[Oe List ...] Another book

[Isobel and Jim Bishop]

Dear Herman,
Thank you so much for posting this on the Listserve.
Your description of this Book makes me really want to have a deep  
read of it. Our son Peter ( who spent his entire Middle School in  
Chicago, and then graduated from Jesse H Jones HIgh School in  
Houston-) has been discussing Planet destabilization with his Dad  
Jim, at their weekly lunch-  and he is worried. I think this Book may  
be helpful to him and others, as a long range view towards  hope.
  Thank you again, and to the listserve.

  Greetings from hot and humid Sydney, to all.....
  Isobel Bishop.
On 26/01/2010, at 1:30 AM, Herman Greene wrote:

> I have just finished David Orr’s Down to the Wire. It is gripping  
> and deeply insightful.
>
>
> David Orr’s book is about the nature of the challenges that face us  
> and what needs to happen. Even after reading many books on where we  
> are, Orr’s book jarred me. He made it plain that there are no short- 
> term or easy fixes and also that there is no way to avoid further,  
> severely negative, decline in the environment resulting from human  
> activities to date.[1] He says we are in the period of the “long  
> emergency” and rather than speak of climate change we should talk  
> of planet destabilization. Adaptation as well as mitigation will be  
> required. The consequences will also require an overhaul of our  
> politics, our economies and our ways of living. Our larger task  
> will be to transform the mode of human civilizational presence on  
> Earth to one that is coherent with the functioning of Earth (or one  
> could also say, as Thomas Berry does, to benign presence or to a  
> mutually enhancing relationship with the other Earth components.)[2]
>
> David Orr identifies three tasks for transformational leadership in  
> “the Great Work”[3] of changing this framework.
>
> 1.       We will need leaders first, with the courage to help  
> people understand and face what will be increasingly difficult  
> circumstances.[4]
> 2.       Second in the “long emergency”[5] leaders will need  
> uncommon clarity about our best economic and energy options.
> 3.       The third quality of leadership in these circumstances is  
> the capacity to foster a vision of a humane and decent future.
>
>
> _____________________________________________
> Herman F. Greene, Esq.
> Greene Law, PLLC
> 2516 Winningham Drive
> Chapel Hill, NC 27516
> 919-624-0579 (ph)
> 919-942-4358 (f)
> Skype: hgreene-nc
> hgreene at greenelawnc.com
> www.greenelawnc.com
>
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>
> [1] Based on my study of the subject, I believe there is little  
> chance that Earth will avoid a 2o C rise in global average  
> temperature in this century and it could be more. See, .e.g. ,  
> European Environment Agency, “CSI 013 - Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas  
> Concentrations -Assessment” (April 2008). The tendency is to see a  
> 2o C rise as a safe target. Orr considers this an unfortunate  
> delusion. He quotes an email to him from George Woodwell, founder  
> of the Woods Hole Research Center, which said:
>
> There is an unfortunate fiction abroad that if we can hold  
> temperature rise to 2 or 3 degrees C we can accommodate the  
> changes. The proposition is the worst of wishful thinking. At  
> present temperatures, which would drift upward if the atmospheric  
> burden were stabilized now [(which it isn’t)], we are watching the  
> melting of glaciers, frozen soil, and the accelerated decay of  
> large organic stores of carbon in soils but especially in high  
> latitude solids and tundra peat. A 2 degree [C] average rise in  
> temperature will be 4-6 degrees [C] or more in higher latitudes,  
> enough to trigger the release of potentially massive additional  
> quantities of carbon dioxide and methane [that] would push the  
> issue of control well beyond human reach.
>
> In other words, there are going to be massive consequences flowing  
> from human activity to date, without even factoring in the  
> projected accelerated emissions and other activities that are now  
> occurring and will occur. No government or nation is prepared for  
> what lies ahead. Summing this up, Orr writes: “We are now in a  
> close race between our capacity to change at a global scale and the  
> forces that we have unleashed.” (p.4)
>
> [2] This is what Thomas Berry calls “the Great Work.”
>
> [3] See footnote 5 and accompanying text.
>
> [4] To quote Orr again, unfortunately
>
> with a few exceptions, climate change is still regarded as a  
> problem to be fixed by small changes, perhaps profitably, and not  
> as a series of dilemmas or as a challenge to consumerism, the  
> growth economy or—in a more abstract but no less real way—to our  
> institutions, organizations, philosophies, and paradigms. (p. 6)
>
> [5] Orr borrows this term from the book by James Howard Kunstler  
> entitled The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes  
> of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler’s work is also very insightful.
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