Change ourselves or the climate? Neither.

Starting assumption: The Earth's atmosphere is getting warmer, due to humans or otherwise.  In other words, global warming is real.

Understandably, the increase of temperatures around the world is going to cause some major problems.  Predictions offer a smorgasboard of disasters including: droughts, monsoons, hurricanes and typhoons, earthquakes and landslides, tsunamis and high tides! (Disasters are less scary when spoken in rhyme).  As it currently stands there are two "solutions" being offered: Social change, and geo-engineering.

Advocates of social change have a primary enemy in carbon and human culture (close bedfellows since the agricultural revolution).  Their solution to global warming is to eliminate greenhouse gases by convincing people to use fewer CO2 producing products, and to make the products that do so, more efficient.  These people are generally your stereotypical environmentalists, hipsters, and other similar activists coming out of liberal-arts schools (like mine).  On the other hand, you have the proponents of geo-engineering, who are your stereotypical scientists, mathematicians, and other similar "experts" who are coming out of technically proficient schools (such as MIT).  They espouse the idea that global warming can be defeated with direct action, such as seeding the sky with reflective particles or salting the oceans to prevent the gulf-stream from collapsing.  Both groups are well supported by evidence and predictive models, and in many cases they agree that both courses of action should be pursued.

Yet both groups have no idea how to go about realizing their goals, since their goals are so unrealistic and idealized.  Does anyone really think that we can convince not only gas-happy America, but developing nations that heavily rely on coal to change their behavior regarding fossil fuels?  Does anyone really want to invest in a massive engineering project that is not certain to work, doesn't address all the climate issues, and may actually cause other problems on top of the climate?  Both of these efforts require massive amount of money, long political campaigns, and can't be too heavily compromised or diluted for fear of the solutions losing their effectiveness.  Furthermore, even if these both could be implemented, the problem would not go away at all.  We have now dumped enough into the atmosphere that a number of feedback-loops have been created in numerous places around the world.  For example: Millenia old perma-frost is beginning to melt, releasing tons of greenhouse gasses. We can't engineer perma-frost not to melt, and we can't guilt trip it into remaining frozen, so what do we do?

My answer: Do nothing....for now.  We have to come to the realization that the world IS going to get warmer, no matter what.  Even the most ideal predictions regarding successful social or engineered changes only slow down the progress of global warming.  But when I say do nothing, I don't mean give up or despair.  One of the major issues with reporting on global warming is the alarmism which so conveniently raises viewer counts for the various networks and publications involved.  It isn't interesting if it can't kill you.  Yet global warming is not a universally negative change.  When a climate changes for the worse in one place, it could just as easily be changing for the better elsewhere.  Increased temperatures are already causing record vegetation growth in many places around the world, and some developing nations being held back by drought or famine may finally get a break.  In all likelihood the majority of changes will be for the worse, but the main idea is not to be alarmist, but rather realistic and practical about our response.  Pretending we are doing something for anything but our wallets when we buy a Prius or an efficient AC is not going to help the planet.

So do nothing, until we find something effective to do.  I don't think that any amount of work on the two solutions I described is going to prevent the eventual rise of sea levels.  Don't spend all our money on ad campaigns for green products, instead spend that money on building sea walls.  Don't spend all our money on trying to prevent the gulf-stream from collapsing, instead spend that money on developing urban agriculture and vertical farms.  Don't spend all our money on...well we aren't spending any money on climate change in developing nations, but we should be spending money on building shelters and colonies for the environmental refugees that are sure to come.  Do you see the trend here?  Instead of trying to stop the problem, we should do our best to mitigate its effects.

An interesting parallel to this problem is the War on Drugs.  A number of extremely dangerous drugs are legal to use because we are used to them (alcohol, nicotine, overprescription of pharmaceuticals ), and a number of not nearly as dangerous drugs are illegal because of old prejudices and interest groups (marijuana).  We spend millions of dollars on trying to stop people from selling/smoking weed, when we know people are going to keep doing it no matter what.  So just like post-prohibition, we should legalize and regulate the substance, so that we stop wasting so much money (and start making money off of taxes), and start educating people better to prevent abuse and addiction.  It worked for alcohol, it would work for weed, and it is our only choice for the environment, because its too late or too impossible to do anything else.

Optimistic Future

(Excerpt from an email to my cousin who wanted to know why I was optimistic about our future):

There are a thousand examples I could write about, but I think it would be more effective to describe abstractly why I am optimistic. First you must take into account my moral standpoint on things. My ideal is the benefit of the greater good, even if it means at the cost of some. I prefer to stand back from the daily suffering we are constantly exposed to in the media to look at the bigger picture of what is coming out of this suffering and the relief from suffering which is so often NOT reported in the media (because it isn't sudden the way tragedy so often can be). This can be taken as "the ends justify the means", which I agree with, but I prefer not to put it that way because it generally carries a negative connotation. If the ends truly are greater than the means, then it is worth it, even if the means are not pleasant.

The context one needs to put this perspective in is that of the overall trend humanity has been following since the dawn of the mind. If we can accept that there are objective means of determining quality of life (freedom, health, length of life, etc) then humanity is in a better place now than it has ever been. On global average people are better educated, more free, live longer, live healthier, and have better opportunities for their kids than at any time in history. This trend has had very few bumps in its constant rise upward, a rise which is closely correlated to technological development and globalism. One must realize that although horrors still exist in many parts of the world, they are relatively less terrible than the horrors which took place in humanity's past. We have pictures and video now which make the horror far more visceral and real to us, but that doesn't mean these things are actually increasing.

There are more people working towards the benefit of others than at any point in history. This doesn't just mean more charity, but rather an exponential increase in people interested in developing products and services which improve the lives of others, not just profit the company producing them. The Buck Fuller's and Dyson's and other humanist futurists being born today are coming into a world where their ideas are actually accepted by the populace and capable of being implemented. Globalism is forcing everyone to come to grips with cultural differences which can and will be overcome because they have to. People who won't will be naturally selected out of this new society existing in this new global environment. It is a slow and painful process, but so is growing up, and that is exactly what we as a species are doing. We are coming out of our infancy and beginning to open our eyes to the possibilities of a greater human cause, rather than a national or familial one. We still have our "teenage" and "adult" years to reach, and there will be conflict and turmoil throughout, but these will be within a context which is better than that in our previous ages.

Another thing which must be addressed is the transformation of optimism to pessimism that takes place as one grows older (speaking of the individual here). Every generation thinks the next one is screwed up, yet humanity keeps chugging along and improving itself from generation to generation. The issues which "plague" one generation are very possibly going to be non-issues to the next generation. For example Ellie (my Aunt) has a strong passion about nuclear technology and its dangerous capabilities. She is certainly right in many cases, but she also grew up in a time which was largely defined by a fear of nuclear devastation. My generation does not have this fear and is thus far more open to safe nuclear technology which will help us transition to other safer and more sustainable energy sources.

The issue of privacy is a good example of this. A lot of people, including many my age, are worried that the growing ubiquity of communication technology, cameras, and other such technologies are going to eliminate privacy. I say, "so what?". What do you have to hide? This is not going to be 1984 with a Big Brother. Transparency and observation go both ways. That is why politicians and corporations have to be ever more careful about what they do, because nearly all their actions are now available to the public. They are finally truly accountable for their actions, just as we should be for our own. Much of society is prejudiced and biased because they are never exposed to things outside of their own local norm. Now that media is increasingly controlled by the masses and not the corporations, popular culture can move past the "pop" and start presenting its true face to people around the world. People can organize and take action in ways never before imaginable due to things like Twitter and Facebook (and I am talking about a lot more than just the Iran situation). A society without privacy is one which embraces the differences that make us richer and eliminates the differences which make us conflict.

All this I am discussing is just the near future. Technology and following it society is changing at an exponentially faster rate. Change is something we are going to have to get used to (kids born only a few years after me are already better adapted to this kind of change than many of my peers) and stop fearing. The sooner we approach change as an inevitability which we can direct, rather than a monster we must stop, we will be that much better. The far future (not that far amazingly) is a bizarre place. I am talking about things far more surprising than flying cars. I am talking about a sentient internet, uploaded minds, nano-bot swarms which can construct on the molecular level, the elimination of old age, and the realization that the digital is no less real than the analog (everything is information interacting mathematically). We will not always be human, we will eventually be post-human, and it behooves us to not be afraid, but rather to imagine what greater possibilities we can make of it.

We will never reach utopia, but we will keep getting closer, until the entropic death of the universe does us all in (or we hack our way out into a different reality).

(Excerpt end)

It Begins...

So here we have it.  The first entry in the bare bones construction of my first real website.  Whether this text shall see the light of day, that is to be determined.  For now it is an apt placeholder for figuring out what the hell I am doing.

Enjoy.