Part of the appeal to Geo Engineering comes from hopelessness with the politics. In a way that marries perfectly with the denier narrative. The Koch Brother types want you either to deny or to give up hope. Both serve the same end.One of the things I emphasize in my own critique is the nonsensicality of this particular argumentative move. Every geo-engineering mega-engineering wet-dream, were it to move from fancy to actual implementation, would require the very politics (funding, regulation, dispute-adjudication, maintenance) to work relatively effectively the specific denial of which tends to be the enabling condition for entertaining these boondoggles in the first place. As often happens in futurological discourse, we are never more than a hop, skip, and jump away from straightforward magical thinking here.
I agree with you that "geo-engineering" plays into denialism. In my earliest critiques of "geo-engineering" I actually declared its anti-politics a kind of second stage climate-change denialism: where many begin by denying the scientific consensus about catastrophic anthropogenic climate change "geo-engineering" enthusiasts end by denying the possibility of any democratically accountable equitable collective response to the shared problem of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. Chris Mooney in particular pooh-poohed this point of mine as a real stretch. But it seems to me a fine way of understanding what Al Gore has famously diagnosed as the tendency of so many folks to leap from a kind of denial to a kind of despair that keeps them maddeningly passive in the face of climate catastrophes like pollution and resource descent.
> "geo-engineering" plays into denialism. In my earliest critiques
ReplyDelete> of "geo-engineering" I actually declared its anti-politics a kind
> of second stage climate-change denialism: where many begin
> by denying the scientific consensus about catastrophic anthropogenic
> climate change "geo-engineering" enthusiasts end by denying the
> possibility of any democratically accountable equitable collective
> response to the shared problem of catastrophic anthropogenic
> climate change.
Long, long ago (something like 35 years ago, in fact) I knew a
guy who was a very concerned environmentalist. He was an
outdoorsy, park-ranger type -- I went canoeing with him once,
one of only two times I've ever done that in my life)
who has since (I've learned, via the Web -- I haven't actually
communicated with him in decades) done stuff like environmental
impact research for a very large manufacturer of consumer chemicals
(think detergent).
Anyway -- and this was years before _Jurassic Park_ -- I
casually commented to him one day that maybe, instead of worrying
about saving the actual animals, we should worry about
collecting DNA samples and freezing them so that all the
species we are extinguishing can be re-created one day.
(I certainly had no doubt back then that such a thing
would be a commonplace technology sooner or later.)
He wasn't too amused, but he refrained from punching me
in the nose ;-> .
Geo-engineering falls into the same category -- don't worry
too much about what's going on, just believe in Science
(or the acceleration of acceleration or whatever) and
trust that the blue skies and clean water will return
one day, even if we have to, in effect, terraform the earth
to make it happen. We'll have AI-controlled nanotech by
then, so no biggie.
> [D]don't worry too much about what's going on,
ReplyDelete> just believe in Science (or the acceleration of acceleration
> or whatever) and trust that the blue skies and clean water will return
> one day, even if we have to, in effect, terraform the earth
> to make it happen. We'll have AI-controlled nanotech by
> then, so no biggie.
Which isn't too far removed from a Secretary of the Interior taking
the attitude that what happens to the forests doesn't matter
because the Christian Rapture is coming any day now.
> We'll have AI-controlled nanotech by then. . .
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of nanotech (in the "Transhumanist" sense of the
word) -- here's an astonishing public admission from Mike Federowicz'
(aka Mike Darwin's) new site, chronopause.com:
http://chronopause.com/index.php/2012/03/31/when-a-singularity-bites-you-in-the-ass/#comment-4826
-----------------------------
One of the most valuable things the powers that be in cryonics
could learn is to understand that cryonics, as it is currently
presented, acts as a powerful filter for a narrow range of
specific personality types. Further, it acts as a series of
filters or separators depending upon whether those recruited
are recruited as activists, involved members,”customer-members,”
or “hired hands.” The efficiency of this process is amazing
to me, and it has taken me a long time to understand it, even
as poorly as I do. Once the phenomenon is understood, and some
of its mechanics are also understood, the question arises as
to whether the kind of people being strained out from the population
as a whole is an inescapable artifact of cryonics itself, or
whether the character of the recruits could be radically altered
by re-crafting the way cryonics is articulated and presented?
That’s a critically important querstion to me to answer, because
one class of people cryonics filters for with exquisite precision
is the sociopath. IMO Robert Nelson was the first of these (and the
most visible) to do great harm, but there have been many others,
and the damage they’ve wrought has arguably been just as great,
if almost invisible to the pubic, and to cryonics community itself.
Beyond this extreme type, there is the more general problem of lack
of diversity and a monoculture of people who are
“information handling types” who are largely divorced from handling
matter and the problems that attend thereto.
I must give Jerry Leaf great credit for seeing this years before I
did. He was very unhappy with the introduction of Nanotechnology
into cryonics and he had considerable contempt for the kind of
people it attracted. He would not infrequently express his feelings
with a snort and shake of the head, but he was never either able,
or willing to articulate his reasons at length. I know he thought
the idea of Nanomechanical cell repair machines was so much
hokum, because we did have discussions about the limits of
reversible damage, and how repair might be undertaken, when possible.
But what I failed to grasp was his distaste for what the ideas of
Nanotechnology in cryonics were doing to the composition of people
being recruited. On the other hand, it was those very ideas that
were in part responsible for the expansion in recruitment –
which had been slight prior to their introduction. This experience
has served to make me achingly aware that the message can and
will shape the medium you find yourself immersed in. That’s one
of my core objectives here – to recast the message in a way that
is at once more honest and more effective at recruiting the kind
of people cryonics needs if it is to prosper – and that we personally
need if we want to survive. As it is, cryonics is a uni-dimensional
and inhuman thing which makes most people with empathy and feelings
uncomfortable to be involved with. It also disproportionately
empowers people who are just plain deadly and dangerous to deal with.
What’s more, the concentration of such “weirdness,” to use your adjective,
is self-sustaining and off-putting.
— Mike Darwin
I think it's worth stressing that even if things are bad and we've missed the boat on avoiding catastrophic warming there's always room to prevent an even worse catastrophe from happening. So there's never a point where it becomes rational to give up.
ReplyDeleteQuite so. Indeed, so much climate change denialism really amounts to the very familiar truly ugly North Atlantic racism that says, sure, climate-change will (and indeed already is) increase famines, droughts, lethally destructive storms, plagues, refugees and so on and so forth, but, hey, it doesn't matter because it will mostly only happen to THEM, you know, OVER THERE, where everything is always already lethal and devastated and alien and precivilized... WE will be okay, WE will still have our bottled water, WE will still have our bubble-domed cities, WE will still have our guns to protect our treasure hoards. Climate change denialism is just a variation on the denial of humanity to the majority of humans on the planet, often by people who smugly regard themselves as humanists.
ReplyDelete> Which isn't too far removed from a Secretary of the Interior taking
ReplyDelete> the attitude that what happens to the forests doesn't matter
> because the Christian Rapture is coming any day now.
This happened, by the way:
(a comment I posted at
http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/08/derangement-of-technodevelopmental.html )
-----------------------
> [G]etting to the Singularity is **the** most important thing
> in the world right now. . .
Which is, of course, different from the following -- how, exactly? [*]
"Bill Moyers reminds us that fundamentalist theology began affecting
U.S. policy, domestic and foreign, with the Reagan administration.
Moyers recalls that 'James G. Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting
natural resources was unimportant in the light of the imminent return
of Jesus Christ.' Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior and a
fundamentalist Christian, claimed that there is no need to support
treaties, protocols, and agreement intended to protect the air, the
seas, wildlife, and forest preserves because 'we don't know how much
time we have before Jesus returns.' In public testimony he said,
'After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'[**]"
-- Mel White, _Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right_,
Chapter 7, "Fascism: The Politics of Fundamentalism", p. 218
http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Gone-Bad-Dangers-Christian/dp/1585425311
[**] Bill Moyers, "Armageddon & the Environment," published December 6, 2004
by CommonDreams.org
[*] I suppose a Singularitarian would say it's different because
one is false and the other is true. YMMV, of course.
> . . .denying the possibility of any democratically accountable
ReplyDelete> equitable collective response to the shared problem of catastrophic
> anthropogenic climate change.
Ya gotta admit, it doesn't look good.
More Bill Moyers, via Mel White:
( http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2010/11/stupidity.html )
--------------------
> Michelle Bachmann is clearly completely out to lunch,
> and is now joined by a whole lamentable Tea Party desk
> set of braying loons. These are the ones so ridiculous
> they outpace every parody. One suspects civilization
> in its minimal construal is something like an organized
> effort to protect majorities from precisely this sort
> of deranged person. . .
>
> We confront real shared problems the stupid is unequal
> to. We are in real trouble.
--------------------
Bill Moyers. . . (. . . a lifetime Southern Baptist himself). . .
is using his considerable media skills to alert his fellow
Americans that while we were sleeping, [Christian] fundamentalists
have taken power over the executive, legislative, and judicial
branches of our government. While accepting an award
from the Harvard Medical School [in 2005], Moyers warns
us of the tragic consequences of our apathy.
"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime
is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has
come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in
the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our
history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power
in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that
cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a
worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally
accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always
blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians
alike, oblivious to the facts."
-- Mel White, _Religion Gone Bad_
--------------------
Gimme that old-time religion. It's good enough for me.
> . . .here's an astonishing public admission from. . .
ReplyDelete> . . .Mike Darwin's. . . new site. . .
Apropos of both Mike Darwin and "astonishing public
admissions", I happened to run across a Web forum comment
from an old habitue of the Extropians' mailing list:
http://www.longecity.org/forum/topic/6938-mike-darwin/
---------------------
Harvey Newstrom Re: Mike Darwin?
07 August 2008 - 01:23 AM
I believe Mike is brilliant. He has contributed more to cryonics
than anyone else I know. The animosity toward him is because he
speaks the truth. Most people in the various transhumanist movements
will attack anybody who points out problems, questions assumptions,
or disbelieves any hype. There seems to be a PR/advertising mentality
within these movements that cannot admit failure, delay, or even
questions. This mentality believes that only the positive should be
presented. Questions about accuracy, safety, inevitability, or speed
of future developments are seen as attacks on the movement, and
immediately attacked.
---------------------
Too true. Too cultish for comfort. Not "scientific" in any
sense of the word.