Posted August 28, 2009
Editor’s note: Albert Bates’ ongoing research and networking around the world have resulted in an optimistic message. He agrees there’s no way that
collapse of suburbia and business-as-usual can be avoided. But with ecovillages, permaculture, biochar and all manner of caring for the Earth,
he knows we can do a lot better than to wait for the results of more fossil foolery and an attempted technofix to maintain the global corporate
economy.
———-
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in
having new eyes”
— Marcel Proust
In the world of climate policy, the argument has been shifting. It used to
be between a few global warming Cassandras and hoards of global warming
deniers, and that arguing got, well, pretty heated. The deniers long ago
lost their argument to the hard science of the matter, so the debate has
boiled down to the preventionists versus the mitigators.
The sunlight reaching the Earth has followed an 11-year solar cycle of
small ups and downs, but there has been no increase. Over the past 30
years, global temperature has risen markedly, but still is only little more
than 1 degree above normal. Each added degree will produce dramatically
more effects.
Preventionists are looking for either very painful emission reductions,
like zero, yesterday, or else some technical fix — nuclear fusion, or
orbiting mirrors, say — a silver bullet that would let us go on spending
more of Earth’s capital than one generation has any right to.
Mitigators have given up any hope that we can arrest or reverse climate
change now, but have some hope we can either slow it down or, if not, be
able to get out of its way.
…
Read the complete article at http://www.culturechange.org/go.html?517