Letters to the Editor
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You Can't Take Care of the World
What you can do is take care of yourself and your family. You can initiate small solutions in a small place.
For myself, I like the idea of going to some fairly small place where, when the bad stuff starts to happen, the damage is limited. I like New Zealand. Lots of arable land and fresh water, small population. Even rising seas can't get all the mountains. Some what isolated, hard to get to for most people. Socialized Healthcare. Terrorists don't have it on their radar screens. Reasonably priced houses. Desire for educated people (you'd be a shoo-in.) Decent pay. First world civilization. Only somewhat racist (Maori and Chinese). You could go into business for yourself, or work with the government installing clean energy and clean water around the country. Sure, the world is being destroyed, but, cheez, you can only do so much.
As for your spirtual situation, I would recommend meditation. You know the brain waves, alpha waves, I believe, are scientifically verified. It is calming and very spirtual, even if you don't believe in it. You can do Zen, a Hindu Ashram, Tanka Buddhism, or a number of secular meditation vehicles. Its all the same brain waves.
Good luck.
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words of comfort?
I was hopeless about peak oil for awhile. The logic of looming catastrophe given the cost of getting energy from non-oil was compelling. Then I had a moment: life itself is so incredibly unlikely, yet we manage. Plants get energy from the sun. SO WILL WE.
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Aeschylus
The one knowing what is profitable, and not the man knowing many things, is wise.
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No magic bullet.
You can't turn it off or stop caring without compromising your integrity. That's the ultimate, horrible truth: that there's no solution. That isn't the same as saying that there's no hope. Hope will endure so long as integrity is maintained.
Only when you accept that after your death things may get much worse - that humanity could be responsible for the death of everything on Earth, which in turn will end its days as a lifeless husk waiting to be immolated in the star death of our sun - can you let go of your feeling of personal responsibility. You are only responsible for maintaining your integrity: to seek the truth with eyes unclouded by hate. True courage is to embark on a doomed endeavor - and your integrity demands it.
Catharsis is a rare and precious gift, and is usually (just as are our minds) an illusion. Why should it be any different with the fate of the world? If you don't believe in a god who is there to tell you everything is OK, you will nonetheless feel the need for it because you are human - that's the function our parents usually fulfill. You will only find the comfort that your integrity permits you to find - and perhaps you should ask why you are searching for comfort in the first place.
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Dear on-eyed man
I wish I could talk to you even though it might depress me, for I have so many questions I would like to ask you, for ideas of scientific innovation usually thrill me, so it worries me that one as brilliant as you is so worried. (Not that I am not worried. The neocons have ruined own economy and wrecked our Constitutional freedoms. This worries me greatly.) Have you no hope that companies such Nanosolar can succeed? Do you think that technology does not advance exponentially or do you believe that that is still not fast enough to solve the peak oil problem?
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LW conceives too much of articulation
LW is too convinced of his own brilliance. Peak oil is a simplistic thesis, based like the creationist's thermodynamic critique on a subset of the actual world. It will fall as history moves on. It will confound our hypotheses.
LW needs to give up his faith in intellect. He should take a day or two off, sit under an oak tree somewhere and eat mushrooms. The brain will be back with its arguments, but it will no longer be the boss.
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Comforting words but they usually don't put bread on the table
I think it’s easy to provide philosophical comfort to the writer while your fridge is full of food. Let’s see how you go when your stomach is grumbling and your power supply is intermittent.
We all know that when the big things are looming over us it’s sometime far less stressful to put it off and not let the worry warts have too much say in the meantime.
Let’s put it another way. If you think that there is only a 10% possibility of all these dire predictions actually occurring you might feel pretty comfortable and you do nothing, somehow the cosmos will provide the answers – are you with me? So before you board your next flight somewhere the captain announces that there is a 10% chance the plane will fall out of the sky – so you still board – right? But you say that’s not comparing apples with apples. No, it’s not because the experts’ predictions on climate are a lot higher than 10% and anyway I’m talking about what you believe – and that’s the problem.
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As a scientist, you must know this...
...human beings respond, we don't foresee.
When does the new set of traffic lights go in? Only after the big accident at the intersection.
When is the pedestrian bridge built? Only after the little girl gets run over.
We also respond, as those two examples also illustrate, in a knee-jerk and nearest-cause fashion. Neither little girls getting run over, or people getting turned into quadriplegics at intersections prompts us to make cars safer.
So what can one person do? IMO it comes down to three things:
1. Work for organisations that are part of the solution, not part of the problem. In your case, go find a solar energy startup that needs a scientist-in-chief. Or equivalent.
2. Vote for political parties that have shown their ability to at least attempt to foresee and take preventative action. This rules out, pretty much globally, any party even slightly right of center.
3. Do your best, in your own life, to consume less. To consolidate. To help your nearest and dearest do the same.
Act, in short, locally, and think, in brief, globally.
But being a brilliant scientist, you probably already know that. So stop letting the fear win, and get on with it.