Manmade climate change is the most frightening term I am aware of. What bugs me though, is the fact that the whole term is so useless. We should be discussing another concept: industry made climate change. Or fossil-fuelled climate change. That way we’d probably raise the chance of us proving able to do something about it.
I mean: think about it. Manmade climate change is a term that might work to make people feel a bit numb. And it may even paralyse the masses of people collectively. As the easiest way to go about dealing with a problem is to exterminate. And I don’t long for people to start exterminating each other. Exterminating big industry on the other hand. Or doing away with all fossil-fuels use. Those would be things that I’d love to see happening. Because climate change is not necessarily manmade, in the sense that there truly are many people who hardly ever make use of fossil-fuels and who are certainly not in the habit of doing factory work.
Tribal peoples from around the planet shall be notified: the problem with global warming and climate change is hardly their fault. A tremendous lot of poor and unemployed westerners like myself shall also be notified: it is indeed possible to lead a perfectly normal low-carbon life, even here in modern Europe.
Climate change is not manmade in the sense that all humans are equally to blame. Some humans do have a bigger part of the responsibility around here. It goes without saying. What bugs me the most is the simple fact that those who are responsible for the most CO2 emissions are the same people who are in complete and unrestrained control of all possible policy making. The super-rich are responsible for all that big industry is doing and as concerns the interest-based decision-making of the political world, they’ve got a lot of control to answer for. And while I’m at it: every middle-class car owner has a stake in climate change which the poor and car-less do not have. It really goes without saying, but few people ever do so. Not on the internet and not anywhere else. It’s frightfully true to the point, that’s why. It makes you feel slightly nauseous and a little irritated, and that’s also why.
But let me return to my first case in point. Fossil-fuelled. Industry made. I think it would be easier to do away with a problem that is fossil-fuelled and industry made, and not manmade as such. I mean: I’d be killing off industries every day. I’d be boycotting all fossil-fuelled activities every hour of every day! No problem! And I would no longer need to think too much about what little the poor masses of this world really matters to members of the upper and middle-classes of society. But that belongs to a rant on the achievement of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. —
April 11, 2008 at 12:38 pm |
Actualy, we should link. After reading the comment you left on my blog, i am certain we are on the same wav link and perhaps we should link our sites together because i agree with everything you said and in fact, i have discovered after spending years of capturing ufo’s and space alien creatures, i can say that part of the reason for global warming is due to UFO’s burning cheap fuel. Also there are meany more UFO’s and Space Alien Creatures coming to earth in the past 2 to 3 years.
I tracked 880 unknown UFO’s just in the last 23 days. I captured 33 Space Alien Creatures in the past 14 days, all 14 were bloated with Boston baked beans and area 51 smelled of meth gas and cheap fossil fuel.
We should all wonder where all the gas that was released from these 14 stinkers went. You are right sir, it mixed right into the very air that we breath.
I have discussed this matter with Al meany times and there seems to be no solution for the problem.
Because of this problem, the temperature has rizen by an average of 9 degreeze warmer in the past 12 months.
I do apoligise but i must go now, for my hot line just rang and i have to go investage another UFO sighting and capture the Space Aliens driving it.
However, i hope to chat with you on this subject at a later date.
April 11, 2008 at 1:29 pm |
Well, I’m all for having a laugh. And I don’t think there is anything wrong in having a space alien laugh. Especially now that I’m in no way certain of what to say to my 13-year-old daughter about the ever rising fossil-fuels demands of a species that has all but covered all the greenhouse effect knowledge that can ever become available to us. Let me just assure you of the fact (fact) that only a few of us space aliens are wishing to do any harm around here. Not to the biosphere of this planet, and certainly not to any humans beating about the bush either.
April 23, 2008 at 8:26 pm |
@Secret Agent Man: I think you are confusing a deep cavity search by the aliens and just having gas. Two different things SAM. The one is not real – and the other one is.
Here’s the play on climate change. You have a gun aimed at your head, but you are questioning whether the guy loaded the thing… Climate change is here, whether creationists believe it or not. The only question open to us might be who can we blame. I’ll play it safe and make a few lifestyle changes. I have nothing to lose. I will either help save the world or I’ll save a few bucks. Guess who’s winning then? Uh, don’t forget to ask the aliens to take you with them. No need for you here. Seeing that you don’t aim at making a difference in any case.
April 26, 2008 at 3:15 pm |
Not knowing exactly how to respond to the super-angry “get out of here” remark, I think I’m going to take a walk on the wild side. That’s the side of the street where people are people are people are people, and everyone is equally free to express their wretched feelings. That’s the side of the street where you might even get to hear talk of telepathic experiences. If ever you do, please give me a call.
August 18, 2008 at 2:45 pm |
When I was a boy, we were taught that each generation had responsibilities to assume and duties to perform with regard to the acknowledgement and acceptance of the challenges that are presented to us, so that the next generation can have a chance at a better life. Under no circumstances, would it be correct to pose as willfully blind, hysterically deaf or electively mute in the face of any challenge, as many too many in my not-so-great generation are doing in these days.
What has happened to the misguided leaders of my generation? So many in the elder generation have determined to let the looming challenges in our time fall into the laps of our children. At least to me, today’s leaders show an astonishing unwillingness to examine the prospects of a good life for those who directly follow us, let alone coming generations.
After my single, not-so-great generation finishes the `missions’ (ie, fools’ errands) the leading, self-proclaimed “masters of the universe” among us have set before the human community, what resources will be left for our children to consume; how many more people will have to share what remains of the dissipated and degraded resources; where will they find clean air to breathe, clean water to drink? I shudder when thinking about what our children might say about what we have done so poorly and failed to do so spectacularly, all for sake of selfishly fulfilling our insatiable desires for endless material possessions and freedom without responsibility…..come what may for the children, coming generations, global biodiversity, the environment and Earth’s body.
How could one generation go so wrong? Here are some of the ways.
First, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.
We religiously promote our widely shared and consensually-validated fantasies of `real’ endless economic growth and soon to be unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources and frangible ecosystems upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.
Second, my not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the “what’s in it for me?” generation. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the vital understanding that humans are no more or less than magnificent living beings with “feet of clay.”
Perhaps we live in unsustainable ways in our planetary home; but we are proud of it nonetheless. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We will own fleets of cars, fly around in thousands of private jets, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, frequent exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. We will live long, large and free. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold much of the world’s wealth and the extraordinary power great wealth purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our `inalienable rights’ to outrageously consume Earth’s limited resources; to recklessly expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; and to carelessly consent to the unbridled global growth of human numbers so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.
We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We enjoy freedom and living without limits; of course, we adamantly eschew any talk of the personal responsibilities that come with the exercise of personal freedoms or any discussion of the existence of biophysical limitations of any kind.
We deny the existence of human limits and Earth’s limitations.
Please understand that we do not want anyone presenting us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making….a manmade world filling up with gigantic enterprises, virtual mountains of material possessions, and boundless amounts of filthy lucre.
Third, most of our top rank experts appear not to have found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the rapacious dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at breakneck speed toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global political economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic `wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Who knows, perhaps we can realistically and hopefully hold onto the expectation that behavioral changes in the direction of sustainable production, per human consumption, and propagation are in the offing…..changes that save both the economy and the Creation.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, est. 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
August 18, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
http://www.theenvironmentsite.org/forum/debates-discussions/13110-voltaire-human-stupidity-approximates-infinite.html
Well, throughout the past few years, I have been hearing (with my own good ears) a lot of ordinary street-walking and pub-crawling people talk about the great war that is bound to be coming our way. I’ve also heard them going on and on about the way they truly hate Moslems, and want them all expelled to whichever country it was they originally came from. I have heard people talk about the way they hate George W. Bush. There is such a lot of hate going around, it’s simply unbelievable!
I have also heard people talking about the way any useful climate change action is simply not going to take place, quite frankly because, as viewed from an ordinary working men’s perspective, it would be an unacceptable move. I’ve heard people saying that humanity may only have about a thousand years left on this planet, and that humanity is bound to be going extinct. It’s been said, often enough, that this is something that we’ve all just got to accept. – I have, as a matter of fact, been listening to a lot of miserable-looking people over the past few years!
Now, here’s what I think: the world and its “family of humanity” is faced with problems of such immense proportions, that I feel I am going a little bit more crazy every time I get to be informed about another instance of armed conflict and war. Why? Because it is just too stupid!
If we are indeed going to start to even try to solve some of the problems that we are faced with here, especially in terms of the state of the world environment, it is, to me at least, a self-evident fact that what is needed now, more than ever, is peace. The UNDP has made a list of eight global development goals that had better be the priority of the governments of this world to find some kind of solution to. And it should be crystal clear to everyone, no matter what might be the social or political position of each individual person in question, that these development goals can hardly be achieved unless the world should decide to “come together” in a political (and cultural, and spiritual, and religious) climate of peace and understanding of the problems at hand.
- –
I think I’ll have to pour an extra mouthful of gasoline on the fire.
In order to combat the political stupidity which is the order of these days of war against terror, war over the control of natural resources, war over religious and cultural differences, etc., I think it is just about time that a good horde of women and youth decided to finally speak out against the political class of our times. I’m talking about a male dominated ruling class that is also influenced by political, economic, and diplomatic theories and measures that were made for an age that ought to be long gone. What I am saying is that all the political systems (political-economic structures) of this planet are controlled by a league of old men who are finding it extremely difficult to accept the notion that the times are indeed a-changing.
What is urgently needed is new approach towards handling political and economic challenges of a global or international nature. I am hopeful that a more feminine and also more youthful approach towards “shooting trouble” may provide this all-so-distorted “family of humanity” with a new way forward that is more refreshing than are the ways of the old. – I am hopeful that more feminine and more youthful ways of perceiving (understanding) the problems at hand will be actively adopted. – I believe I am dreaming of a certain set of steps towards a softer, more human friendly, and much more future-minded way of dealing with things; steps that ought to be taken in the year 2009. – Well, as soon as possible, anyway.
Yes: I’m DREAMING.
October 29, 2008 at 3:38 pm |
Thanks to Magneok and everyone else for what is being communicated in the Mulig Blog. At least to me, this work is vital.
You are an honorable fellow. You neither hide nor are you willing to hide from empirical evidence. We need your example displayed in the actions of many other leaders who presently seem to be unwilling to communicate openly certain understandings about what is real and true to them. The science of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth is a case in point.
So far as I can tell, your work is helping people to see more clearly as it is the wondrous world we inhabit and to more deeply appreciate the miraculous beings that humans are.
Of course, your reporting is occasionally off-putting precisely because the message from science that you bring us is apparently unforeseen, distinctly discomforting and most unwelcome.
Reports of good science, when that science is new, is routinely difficult to acknowledge, much less address. But that is what we are called upon to do. Grasping good science and adjusting to whatsoever could be real is required of us, I suppose. If today’s leaders intend to provide a good enough future for our children, then nothing other than productive adaptation to the requirements of reality will do. It appears that the human community could soon have genuine, human-driven, global challenges to overcome.
Despite all the efforts of denialists and naysayers, leadership has responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, just as you are doing, by urging the family of humanity to open our eyes and see what looms ominously before us on the far horizon. By willfully avoiding scientific evidence, we are losing the exquisite value found in one of God’s gifts to humanity as well as threatening the wellbeing of our children, life as we know it and Earth.
Remaining electively mute in the face of good science related to the human overpopulation of Earth, the reckless dissipation of natural resources and the wanton degradation of the environment cannot be allowed to prevail. Even though reasonable and sensible scientific evidence comes into conflict with what our culture validates as real and true, still the evidence has to be carefully examined…. and not ignored. Is it possible that the standard for determining what is real and true in our culture is too often this: whatsoever is widely shared, consensually validated and judged to be economically expedient, politically convenient, socially agreeable is true and real? In that case, much of the scientific evidence found in the Mulig Blog presents many too many leaders and opinion makers in our culture with evidence of inconvenient truths.
Each culture presents its membership with much that is real and also much less that is illusory. From the standpoint of a psychologist, because humans are shaped early and pervasively by cultural transmissions in our perception of reality, it looks like an evolutionary challenge for humankind to see the world as it is.
It appears that cultural transmissions or memes generated within a culture may at times mesmerize human beings in that widely shared and closely held memes occasionally “produce” illusions of the world as it is. Some research seems to disturb us in basic ways because this scientific evidence comes into conflict with certain ideologically/culturally derived notions that are adamantly held by leaders about what it means to be human and about the “placement” of humankind within the natural order of living things. Unexpected scientific evidence of this particular kind is uniformly difficult for people to see, I suppose, because such evidence undercuts the ‘pedestal’ from which human beings prefer to hubristically look upon other living creatures and nature. We humans may introject biased and empiricially unsupportable cultural transmissions that confuse human reasoning and promote a certain cortical conceitedness which is not helpful when trying to see what is real. For a long time certain illusory memes appear to have been passed from generation to generation, distorting human perceptions and making it difficult for the human family to see scientific evidence for what is real about it.
With your leadership and assistance, perhaps we will come to more fully appreciate the difference between specious illusions borne of ideological/cultural bias and evidence derived from the careful, skillful and rigorous deployment of science.
October 29, 2008 at 6:13 pm |
Thank you, Steve. Your words of encouragement really are appreciated.
Now, it is true what you are saying: the message from science that I and such a other people bring us is “apparently unforeseen, distinctly discomforting and most unwelcome.” I realize this, but I do think that going into hiding somewhere between the cause and the effect is too pathetic. We’ve got this reality of manmade climate, we’ve got the reality of all these other forms of environmental devastation of every conceivable kind, and we’ve got the reality of the population explosion, especially in the developing world, where quite countries can expect the population to increase by more than a 120% i the next forty years. And this is real. Now, we need to look at this reality as real, so to speak; and not just treat these issues as concerns the natural environments of this planet as interesting, at best, but impossible to do anything about. Such a defeatist attitude simply cannot be tolerated, now can it?
I am terribly afraid of a situation in which all inconvenient truths are deliberately ignored. I think it is very possible that a situation like that is developing around here. A situation in which the winners will be those who are best at lying both to themselves and others, and the losers will be those who seem to know too much about the reality of ecological degradation, the reality of the sixth extinction of species, the reality of overpopulation, the reality of war, poverty, hunger and thirst, and the reality of lies, damned lies, and bloody deceit. It’s a grim worldview, I know. But I’ve got every reason to suspect that this shameful situation is our everyday reality now, and that it is based on something much bigger than simple greed. I think it is, like you say, politically expedient, religiously tolerated, and consensually validated: I’m especially thinking of the popular notion that nature will somehow take care of itself, and that there is nothing humanity as a whole or any human in person can do about that. Just ask around. You’ll probably not be amazed at finding out that most people, in tesy, will say that nature will take care of itself quite nicely. Not to make any manipulative inquiries about what that might actually mean, in the long run. -
December 9, 2008 at 7:10 pm |
On the need for scientific education regarding the human overpopulation of Earth in these early years of Century XXI………..
Dear Magne and Friends,
I want to at least try to gain your quick help. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but yesterday the “AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population” submitted an idea for how we think the Obama Administration could change America. It’s called “Ideas for Change in America.”
I’ve submitted an idea and wanted to see if you could vote for it. The title is: Accepting human limits and Earth’s limitations. You can read and vote for the idea by clicking on the following link:
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/accepting_human_limits_and_earths_limitations
The top 10 ideas are going to be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day and will be supported by a national lobbying campaign run by Change.org, MySpace, and more than a dozen leading nonprofits after the Inauguration. So each idea has a real chance at becoming policy.
Thanks.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
May 9, 2009 at 3:29 pm |
Dear Magne,
People are beginning to view the world as you do.
Thanks for all your morally courageous and intellectually honest efforts, even though approaching threats to human wellbeing and environmental health loom ominously before us. Imagine what would immediately occur if everyone followed your good example. In the face of such daunting global challenges as humanity confronts in our time, it is so easy to curse the darkness and, by so doing, choose NOT to light candles, as you are doing. Keep lighting candles, Magne.
Always,
Steve
May 11, 2009 at 5:19 pm |
Thanks for your clear voice.
More voices…….we need many more voices speaking out loudly and often. Time is being wasted by those with wealth and power who adamantly defend unsustainable status quo overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species that are overwhelming and threatening to ravage the Earth in our time. Because these distinctly human activities could soon become patently unsustainable, necessary behavior change has to occur fast. If more members of the human family do not speak out to vigorously resist what the leaders of the human community are demanding all of us do now as we strive to ravenously overconsume Earth’s resources; to relentlessly hoard wealth; and to overproduce unnecessary stuff, then the planetary home we are inhabiting and overpopulating could be made uninhabitable for our children and life as we know it by 2012.
May 27, 2009 at 5:13 pm |
Thank you, Steve. Your words of encouragement are deeply appreciated, as always.
As of right now, I have all but stopped blogging. I am in the middle of the process of writing a novel, making use of my own language, Norwegian: my mother tongue. My novel will be confronting issues of both a political, an economical, and an ecological kind, and is, therefore, never going to make its way past the large, guarded gates of the cultural elites; ie. I do not expect this manuscript to make it’s way past the scrutiny of the editors of publishers of the old and respected kind. It’ll be too political, and all too truthful, to even be considered publishable. This is the way of the world, I dare say: The truth is a lie and a pack of lies are considered truthful. It’s politically and economically convenient that it stays that way.
My novel will be published on the internet as a PDF-file. Knowing that I am not going to make a single little dollar here, I feel like an idealist of a very stupid kind. But hell, the truth is: I am leading the life of a clientified and institutionalized loser here, and I very often catch myself thinking: “… so why don’t you kill me?”
My therapists have made it perfectly clear to me, that I am not going to be an empoyee of any kind, ever, in my life. You see: the point is: here in little Norway, I am officially classified as a hopeless person; a case of my own; a man who thinks too much. Someone who is going to prove very difficult to ever take seriously. Someone who is not as ignorant and indifferent as we’re all supposed to be, these days. And forever and ever again. Until the end of time?
I don’t know what to think about this fascism.
Cheers.