Hi Tom, excellent post, I always think about green activism as something like a non-functional element of our lives that must have balance, like security and many others non-functional requirements. Even using public transportation and electric cars, we are still rolling over thousands and thousands million square meters of devastated green areas... Where does it stop without returning to the caves?
On 'non-functional': the huge danger with the term 'non-functional' is that it gives people an excuse to think that it doesn't matter. To me a better term for that is 'qualitative' - it's about quality, in all its forms. Once we get that switch in perspective in our architectures and elsewhere, we can perhaps start to get people to realise that yeah, it _does_ matter - and matters a _lot_...
"Where does it stop without returning to the caves?" - it won't, unless we can change the core system. As I've said often elsewhere here, the fundamental is to put an end to possessionism, and shift to a responsibility based model. Yeah, I know that'll be a huge challenge - but if we can't rise to that challenge, then yeah, everything dies. That's the stakes here. Oh well.
'qualitative': agreed in a sense that this is an element to provide the balanced quality to our lives (or not). When I talk about the danger of 'returning to the caves', I mean that I see no problem in transforming nature according to our evolving needs. A non-green transformed nature at some point is all right to me. This is the least hypocrite I can be :-)
"A non-green transformed nature at some point is all right to me" - agreed in principle. Probably. The challenge on that is whether we really know what we're doing, in terms of sustainability measured not in terms of just next week, but millennia and more. Nature has rather more practice at that than we have, and it did it without needing to think about it, too. :-)
Do not stress over your car Tom, even the EV owners merrily plug their cars into electricity sockets with little or no idea as to where or how the electricity is generated. Hypocrisy is evident across the globe with most climate change advocates flying around the world with little or no concern to the impact of their actions.
Statements such as "we are all in this together" from government officials or billionaires are the highest level of hypocrisy when they have already furnished bunkers to ride out any climate events or nuclear repercussions in the event of global conflicts.
Most of us will be viewed as "collateral damage" in the bigger scheme of things.
Many thanks for this, Robert. And don't worry, I'm not stressing out about any of this, just noting that this is the kind of situation that most of us are stuck, whether by choice or not. Hence, as usual, the hidden implication is that the only way we'll get out of this by scrapping the entirety of the current farce of our so-called 'economics'.
"collateral damage" - yeah. Bleak but all too accurate,I fear. Oh well. :-|
Hi Tom, excellent post, I always think about green activism as something like a non-functional element of our lives that must have balance, like security and many others non-functional requirements. Even using public transportation and electric cars, we are still rolling over thousands and thousands million square meters of devastated green areas... Where does it stop without returning to the caves?
On 'non-functional': the huge danger with the term 'non-functional' is that it gives people an excuse to think that it doesn't matter. To me a better term for that is 'qualitative' - it's about quality, in all its forms. Once we get that switch in perspective in our architectures and elsewhere, we can perhaps start to get people to realise that yeah, it _does_ matter - and matters a _lot_...
"Where does it stop without returning to the caves?" - it won't, unless we can change the core system. As I've said often elsewhere here, the fundamental is to put an end to possessionism, and shift to a responsibility based model. Yeah, I know that'll be a huge challenge - but if we can't rise to that challenge, then yeah, everything dies. That's the stakes here. Oh well.
'qualitative': agreed in a sense that this is an element to provide the balanced quality to our lives (or not). When I talk about the danger of 'returning to the caves', I mean that I see no problem in transforming nature according to our evolving needs. A non-green transformed nature at some point is all right to me. This is the least hypocrite I can be :-)
"A non-green transformed nature at some point is all right to me" - agreed in principle. Probably. The challenge on that is whether we really know what we're doing, in terms of sustainability measured not in terms of just next week, but millennia and more. Nature has rather more practice at that than we have, and it did it without needing to think about it, too. :-)
Do not stress over your car Tom, even the EV owners merrily plug their cars into electricity sockets with little or no idea as to where or how the electricity is generated. Hypocrisy is evident across the globe with most climate change advocates flying around the world with little or no concern to the impact of their actions.
Statements such as "we are all in this together" from government officials or billionaires are the highest level of hypocrisy when they have already furnished bunkers to ride out any climate events or nuclear repercussions in the event of global conflicts.
Most of us will be viewed as "collateral damage" in the bigger scheme of things.
Many thanks for this, Robert. And don't worry, I'm not stressing out about any of this, just noting that this is the kind of situation that most of us are stuck, whether by choice or not. Hence, as usual, the hidden implication is that the only way we'll get out of this by scrapping the entirety of the current farce of our so-called 'economics'.
"collateral damage" - yeah. Bleak but all too accurate,I fear. Oh well. :-|