[lbo-talk] Climate Change as Liberation Hydrology

[Jeffrey Fisher]

On 8/10/07, Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Seeing the Ballardian aspect of climate change
> warnings, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG writes:
>
> <snip>
> In other words, these things are actually so
> evocative, and so imaginatively stimulating, that it's
> hard not to get at least a tiny thrill at the idea
> that you might get to see these things happen.
> Nothing against Miami, but all of south Florida under
> several meters of water? With Cape Canaveral lost
> under a subtropical lagoon and St. Petersburg an
> archipelago?
>
> The problem, it seems, is that climate change
> scientists, in describing these unearthly terrestrial
> reorganizations, are science fictionalizing, so to
> speak, our everyday existence. The implicit, if
> inadvertant, message here seems to be: hey, south
> Floridians, and all you who are bored of the world
> today, sick of all the parking lots and the 7-11s,
> tired of watching Cops, tired of applying to colleges
> you don't really want to go to, tired of credit card
> debt and bad marriages, don't worry.
>
> This will all be underwater soon.
>
>
> It could be called liberation hydrology.
>
>
> Climate change becomes an adventure – the
> becoming-science-fiction of everyday life.
>
> [...]

interesting, yes, but i'm not sure i'm entirely convinced. maybe some people
do find it titillating somehow, even subconsciously -- it's an adventure,
living the adventure of the future, as if the whole world is really disney
world.

but i suspect it's more that such catastrophic threats seem totally unreal
-- like a movie, or disney world. people talk about them, you might spend
some time there (in your mind, say), but at the end of the day, you go back
home, flip on the a/c, watch some tv, and go to bed.

the thing that finally struck me was how we had a natural carbon
sequestration program in place until we blew it . . . or, rather, melted it.

j

--
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