264 of 365: McKibben tells us that we must get used to "Eaarth" -two "a"s. That's the planet we've shifted into being from global warming, unlike any planet our evolution and recorded history have known. An alien planet, to us, full of global weirding, tragedy, loss, heat and dryness and dust and rain and floods. But here I disagree with him. It's still Earth, a continuous biochemical system, our origin and home. And we would do better to relate to it as the same planet in a shifted sense(lessness). There's the loss -the reality that'll harsh us. This is Earth, still Earth, and we have pushed it until it ravages us.
Earth thought 265 of 365 (a hundred more to go!): Once one realizes (a) the magnitude of global environmental problems, (b) their need for persistent and long-term response, and (c) their complexity, not least to evaluation, it is understandable to wonder whether it wouldn't be better to push for an authoritarian answer. After all, democratic states exist currently in a dis-integrated global patchwork with many holes of sovereignty and failed coordination. State alongside state alongside state with no clear environmental consistency in-between. And then the whims and winds of democratic preference, opting for short-term interests. The wide-spread ignorance and apparent hedonism -valuing material pleasures over invisible values such as biodiversity or the imagined well-being of generations a hundred years from now. (This hedonism perhaps more a result of deft corporate advertising and lobbying, but then the problem of each of those.) It is enough to make one reach for one's Philosopher-King (and cock it). But whereas a globally integrated normative order is needed as a goal, authoritarianism seems unjustifiable even on consequential grounds. For it does not avoid the dangers of epistemological blindness, value over-selectivity, and lack of motivational authority. Not to mention corruption. It can be blind to its perspective, overly focused on the things it thinks matter, and abstract to the real concerns of people -indeed, it would almost certainly be, if global. More importantly, it is notoriously susceptible to corruption, whereas checks and balances are less so. What is needed is a dispersed and widely held method for stabilizing perspective and integrating invisible values. And the wide hold will bring motivational authority. What is needed are checks on the systemic soft-spots that currently give lobbyists and the media such inordinate power to sway actual politics away from actual public opinion (which is, actually, greener than you might think!).
266. Lady Gaga's meat. Her raw beef. I'm talking about the dress she wore to the MTV award ceremony on the 12th -a dress made of raw meat. Ha ha. You get the joke. Now, the question is, is her behavior any worse than the typical American diet of meat 2 to 3 times a day, 5 to 7 days a week? (I am guestimating, anecdotally.) Is it more flagrant, more gluttonous than the typical diner or restaurant menu? Sure, the eaters eat the meat -but certainly not for nutrition, as so much meat is unnecessary and often bad for people. And, on Gaga's side, she is doing something creative, whereas the meat eaters are just suctioning in sausages, burgers, steaks, chicken on chicken processed dish, pork on pork hotdogs, ham sandwiches, you name it. And the eaters have made the kill invisible, whereas she made it visible.
267. The other day, during a sustainability workforce, I found myself reacting with momentary surprise at the realization that what is ecological is also economical. So seldom do you hear that kind of talk. It was like a voice from my culture of expansive and compulsive "growth" was saying, "You can save energy, save the planet, and save money -who would have thought?!" Here, I glimpsed the abstraction Marx analyzed so well in his explanation of capitalist value. I had fallen into a frame of mind that forgets how the economic circulates goods drawn from and embedded in Earth's ecology, like it or not. Goods come from somewhere, consumption consumes, and even the abstract value in a Versace scarf still depends on the silk, dyes, and production energy that fabricated it, the transportation (pollution), the packaging, the physical world! But of course economy rests on ecology at some point -of course!
268. (In honor of Breena Holland, who will be publishing a good book.) What is the source of all our fun? The environment. Without it, we wouldn't even live. "Hey! You, idiot! You're destroying all our fun!"
