A book recommended by my friend Sara, I find other friends, of people I’ve read or know, among it: Ivan Illich, who I read in India – his Development Dictionary – food for our chapter on Needs and Wants in our book on plastic, Life In Plastic; Charlotte Du Can
Subtitled Finding our place in the time of science, climate change, pandemics and all other emergencies, it is written by Dougald Hine from a perspective of living in Sweden, and a life of immersion into Climate Change.
Premis: First there must be an end. The escalator of Progress
Swedish perspective – he lives in a country that didn’t force its population to stay home or encourage an overwhelming sense of fear. Has anyone noticed how the people refusing to follow the Covid science are the same ones who refuse to accept the climate science.
He traces the history of climate change as they impacted his life: 2005, the time of climate sceptics, 2006 An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore. 2009 formation of Dark Mountain, in which his pesimism attacked by George Monbiot.
2018 Extinction Rebellion established in Stroud by Gail Bradbrook Roger Hallam etc.
2018 DeepAdaptation Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy” by Jem Bendell.
2000 Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, launched term Anthropocene to name a new geological epoch bought about by human actions. The influence of human behavior on Earth’s atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch.
Science: With Climate Change we enter into a conversation that is framed by science. Time of Covid, political invocation of science took on a new colour: ‘Faced with a novel threat about which there was far less scientific understanding than climate change, politicians never the less urged us to ‘follow the science’
Two paths: one big brightly lit many lanes coverging. A fast track to no where. Small path a trail with many branches, made by those who seek to build resilience closer to the ground, nurturing capacities and relationships
Problem/Predicament. A problem has a solution: you can fix it and it goes away. A predicament has no solution, is is something you have to live with
Premis: First there must be an end. The escalator of Progress. All life feeds on death. Robin All Kimmerer : In her house we learned that everything we put in our mouths, everything that allows us to live, is the gift of anothers life.”
How millions of years of dying in the forests and seas of the ancient world go into one generation of living he way we have been doing. Dependence on these vast underground reserves of death.