Comments for Dark Optimism

Comment on Transition Town Kingston – celebration and future plans by Rob Hopkins

Rob Hopkins — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:57:08 +0000

Well done Transition Town Kingston and well done Shaun! What next? I’ll be keeping one eye on the Oscars just in case you are in line for winning something there too!
Brilliant stuff, and well deserved.
Rob

Comment on Burn up by Waffeleisen

Waffeleisen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:34:02 +0000

Good post. I searched the whole net for something like this. Thank you a lot, it aided me out.

Comment on David Attenborough on global population by Shaun Chamberlin

Shaun Chamberlin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:56:51 +0000

Yep, agree with just about everything both of you say. As I put it in my book,

“While population growth rates are significantly higher in Bangladesh (2%) and Ethiopia (3.2%) than in the UK (0.3%) the difference between our levels of consumption is an order of magnitude greater, meaning that the UK growth rate in greenhouse gas emissions and ecological impact due to increasing population is considerably higher than that of these developing countries.

This also emphasises that population is not (as some claim) the single most crucial environmental issue. It clearly has a significant effect as a multiplier, but our chosen way of life and ecological footprint are bigger contributors to climate change, energy resource depletion and the other challenges facing us today and in the near future.”

As you say Mandy, ‘elephants in the room’ abound. Soon we may have to replace ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ with something about not being able to see the herd for the elephants… Especially given the rate of deforestation I guess!

Comment on Applied Philosophy by Shaun Chamberlin

Shaun Chamberlin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:34:30 +0000

I love that. One that will reveal greater depths to me over time I suspect..

Comment on Applied Philosophy by Peter Donovan

Peter Donovan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:22:05 +0000

Thanks for this Shaun. Reminds me of my favorite quotation from John McKnight, who did a lot to train people in asset-based approaches:

The greatest tragedy is not needs unmet. It is gifts ungiven.

Comment on David Attenborough on global population by Mandy Meikle

Mandy Meikle — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:17:18 +0000

Hi Smallbeds – I totally agree that one of the factors in understanding the Earth’s carrying capacity is not just the number of people but their combined consumption of resources. However, given that the global population before we started converting fossil fuels into food was just over one billion, we have to consider population decrease over the next century & stop referring to 9 billion by 2050 as if everything will carry on as is.

I don’t think we should “concentrate” on population – as you say, it is one of many factors. What we should focus on is energy in its widest sense (i.e. including food). Few people seem to realise that our technological wizardry has largely been possible because of the vast energy bank of fossil fuels. There is a tendancy to believe that we can do anything if we just put our minds to it – not the case. We have to remain within the laws of nature!

Global population is one of the increasing number of ‘elephants in the room’ so I was pleased to see a respected character such as David Attenborough discussing it on mainstream TV. I wonder if he could be persuaded to do a programme on ending growth economics? : )

Comment on David Attenborough on global population by smallbeds

smallbeds — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:38:13 +0000

The problem with concentrating on population is that it provides people with high-consumption lifestyles with a tool for berating those with large families: typically that means that affluent Westerners can look down on the poor and the foreign, and use their sheer weight of numbers to excuse their own pampered inactivity. Monbiot has a good piece on this: The Population Myth. The full issue is surely a more complex combination of consumption and numbers, with the weight of responsibility much more on the shoulders of the individual who consumes the carbon of two to reduce their consumption, rather than for one of every two poor people to stop having babies. When the habits of a Western lifestyle can easily emit around ten times the carbon of a Vanuatan one, then the size of that Vanuatan's brood isn't really here or there unless they're really getting it awwn in Vanuatu. I guess most of them don't have a telly to distract them.

Comment on Kingston Green Guardian Awards 2010 by Bex White

Bex White — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:17:30 +0000

Congratulations to TTK and yourself on winning their awards – both very much well deserved.

I look forward to some apple crumble from that little tree

Comment on Parliamentary TEQs talk, and an interesting conversation… by Rosemary Fletcher

Rosemary Fletcher — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:48:16 +0000

I found your website when I was browsing for something entirely different, but this post showed up at the top of Bing your web site must be so popular! Keep up the awesome job!

Comment on Heroes and villains in Copenhagen, and beyond by Roger

Roger — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:27:32 +0000

Not that I believe in probability, but when our highest leaders are prepared to take a ‘50-50 chance’ on precipitating catastrophic climate change on the explicit reason that it would require a change in taxes to take further action, [and their data is both out of date, incomplete, and rather optimistic ] then it is clear that there is no ‘central’ solution coming in the next very few crucial years of ‘war against exponentials that will overwhelm capabilities of mankind to do anything’ … the beginning is just too insidious and folks think in terms of straight lines… and then suddenly the slope is significant and by the time anyone changes the slope is overwhelming… it would be nice to think mankind is intelligent, and indeed some it seems are, but as a mass with governments set in fixed procedural patterns which cannot be altered because there is no procedure , patterns designed to allow corruption and protect the backs of the guilty… nay, corporate mankind , even the billions who do not know that is what we are, has killed itself by adopting inflexibility and living lies where mankind clearly only came this far by dealing with the truth and being flexible… to me it matters not because I loo beyond even the long-term whilst I can get few to even look beyond the short term disasters of life our way of ‘life’ brings… I see time as the ‘enemy’ , we should never have believed in it if we looked at it through the highest clarity of intuition/inspiration… what is my being is not my survival for a lifetime, nor anyone else’s but the spirit which ‘moves’ me , and the remarkable fact is that there is only one spirit moving us all… if we ‘could’ see that then we should all be happy and live by loving one another and there would be no such catastrophe as we now perhaps envision , a ’shorter-term ending of much of mankind and nature through short-sighted mankind’ , but just a slower process of time in which even slower processes outstrip the human mind, its flexibility and and ability to think outside the boxes of ‘convenience’ [laziness ?]
Nay we would miss the point that way too… the point is that the spirit makes us what we are, some rush around doing things and solve their ‘problems ‘ that way, some think a bit further and see what works and what does not on longer time-scale , but who looks at what moves us ? Not religion, because that is easily unmasked as mostly political lies as bad as politics, but our own hearts if we STOP and listen, our own hearts tell us lovingness is the best way to live , but we have the capacity and will to deny our hearts using logic, ‘reason’ , even if the input to reason is false concepts, lies, albeit familiar lies… so the spirit has taken us this way , but also the spirit, by inspiration, has invested a few of mankind with a longer-still view of being, that not only is love beyond life and death [that by ceasing unlovingness through understanding what is 'beyond' life one can understand that the spirit creates the individual 'soul' and can recreate it just as easily], but that the spirit is thus not bound in time[or space] as is the perception of most souls … that the spirit is creator not in the sense of a physical being creating a physical being, but in the sense of creation of a virtual reality… that being is not in space and time, but makes the image of space and time…

And not only that, but the clues are there, the cracks in apparent reality, our ‘laws’ just don’t work, none of them …our conceptions are all assumptions of completeness where none exists… almost everything we believe could change tomorrow and all we could say is that we were wrong about causality…

But then what does the spirit see in our world …the answer is the whole of time and space , known , no doubt about beginning or end, no unknown future … and that vision of the end of time is given to us, but most will not look, will not believe, even if it came from their own hearts, their own ‘inner perception, their own inspiration…
So one cannot comfort mankind with the truth about what is our essence because of ‘inbuilt’ blindness, it is not just that most will not look, most are not moved to look, belief as-it-were prevents the seeing of the source of ALL knowledge, inspiration… our science refuses to look at its own source … the politics of lies and religion, and tradition thus complete the blindness process, but no-one is to ‘blame’ … we cannot see as individuals because that is how it is , when we shall see is when we shall see, and some that have seen have said so, but it changes not very much as incredibly few will listen and look and see… and that indeed has to be so…
The upshot then is that there is , in a sense that is real, only a virtual crisis … life does not even end at death, only at the time of ceasing all unlovingness [and then not necessarily immediately and indeed the individual may return to virtuality once freed of death, of 'mortality' ... love is the only way out of life, but life says only very little about being ... being is beyond time and space , and it is that which moves us as individuals ... we are that being , ina sense we are its knowing of time and space, but time and space are no threat to being... the evidence for this is ,I believe, clear within us all, we should recognise it as true [hence I say it is 'absolute' ] , but belief of reason based on false evidence defeats our own inspiration of the truth…that is how it must be for most, so most will not see anything in this I write ….