I'm home sick with some potent incarnation of the swine flu, hopefully not as fatal though, although I definitely have been having melodramatic feelings about writing my will on occassion. I know this is bad, because I didn't even enjoy this Saturday morning, my head feels like it's full of cotton, delirious cotton, brought upon either by fever or vast quantities of mulled wine I'm consuming....anyway... now I feel like writing something, but I of course cannot really think of anything to write, so I shall attempt to convert a talk I recently did into a blog post i.e. a form of intellectual recycling, which in this instance is actually quite apt - you'll hopefully get the joke if you read the post ;)
*****
Why do we (should we) care about climate change?
Because climate change is no longer just affecting our climate system, but through peoples efforts it is having an effect on our thinking, society, our markets, policy, economics, and industry. Sadly constantly the phrase rings out – I ‘believe’ in climate change, I do not ‘believe’ in climate change. I hope we share the desire not to believe (or not) in climate change, but because as we see its far-reaching influence, we want to ‘know’ more about it.
But I find that there’s not a lot of clarity out there on this issue. More specifically, clarity on how we are affecting it, and how we will be affected by it. This isn’t exactly clear to me. If we take to one side the question about whether humans are affecting the climate or not, and consider a message that has received some traction – that of reducing your energy consumption, or your ‘green footprint’ you get an overwhelming amount of questions:
Don’t you print double-sided? Don’t you drive a Prius? Don’t you recycle? Don’t you switch the lights off when you leave the room? Don’t you unplug your mobile phone charger? Don’t you avoid using the elevator?
We are: 'THE GUILTY GENERATION’.
'Back in the good ol’ days' people were optimistic about the future. It seems like a foreign sentiment to feel these days. Optimism about the future is unheard of in a general humanitarian sense. Sure, you can be optimistic about your future SAT scores, or your new baby etc, but about the future of mankind in general - well that's blasphemy really, and/or you just haven't been watching the news. They (i.e. our parents, and theirs) thought that by now we’d be on Mars, teleport all over the place, live forever, looking like Elle McPherson. There was excitement, optimism, things where being built, people where looking forward to the future…
Not anymore.
We, the future of the past are made to feel guilty all the time. Is that fish you’re eating? Is it from a sustainable source? But what is sustainable? (I have this awesome app on my phone: http://www.sustainableseafood.org.au/Sustainable-Seafood-Guide-Australia.asp?active_page_id=695) Do you recycle your plastics? But did you know that packaging companies might finance recycling centers, and encouraging consumerism (http://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/04/25/can-recycling-be-bad-for-the-environment/)? How is it that it may costs less to buy a new TV than to have your old one repaired? How much do cows really fart – and how is it really affecting the climate? (this is kinda cute: http://www.show.me.uk/site/news/STO873.html)
*****
Why do we (should we) care about climate change?
Because climate change is no longer just affecting our climate system, but through peoples efforts it is having an effect on our thinking, society, our markets, policy, economics, and industry. Sadly constantly the phrase rings out – I ‘believe’ in climate change, I do not ‘believe’ in climate change. I hope we share the desire not to believe (or not) in climate change, but because as we see its far-reaching influence, we want to ‘know’ more about it.
But I find that there’s not a lot of clarity out there on this issue. More specifically, clarity on how we are affecting it, and how we will be affected by it. This isn’t exactly clear to me. If we take to one side the question about whether humans are affecting the climate or not, and consider a message that has received some traction – that of reducing your energy consumption, or your ‘green footprint’ you get an overwhelming amount of questions:
Don’t you print double-sided? Don’t you drive a Prius? Don’t you recycle? Don’t you switch the lights off when you leave the room? Don’t you unplug your mobile phone charger? Don’t you avoid using the elevator?
We are: 'THE GUILTY GENERATION’.
'Back in the good ol’ days' people were optimistic about the future. It seems like a foreign sentiment to feel these days. Optimism about the future is unheard of in a general humanitarian sense. Sure, you can be optimistic about your future SAT scores, or your new baby etc, but about the future of mankind in general - well that's blasphemy really, and/or you just haven't been watching the news. They (i.e. our parents, and theirs) thought that by now we’d be on Mars, teleport all over the place, live forever, looking like Elle McPherson. There was excitement, optimism, things where being built, people where looking forward to the future…
Not anymore.
We, the future of the past are made to feel guilty all the time. Is that fish you’re eating? Is it from a sustainable source? But what is sustainable? (I have this awesome app on my phone: http://www.sustainableseafood.org.au/Sustainable-Seafood-Guide-Australia.asp?active_page_id=695) Do you recycle your plastics? But did you know that packaging companies might finance recycling centers, and encouraging consumerism (http://www.forbes.com/sites/amywestervelt/2012/04/25/can-recycling-be-bad-for-the-environment/)? How is it that it may costs less to buy a new TV than to have your old one repaired? How much do cows really fart – and how is it really affecting the climate? (this is kinda cute: http://www.show.me.uk/site/news/STO873.html)
When I consider how much 'badness' there is out there, it's like trying to imagine the size of the universe - except it makes you feel guilty not giddy. I GUILTY (and I’m not even Catholic). If I starting thinking about it - I feel bad about what I eat, what I drink, how I live... If you just open the lid on ‘climate change’ you can feel like a downright rotten human being for existing, because it seems that your existence precurs the existence of the future for the human race.
I don’t think I deserve to, or that we need to.
I think the reason I become susceptible to this external guilt is that I do not understand the problem(s) entirely. I don’t know how large it is, and I don’t actually know how I contribute to it. This cloudiness leads to lack of action, to the point of apathy on my part. I think the key is in quantifying this issue, i.e. putting it in a context, and removing ambiguity always helps – for example, very simplistically, price is usually a first indicator we use to judge quality: How do I know if a bottle of wine is better than another? I look at the price. (For me £100 is always worse than a £5 bottle....especially for mulled wine... :))
So in my search for clarity, I stumbled across a text that addressed the issue of sustainable energy objectively. It got down to the numbers and quantified the situation. It’s called “Sustainable Energy: without the hot air” by David Mackay (http://www.withouthotair.com/).
This in my opinion is a text that addresses the issue (ahem…guilt) of sustainable energy (conveniently for those of you in the UK, in a British context) in a quantitative way, fanning away adjectives, and replacing them with numbers. It removes the guilty feeling, because it quantifies the problem. It answers questions about how big this problem really is, how you can affect it as an individual. By putting the issue of sustainable energy in a current quantitative context it becomes tractable.
I don’t think I deserve to, or that we need to.
I think the reason I become susceptible to this external guilt is that I do not understand the problem(s) entirely. I don’t know how large it is, and I don’t actually know how I contribute to it. This cloudiness leads to lack of action, to the point of apathy on my part. I think the key is in quantifying this issue, i.e. putting it in a context, and removing ambiguity always helps – for example, very simplistically, price is usually a first indicator we use to judge quality: How do I know if a bottle of wine is better than another? I look at the price. (For me £100 is always worse than a £5 bottle....especially for mulled wine... :))
So in my search for clarity, I stumbled across a text that addressed the issue of sustainable energy objectively. It got down to the numbers and quantified the situation. It’s called “Sustainable Energy: without the hot air” by David Mackay (http://www.withouthotair.com/).
This in my opinion is a text that addresses the issue (ahem…guilt) of sustainable energy (conveniently for those of you in the UK, in a British context) in a quantitative way, fanning away adjectives, and replacing them with numbers. It removes the guilty feeling, because it quantifies the problem. It answers questions about how big this problem really is, how you can affect it as an individual. By putting the issue of sustainable energy in a current quantitative context it becomes tractable.
I 'believe' that this is a work that objectively presents how you can contribute on an individual level to affecting the consumption of fossil fuels. One interesting message that I got from the book is that if “everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little”. What is a little? What is a lot? For example, switching off your mobile phone charger for ‘one year’ is equal to the energy in a single hot bath. The message? No more washing... ;)
Seriously. The message? Let’s stop to this guilt, by making a directed/informed choice.
Seriously. The message? Let’s stop to this guilt, by making a directed/informed choice.
