The Manpollo Project
This is a wonderful essay written by a dear friend of mine. nolawitch is an amazing, funny, strong, wise and intelligent woman. I wanted to share her words with anyone willing to read so they might inspire you as she continually inspires me.
Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something About It
-a personal essay by Susan R. Kagan
I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon and evening watching every single video in the links from The Manpollo Project
website. They were all made by the same science teacher who did the video asking what was the worst that could happen in my LiveJournal post last month. My suggestion is that you bookmark the link and watch them in batches. Since YouTube has a time limit of about ten minutes per video, you should watch them in groups and expect to spend several hours and exercise brain cells that haven't thought about science since you got out of high school. It's the least you can do if you plan to be alive for the next couple of decades.
I began viewing to get comfort that I was doing everything in my power to mitigate against the horrors hinted at in the first video. Even though I know I do more than the average person to recycle and curb consumption, I came away feeling my efforts have been inadequate. I will increase my personal efforts and encourage others to join me in bailing lest the boat sink. If I feel I owe it to the planet--I who have no progeny to feel responsible for, what do those of you who do have children feel comfortable leaving them?
A little over two years ago as I sat listening to the shrieking winds of Hurricane Katrina outside my home, I was reminded of the power of nature. I've always known its power. As a child growing up in Indiana, I saw buildings whirled to pieces and trees reduced to splinters by tornadoes. In my lifetime, I've seen blizzards, ice storms, dust storms, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and beautiful, warm, sunny days that make the dark side of the weather seem distant and improbable.
As with so many other things in life,our relationship to the climate can be either benign or malignant. If we pollute our drinking water, we cannot be surprised if it poisons us.If we pollute our air, we cannot be surprised when it chokes us. If we negatively impact the climate, we shouldn't be surprised when it adapts and bites us on the ass. We cannot poke a grizzly bear with a stick and not expect to be mauled.
Like a lot of people, I halfway expected there to be more equal resources on both sides of the argument. That the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of climate change really irritates me. Every time you read or see a story in the news about climate change, isn't it written to give equal credence to both sides of the argument? That's journalistic laziness. That makes me mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore (as Howard Beale said in Network). When I see articles in the Times-Picayuneor online or on TV, I'm going to write those letters to the editor and bitch them out for their dishonesty and laziness. Do they hunt down those quacks in Mexico with the Laetrile treatments to "balance"articles about current advances in oncology? Do they contact the Flat Earth Society every time they do an article on NASA? I'd like to know why they go out of their way to give the benefit of the doubt to the ones with the least amount of credibility when it comes to something of such enormous importance as climate change.
The media really doesn't have our interests at heart anyway. As in Network,the news divisions are no longer expected to be paragons of journalism.They're now expected to make money. That's why they waste so much of your valuable, dwindling time with bullshit, such as Britney Spears,Paris Hilton, the corpse of Anna Nicole Smith and all the other useless topics they grind out in the 24/7 news cycle. When I started in college, I was a journalism major. We were told that it was our job to make the important interesting. With few exceptions, the state of so-called journalism has made the interesting important and left the truly important issues along the wayside. Climate change has such catastrophic ramifications, it's irresponsible for the news media to give it fewer column inches and minutes than the banal derangements of vapid celebrities.
I keep wondering why I care. Certainly I don't care personally about your children. Somehow, it bothers me that you would be upset if your son or daughter was living in a hellish future that made our most repulsive filmmakers dystopian movies seem tame. Maybe I only care because you care and that's good enough for me.I'm also honest enough to say that I selfishly do not wish to spend my"twilight years" in a hardscrabble kind of life. Hell, it's even possible that when the shit hits the fan, the authoritarian governmental system that would supplant any republic, democracy or parliamentarian construct would deem it necessary for all those who were over the age of sixty years old be euthanized for the common good.As the resources got scarcer, the age limit might go down to fifty,then forty, then thirty and it won't even be as pretty as Logan's Run.
This is my manifesto, my vow that I will not go quietly or gently into that howling abyss, nor will I let others without even their own interest sat heart drag us all there. I challenge any of you who care even a miniscule amount to watch every single video that teacher made. It's the least you can do after he went to all the trouble that the news media refuses to bother with. The tide may be changing, and frankly,I'd rather be on the side that did whatever it could to prevent the catastrophic change rather than with those who deny climate change is even occurring. And arguing whose fault it is exhibits childish "not me" behavior rather than adult "let's clean up this mess" pragmatism.What's the worst that could happen?
(Note: Feel free to forward this to anybody and everybody as long as attribution is retained. It beats the hell out of some of the pointless glurge and drivel making the rounds of in boxes only to be quickly clicked to electronic trash bins. Plus, it helps to know exactly whose views are being represented. I am not ashamed or afraid to put my name on my writing.)
Stop Talking About the Weather and Do Something About It
-a personal essay by Susan R. Kagan
I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon and evening watching every single video in the links from The Manpollo Project
website. They were all made by the same science teacher who did the video asking what was the worst that could happen in my LiveJournal post last month. My suggestion is that you bookmark the link and watch them in batches. Since YouTube has a time limit of about ten minutes per video, you should watch them in groups and expect to spend several hours and exercise brain cells that haven't thought about science since you got out of high school. It's the least you can do if you plan to be alive for the next couple of decades.
I began viewing to get comfort that I was doing everything in my power to mitigate against the horrors hinted at in the first video. Even though I know I do more than the average person to recycle and curb consumption, I came away feeling my efforts have been inadequate. I will increase my personal efforts and encourage others to join me in bailing lest the boat sink. If I feel I owe it to the planet--I who have no progeny to feel responsible for, what do those of you who do have children feel comfortable leaving them?
A little over two years ago as I sat listening to the shrieking winds of Hurricane Katrina outside my home, I was reminded of the power of nature. I've always known its power. As a child growing up in Indiana, I saw buildings whirled to pieces and trees reduced to splinters by tornadoes. In my lifetime, I've seen blizzards, ice storms, dust storms, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and beautiful, warm, sunny days that make the dark side of the weather seem distant and improbable.
As with so many other things in life,our relationship to the climate can be either benign or malignant. If we pollute our drinking water, we cannot be surprised if it poisons us.If we pollute our air, we cannot be surprised when it chokes us. If we negatively impact the climate, we shouldn't be surprised when it adapts and bites us on the ass. We cannot poke a grizzly bear with a stick and not expect to be mauled.
Like a lot of people, I halfway expected there to be more equal resources on both sides of the argument. That the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of climate change really irritates me. Every time you read or see a story in the news about climate change, isn't it written to give equal credence to both sides of the argument? That's journalistic laziness. That makes me mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore (as Howard Beale said in Network). When I see articles in the Times-Picayuneor online or on TV, I'm going to write those letters to the editor and bitch them out for their dishonesty and laziness. Do they hunt down those quacks in Mexico with the Laetrile treatments to "balance"articles about current advances in oncology? Do they contact the Flat Earth Society every time they do an article on NASA? I'd like to know why they go out of their way to give the benefit of the doubt to the ones with the least amount of credibility when it comes to something of such enormous importance as climate change.
The media really doesn't have our interests at heart anyway. As in Network,the news divisions are no longer expected to be paragons of journalism.They're now expected to make money. That's why they waste so much of your valuable, dwindling time with bullshit, such as Britney Spears,Paris Hilton, the corpse of Anna Nicole Smith and all the other useless topics they grind out in the 24/7 news cycle. When I started in college, I was a journalism major. We were told that it was our job to make the important interesting. With few exceptions, the state of so-called journalism has made the interesting important and left the truly important issues along the wayside. Climate change has such catastrophic ramifications, it's irresponsible for the news media to give it fewer column inches and minutes than the banal derangements of vapid celebrities.
I keep wondering why I care. Certainly I don't care personally about your children. Somehow, it bothers me that you would be upset if your son or daughter was living in a hellish future that made our most repulsive filmmakers dystopian movies seem tame. Maybe I only care because you care and that's good enough for me.I'm also honest enough to say that I selfishly do not wish to spend my"twilight years" in a hardscrabble kind of life. Hell, it's even possible that when the shit hits the fan, the authoritarian governmental system that would supplant any republic, democracy or parliamentarian construct would deem it necessary for all those who were over the age of sixty years old be euthanized for the common good.As the resources got scarcer, the age limit might go down to fifty,then forty, then thirty and it won't even be as pretty as Logan's Run.
This is my manifesto, my vow that I will not go quietly or gently into that howling abyss, nor will I let others without even their own interest sat heart drag us all there. I challenge any of you who care even a miniscule amount to watch every single video that teacher made. It's the least you can do after he went to all the trouble that the news media refuses to bother with. The tide may be changing, and frankly,I'd rather be on the side that did whatever it could to prevent the catastrophic change rather than with those who deny climate change is even occurring. And arguing whose fault it is exhibits childish "not me" behavior rather than adult "let's clean up this mess" pragmatism.What's the worst that could happen?
(Note: Feel free to forward this to anybody and everybody as long as attribution is retained. It beats the hell out of some of the pointless glurge and drivel making the rounds of in boxes only to be quickly clicked to electronic trash bins. Plus, it helps to know exactly whose views are being represented. I am not ashamed or afraid to put my name on my writing.)