The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
So here we have a single-issue global warming advocate (Monbiot) accusing (or so Giambrone implies) a single-issue radiation contamination advocate (Caldicott) of being a climate change denier and coal advocate. I suppose then Monbiot can be accused of being an anthropogenic background radiation exacerbation denier. Are we having fun yet?
Are we having fun yet?
The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
I began to see the extent of the problem after a debate last week with Helen Caldicott. Dr Caldicott is the world's foremost anti-nuclear campaigner. She has received 21 honorary degrees and scores of awards, and was nominated for a Nobel peace prize. Like other greens, I was in awe of her. In the debate she made some striking statements about the dangers of radiation. So I did what anyone faced with questionable scientific claims should do: I asked for the sources. Caldicott's response has profoundly shaken me.
(a question for the professionals such as Sven) Economics is politics by other means
If you step back far enough, any bunch of issues can be made into a single issue. You have to step back far enough for a graspable gestalt to appear. Typical framed gestalty issues would include justice, fairness, equality, survival etc. These gestalts tend to be the content of editorials.
But while 'single issue' is easier to create, the fundamental change in communication over the last 20 years has been the growing awareness that everything is connected to everything else. It is getting harder and harder to do 'single issue'.
I don't know how we will handle this problem. It is cropping up for me quite regularly now. You can't be me, I'm taken
- Humphrey, Yes Minister Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
the growing awareness that everything is connected to everything else. It is getting harder and harder to do 'single issue'. I don't know how we will handle this problem. It is cropping up for me quite regularly now.
the growing awareness that everything is connected to everything else. It is getting harder and harder to do 'single issue'.
I don't know how we will handle this problem. It is cropping up for me quite regularly now.
there are so many 'single issues' vying for prioritisation, though right now the global reality of 400+ potential fukushimas all depending on us keeping them chilled for millenia in a post fossil fuel, diminishing water reality is focussing a lot of minds, ditto exporting 'democracy *beta' to the oppressed (by 'our guys' bastards).
trying to keep two eyes on many balls in the air at once.
it's like in one's personal life, there's so much to do, each thing important, but none makes sense without the context of the others. if one gets too far ahead of the others, the kilter goes out.
the earth, our relationship to it, whether we use our knowledge to further befriend it, or to use it as a cheap goods depo/waste dump, how can anything trump that? without that we are a million more times more fucked than if the banks fail, or oil runs out and we have to remember how to stretch a bit more without some of the conveniences we have become used to. the sins of the fathers... we have inherited the work of mad ancestors, as well as the genius.
to preserve the way of life of a privileged few we've hocked the future, gambled ecological balance for quick returns, and now we're up shit creek.
the are so many ways to be useful, so many examples to follow and reset. no need for many more new dots, more the need to connect the ones we have.
the privilege of living on this beautiful planet has a high price of knowledge to make it sustainable, today you may write something insightful, tonight you may dance, tomorrow you're studying your local watershed.
the only danger is the dilution of diffusion, becoming overwhelmed by the plethora of problems till you worry all the time and your spark feels too damped down to fire.
some will run with one issue, some (like most here) take a more polymath approach, so not to go so far out on one branch that they can't see the trunk any more.
humanity is like a diseased tree, still producing fresh, healthy growth, but with a blight eating away at its core.
some branches won't last long, others will. the game as i see it is to choose between them.
thanks to the discourse here, prioritisation becomes easier, if never easy.
managed decline never is, i guess. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
by Frank Schnittger - Dec 8 39 comments
by Oui - Dec 4 57 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 27 72 comments
by Oui - Dec 9 16 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Dec 1 4 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 23 37 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 20 72 comments
by Oui - Nov 21 2 comments
by Oui - Dec 916 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Dec 839 comments
by Oui - Dec 457 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Dec 14 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 2772 comments
by gmoke - Nov 26
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 2337 comments
by Oui - Nov 212 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 2072 comments
by Oui - Nov 1510 comments
by ATinNM - Nov 135 comments
by Oui - Nov 134 comments
by Oui - Nov 124 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Nov 10115 comments
by Oui - Nov 428 comments
by Oui - Oct 2916 comments