DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, my concern is general with both Republican and Democratic administrations. They both feel that they can control what scientists say to the public. So their offices of public affairs in the science agencies are headed, in general, by political appointees, and they review the press releases before they go out. So, it doesn’t really make sense in a democracy. The public should be honestly informed. And then, of course, the publications are allowed to make the decisions, and they don’t have to follow exactly what the science says. There are other considerations that they have. But they shouldn’t influence what is presented, the scientific evidence. And I object to that, regardless of which administration is in power.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/censoring_science_inside_the_political_attack

“”China will step up its efforts in prospecting coal resources,”" the report said. It said Beijing would reorganize its coal industry by closing smaller, less efficient mines while creating conglomerates with bigger production capacity.

http://bajaenergys.blogspot.com/2007/12/asia-china-warns-of-increased-coal.html

Coal-fired power plants are one of our nation’s largest—and dirtiest—sources of energy. Although these plants already produce about half of our electricity, there are plans on the drawing board to build over 150 new plants in the next few years. With new laws to fight global warming expected on the horizon, the coal industry is in a rush to build as many new plants as possible before pollution safeguards are in place.

To learn about the many new coal plants springing up, go to http://www.sierraclub.org/environmentallaw/coal/plantlist.asp

But that doesn’t mean that we humans lack bona fide feelings and purposes. That there someday might not be anything doesn’t mean that there are no legitimate moral claims, here and now.

Here is my moral claim. We shouldn’t distract our limited human attentional capacity with hyper-consumerist political and social systems that cause us to keep desperate people off of our radar (Exhibit A: http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1855). I’ve pondered these issues at length before. See http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=699

My moral claim frustrates many people (including me), because they want lots of time off when they don’t HAVE to consider all those other needy people. Whoever said that you get that kind of moral vacation? Hack preachers to the contrary (see http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=511), what God has allegedly ever uttered those kinds of words? What God has ever handed out “Get out of hell free” cards?

One of the reasons is global warming, a theory that is rapidly gaining acceptance even in the fossil fuel industry as supporting evidence mounts and philosophical objections are countered. The exact effects of this warming are still uncertain. However, they must be prepared for, and hopefully can be reduced. Pricey carbon sequestration techniques can help with that issue.

Another reason is long-term sustainability. If we consume all available resources faster than they can be replenished, eventually they will be gone. We are now capable of seeing the deep, dark pit at the end of the fossil fuel rainbow.
If we cannot get fusion to work (”any year now” since 1970) or find a way to harvest zero-point energy, we will have some harsh changes to make unless we begin to reduce our footprint in the very near future.

Did it matter to them that they suffered greatly while they were polluting and overpopulating? Damn straight. Did it matter “to the universe.” I don’t understand that question. In my world view, the universe doesn’t “know” anything.

Does it “matter at all”? I don’t understand that question, either. Things can “matter” only to sentient beings. That things don’t matter in some “bigger” “overall” way doesn’t diminish the fact that families become terrified as flood waters rise to wipe out their homes and lives.

There is a belief out there held by many people (not by me) that if something isn’t important in a vague overall supernatural sense (that I don’t understand), or if it is not eternal, it doesn’t “matter.”

If something is part of my life, or part of the lives of those about whom I care, then it might matter to me. I understand, though, that events that matter to me (even though they really matter, from my perspective) might not matter to others.

Innocent children needlessly die of malaria every day, especially in Africa. Does that matter, even to those of us who share that same planet? Based on their non-action, the answer, for most people in the U.S. is no. Does it matter to Bill Gates? Absolutely.  As a result of his actions in trying to wipe out malaria deaths, I greatly admire Bill Gates.

Will it matter to a civilization that exists 1000 years from now that children are needlessly dying of malaria? Only to the extent that it “matters” to most of us that hundreds of people got buried alive at Pompeii in AD 79. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii We don’t have a Pompeii Day here in the U.S. No day off. No special food. No banners with volcanos. It’s just not on our radar.  Not enough of a connection to our actual lives.

Empathy exists only to the extent that something is on particular peoples’ radars. We can work hard to extend the reach of our “radar” by reading up about people from other lands. We can travel to those other lands, spend time with those people and then care greatly about them. Without actually getting to know other people, though, we can care about them only in an abstract sort of way.  We are not physcially capable of caring greatly for everyone else on the planet, much less civilations from other time periods or planets.   We lack the cognitive capacity love everyone and care about everyone to the extent that we love and care about those we know.  http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=276

To what extent do we have a moral duty to extend our moral radar–our realm of concern–to include people we currently don’t know well enough to care about?  That, in my mind, is perhaps the most interesting moral question of all.  Certainly we can choose to remain ignorant about other peoples, and this has the effect of wiping out any guilt we might have to care about them when their lives are threatened.   The articles cited in this post bring this idea home strongly for me:  we can choose to be ignorant about the dangers of using coal, thereby completing the disconnect between our own current behavior and the dangers that behavior poses to other humans (and other animals too).

Maybe none of us will be alive when the floodwaters cause great anguish to billions of Earth’s coastal inhabitants. Nonetheless, it will certainly matter to all of those people.  To the extent we work at it, we can work to make it matter to ourselves to care more (rather than less) about the world we are passing on to the children and grandchildren we currently care about (even if they haven’t yet had those children and grandchildren).

if i told you that a trillion light years ago there was a planet whose ‘people’ did stupid things like we are doing and thereby destroyed their creation, how upset would you - or anybody - be? how would that make any difference to anything in the universe?

indeed, what if somebody built such a big bomb that it destroyed all of creation everywhere. there would be nothing left. infinite vacuum. after all the dust settled (what dust?) there wouldn’t be anybody or anything left to be PO’d about the whole thing, or to even care.

I am not advocating blowing anything up, or even driving a gas guzzler. I’m just pondering the earlier posts’ question about whether the universe has a purpose.

Human animals can have consciously articulated purposes, at least with regard to some of their behavior. We are also rigged with emotions and cravings that make at least some of our behavioral purposeful.

That the universe as a whole cannot be said to have a “purpose” doesn’t mean that individual organisms can’t have the individual capacity to have purposes.

To the extent that might lessen our dependence on coal, it would be because individuals and groups of individuals have purposely acted to accomplish this. As the article suggests, though, our continued dependence on coal might be relatively thoughtless and habitual, certainly lacking in animus regarding the dangers the continued widespread burning of coal poses to numerous ecosystems.