Eco and Ethics Has Moved to Greenpress.com!

After having been contacted by Chris from Greenpress - whom wanted to see Eco and Ethics move to their green blog format - I decided to switch to Greenpress because I feel that it is the right decision for me and my blog right now.

We're at a point in time when we have to re-think our strategies and global tactics not only to embrace technological breakthroughs, but also to enhance them in order for us to learn how to cultivate and harvest energy in new ways.

Not only do we have to learn how to deal with e-waste and garbage, we also have to try and figure out how to use our resources better and how to globally avoid disasters and to diminish wars over water, oil and natural resources.

Logistics per se, and how we understand this concept, will change over time, and it is up to governments and citizens of the world to decide whether or not we want to limit our way of life or keep on going as before, and at the same time doing something about it.

Citizens can be encouraged to influence politics both locally and globally. They could empower themselves to hack their environments, through individual actions involve their peers as well as governmental structures in microtactical collective actions, in order to clean up their local environments, lakes, parks or even public gardens. I ask myself why there aren't initiatives that strive to clean up in deserted and zero degree spaces. Why aren't we all making these spaces more beautiful and inhabitable? I reallt want to dwell more in secret and unknown locations.

Governments and nations could in cooperation with citizens engage in macrotactical manouvres in order to learn how to spawn new solutions, new ways of understanding energy, develop ways and tools in order to grow and cultivate energy as well as re-using our existent e-waste materials as well as excess materials.

The reason why I am moving my blog to Greenpress is that I want to learn more about technologies, development of democracy in relation to speed and politics, democracy and citizenship in relation to a more transparent state as well as studying the very constitution of governments, in accordance with forward thinking democratic tools and projects.

A very powerful way of becoming engaged in politics and different environmental issues is to spawn net political clusters. I will come back to this in a later post, however, clusters can come up with a lot of good ideas, solutions as well as informative actions just by teaming up and creating assemblages and ideas through communication and chaotic teamwork.

We Rebuild.EU has got a wiki for a variety of topics of concern and importance such as net censorship, openness, net neutrality, data retention etc. However, the wiki is also used as a "tink tank" (a sort of tool oriented and idea oriented think tank), and I hope that'll be able to get someone to translate "Patent och klimatkampanjen" into English, since this kind of individual and collective cluster not only spawns new ideas and creates and interest for pressing issues, it also manifest a new idea and a new way of "tinking" and doing politics.

Citizenship is about enhancing transparency between government, institutions and citizens. It is also about acting and doing something in this day and age, and the surrounding political climate that we now face.

We are all quite naive in thinking that our protests against governments, and the complaints against the democratic reorganisation neither will spawn new solutions nor shrinking the gap between the national and the global, between the citizen and the politician and between the individual and the collective. It is time to write more about how citizens can spawn, create and to cultivate ideas and solutions in order for governments to try and implement these solutions into a global problem solving scheme.

Eco and Ethics

Ray Kurzweil Talks About Technological Advancement

Ray Kurzweil's latest data shows that technological development will continue to accelerate even though we're currently in an economic recession.

If we look at the graphs we can clearly see that the technological development has gone through periods of recession in the past, and we ought to continue developing information technologies etc. in order to spread fortwardthinking ideas and progressive technologies to mankind.

In this TED talk, Kurzweil also unveils his new project, Singularity University, to study technology on the verge of breakthrough and find ways to share this technology in order to benefit humanity.

In the talk you will also be able to hear some remarks and thoughts about the environmental and global issues we all have to deal with in new updated ways.

We need to rebuild the ethical environment, perspectives on problem solving and political attitudes.

Ray Kurzweil is an engineer who has radically advanced the fields of speech, text, and audio technology.

Hans Rosling's Talks on TED

Have you seen Hans Rosling's talks on TED yet?

I encourage you to see these talks because they are already classics as well as very inspiring. They will challenge your preconceptions and your way of thinking about globalization, markets, economy and data. The first talk was filmed Feb 2006 and the second talk was filmed Mar 2007.

Hans Rosling (b.1948 in Uppsala, Sweden) is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system. From 1967 to 1974 he studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1972 he studied public health at St John's Medical College, Bangalore. He became a licenced physician in 1976 and from 1979 to 1981 he served as District Medical Officer in Nacala in northern Mozambique.[]

"You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world.""



"Researcher Hans Rosling uses his cool data tools to show how countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He demos Dollar Street, comparing households of varying income levels worldwide. Then he does something really amazing."



Link:

Gapminder.org

The Skeptic's Handbook

"Rise above the mud-slinging in the Global Warming
debate. Here are the strategies and tools you need
cut through the red-herrings and avoid the traps."

The Skeptic's Handbook

Juan Enriquez: Why can't we grow new energy?

Juan Enriquez: Why can't we grow new energy?

"Juan Enriquez challenges our definition of bioenergy. Oil, coal, gas and other hydrocarbons are not chemical but biological products, based on plant matter -- and thus, growable. Our whole approach to fuel, he argues, needs to change."

"Juan Enriquez thinks and writes about the profound changes that genomics and other life sciences will cause in business, technology, politics and society. Full bio and more links"

TED: Ideas worth spreading

Is Climate Alarmism A Threat?

I've done a lengthy blog post on a report from the swedish think tank Timbro, about the climate debate as a potential environmental threat. If you know some swedish then you can read about it here.

If you are interested in knowing more about this report, then contact Timbro by going to their site.

The report from Holdstock and Poirier Martinsson does bring up a connection between the reports from a governmental institution working with environmental goals, and the swedish media.

H & PM show that the reports have become more centralised in favouring the climate goal, thus pushing the other environmental goals away from the agenda.

H & PM bring up a lot of interesting data and connections which makes me think that this is a real phenomenon. However, they only mention the possibility that media reports and their climate alarmism can be a threat to the environment. They do not really link anything substantial to this claim.

Nevertheless, this report is rather interesting since the results show that the media have been favouring certain kinds of reports rather than others.

Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus On "Global Warming Alarmism"

The Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, who holds the European Union presidency at the moment, condems "global warming alarmism" in a recent speech.

The "alarmists" are not concerned about environmental micro management and they do not have an acceptable view concerning risks. They are infact misusing climate change information in their quest to expand the role of government.

In other words, they are using climate crisis as a scapegoat to expand profits and the role of government. This is a very negative attitude and citizens lose their sense of knowing which threats are worth fighting and which risks that should be taken seriously - both locally and globally.

We are allowed to doubt views that are taken for granted in the name of science. Doubt and skepticism is also science and should be taken seriously. If all views are allowed within a scientific community, then different views will in time, come to dissolve themselves. Stupid or unpredictable research or hypothetical frameworks, will over time, fall apart and shift towards a new paradigm. However, we have to allow theoretical and hypotetical frameworks that are against the current paradigm.

All scientific facts are always already packaged interpretations, which come from interpretation of scientific data and imagined models.

Swedish Toxicologist On Environmental Frenzy

Swedish toxicologist professor Robert Nilsson at Stockholm University had an article in today's DN about the environmental frenzy. His concern is directed towards the fact that swedish governmental insitutions lack the general insights as to what real threats against our environment are.

What is a real environmental threat anyway? Environmental extremism or fundamentalism can really cloud our judgements as to what is a real threat and we cannot really trust our governmental institutions in these matters.

If you want to know more about radiation, particles in the air and other toxic related stuff, then you have to gather information from several sources.

I for one do not really know if all the particles, data and transmissions in the air is hazardous or not. I have no way of knowing this without looking at scientific facts or trying to sense how I am feeling. I will not entirely trust any external sources in these matters nor will I force my beliefs onto someone else, but I cannot go and hide from all the dangerous stuff either; I will not avoid the debates and discussions concerning these matters.

The institutions rely on different kinds of labelling and categorization. The climate friendly, ecological and the environmental friendly have gone from being serious concepts, to becoming static clusters of non-meaning with economic and political connotations.

When I hear these concepts in the media or in politics they feel so dated and stagnated. I still buy a lot of ecological stuff when i buy food and I like to have that option, however, politicians use our awareness and our fear in order to change and manipulate us, as well as the politics and our society as a whole.

Even though there are real threats, politicians tend to make us believe that everything is a threat. There is a sort of notion in swedish politics that citizens are stupid and cannot know what is good for our society and our environment. The political situation is even worse when intellectuals and scientists are not allowed to have different opinions on these concepts and about the so called threats.

The politics as well the different opinions and 'facts' are shoved down our throats and we are not allowed to have different opinions because different opinions can be 'dangerous'. That is the worst possible climate for an intellectual debate and a serious perspective on science. This is proof of a poor insight as to what type of threats we have to address first.

We cannot shut down our socio-economical structures and industries when we are going to battle climate change. We have to embrace all possibilities, technologies as well as be highly progressive. One has to realize that the world's climate is changing over time and that we cannot blame everything on mankind. The earth has always had different time periods of climate change.

We cannot just neglect or reject all the research on our sun, the oceans as well as our air when we are looking into what is 'causing' this.

I presume that cause & effect in this matter is more complex than what politicians are willing to admit or even understand. The one thing that I am concerned about is that people are excluded from the general media as well as debates simply because they have different opinions from the given facts handed down by the European Parliament as well as the swedish government.

What about Nilsson then? What does he think? Well, he blames the ignorant and clueless politicians of course. He also points our that we have gotten worse products since the alarmism started and that these concepts have weakened our economy.

Has anyone noticed how quiet all environmentalists became after the recent economic recession?

Poetry

I have not yet found any interesting thing to write about during '09, however, I am sure that I will have something to write about soon. I have been writing more for one of my other blogs and I have been neglecting Eco & Ethics.

I just posted a text in swedish about forests and assemblages on my other blog, but I thought that I could post parts of it here as well. This is a poem by Wendell Berry on the topic of planting trees:

Planting trees av Wendell Berry

In the mating of trees,
the pollen grain entering invisible
the domed room of the winds, survives
the ghost of the old forest
that stood here when we came. The ground
invites it, and it will not be gone.
I become the familiar of that ghost
and its ally, carrying in a bucket
twenty trees smaller than weeds,
and I plant them along the way
of the departure of the ancient host.
I return to the ground its original music.
It will rise out of the horizon
of the grass, and over the heads
of the weeds, and it will rise over
the horizon of men’s heads. As I age
in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of the winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased by the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.