Discuss: Snap into Action for the Climate

Is gelware the goey stuff that is used in mouse pad wrist rests and that sort of thing?

Wot? Google blew it? It’s slang for the gooey stuff you carry between your ears. Software - hardware - gelware, geddit??

Where do you carry yours?

Well, Paca, since I’m a guy…

§-)

Nattering on . . . for Paca?? )grin(

My gelware remark - and the rip on cars that get so-so mileage - to translate? (Or did I completely miss a boat, something about Delaware?)

Something that shakes me up again and again is to be presented with the evidence, like this bit about cars people prefer, and realize again where that great middle lives. That’s middle as in middle of the bell-shaped curve of preferences, purchases… What’s hard to influence, in the ‘right’ direction at least, is people’s attitudes. Or values, as expressed in actual behavior.

That’s where the notion of going after executives of polluting, wasteful corporations gets traction for me. Criminal behavior should actually be brought to court, tried, convicted, punished. And in the meantime, raising the possibility? One lever to shift attitudes, maybe.

We need grabber slogans, ad images, and so on. The angels are in the details.

Bob,

Here’s a fact:

When I was in Italy I ignored the street lights and ran like hell whenever I crossed the street. Then, when I went to Zürich for a weekend, I obeyed the street lights and walked across.

Why is that?

Paco

Paco,

Mmmmm (thinking REALLY REALLY hard) - maybe because in Zurich, no one else was on the streets because everyone had gone over to Splügenstrasse 11, to see my photographs at Galerie ArteF??

Boh - I dunno. Tell me.

(Hint: it’s considered better form to cross streets with ones eyes OPEN. In Italy, even!=)

Bob

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the cogent reply.

So THAT"S where that huge crowd was going! Thought for a moment it was a riot! Sorry I missed your exhibit.

By way of consolation, however, I did manage to see a wonderful Giacometti at the Künsthaus.

Will definitely check out your revised website.

Meanwhile, on to Paca’s questions.

Paco

Hi Paca,

Excellent questions.

1. Crimes against humanity.

Before you can prosecute anyone for crimes on such a scale, you must first have enforceable laws. This presumes that you have a functioning legislature. I’m not sure ours qualifies. Then you must have incorruptible courts. Again, there is some doubt on this score as well. As I recall, one of the first things Bush and Co. did when they got into office was to grant themselves and their agents—via an “executive order,” I believe—a widespread immunity from prosecution for “war crimes.” Hmmmm . . . I wonder what they had in mind? And now that they have control over the supreme court, and much of the lower judiciary as well, have you noticed that they’re no longer shouting about “activist judges”?

(And by the way, just how many pages was that Homeland Security bill that they pulled out of a hat and ram-rodded through Congress? How many years of advance preparation did it take to write it? Just wondering.)

There may be some publicity value, of course, in Hansen’s even raising the question of crimes against humanity, just as there is in Kucinich’s attempt to promote impeachment. No one expects either effort to succeed, but at least they’re talking about it.

Thom Hartmann rails occasionally about a little-noticed court ruling in 1975 or so (I’m not sure about the date, Bob), that granted rights of personhood to corporations. Somehow, however, we forgot to insist that a public charter might actually involve a moral responsibility to act in favor of the public good. We see the results of this carelessness far and wide. We will have to reach deep into the roots of entrenched interests if we ever hope to alter this devastating system we’ve created.

2. Scientists speak out.

I would hope more scientists like Hansen, with access to a public platform, will find the courage to voice their outrage. The pursuit of “objectivity” in scientific work is well and good, but it doesn’t mean that one has magically forfeited other human responsibilities in the process. Good for Hansen.

And to bring the question of moral and ethical obligations into a discussion of the activities of vast corporations or the consequences of scientific work, is something we need much more of. As individuals we’re already beating ourselves up over our “carbon footprint,” a display of what Cheney called “personal virtue.” But the gulf between individual conscience, on the one hand, and the ruthless attitudes of titanic global organizations, on the other, is difficult even to imagine. How much more difficult is it, then, to imagine how in the world individual ethics or a sense of personal responsibility might eventually come to inform executive decisions at Exxon or Halliburton?

My intuition is that, sooner or later, the “system”—our global, industrial system and the societies it has given rise to—will crash on its own. And like a great airliner whose power is failing, no one can prevent the crash. In its present form, it is virtually unsustainable.

But I suspect that depth of character in individuals, or what Cheney dismissed as “personal virtues,” will be more important than ever before. Whatever our individual carbon footprints might be, we will find out what we are made of.

Thanks again, Paca.

Paco

Paco,

I’ll have to send you a photograph one of my students took in the Giacometti collection at the Kunstmuseum. It’s become enshrined in one of the offices at the Cattolica in Brescia.

My Italian students, including the one who took that picture, were impressed with traffic in Zurich, noticing right away that drivers were polite. And stopped. In advance. At the next class meeting, back in Italy, they all agreed it was dangerous to go to Zurich. (I wonder about these kids - they seem to have been everywhere but when the idea came up to make the day trip by train it was as if we’d decided to go to the most exotic place on earth, go figure.) That is, dangerous once you came back to Italy, having lost your protective caution about crossing streets…

And that was just from ONE DAY away.

Yes, Paco, I vaguely recall there was a court decision granting corporations ‘personhood’. Year? No idea.

To anyone, you might find thoughtful the views of Bjorn Lomborg. Google the name.