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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Less is more: decreasing the number of scientific conferences to promote economic degrowth (PDF)
Hervé Philippea, Trends in Genetics
Today’s scientists are confronted with a serious paradox: although the goal of their research is often to mitigate the negative impact of human activities (e.g. loss of biodiversity), the research community itself can be a significant contributor to the problem. Moreover, grant evaluation criteria (e.g. number of publications, number of presentations given at international conferences) strongly favour activities that have a significant impact on the environment.
From an historical perspective, there is a strong positive correlation between scientific progress and environment degradation. During the past 300 years, tremendous scientific progress has been made in, for instance, biodiversity research, from the typological taxonomy of Linnaeus that described only a few thousand species to the current description of millions of species ordered using sophisticated phylogeneticmethods. Over this time, however, the environment has been progressively degraded, because of soil, air and water pollution (e.g. with heavy metals and organochlorates), deforestation, overfishing, habitat destruction and poor resource management in general.
Altogether, this degradation has brought us to our current position, from which we can expect increasing global warming and fertile soil destroyed by human activities (e.g. roads or suburbia) or severely degraded by nonsustainable practices (e.g. mechanised agriculture), all resulting in a loss of biodiversity.
Although this degradation does not threaten life in general, which has survived more dramatic changes, such as the massive increase of the oxygen content ~2 billions years ago, it threatens human civilization. Overall, during the past 300 years, our improved understanding of the workings of nature has generally not resulted in appropriate management policies and has instead enabled increasing degradation.
I believe that the main explanation to this paradox can be found in the relationship between scientific understanding and economic growth.
… The question is what can we do about it? I argue that uncoupling scientific progress and economic growth is required to preserve our future. Here I would ask all scientists to promote economic degrowth*.As scientists,wemight not be in a position to change economic policies overnight. However, we can at least lead by example. I propose that an easy first step is to significantly reduce the number of scientific conferences by replacing annual meetings with less frequent but longer meetings. Our environmental footprint could be further reduced by giving presentations by video conferences or by organizing ’virtual’ conferences.
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Centre Robert Cedergren, Département de Biochimie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec H3T1J4, Canada
(30 April 2008)
A letter to the publication, unfortunately behind a paywall. Contributor Michael Lardelli writes:
What is it with Canadian geneticists and clear thinking on sustainability? Methinks they should let geneticists rule the world. [Lardelli is a geneticist]
Running the Numbers, the Next Installment
Sarah Kuck, WorldChanging
To help people picture their impact, photographer Chris Jordan has been diligently adding to his consciousness-raising series Running the Numbers, which puts statistics about consumerism into perspective by capturing them visually.
When we covered the first installment of this series, we were taken aback with his ability to make jaws drop and minds expand in a single shot. If you haven’t seen his work before, I recommend taking a look. His talent for illustrating how our individual choices build mountains of consequences (literally) is worth exploring.
(28 May 2008)
Stunning photos at the original post and at artist Chris Jordan’s website, for example Running the Numbers.
John Papworth on Transition: From Fourth World Quarterly Review
John Papworth, Quarterly Review via Transition Culture
Quite suddenly and almost by accident, a wholly new political movement has exploded upon the scene. It erupted in Totnes, an ancient town on Devon’s River Dart of only 7,500 inhabitants. Scarcely two years ago, a small group of its citizens took note of the announcement that the global supply of oil had ‘peaked’, (meaning that against a rapidly expanding demand for a resource which has been the basis of industrial development and economic expansion for at least 150 years, the supply would sooner or not much later run out or become unaffordable). So did a lot of other people of course, but the Totnes group were unique in deciding to do something about it. They realised that what was at stake was an urgent need to change an entire lifestyle, currently based on the availability of oil, to one based on local resources.
There have been many revolutions in history, but has there ever been one of such sweeping practical implication as what this tiny group proceeded to affirm? They were promoting it in just one small town in a remote corner of England and any conventional wiseacre might have felt justified in judging them to be a group of impractical dreamers and visionaries. In this he could not have been more mistaken; for what had stirred this group to act immediately flashed a responsive echo in other towns.
… What in fact the Transition movement has stumbled upon is the argument first put forward by Professor Leopold Kohr over half a century ago in his epochal Breakdown of Nations, later popularised in Fritz Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful. They were simply arguing that the origins of the modern crisis lay in the fact that governments and institutions (including industries), had become so large as to be uncontrollable under any political label, and that the genuine democratic target lay in making them smaller so people could control them.
Nobody listened, of course. The fruits of oil-based economic expansion were so obviously going to be with us for evermore there was no need to listen. But now, suddenly, dramatically, people are realising they must listen if they or their children are to survive.
(28 May 2008)
Quarterly Review homepage.
Do schools kill creativity? (video)
Sir Ken Robinson, TED
Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. Bio.
(2006)
Contributor John Gear writes:
Best talk on education EVER — concludes with an important message about the kind of education we need to address the challenges we’re creating for ourselves.
