a blight on mother nature, so to hell with them. No kidding, these precise sentiments were voiced. (By not-me.)

(Which is ironic, considering new figures that say more Americans than ever doubt or deny global warming.)

Here's to having more than one idea in your head at once. I'm sure all my Nepalese and Tibetan friends would approve. Their lifeworld is global warming, like ours.

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