316 revolution, evolution, and more pollution

Yesterday started on a bright note, with my brother inviting me to watch this webinar.

A Nobel prize winner and several other scientists put out a paper about just what deep doo doo we're all in.

It fit neatly into my "less is more" goal for the year.

Here are some of the key takeaways I got listening to these experts. This curve above? That's energy coming from the ground. But, it's also human population. They're linked.

Human population didn't start to explode until we figured out how to use fossil fuels. And now we're running out of them.

There's no substitute. It took hundreds of millions of years for the sun to produce the plants that eventually became fossil fuels. We've burned them in 200 years, especially in the past 50. If we're not in the downward phase of the curve above, we're close.

But... There was some hope in this. The growth of fossil-fuel based transportation, manufacturing, and factory farming also follow that curve... And they use more energy than humans. (Well, except, we're the ones using them, so it's really still us.)

But if we stopped factory farming and scaled back other fossil fuel uses, we might have enough fossil fuels around to keep the cliff from being too steep.

The average American, for instance, uses 100x more energy than what is required to keep us alive.

So what do we do? That's where everyone started to hem and haw. This was particularly awkward because it was zoom, and everyone was at home. These are mostly old men, and they have comfortable homes filled with the knickknacks of a life well lived... And these men are talking about how society just keeps kicking the can forward, not dealing with the consequences of our immediate actions. And you can just see the mental gears burning, when asked, "what do we do?"

This is a question I've posed in the past with some scientist friends: if you know about climate change, why are you still flying? And the answer is always, "well, we have to."

And then we had a pandemic. None of these scientists believe that we're in a post-singularity world, as they sat confined in their homes, talking on Zoom, giving a free presentation to the world which they might previously have presented only to colleagues at a symposium, they were firmly convinced that no, technology is not going to save us.

Here's what the big gun had to say: we need a new religion. And it's not what you think. Yes, the old religions continue to hang around, christian and muslim and hindu and all of that, but he said they're not really our religion anymore: currently, we worship money and consumption. (And he's 100% right.)

As long as getting more money and consuming more remain our highest goal, we're fucked. We're going to drive off the cliff, pedal to the metal.

So the new religion, a new way of looking at the world, and striving to be the best human we can be, needs to put harmony with the rest of nature at the core of our beliefs.

I think he's really onto something. It really does need to be that central. As somebody who has struggled to stay out of the car and off the consumer path for twenty-ish years, I can testify: it is possible, but it's going to be way easier if everyone else is doing it, too.

They asked what we say to kids about this. And they recognized that kids are growing up with some openness to this thinking, more than their generation will ever have.

There was a token woman. Why one? Uh, fucking discrimination, of course! Man, we have so many walls to break down.

(The big reveal was that this was written in 1875, so, we've kinda known about this situation for a while... And only made it worse.)

However, "bend and not break" was also a key takeaway. Basically, we're hoping that our current systems for keeping everyone alive will bend, adapt flexibly, rather than break. Because break=miserable death.

Also, they had very little faith in our elected officials to do anything at all meaningful about all of this. The word "revolution" was used.

Moxie Marlinspike is in the news, after everyone bailed from WhatsApp (featuring his encryption) to Signal (also featuring his encryption, but non-profit and not handing your meta-data to Zuck's wallet).

So some people are calling for him to police the platform. Do they know where they work? Who they're working for? What they're working on?

What you're asking to do is go against your job's entire reason for being! Privacy. The ability to communicate without being snooped on. That's what Signal is all about. And if you think a radical anarchist genius is going to fall in line with the red vs. blue nanny state bullshit drama we call leadership, just go ahead and quit.

The first boats are finishing the Vendee Globe.

The "line honors" winner may not actually win, because of the time correction owed to the skippers who helped with the rescue off the Cape of Good Hope.

He's got a long ten hour wait to see if he's really the winner.

And of course, after her transatlantic crossing on one of these boats two years ago, Greta is watching the action.

That's the guy who captained her boat.

Huh, I've got a few more screencraps, about the rent situation here in SF (bottoming out?) and the stock market bubble, but I think I've said enough for now. So, I'll just leave this here...