Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recycling. Show all posts

Monday, April 7, 2008

Climate Change—Part Three: The Dark "Optimism" of James Lovelock


“Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam,” says Decca Aitkenhead in an article in the Guardian. When Aitkenhead asked the 88-year old scientist what he would do, Lovelock replied—rather pithily, I might add: “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

“Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists,” says Aitkenhead. “[Lovelock] introduced the Gaia Hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science.”

His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation by 2020; and that much of Europe will be Saharan by 2040; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reflects some of 88-year old Lovelock’s predictions.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Garbage Just Isn’t What it Used to Be…


When I was fourteen years old, I wrote a letter to a local orange juice company in Montreal, Quebec, where I lived at the time. In the most erudite language I could muster, I informed them of the benefits to the environment of recycling; then I rather imperiously let them know that I would not buy their product again unless they embarked on a recycling program similar to one that other progressive Montreal companies had adopted—recycling was pretty scarce then and handled only by a few intrepid visionary companies. I surprisingly got an answer, requesting a face-to-face meeting to discuss possibilities. I went to the meeting, but when the manager saw me, he was obviously taken aback; I was just a teenager with a big mouth and a fast pen! Nothing happened. I was devastated. But ten years later, I saw the birth of a city-wide recycling program that mandated curb-side recycling with full support by the city. It just took time…like everything…

So, let’s fast track to the present…