On climate shift and the end of the world.
Three vaguely related stories have collided to create a perfect storm in my mind.
boingboing.net/2014/10/08/20-meaningful-things-you-can-d.html
This is a thoughtful response to all those glib, shallow checklists that we routinely see in women's lifestyle magazines, designed to let people believe they're actually paying attention to important problems, just before they click the remote to watch the shopping network. It's the first indication I've had that someone out there feels the same way I do about this stuff.
nextbigfuture.com/2014/09/ocean-acification-mitigation-deatils.html
This helps me let go of images of starving polar bears, and let my mind consider the truly epic scary shit. Existential Threat. 30 years ago, I was paying close attention to the threat of nuclear war, it seemed great enough to alter the way I lived my life in response. The implications of Ocean Acidification are truly, deeply, horrifying. And while Nuclear War was something unlikely to happen unless someone had a very bad day, This shit is going to play out whether anyone notices... or not.
www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/scientists-zero-whats-causing-starfish-die-offs/
Starfish Wasting Disease may not have anything to do with global warming. It also may have nothing to do with anything that humans are doing. And yet... It's far more unsettling to me than any Ebola scare. The coastal ecosystem is going to be changing a lot in the next few decades, and it seems doubtful that this is going to be good for humans.
The storm in my head is still raging, I don't know what to do with this stuff... Yet in the larger sense, it never really died down just because the Berlin Wall came down, from the nuclear nightmare. It just changed. I'm left with a very powerful resolve to make one single change in my life, and that's to become a better politician than I've ever tried to be before.
"politician" in contemporary American colloquial syntax, means someone whose job it is to tactfully ignore you. I'm thinking of it in the older sense, of someone whose job it is to really *listen*- and then act accordingly, in equal measure. It may not be the best word to describe what I want to be as I grow up, but it works for now, and it gives me something different to think about from starving sea birds, or undersea creatures pulling themselves apart.
boingboing.net/2014/10/08/20-meaningful-things-you-can-d.html
This is a thoughtful response to all those glib, shallow checklists that we routinely see in women's lifestyle magazines, designed to let people believe they're actually paying attention to important problems, just before they click the remote to watch the shopping network. It's the first indication I've had that someone out there feels the same way I do about this stuff.
nextbigfuture.com/2014/09/ocean-acification-mitigation-deatils.html
This helps me let go of images of starving polar bears, and let my mind consider the truly epic scary shit. Existential Threat. 30 years ago, I was paying close attention to the threat of nuclear war, it seemed great enough to alter the way I lived my life in response. The implications of Ocean Acidification are truly, deeply, horrifying. And while Nuclear War was something unlikely to happen unless someone had a very bad day, This shit is going to play out whether anyone notices... or not.
www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/scientists-zero-whats-causing-starfish-die-offs/
Starfish Wasting Disease may not have anything to do with global warming. It also may have nothing to do with anything that humans are doing. And yet... It's far more unsettling to me than any Ebola scare. The coastal ecosystem is going to be changing a lot in the next few decades, and it seems doubtful that this is going to be good for humans.
The storm in my head is still raging, I don't know what to do with this stuff... Yet in the larger sense, it never really died down just because the Berlin Wall came down, from the nuclear nightmare. It just changed. I'm left with a very powerful resolve to make one single change in my life, and that's to become a better politician than I've ever tried to be before.
"politician" in contemporary American colloquial syntax, means someone whose job it is to tactfully ignore you. I'm thinking of it in the older sense, of someone whose job it is to really *listen*- and then act accordingly, in equal measure. It may not be the best word to describe what I want to be as I grow up, but it works for now, and it gives me something different to think about from starving sea birds, or undersea creatures pulling themselves apart.