Can we choose who we will become before we know who we are?

Posted by on . No comments.

E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge:

Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us.  There is no genetic destiny outside our free will, no lodestar provided by which we can set course.  Evolution, including genetic progress in human nature and human capacity, will be from now on increasingly the domain of science and technology tempered by ethics and political choice.  We have reached this point down a long road of travail and self-deception.  Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

Climate Change

Posted by on . No comments.

Today is Blog Action Day and the hope this year is to get people blogging about, talking about, and discussing climate change.  I talk a lot about climate change on here, but I approach it as a scientist for the most part.  I grew up with people who flat out denied that climate change could be occurring, and I still feel like people need to be convinced that something is going on.  I’ve believed for a long time that if people understood the problem, they’d act to solve it.

I’m beginning to think that’s not true.  Most people do believe that climate change is occurring.  Most people even think we need to do something about it.  But most people either don’t do anything about it or think we can solve our problems with CFLs and recycling.  Those aren’t bad things to do, but it’s so far from what we need to be doing as to be laughable.

We need to be implementing fast and efficient public transportation everywhere, not encouraging people to get new cars.  We need to reorganize our cities so that work and services are mixed with residences so people and stuff doesn’t need to travel as far every day.  We need to stop using fossil fuels, period. We need to be promoting contraception, women’s rights, and good education for women here and across the globe to get our population down.  We need to dramatically change our farm subsidies so that they aren’t just increasing profits for agribusiness and consumers see more realistic costs for things like beef, dairy, and corn. We need to eat a lot less meat and dairy.  New buildings should have far less environmental impact and old buildings should be made more efficient.  Our fuel efficiency standards are still much too low.  We need to change people’s focus from consuming things to doing things.

If we managed even some of the things in that list, we’d not only be doing a lot to decrease carbon emissions, I think we’d create a world that we’d prefer to live in. We’ve already passed the point where we could have made changes and avoided the consequences of climate change – we’re going to be facing sea level rise, drought (and famine), worse hurricanes, and all sorts of unpleasantness no matter what we do now, but we have the opportunity to make the future a lot less painful.

The trick is figuring out how to get people to care enough to act – even appealing to a sense of self-preservation hasn’t done much good so far.

It’s the End of the World As We Know It

Posted by on . No comments.

We’ve waited so long to do anything about climate change, that sea level rise of more than 6 feet (and half of that predicted in this century) is pretty much unstoppable now.  Things are going to go pretty badly for most countries, but island nations will be faced with (proportionately) far more land loss (forcing more people to depend on less land) along with a sharp decline in fish populations, one of their main food sources.  In other regions, burning wood fires and inefficient diesel engines is causing rapid melting of the glaciers that feed river systems that more than 3 BILLION people depend on.

Climate change is increasing hunger and poverty.  The green revolution fed many more people, but also led to a higher population (and increased energy use).  We should have listened to the man responsible for the green revolution and worked at reducing (or at least just maintaining) population levels.  Then we’d have plenty of food for everyone.

I’ve got some hopes for Copenhagen – I don’t want to believe that our society is going the way of Easter Island – but so far climate pledges are far too little and much too late.