Society

No more Ms. Nice Girl

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What’s a silver-streaked lady ecology writer to do? Be nice, be friendly, avoid the troubling topics, read the classics, don’t feel morally obliged to infect others with a perfectly warranted alarm and pessimism. Who am I to tell 10,000 ostensibly complacent neighbors that the ship is going down … especially at the height of summer, when the days are so fine and fair?

Is electricity really the lifeblood of civilization?

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We are currently in a deep and horrible disaster, being visited on the world’s poorest and the tentacles are gradually crawling up the anchor to take down the rest of the ship. But I also think that there is a good deal of reason for hope – we have vast capacities, vast resources and vast imagination.

One more thing

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As the energy crisis explodes on the rest of us, I’d like to advocate for mercy for those who don’t yet fully understand. … sympathy and kindness are not small things to be rationed out by droppers, only to those perfectly deserving – they should be ladled out and poured from buckets and flow out of us like rivers. Any scarcity of kindness is artificial – and far too many things are growing scarce for us to have artificial shortages of generosity.

The ‘Silent Running’ fallacy

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Most contemporary debate on such environmental issues as global warming assumes that nature is fragile and modern industrial civilization is not. Are we missing the elephant — or, rather, the grizzly bear — in our unexpectedly delicate living room?