Posts tagged "climate-change":

Diary

I'm still suffering from my by cold. We had a couple of guests over the weekend. C H, a Canadian citizen, who is associated with the Thich Nhat Hanh sanghas - a former "boat person" who escaped from Vietnam just after the war. She is a member of a Buddhist practice centre in Ontario, and on her way back to Canada, was about to visit another practice centre in Italy.

Optimism vs pessimism vis à vis the climate emergency

In his recent interviews, Kim Stanley Robinson has been saying that the 3 or 4 years that have passed since he wrote Ministry of the Future have given him more room for optimism that we will successfully address climate change. On the other hand, Amitav Ghosh another novelist who has been doing some non-fiction writing on climate change, looks at the same period and finds reason to be pessimistic. Probably both writers would qualify such categorical statements, but that's the drift. Others like Yanis Varafoukis, Noam Chomsky, Miguel Fuentes and (ultimate pessimist) Guy McPherson have been weighing in on the subject.

Planet of the Humans (again)

Reading George Monbiot’s critique of “Planet of the Humans” I appreciated his ability to sift through the many details, see where the errors lie and then state the ways in which the film is inaccurate, dangerous and damaging to the cause that it is supposedly trying to support. Environmentalists face so many challenges from the political right and those with vested interests who wish to undermine challenges to the continued degradation of the biosphere.

"Planet of the Humans"

I watched this movie, (it’s available free on YouTube) by Jeff Gibbs and produced by Michael Moore, as there have been appeals from the Green movement to take it down and, who knows, maybe they’ll succeed. While the film is, as critics say, no doubt hurtful to efforts to lobby for greener solutions, I think the central thesis of the film is correct, that without addressing the root causes of our environmental problems – overpopulation and unrestrained economic growth – any technological fixes we try to find will not work. (Update: See George Monbiot’s critique of the film.)