eco-optimism

[Ian Murray]

<seamus2001 at home.com> writes
> >That's not fair, Gordon. The whole point of science is to make and
> >correct errors as quickly as possible. To the extent that folks
were
> >passing off conjectures and models of simulable futures as 'facts'
> >they definitely weren't speaking as scientists but acting out
> >anxieties based on the limited models they had at the time.
>
> But when I pointed out the conjectural nature of the evidence on
global
> warming on this list, I seem to remember getting told off for it.
========
Well it's unfortunate that occurs but conjectural is a rather wide
term. I mean, quantum theory-the best physics we got-is conjectural,
and with further reasearch into theories of computation and topology
etc. may undergo revisions, nevertheless we get a hell of a lot good
and bad stuff from it. So, modeling atmospheric dynamics with
computers and doing paleoclimatology should keep on being done and the
peer review process needs to be as robust as we can make it lest
deception creep gets out of hand. Big Science, too, still hasn't shed
it's cold war skin, with all it's anxieties, phobias etc.


> As I see it, the 'profound changes that the environmental movement
has
> wrought on the left side of the political coin' are for the worse,
not
> the better. Certainly any philosophy that seeks to demote the
interests
> of humanity to some 'spiritual' value are generally speaking
alienated
> religious crap.
========
Well that definitely seems to be true but the response needs to be
better analysis, explanations,  persuasive rhetoric etc. The paradoxes
of valuation are all too familiar to those of us on the left [saii];
also not everyone on the left buys the religion as alienation thesis
and antagonizing them is counterproductive. The US citizenry [pardon
my generalization here] seems to enjoy it's existential anxiety so
religiosity isn't going away anytime soon. To show us [them] we can
have wonder, beauty, a sense of purpose and hope and altruism and
kindness without the secular/sacred dyad is gonna take a lot of work.
Non-theistic or post-theistic world views always run into the 'proving
a negative' problem; hence a tolerance for pluralism seems to be the
sensible 'solution' for now.


>
> More than that, the outlook that collapses the contrasting views of
> historical materialism on the one hand and capitalist growth on the
> other, is the outlook of the embittered petit bourgeois, who feels
that
> both classes are closing in on him. This is the guy that signed up
for
> Hitler, Poujade and Huey Long.
>
> --
> James Heartfield
====
Well we have to keep on our toes then and communicate in a
non-condescending manner in order to change minds. Democratizing
science via tapping people's sense of wonder is one solution imo.

Ian