Global Warming and Degrowth: Faster, Farther, and Stop
Sufficiency is the magic word against the overpowering, nature-destroying human beings. The Anthropocene calls for frugality.
Sufficiency is the magic word against the overpowering, nature-destroying human beings. The Anthropocene calls for frugality.
How do we want to be treated with our time? Two design students invite you to write down your own reflections on this question for an exhibition in 50 years.
Speaking of the criminalization of civil disobedience: ….the action of two young people who glued themselves to the frames of two of Goya’s most famous works at the Prado Museum. “The reality is that there are very few civil disobedience actions that enjoy the thunderous applause of citizens. Because they are annoying, because ideally they would not happen.”….. But it was these actions that made it possible to end centuries of segregation iden USA or apartheid in South Africa….
(modified text source https://www.elsaltodiario.com/boletin/boletin_general_11_11_2022-lectoras)
Artificial intelligence systems should enable more objective and balanced decisions. But they can fail.
It is estimated that up to 12 million tons of plastic waste end up in the oceans every year. The organization everwave addresses the problem from all sides.
The left-wing politician and lawyer represented one of the accused activists in court. At first he was unsuccessful.
Who has not felt that warmth that:
– emanates from a lit light bulb;
– comes out when you charge a cell phone;
– comes out from under a blender when you use it;
– from somewhere in the fridge;
– from the TV;
– from the radiator of a car, the tires, the exhaust, the gearbox casing;
– from the air conditioner;
– from the motor of a fan;
– from the sides of a pot on the stove;
– …
Every appliance that uses energy “always” gets hot. A little or a lot, but it gets hot. And that heat is not what we pay for to get light, sound, ventilation, “cold”, movement, entertainment, work. It is heat that is thrown into the thermodynamic dustbin we have turned the upper atmosphere into.
In the field of physics around 1850 a “law” was recognized that has not been refuted to this day: the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the Law of Entropy. Sadly, when encountering words like physics, thermodynamics and (even worse) Entropy, the vast majority of readers run away. However, the Law of Entropy pursues them inexorably, no matter how much some raise their shoulders and stop reading. Just as we are inexorably pursued by the light of day and the darkness of the coming night. And by night I want to point out that time of darkness that is fought with the lighted bulbs that emanate that little warmth that is felt. Every light bulb emanates heat, in every room, on every street pole, in every stadium. How many light bulbs will be lit at this moment in the rotating night of the planet? I would say several hundred million, better several billion, billions. And they all emanate heat.
If we wrap a light bulb with a cloth in a few minutes we will feel that it has warmed up much more than without the cloth. Obviously we will not see the light. And if the cloth is thick we will feel that the temperature will be higher in less time and perhaps damage the bulb. The fabric prevents the
heat from passing to the surrounding air and accumulates in the fabric, raising its temperature and that of the light bulb. In the same way greenhouse gases act on the planet, they cause heat to accumulate and raise the temperature.
Yes, every light bulb, blender, car, motor, charger, etc. etc. emanates heat. So, the question is: What are we going to do? We are, say those who say they know, about eight billion inhabitants on the planet with more than one light bulb per person and each person aspiring to a variety of electromechanical slaves according to the drivers of a globalized/globalizing way of life in which the premises of comfort and speed reign, increasing both the number of electromechanical slaves and their time of use. And all of them emanating that little warmth you feel.
Caring for a baby is usually the utmost, by instinct and by learning. It requires delicacy, promptness and good judgment as well as intuition. A baby in its first months really requires little, even if commercialism pushes advertising to over-satisfy the few and crucial needs of the child. In parallel it could be said that caring for (creature) energy, as invisible as it is omnipresent, requires delicacy, promptness and good judgment as much as intuition.
The Care of Energy, I suspect, requires today varied learning that leads to delicate behaviors in its use, which minimize the inevitable consequences of handling errors.
Mauricio Gnecco January 2023
This week we talked with the Brazilian scientist Everlon Rigobelo, a professor at the Paulista State University (Unesp), an agronomist and an expert in microbiology, who has a proposal to save our soils from degradation : using bacteria as fertilizer. Professor Everlon’s initiative caught our attention when we met it in a scientific magazine and we found it curious, but talking to him, we understood that his idea is to revive the steps that nature took to strengthen life on earth.