This week, to draw attention to the Copenhagen Climate Summit, the New Yorker has published Helen Simpson’s story “Diary of an Interesting Year.” It’s a story filled with cold nights, dirty parkas, weeping sores, and replete with the kind of maniacal attention to detail that comes with desperation. “Every one of us takes about twenty-five thousand breaths a day,” a character says. “Each breath removes oxygen from the atmosphere and replaces it with carbon dioxide.”
Another on climate change by Helen Simpson.
This quote: “Each breath removes oxygen from the atmosphere and replaces it with carbon dioxide.” reeks of the notion that humans are DISTINCT from natural process. We are the natural process come into consciousness deciding that our demise is undesirable.
Volcanoes cause global cooling, and other processes cause global warming. Continuing to see humans as DISTINCT from the natural process is what got us into this mess and not what is going to take us out.
My dream was to see more riots @ Copenhagen. It’s the way civilized people respond to uncivilized times governed by despots. Except our despots have huge PR campaigns to make you feel good about their doing their best.