tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post8956078367928405743..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: Are Sustainability Movements Sustainable?Anne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-12138319365874439562016-02-15T12:26:42.010-05:002016-02-15T12:26:42.010-05:00Thanks for the clarification. The search for life...Thanks for the clarification. The search for life 'out there' is largely just playing games and in my cynical view should be paid for by the video game industry. We've posted on this in the past. Even if it's out there, there is almost no way to know, as you say. And the whole idea of 'life' often means, though not explicitly so stated, people of some recognizable sci-fi sort (who speak English!).Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-5296400346434301132016-02-15T11:54:25.460-05:002016-02-15T11:54:25.460-05:00Fermi, as far as I know, never defined the great f...Fermi, as far as I know, never defined the great filters. He essentially asked, if the universe is teeming with complex life, then where is everyone? He speculated that some great filter was eliminating all or most other intelligences, and that was why we have never met them.<br /><br />A bunch of other possible great filters have been proposed, but, of course, in this point in our development, there is no way to find out if any of those ideas is correct.Michael Finfer, MDnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-76307108807777751582016-02-15T10:17:13.445-05:002016-02-15T10:17:13.445-05:00Thanks for these thoughts! I don't know what ...Thanks for these thoughts! I don't know what Fermi's filters were, but will try to find out. My feeling, and of course it just is a feeling not any kind of 'fact', is that, as you concluded, we are short-term behavers. Perhaps that is contsitutional based on our evolution as mammals. I agree about the tobacco playbook, but one has to accept that tobacco companies and their investors and customers are, after all, people with just as much legitimate self-interest as their opponents. Everyone uses tactics that they think will work--to wit, the rife demagoguery in our current political system.<br /><br />As to 'sustainability', archeologists point out to me that agriculture has never been 'sustainable'. The great civilizations of the past either died out as such by exhausting their soil (a good book about this is Dirt), or by dominating some external source (as the Romans and perhaps Greeks before them did in North Africa).<br /><br />The 'brush' I painted the succession of movements with was, essentially, its largely symbolic and passing nature, even if the threats being responded to were and are real. And while I did list some of the same successes you mention, it is not clear that anything remotely like existential threats have been perceived by a consensus in the sense of willingness to make deep cuts in our ways of life. If I'm wrong, that will be great, but the waves of similar concerns that largely passed into the night can't just be dismissed because they're inconvenient to acknowledge as possible precedents of current concerns.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-39715340745008818832016-02-15T09:43:15.736-05:002016-02-15T09:43:15.736-05:00I would not paint every sustainability movement wi...I would not paint every sustainability movement with the same brush. For example, there have been some great successes, such as ending emissions of substances that deplete the ozone layer and the removal of lead from our environment (except in Flint, MI). There are others that I would call into question. For example, I think that the discussion about climate change is being influenced by a powerful, vocal group that is running a denialist campaign that comes right out of the tobacco companies' play book. <br /><br />I have similar misgivings about the discussion about GMO's. Is organic farming really more sustainable than GMO's when GMO's allow more food to be grown on less land with fewer pesticides? Again, I think there is a denialist campaign being run that is right out of the tobacco companies' play book. I see no reason to object to GMO's on safety grounds, but it seems to me that sustainability in this case is much more difficult to evaluate. In any event, I actively avoid organic produce that is eaten raw because the incidence of food-borne illness with organic produce is 8 times the incidence with non-organic produce. Having had one serving of bad shellfish and a bad chicken sandwich in my life, that is one risk that I find to be intolerable. I prefer to take practical, defensible positions.<br /><br />I any event, I think that climate change is the big one, the one that will get us in the end if we do nothing. I have even been wondering if it is one of Fermi's great filters. I am also not optimistic. Humans seem to have an unlimited capacity for acting for their own short term interested and against their own long term interests.<br /><br />Michael Finfwr, MDnoreply@blogger.com