Here’s another of those wonderful graphics (discussed in a previous post). It instantly makes many things clear. Not least how responsible we are in the West – the US and Europe in particular – for the predicament we find ourselves in. Also how little China and India and Brazil, the new ‘bad boys’, are responsible. And most crucially, how little time there is… Then, when you combine it with this other graphic… noting especially the …
Preindustrial societies relied on muscle power for work: if not your own, then that of some animal, or of another human. Combustion of fossil fuels has largely become the ‘muscle’ that does most physical work: electricity powering machines that replace the jobs, for example, carried out by slaves in the ancient (and not so ancient) world… petrol pulling our carriages and ploughs. As recently as the American Civil War, people killed to keep their slaves. …
IVF is a sign of our times: society encourages us to remain non-adult ever longer, but our bodies ignore this cultural infantilizing of our minds. It strikes me that there is a parallel here with our response to something like global warming. We have created a virtual reality (the human world) and imagine that it IS reality. Meanwhile the world continues to turn, global warming approaches inexorably, and we don’t realize that there is a …
