Culture & Behavior

What is to be done? – May 9

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– Military thinkers: for a bright American future, look to sustainability and liberalism
– Renewable Energy Can Power the World, Says Landmark IPCC Study
– Taboo Economics
– ‘The Ecological Rift’: a radical response to capitalism’s war on the planet (book review)
– Poet Wendell Berry on Mankind’s Ecological Imprint

Human intelligence and the environment

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With the environmental crisis, we’re now in a situation where we can decide whether biologist Ernst Mayr was right or not. If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we’ll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us.

The self-inflicted injury of emotional callousness

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It’s not resource depletion, peak oil, climate change, rising population, corporatocracy or environmental devastation that will be the cause of our demise. Nor is the problem a political stalemate or the stranded costs of our investments in useless, outmoded or destructive technology. These are the not the problems, really: they are the symptoms. Our callousness plays a causal role here, empowering all of these immanent threats to humanity. Change that and we start to change everything.

Ten years on the road, part two

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The beauty of the natural world is a sublime enjoyment we got for free, and this made the pleasure from having possessions pale by comparison. We decided never to let things become our masters. We began to comprehend the great age of the earth, evident every time we walked on rocks or ocean shore, and this made us see the insignificance of our lives. But we were content.

When one of us had a life-threatening illness, remembering our years on the road, mentally reliving the exciting things we did and the inspiring landscapes we saw, gave a comfort nothing else could have given. We are a part of the great and endless circle of life, nothing more, but nothing less.

What must we do?

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We must not work or think on a heroic scale. In our age of global industrialism, heroes too likely risk the lives of places and things they do not see. We must work on a scale proper to our limited abilities. We must not break things we cannot fix. There is no justification ever for permanent ecological damage. If this imposes the verdict of guilt upon us all, so be it.

Millennium Consumption Goals— plus An Update

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I read yesterday that “a Sri Lankan scientist is calling for the drafting of “Millennium Consumption Goals” to [help] rich countries to curb their climate-damaging consumption habits, in the same way the poor have Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to get them out of poverty.” A fantastic idea—but what would these MCGs include?

Japan should look to satoyama and satoumi for inspiration

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The practices of satoyama and satoumi refer to traditional Japanese land-management methods in inland (satoyama) and coastal (satoumi) areas. The concepts, which comprise not just agricultural techniques but entire socio-ecological systems, have provided in the past for sustainable, high-biodiversity areas that produce a range of “ecosystem services” — from timber, rice and fish to energy (biomass and hydropower for instance) and tourism. Although not quantifiable in purely economic terms, the concepts have provided residents and visitors with significant cultural and social benefits.