September 23, 2008

Considering the news of the possible beginning of the end of the world as we know it I posted earlier (disclaimer: no, I do *not* think that we are irrevocably and without a doubt doomed. I think there is a very real *possibility* that we are doomed, or about to be doomed, and awareness of that possibility should cause us to act radically, NOW. This is *not* the same thing as believing all is already lost.) - well, considering those news, which apparently broke on September 23, it is eerily fitting that September 23 was also this year's Earth Overshoot Day.

Two big warning shots on the same day.

How do we go about changing society from the ground up, in less than half a decade?

Addendum: 'nother article about the methane thing here.

Addendum 2: Funny thing: although I really do believe we may be facing something damn near apocalyptic within the next few decades, I still care about fandom, and fanfic, and writing. Isn't that ridiculous?

Methane news & reactions roundup

This is what I just posted to a thread on boingboing:

Seems to me as if the only truly reasonable reaction to this is, for each of us, to turn our lives around so as to reduce our personal emissions *as much as possible*, *right now* - and start to get politically active so as to get society to adopt that course, as well.

Of course, that's for a definition of 'reasonable' which is based on two assumptions:

1.) The survival of civilisation/humans/life on earth is a priority that overrides individual desires for unnecessary luxuries. (I'm not equating the three things separated by slashes in the previous sentence, btw - I'm just listing them in the order of likelihood of their being threatened.)

2.) In a complex system which we do not fully understand, we should not be too ready to declare that 'it's over' and 'we're screwed'. As long as there are factors that aren't understood, there is hope. This means that giving up now is unreasonable, because only by giving up (and, by implication, continuing our lives the 'business as usual' way as long as it's still possible) do we condemn ourselves with *absolute* certainty.

**

Links:

I've posted most of these before, but here they are again, collected in one handy post for easier clicking. Discussion is still going on in the comments, so it pays to check back occasionally.

Green blogosphere:

http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/23/has-runaway-climate-change-begun/

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008702.html

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/9/24/111531/839

Newspapers:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/23/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange1?gusrc=rss&feed=environment

Addendum:

Nice animated movie explaining positive feedback loops and tipping points:

http://wakeupfreakout.org/

Actually...

this deserves its own entry. I added it to my previous post some twenty minutes after making the post, so some of you may have missed it; therefore I'm making a new entry for it. I just finished watching this and it's really impressive. If you ignore all my other environmental posts - please, watch *this*. Yes, it's ten minutes, and that may seem like awfully long for a web animation, but it really does a great job of explaining fairly complex, vitally important things:

The movie

The website

And when you've watched it, spread it around - this should go viral!