permaculture

[Claude Genest <genest@together.net>]

Seems that Lomborg's book is an expression of the general public's having
had enought with ( what they perceive to be) environmental doomsaying.

I agree that throwing stats/facts back and forth doesn't get very far - but,
and maybe this harkens back to the thread on the relative utility of
scientific enquiry, it seeems like it's the only language we've got.

 I just find it so frustrating: What I want to talk about with people
 (mom/dad brother/friends) is Permaculture.
 But I can't do that till I define our "other way of seeing".
 And I can't do that till I convince people that it's worth taking the time
to consider an ecological perspective, and I can't do that till I convince
them that something's broken and needs fixing, and I can't do that till I
wade through their objections which include things like
"you're too negative and seeing the glass as half empty - stats/facts reveal
that things aren't getting worse, they're getting better !"

I guess this Lomborg stuff is a little like the Canadian in Alberta a few
years back who made headlines saying that the Holocaust had never happened.
What can you say to that ? "yes it did" ?!

As Thomas Pynchon says in "Gravity's Rainbow" "If they get you asking the
wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers".... What a
catch-22 this Lomborg puts us in ....



> From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
> Reply-To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 18:22:49 -0800
> To: "permaculture" <permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu>
> Subject: Re: Guardian article on Lomborg
> 
> I've toured the various websites that rebut Lomborg, and think that
> Souscayrous's analysis is the most cogent and promising. We can forever
> debate whether species are vanishing or not; whether Lake Erie is now
> cleaner or Baikal is now dying, and whether we'll find more oil or turn to
> hydrogen for power. The debating game is a losing one and keeps us in an
> endless cycle of Lomborg's making. We all know that most projections--from
> sports scores to weather to the economy to global warming--end up wrong. The
> Devil can quote scripture to his purpose, and Lomborg has ample writings to
> choose from: If you torture the data long enough, they will confess.
> 
> Ask instead, Are human beings only consumers, here only to collect a lot of
> toys? Does "what are you worth?" mean only "how much money do you make?" Is
> the earth simply a treasure trove to be plundered? Playing Lomborg's game
> answers those questions with a "yes." The question is really, what kind of
> life do we want? One in which we are distracted by the candy dangling in
> front of us, or one in which we try to find out what being human can be? I
> know I'm preaching to the choir here, but Souscayrous has reminded me that
> the real issues are larger than Lomborg's debate. Thanks for that.
> 
> Toby    
> 
> on 1/2/02 2:52 AM, souscayrous at souscayrous@wanadoo.fr wrote:
> 
>> There is nothing to answer in Lomborg's practical analysis: we are still
>> using oil; there is still tin, copper, chromium, phosphate, gold and 
>> silver.
>> It is simple to imagine new sources, new processes of extraction.  Even 
>> when
>> the world has eventually yielded its mineral deposits Lomborg will not be
>> proved wrong: because, surely, by then, there will be mine ships plying
>> interplanetary routes laden with the fruits of other worlds.
>> 
>> Cassandra will always be a lonely and destitute woman.
>> 
>> Penitential environmentalism is exposed to the pragmatic derision of the
>> status quo expressed through Lomborg and trite rebuttals are the stock of
>> modern politics not a thoughtful counter movement.  Any response must be
>> deliberate and profound however difficult and lengthy.  As we are
>> discovering in the illuminating discussion currently lead by Flick Wright,
>> the roots of our thinking go deep and an aboriginal interpretation (or 
>> other
>> cultural perspective) of Lomborg's analysis might enlighten an answer.
>> 
>> It is not insatiable technology but insatiable desire stripping the world.
>> It is not the exhaustion of oil, or tin, it is not the transformation of
>> rain forest to carbon dioxide and ash: this is the product and not the
>> source.
>> 
>> Lomberg is tangential.  He touches my concerns with his words but his
>> meaning is not mine.  Resources, finite or infinite, have nothing to do 
>> with
>> my belief in recycling, small is beautiful or my disgust at my societies
>> over consumption.  Nothing.
>> 
>> 
>> Souscayrous
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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