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Carl Sagan:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Does not leave a lot to say…

Some one commented to blame all Americans both the “good” and the evil. I replied:

I did not mention Americans or the residents of any other country. It is us, the people of the (mostly “western”) world, that are doing this. Allowing it and encouraging it by continuing our consumerism.

I live in southern England about 15 miles from London Heathrow airport, it is a nice day, all the better for the lack 747s lumbering upwards and over us every 10 minutes. Thanks for the day of peace and quiet Iceland

Many think the world would stop turning if we did not have hundreds of thousands of air trips daily, and thousands of millions of car journeys.

Today proves them wrong

Inexorable natural processes, whether it be the weather, climate, soil degradation, beneficial species loss, or simply an exhaustion of supply, will eventually put a stop to all the waste and pollution. It will probably be a combination of them all because we just can’t continue taking, destroying and altering everything to suit our “lifestyles”. Which in case you had not noticed, for most of us, actually consists of being debt slaves to the banks and businesses that are rapidly accumulating all the worlds “money”. What they will do with it all after they have, I just don’t know. It won’t buy them a nice shiny new climate, or a new supply of oil, or a rain forest, or a fertile delta or a million other natural necessities that’s for sure.

They may have nice big numbers stored in their computers and written on bits of paper, but they have no real wealth. Turn off the computers, burn the paper and you would see how ephemeral this “money” and the quest for it, really is.

We, the worlds people, just need to decide if this is the way we as a species, want to die out or not, to have no greater purpose, to not go boldly forward but to sink back in to the mud and slink away.

Find a copy of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Stick it on your wall. It may help your perspective there is a web picture here:

http://andygiefer.com/the-pale-blue-dot-a-view-of-earth-from-4-bill

Sorry I ramble but Mordor Mountains and blasted-land-forests have a depressing effect.

According to my associate in Iceland:

“Below is a nice picture I saw this morning, it’s shot by the farmer of this farm called Þorvaldseyri which is quite close to the volcano.  He is only allowed to go to his farm during the day to check his cows.”

I think it’s a fantastic picture if a little scary.

Every time I see a picture of mountains with their tops missing, my heart sinks.

Every time I see a picture of the tar sands project, my heart sinks.

There is something terribly wrong with both these “technologies” it is wrong at the heart level, the head level and any other level you care to add.

Surely, this is most people’s reaction to those same pictures?

How politicians dare to dress this up as essential or supportable I don’t know. They are closing their eyes and minds in exchange for the power and money bought by these big businesses.

If they opened their eyes, just for once, surely the world could use $60 Billion that is Sixty Thousand Million dollars (60,000,000,000) to start building something better.

I would rather see a sea of windmills from my windows than Tolkeinesque Mordor mountains and blasted-lands-forests.

These twin evils are a visible stain on our planet.

 The original story

Comment to Rob Killick’s article of a similar name but opposite meaning.

I commented because this particular proposition - that we must stagnate and or go back to the stone age in order to protect the environment, really gets up my nose.  What is wrong with people’s imagination? We must have a new Industrial Revolution possibly known as the tech-tronic-dustrial revolution. We are at the beginning of the digital electronic revolution, not the end. We have the technology and the knowledge - we lack the will us it.

Why do we lack the will? We don’t. The industrialists do.

Examples:

1.  Food.

There is enough growing space and enough seed and water to feed the world’s population. It’s just that we don’t grow food to feed people! The industrialists grow food, market food and ship food to make money. Not to feed us all, simply to make money.

2. Energy.

There is enough energy available to power our homes using solar and wind generated electricity. We need different homes, not ones built while, and following the designs of ones built, when the steam engine ruled.

Back to my comment:

Rob,

Along with others, I don’t know where you get this idea from. Who is suggesting we destroy our economy? Who is suggesting the we compromise our way of life? If we leave the extreme-greenie-hippy-back-to-nature-groups out of this who is suggesting it?

What most people who recognise the dangers in what we are doing to the planet (even putting “Global Warming” to one side) is that we must change what we are doing to preserve our environment. This is obviously in danger of deteriorating to a point where it can’t support us all. We can’t ALL do this by living in tents and caravans and harvesting berries, there are just too many of us. We will need high technology to change the current balance from taking too much from our surroundings to putting something back , or at least, leaving what is there for the next generation to use. This seems to me just simple common sense.

What seems blatantly obvious to me should happen is that having invested umpteen billions in the financial system – when it is taken back (For the money to be vaporised back to where it came from – thin air.) We DO NOT vaporise it but we start the biggest rebuilding of our transportation system, our industrial base, our scientific community and our personal living conditions since the start of the original industrial revolution. If we can create £500 Billion to give to banks and survive virtually unpunished on the world stage we can do it again to secure our environmental and energy future. We DO NOT wait for the rest of the world, we lead, we invent, we demonstrate as we have in the past.

We get people working, DOING STUFF that benefits us all, Building, Insulating – tear down the worst – whole towns if we have too – and rebuild using 21st century knowledge and technology. Gut the petrol and diesel cars and retro fit electric propulsion – don’t tell me it can’t be done. Why waste what is already there?

Invent, Design and build the electrical networks and switching mechanisms that are required to handle disparate, differently sized intermittent AC and DC power and base load generation. Get the farms working again get PEOPLE back to farming and being interactive with the land – our farms are dying – the soil is dying from over fertilisation and over mono-cropping (is that a word?). Did you know that birds no longer follow tractors to get the bugs and worms turned up by the ploughing? Why – there are none to get – the birds have given it up as a bad source of food – that worries me that one fact! Get rid of SOME of the problems – Investigate and fix the problem with the Bees – Surely we could do that?

We are a small enough, densely populated enough country to make it all viable as an experiment. We do not have the vast distances that need covering in the US, China, Canada or Africa. We are small enough to be the experiment.

Then we sell our newly gained knowledge and our experience to the rest of the world. They are going to need it after peak oil/gas if they don’t start now. This is the type of “New world” that we can create – get a jump on the competition. This is the type of vision that the UK people need – something to strive for – something that has underlying good at its heart, something to be proud of as a nation. Some thing that will actually pay back to the people not to global banks, businesses and as you mentioned it, dictators.

Hmmm a year has slid past :(  - I’ll tel you about it later maybe…

Here is comment I posted in response to “Reader Leaders” in the Guardian. Hope You enjoy it:
Clime-Flu gives Capitalism Cannibalism.

Today a meeting in Copenhagen known as COP-15 will commence to diagnose the illnesses of both our climate and unwittingly the cannibalism of our capitalism. One it seems has caught a nasty disease (Cannibalism) off the other.  Climate has the flu, symptoms are raised temperature, runny glaciers and infected and acrid waters.

Climate doctors point to the cause as “living in an area affected by noxious gases”. Among other causes of Clime-Flu such as substandard living conditions which include lack of forest vitamins and fresh clean water. The Clime-Flu virus is also causing climate’s “sneezing” distributing another virus known as “fossil-flue”. The sneezing of noxious fossil-flue germs is also blamed for a reduction in climate’s immune system leading to many small and hitherto unrecognised immuno-efficient inhabitants dying off.

Doctors are unsure of the consequences of the reduced immuno-efficient organisms but say “it’s not looking good”. Another complication is billions of tiny bugs on Climate’s outer skin (see “germ-bank feeders”). In centralised locations these germ-bank-feeders are exacerbating the noxious gases that give rise to the Clime-Flu symptoms and fossil-flue sneezing.

Experts say that the probably infection and death rate from clime-flu will be approximately 1 of 1 or 100% and are concerned that they do not have an antidote yet and add that current infection rate is also 100%. They repeated their earlier sentiments that “it’s not looking good”.

After tests scientists investigating the clime-flu outbreak think they have identified an underlying cause which they have named “Viral-Capitalism”. They are studying the nucleus (known in clime-flu circles as “banks of germs” or just banks for short) of the virus source. Under test conditions they formulated “Credit-Lunch-1″. This ingested medicine did in fact reduce the effect of the bank-feeders by approximately 3% overall and up to 5% in a particularly sensitive centralised island, but they misjudged the resourcefulness of the germ-banks which immediately switched to larger feeders known as “Countries”.

On a better note doctors have made a remarkable discovery: The virus seems to be “self limiting” in the sense that Viral-capitalism is not just causing clime-flu but has also started to consume itself (the Cannibalism). They are hoping that they can help the Cannibalism process along by developing “Credit-Lunch-2″. But they have reservations on the efficacy of this without using a dose powerful enough to actually kill the patient. Also Climate in a strange association is quite fond of all the bank-feeders as they can be useful in clearing up the mess caused by their centralised living and in the past have successfully dealt with over-active germ-banks.

So there we have have it, COP-15 in Copenhagen must decide whether to give the medicine or not. If they do not then the germ-banks will tire of bank-feeders and countries and just feast on Climate itself. If they give the medicine it must be just the right dosage to strengthen and allow the bank-feeders to deal with the bank-germs.