Photo by: Akuppa

Bruce Sterling on Climate Change:

Climate change is not gonna be combatted through voluntary acts of individual charity. It’s gonna be combatted through some kind of colossal, global-scaled, multilateral, hectic, catch-as-catch-can effort to stop burning stuff, suck the burnt smoke out of the sky, and put the smoke back into the ground. That’s not gonna get done a little green teacup at a time, because we’ve been doing it for two centuries and we don’t have two centuries to undo it.

“Reducing emissions” is a wrongheaded way to approach it. If “reducing emissions” is the goal, then the best technique available is to drop dead. The second-best technique is to go around killing a lot of people. Nobody’s got a lighter eco-footprint than a dead and buried guy. He’s not walking around leaving footprints: the Earth is piled on top of him.

We’re past the point where reduction helps much; we will have to invent and deploy active means of remediation of the damage. But from another, deeper perspective: we shouldn’t involve outselves in lines of development where the ultimate victory condition is emulating dead people. There’s no appeal in that. It’s bad for us. That kind of inherent mournfulness is just not a good way to be human. We’re not footprint-generating organisms whose presence on the planet is inherently toxic and hurtful. We need better handprints, not lighter footprints. We need better stuff, not less stuff. We need to think it through and take effective action, not curl up in a corner stricken with guilt and breathe shallowly.

Super fascinating Bruce Sterling: State of the World 2007 thread at The Well