OR
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Hamish MacDonald, author of FINITUDE, a novel about future climate chaos in an un-named country, talks about climate change, media awareness and fiction writing
Hamish MacDonald, the Canadian author of FINITUDE who is now based in Scotland, has written a powerful novel that depicts people trying to survive in dystopian post-apocalypse times, and the book makes it clear that we humans are very implicit in our own human-made disasters. Human-made global warming is at the top of our radar screens now, with James
Lovelock and Mark Lynas and George Monbiot and James Hansen, not to
mention, Al Gore, making sure we don't ignore the issues.
When MacDonald was asked what his take is on global warming and what can we do -- if anything -- to try to stop
it from causing devastating climate chaos in the distant future, he replied: "I think we're just starting to see the effects of our [human] impact on the
ecosystem. In 500 years, we'll be well-settled into whatever's next,
what comes after this. The big concern is the adjustment to the new
'normal' - and from this vantage-point, I don't think anyone can say
what that'll be. This is a chaotic system we're talking about, so
there are no simple "A+B=C" conclusions we can make.
Of course, some people naturally jump straight from that to "Oh, then
it's all just made up. Let's ignore it then." That's just stupid. All
the arguments for doing nothing fail the very simple test of Pascal's
Wager. The changes that leading environmental thinkers are asking us
to make would have so many long-run social and economic benefits that
the only defence against them is intellectual laziness and
intransigence, like sticking your fingers in your ears and singing La
la la.
It's also difficult to separate our personal feelings from this issue.
I find much of consumer culture nauseating, so it's easy to secretly
wish for our society to get a spanking from the universe for our
excesses. This kind of moralising is probably what 'deniers' really
object to, and I can't blame them for that.
In the end, this is all a bit like our reaction when a young person
dies: yes, it's a tragedy, but that tragedy is usually set against a
make-believe story of the world in which that person would never have
died if it weren't for this accident, disease, or choice.
Likewise, I've heard it said that we're the lucky couple of
generations going through an "Anthropocene Era", when conditions on
life happen to be ideal for us. But it hasn't always been this way,
and, with the Earth being a system in constant flux, Gaia might
transition into something hostile anyway. Fast-forward far enough into
the future and total entropy will make the entire universe
uninhabitable, and all evidence of us will be erased in a sea of
energy-less ash.
Hardly the kind of thing anyone wants to imagine over their morning
bowl of cereal.
Still, the changes being asked of us aren't really that big in the
grand scheme of things - if only we could stop getting distracted by
economic crises and wars, both of which are complete fabrications over
which we have total control. At this point in history, we have every
chance to make this short-term period turn out well, but my fear is
that we might just be too stupid to take it."
When asked why the mainstream media, even book reviewers, are staying clear of discussing the real possibility of climate chaos in the future and even mocking those who go out on a limb and push the proverbial envelope, MacDonald said: "I suppose they're reacting unconsciously to an outcome that they
either can't imagine or don't want to imagine as a possibility. The
easiest way to save oneself from having to engage with an idea is to
ridicule the source."
Whena asked by this blogger what kind of feedback he received from readers and reviewers on his
''Finitude'' book, he replied: ''This is why I set ''Finitude'' in an alternate, yet very similar, world: I
didn't want to come across as a finger-wagging moralist, but to tell a
fun story that just happened to contemplate this huge, important
issue.
I think you've chosen well here by giving people an unrecognisable
world with the warm familiarity of a Western. That trope helps readers
understand how the world works, but will also underscore the
differences between that world and ours. These books sound like
they'll be a lot of fun.
My recommendation to anyone writing about a Big Issue like this is to
keep coming back to the characters and let the message and the
importance drift back into a subconscious place while writing. Nobody
likes getting a lecture in their fiction like a rock at the bottom of
their popcorn. As someone once said to me, "Where there is contention
there is never understanding."
What makes a good novel about climate change and global warming? MacDonald noted: "People will accept anything if it's presented with its own coherent
logic, contains vivid imagery, moves ahead at a good clip, and
features compelling personalities whom we care about."
MacDonald added: "I guess it depends what a fiction writer's agenda is. If he wants to make people
take action on climate issues, is fiction the way to do it? Maybe a writer can plant the seed
of an idea and really make people feel the issue in their bones. That
is really important right now, and we're not getting that deeply -
especially now that the news is doing its level best to make us all
scared witless about our day-to-day survival, as if we're all
permanently locked into an abusive relationship with this sociopathic
banking system.''
And how have readers reacted to FINIUDE? The author said: "The CEO of an environmental group in Scotland told me a few weeks ago
that he'd read Finitude and loved it. That meant a lot to me. I think
we could really use good entertainment about issues that matter,
rather than re-re-reworked plots about dinosaurs, robots, and aliens.
Not that I'm dissing science fiction; I just think it's capable of so
much more than it's being asked to do lately.''
When this blogger told MacDonald that he really enjoyed reading FINITUDE and has re-read it ten times since he received in the mail a year ago: "Thanks very much. I'm really happy you liked "Finitude" so much.
I think you're onto great territory for fiction when you start asking
questions like "What if?" and "Why not?"
As for the reaction or the effect, that's not really something we have
much say over as writers. People will react how they react, and it's
not really our business. Our business is to write what's true to our
hearts, and if others like it, more's the good. If they don't… well,
better we should be true than try to produce something just to be
popular or to try to manipulate others' minds without taking care or
responsibility.''
When asked why the MSM has not done a good job covering climate change
and the real possibility of major disasters befalling humankind, and not just with Hollywood disasgter movies, MacDonald said: "The mass media are stupid, that's why. Someone once said, "The
evening news is the bad news so the commercials can be the good news."
The media, like politicians, will rarely lead. They follow because
that's what pays most securely; they're a barometer for what people
are already doing and thinking - which begins with the work of
visionaries, few of whom are ever recognised in their lifetimes.
I'm not trying to aggrandise you and me here, but I do share the general
perplexity that so many people and institutions are so steadfastly
ignoring this giant, obvious thing right in front of us. It's great
that you hold this hope that we'll do something and survive. Myself, I
don't know. Maybe we'll come together in a beautiful period of
cooperation and vision. Or maybe we'll simply shop ourselves to death.
We imagine it'll be this huge blow to our quality of life to make the
changes being asked of us - in spite of endless evidence about human
happiness says that owning a lot of stuff doesn't contribute to
happiness at all, and probably diminishes it because it distracts us
from ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
In a cosmic sense, it doesn't matter. None of this will ultimately
survive. So it's simply up to us to choose what we want our experience
to be right now. But such a choice involves first becoming conscious
of the issue before us. In this case, it isn't whether or not "global
warming" is real, but about whether we want to keep living in violent
opposition to the system of life that supports our existence. The
particulars of this or that bit of science are irrelevant. It's about
the choice. Unfortunately, in the context of a two-minute news piece,
that choice doesn't matter. It only matters when you lift your head,
look around, and think.''
Email exchange interview between Hamish MacDonald, author of FINITUDE, and Danny Bloom, director of the Polar Cities Research Institute
Hamish MacDonald is the Canadian author of a powerful book about future climate chaos, titled FINITUDE, and it a book well worth reading. He lives in Scotland. Dan Bloom is an American climate activist based in Taiwan.
Dan Bloom: Your novel ''Finitude'' depicts people trying to survive in
dystopian post-apocalypse times, and the book makes it clear that we
humans are very implicit in our own human-made disasters. Human-made
global warming is at the top of our radar screens now, with James
Lovelock and Mark Lynas and George Monbiot and James Hansen, not to
mention, Al Gore, making sure we don't ignore the issues. What is your
take, Hamish, on global warming and what can we do now to try to stop
it from causing devastating climate chaos in some distant future, say
500 years from now? Or do you think things will happen sooner than
that, sooner than 30 generations from now?
Hamish McDonald: I think we're just starting to see the effects of our impact on the
ecosystem. In 500 years, we'll be well settled into whatever's next,
what comes after this. The big concern is the adjustment to the new
'normal' - and from this vantage-point, I don't think anyone can say
what that'll be. This is a chaotic system we're talking about, so
there are no simple "A+B=C" conclusions we can make.
Of course, some people naturally jump straight from that to "Oh, then
it's all just made up. Let's ignore it then." That's just stupid. All
the arguments for doing nothing fail the very simple test of Pascal's
Wager. The changes that leading environmental thinkers are asking us
to make would have so many long-run social and economic benefits that
the only defence against them is intellectual laziness and
intransigence, like sticking your fingers in your ears and singing La
la la.
It's also difficult to separate our personal feelings from this issue.
I find much of consumer culture nauseating, so it's easy to secretly
wish for our society to get a spanking from the universe for our
excesses. This kind of moralising is probably what 'deniers' really
object to, and I can't blame them for that.
In the end, this is all a bit like our reaction when a young person
dies: yes, it's a tragedy, but that tragedy is usually set against a
make-believe story of the world in which that person would never have
died if it weren't for this accident, disease, or choice.
Likewise, I've heard it said that we're the lucky couple of
generations going through an "Anthropocene Era", when conditions on
life happen to be ideal for us. But it hasn't always been this way,
and, with the Earth being a system in constant flux, Gaia might
transition into something hostile anyway. Fast-forward far enough into
the future and total entropy will make the entire universe
uninhabitable, and all evidence of us will be erased in a sea of
energy-less ash.
Hardly the kind of thing anyone wants to imagine over their morning
bowl of cereal.
Still, the changes being asked of us aren't really that big in the
grand scheme of things - if only we could stop getting distracted by
economic crises and wars, both of which are complete fabrications over
which we have total control. At this point in history, we have every
chance to make this short-term period turn out well, but my fear is
that we might just be too stupid to take it.
Dan: For the past 5 years, I have been exploring the concept of
"polar cities" as climate refuges for climate refugees in some distant future, perhaps around the year 2500 AD. But for some
reason, I cannot get the mainstream media in the USA or the UK to
report on my admittedly eccentric and also admittedly "self-appointed
visionary" ideas on this. Why do you think the media is afraid to even
engage with me? Except for one small report in a blog on the New York
Times "Dot Earth" site a few years ago, which was mostly presented in
a humorous, "cute" way --which was fine with me — not one newspaper or
magazine or website in North America or Europe or Australia will talk
with me. Nobody will interview me or present my ideas for polar
cities, pro or con? Why do you think this is, this silence about
"polar cities"? Of course, I am not famous, and I have no PHD and am
not connected with any university or group, so I basically do not
exist for the mainstream media's criteria since I am not an "expert."
I accept all that. But why can't even one newspaper or magazine or
website engage with me about polar cities, as a mere idea? What are
they so afraid of?
Hamish: I suppose they're reacting unconsciously to an outcome that they
either can't imagine or don't want to imagine as a possibility. The
easiest way to save oneself from having to engage with an idea is to
ridicule the source.
Dan: I envision polar cities serving as climate refuges for
climate refugess in the northern regions of the world around 500 years
from now. James Lovelock is my teacher here, and I got the idea
indirectly from him, and he knows of my work on polar cities and has
even seen my illustrations and proposals by email. He wrote back to me
by email two years ago: "Thanks for sharing your polar cities ideas
and images with me. It may very well happen.... and soon!" But I
cannot get the mainstream media or any serious reporter anywhere in
the world to interview me on this topic. So I decided to write a novel
about polar cities, a trilogy really, with a working title now of
"Polar City Red: Arrival" -- followed by Polar City Blue: Awakening"
and finally "Polar City Green: Going Home." I am working with a
published novelist in Texas on the books, and I intend the stories to
be both entertainment and instruction. I want the books to be first of
all, a very good yarn, wonderful storytelling and pure entertainment.
The stories are set in the distant future, in 2500 AD, when the world
population has been reduced from 25 billion to just 200,000 men and women and children living desperate lives in a few
scattered "polar cities" in the north, from Alaska to Canada to
Russia. And in New Zealand and Tasmania, too. But the story I want to
tell will take place in North America. I don't
want to scare people. I want to first, entertain readers, and then
have the books also serve as an alarm bell, a warning, about global
warming, about how if we do not take action now to stop climate
change, then polar cities might become a reality.
I don't want polar cities to ever become a reality. Do you think
readers -- and reviewers -- will go for this kind of storytelling?
What kind of feedback in this regard did you get from readers on your
Finitude book?
Hamish: This is why I set ''Finitude'' in an alternate, yet very similar, world: I
didn't want to come across as a finger-wagging moralist, but to tell a
fun story that just happened to contemplate this huge, important
issue.
I think you've chosen well here by giving people an unrecognisable
world with the warm familiarity of a Western. That trope helps readers
understand how the world works, but will also underscore the
differences between that world and ours. These books sound like
they'll be a lot of fun.
My recommendation to anyone writing about a Big Issue like this is to
keep coming back to the characters and let the message and the
importance drift back into a subconscious place while writing. Nobody
likes getting a lecture in their fiction like a rock at the bottom of
their popcorn. As someone once said to me, "Where there is contention
there is never understanding."
Dan: Readers often respond to dystopian novels with the thought
of "Oh no, it can't happen here." For example, people
find it hard to believe that anyone could even imagine a novel where a
corporation send a virus through the world via sex pills. They simply
don't want to believe it. Do you think people could be drawn into a
well-told story about polar cities serving as lifeboats, as saviors of
humankind? Or is all that nonsense to people today?
Hamish: People will accept anything if it's presented with its own coherent
logic, contains vivid imagery, moves ahead at a good clip, and
features compelling personalities whom we care about.
Dan: I have envisioned polar cities for use 500 years from now,
30 human generations from now, not now. Now, life is wonderful. No
need to worry. Yet, I worry about the distant future. I feel that a
novel about polar cities just might help the media to get used to the
idea and maybe start broaching the subject with newspaper and magazine
readers. Not science fiction, but a kind of dytopia fiction, a bit of
Mad Max mixed in with Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Do you think there
are readers out there who would go for such a book, even as mere
entertainment and fiction? How did readers react to YOUR book?
Hamish: I guess it depends what your agenda is. If you want to make people
take action, is fiction the way to do it? Maybe you can plant the seed
of an idea and really make people feel the issue in their bones. That
is really important right now, and we're not getting that deeply -
especially now that the news is doing its level best to make us all
scared witless about our day-to-day survival, as if we're all
permanently locked into an abusive relationship with this sociopathic
banking system.
The CEO of an environmental group in Scotland told me a few weeks ago
that he'd read Finitude and loved it. That meant a lot to me. I think
we could really use good entertainment about issues that matter,
rather than re-re-reworked plots about dinosaurs, robots, and aliens.
Not that I'm dissing science fiction; I just think it's capable of so
much more than it's being asked to do lately.
Dan: I sometimes call myself "James Lovelock's Accidental
Student." Because it was a remark he made in an interview in 2006 that
gave rise to my thinking about polar cities. He said that in the
future there might be "breeding pairs in the Arctic" after global
warming had caused billions of people to die off in unimagiable
disasters caused by climate chaos. He said there might
be just 200,000 people left on Earth, mostly in the north, and they
would serve as breeding pairs to keep the human species going in the
far north. I said to myself: so where will these breeding pairs live,
in what kind of homes or villages? And the image of polar cities came
into my mind, back in 2006, and I began furiously blogging about them.
But nobody has ever taken me seriously. Only Dr Lovelock has replied to me. Everyone else in the field of climate
research and climate studiea ignores me. They think I am nuts. Five
hundred years from now? They don't want to think that far ahead.
Finitude was also in a distant future. And I loved your book. What's
holding people back, do you think?
Hamish: Thanks very much. I'm really happy you liked "Finitude" so much.
I think you're onto great territory for fiction when you start asking
questions like "What if?" and "Why not?"
As for the reaction or the effect, that's not really something we have
much say over as writers. People will react how they react, and it's
not really our business. Our business is to write what's true to our
hearts, and if others like it, more's the good. If they don't… well,
better we should be true than try to produce something just to be
popular or to try to manipulate others' minds without taking care or
responsibility.
Dan: Most people only care about their present lives, their
families and loved ones and friends now, and their children and
grandchildren of course. But every few people, and especially
politicians who set policy, care about what happens beyond three
generations from now -- or the next election cycle. This is what I am
up against with my polar cities ideas. Very few people want
to go that far ahead, to 2500 AD. Why do you think that is? What holds
people back?
Hamish: You nailed it there: we don't like to think that far out, because then
we enter the realm of imagining ourselves and the people we love not
being around, which makes us feel either sad or indifferent.
Personally, I have to admit that 2500AD is unimaginable to me. To
care, I'd have to get some glimpse of who'd be there, or be given some
concrete image of life then that I could anchor my imagination to.
Dan: Someone asked me once why I care so much about human life
500 years from now. It was actually a newspaper reporter who was
interviewing for me for a big story about polar cities three years ago
-- until his editor killed the piece before publication, without any
explanation other than that I was a nobody and my ideas were pure
nonsense -- and he asked me why I was so concerned about life in the
year 2500. I told him that I cared because I am worried that the great
human experiment on Earth, our long story on Earth, might face
extinction 30 generatiosn from now if we don't take action now to stop
global warming in its tracks. That means dialing back in a big way on
our current lifestyles and changing our manufacture/consume/waste
lifestyle into something that's better for the planet as a whole. Yet,
very few people want to go down that road. I do. I already started
walking on it. I no longer fly in airplanes, haven't flown since 1983,
really. I haven't driven a car for 20 years. I own a bicycle, that's
all. And I care deeply about a future that I am not going to be here
to see. I had a heart attack two years ago and my days are numbered
now. I could go anytime. Certainly before 2030. So my polar cities
ideas and books are intended as a cri de couer. i think you understand
what I am saying here, but why do you think it is so hard to get the
mass media to pay attention to future scenarios that may not be rosy
but are at the same time anchored in a climate reality?
Hamish: The mass media are stupid, that's why. As someone once said, "The
evening news is the bad news so the commercials can be the good news."
The media, like politicians, will rarely lead. They follow because
that's what pays most securely; they're a barometer for what people
are already doing and thinking - which begins with the work of
visionaries, few of whom are ever recognised in their lifetimes.
I'm not trying to aggrandise you and me here, but I do share your
perplexity that so many people and institutions are so steadfastly
ignoring this giant, obvious thing right in front of us. It's great
that you hold this hope that we'll do something and survive. Myself, I
don't know. Maybe we'll come together in a beautiful period of
cooperation and vision. Or maybe we'll simply shop ourselves to death.
We imagine it'll be this huge blow to our quality of life to make the
changes being asked of us - in spite of endless evidence about human
happiness says that owning a lot of stuff doesn't contribute to
happiness at all, and probably diminishes it because it distracts us
from ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
In a cosmic sense, it doesn't matter. None of this will ultimately
survive. So it's simply up to us to choose what we want our experience
to be right now. But such a choice involves first becoming conscious
of the issue before us. In this case, it isn't whether or not "global
warming" is real, but about whether we want to keep living in violent
opposition to the system of life that supports our existence. The
particulars of this or that bit of science are irrelevant. It's about
the choice. Unfortunately, in the context of a two-minute news piece,
that choice doesn't matter. It only matters when you lift your head,
look around, and think.
Dan Bloom: Your novel ''Finitude'' depicts people trying to survive in
dystopian post-apocalypse times, and the book makes it clear that we
humans are very implicit in our own human-made disasters. Human-made
global warming is at the top of our radar screens now, with James
Lovelock and Mark Lynas and George Monbiot and James Hansen, not to
mention, Al Gore, making sure we don't ignore the issues. What is your
take, Hamish, on global warming and what can we do now to try to stop
it from causing devastating climate chaos in some distant future, say
500 years from now? Or do you think things will happen sooner than
that, sooner than 30 generations from now?
Hamish McDonald: I think we're just starting to see the effects of our impact on the
ecosystem. In 500 years, we'll be well settled into whatever's next,
what comes after this. The big concern is the adjustment to the new
'normal' - and from this vantage-point, I don't think anyone can say
what that'll be. This is a chaotic system we're talking about, so
there are no simple "A+B=C" conclusions we can make.
Of course, some people naturally jump straight from that to "Oh, then
it's all just made up. Let's ignore it then." That's just stupid. All
the arguments for doing nothing fail the very simple test of Pascal's
Wager. The changes that leading environmental thinkers are asking us
to make would have so many long-run social and economic benefits that
the only defence against them is intellectual laziness and
intransigence, like sticking your fingers in your ears and singing La
la la.
It's also difficult to separate our personal feelings from this issue.
I find much of consumer culture nauseating, so it's easy to secretly
wish for our society to get a spanking from the universe for our
excesses. This kind of moralising is probably what 'deniers' really
object to, and I can't blame them for that.
In the end, this is all a bit like our reaction when a young person
dies: yes, it's a tragedy, but that tragedy is usually set against a
make-believe story of the world in which that person would never have
died if it weren't for this accident, disease, or choice.
Likewise, I've heard it said that we're the lucky couple of
generations going through an "Anthropocene Era", when conditions on
life happen to be ideal for us. But it hasn't always been this way,
and, with the Earth being a system in constant flux, Gaia might
transition into something hostile anyway. Fast-forward far enough into
the future and total entropy will make the entire universe
uninhabitable, and all evidence of us will be erased in a sea of
energy-less ash.
Hardly the kind of thing anyone wants to imagine over their morning
bowl of cereal.
Still, the changes being asked of us aren't really that big in the
grand scheme of things - if only we could stop getting distracted by
economic crises and wars, both of which are complete fabrications over
which we have total control. At this point in history, we have every
chance to make this short-term period turn out well, but my fear is
that we might just be too stupid to take it.
Dan: For the past 5 years, I have been exploring the concept of
"polar cities" as climate refuges for climate refugees in some distant future, perhaps around the year 2500 AD. But for some
reason, I cannot get the mainstream media in the USA or the UK to
report on my admittedly eccentric and also admittedly "self-appointed
visionary" ideas on this. Why do you think the media is afraid to even
engage with me? Except for one small report in a blog on the New York
Times "Dot Earth" site a few years ago, which was mostly presented in
a humorous, "cute" way --which was fine with me — not one newspaper or
magazine or website in North America or Europe or Australia will talk
with me. Nobody will interview me or present my ideas for polar
cities, pro or con? Why do you think this is, this silence about
"polar cities"? Of course, I am not famous, and I have no PHD and am
not connected with any university or group, so I basically do not
exist for the mainstream media's criteria since I am not an "expert."
I accept all that. But why can't even one newspaper or magazine or
website engage with me about polar cities, as a mere idea? What are
they so afraid of?
Hamish: I suppose they're reacting unconsciously to an outcome that they
either can't imagine or don't want to imagine as a possibility. The
easiest way to save oneself from having to engage with an idea is to
ridicule the source.
Dan: I envision polar cities serving as climate refuges for
climate refugess in the northern regions of the world around 500 years
from now. James Lovelock is my teacher here, and I got the idea
indirectly from him, and he knows of my work on polar cities and has
even seen my illustrations and proposals by email. He wrote back to me
by email two years ago: "Thanks for sharing your polar cities ideas
and images with me. It may very well happen.... and soon!" But I
cannot get the mainstream media or any serious reporter anywhere in
the world to interview me on this topic. So I decided to write a novel
about polar cities, a trilogy really, with a working title now of
"Polar City Red: Arrival" -- followed by Polar City Blue: Awakening"
and finally "Polar City Green: Going Home." I am working with a
published novelist in Texas on the books, and I intend the stories to
be both entertainment and instruction. I want the books to be first of
all, a very good yarn, wonderful storytelling and pure entertainment.
The stories are set in the distant future, in 2500 AD, when the world
population has been reduced from 25 billion to just 200,000 men and women and children living desperate lives in a few
scattered "polar cities" in the north, from Alaska to Canada to
Russia. And in New Zealand and Tasmania, too. But the story I want to
tell will take place in North America. I don't
want to scare people. I want to first, entertain readers, and then
have the books also serve as an alarm bell, a warning, about global
warming, about how if we do not take action now to stop climate
change, then polar cities might become a reality.
I don't want polar cities to ever become a reality. Do you think
readers -- and reviewers -- will go for this kind of storytelling?
What kind of feedback in this regard did you get from readers on your
Finitude book?
Hamish: This is why I set ''Finitude'' in an alternate, yet very similar, world: I
didn't want to come across as a finger-wagging moralist, but to tell a
fun story that just happened to contemplate this huge, important
issue.
I think you've chosen well here by giving people an unrecognisable
world with the warm familiarity of a Western. That trope helps readers
understand how the world works, but will also underscore the
differences between that world and ours. These books sound like
they'll be a lot of fun.
My recommendation to anyone writing about a Big Issue like this is to
keep coming back to the characters and let the message and the
importance drift back into a subconscious place while writing. Nobody
likes getting a lecture in their fiction like a rock at the bottom of
their popcorn. As someone once said to me, "Where there is contention
there is never understanding."
Dan: Readers often respond to dystopian novels with the thought
of "Oh no, it can't happen here." For example, people
find it hard to believe that anyone could even imagine a novel where a
corporation send a virus through the world via sex pills. They simply
don't want to believe it. Do you think people could be drawn into a
well-told story about polar cities serving as lifeboats, as saviors of
humankind? Or is all that nonsense to people today?
Hamish: People will accept anything if it's presented with its own coherent
logic, contains vivid imagery, moves ahead at a good clip, and
features compelling personalities whom we care about.
Dan: I have envisioned polar cities for use 500 years from now,
30 human generations from now, not now. Now, life is wonderful. No
need to worry. Yet, I worry about the distant future. I feel that a
novel about polar cities just might help the media to get used to the
idea and maybe start broaching the subject with newspaper and magazine
readers. Not science fiction, but a kind of dytopia fiction, a bit of
Mad Max mixed in with Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Do you think there
are readers out there who would go for such a book, even as mere
entertainment and fiction? How did readers react to YOUR book?
Hamish: I guess it depends what your agenda is. If you want to make people
take action, is fiction the way to do it? Maybe you can plant the seed
of an idea and really make people feel the issue in their bones. That
is really important right now, and we're not getting that deeply -
especially now that the news is doing its level best to make us all
scared witless about our day-to-day survival, as if we're all
permanently locked into an abusive relationship with this sociopathic
banking system.
The CEO of an environmental group in Scotland told me a few weeks ago
that he'd read Finitude and loved it. That meant a lot to me. I think
we could really use good entertainment about issues that matter,
rather than re-re-reworked plots about dinosaurs, robots, and aliens.
Not that I'm dissing science fiction; I just think it's capable of so
much more than it's being asked to do lately.
Dan: I sometimes call myself "James Lovelock's Accidental
Student." Because it was a remark he made in an interview in 2006 that
gave rise to my thinking about polar cities. He said that in the
future there might be "breeding pairs in the Arctic" after global
warming had caused billions of people to die off in unimagiable
disasters caused by climate chaos. He said there might
be just 200,000 people left on Earth, mostly in the north, and they
would serve as breeding pairs to keep the human species going in the
far north. I said to myself: so where will these breeding pairs live,
in what kind of homes or villages? And the image of polar cities came
into my mind, back in 2006, and I began furiously blogging about them.
But nobody has ever taken me seriously. Only Dr Lovelock has replied to me. Everyone else in the field of climate
research and climate studiea ignores me. They think I am nuts. Five
hundred years from now? They don't want to think that far ahead.
Finitude was also in a distant future. And I loved your book. What's
holding people back, do you think?
Hamish: Thanks very much. I'm really happy you liked "Finitude" so much.
I think you're onto great territory for fiction when you start asking
questions like "What if?" and "Why not?"
As for the reaction or the effect, that's not really something we have
much say over as writers. People will react how they react, and it's
not really our business. Our business is to write what's true to our
hearts, and if others like it, more's the good. If they don't… well,
better we should be true than try to produce something just to be
popular or to try to manipulate others' minds without taking care or
responsibility.
Dan: Most people only care about their present lives, their
families and loved ones and friends now, and their children and
grandchildren of course. But every few people, and especially
politicians who set policy, care about what happens beyond three
generations from now -- or the next election cycle. This is what I am
up against with my polar cities ideas. Very few people want
to go that far ahead, to 2500 AD. Why do you think that is? What holds
people back?
Hamish: You nailed it there: we don't like to think that far out, because then
we enter the realm of imagining ourselves and the people we love not
being around, which makes us feel either sad or indifferent.
Personally, I have to admit that 2500AD is unimaginable to me. To
care, I'd have to get some glimpse of who'd be there, or be given some
concrete image of life then that I could anchor my imagination to.
Dan: Someone asked me once why I care so much about human life
500 years from now. It was actually a newspaper reporter who was
interviewing for me for a big story about polar cities three years ago
-- until his editor killed the piece before publication, without any
explanation other than that I was a nobody and my ideas were pure
nonsense -- and he asked me why I was so concerned about life in the
year 2500. I told him that I cared because I am worried that the great
human experiment on Earth, our long story on Earth, might face
extinction 30 generatiosn from now if we don't take action now to stop
global warming in its tracks. That means dialing back in a big way on
our current lifestyles and changing our manufacture/consume/waste
lifestyle into something that's better for the planet as a whole. Yet,
very few people want to go down that road. I do. I already started
walking on it. I no longer fly in airplanes, haven't flown since 1983,
really. I haven't driven a car for 20 years. I own a bicycle, that's
all. And I care deeply about a future that I am not going to be here
to see. I had a heart attack two years ago and my days are numbered
now. I could go anytime. Certainly before 2030. So my polar cities
ideas and books are intended as a cri de couer. i think you understand
what I am saying here, but why do you think it is so hard to get the
mass media to pay attention to future scenarios that may not be rosy
but are at the same time anchored in a climate reality?
Hamish: The mass media are stupid, that's why. As someone once said, "The
evening news is the bad news so the commercials can be the good news."
The media, like politicians, will rarely lead. They follow because
that's what pays most securely; they're a barometer for what people
are already doing and thinking - which begins with the work of
visionaries, few of whom are ever recognised in their lifetimes.
I'm not trying to aggrandise you and me here, but I do share your
perplexity that so many people and institutions are so steadfastly
ignoring this giant, obvious thing right in front of us. It's great
that you hold this hope that we'll do something and survive. Myself, I
don't know. Maybe we'll come together in a beautiful period of
cooperation and vision. Or maybe we'll simply shop ourselves to death.
We imagine it'll be this huge blow to our quality of life to make the
changes being asked of us - in spite of endless evidence about human
happiness says that owning a lot of stuff doesn't contribute to
happiness at all, and probably diminishes it because it distracts us
from ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
In a cosmic sense, it doesn't matter. None of this will ultimately
survive. So it's simply up to us to choose what we want our experience
to be right now. But such a choice involves first becoming conscious
of the issue before us. In this case, it isn't whether or not "global
warming" is real, but about whether we want to keep living in violent
opposition to the system of life that supports our existence. The
particulars of this or that bit of science are irrelevant. It's about
the choice. Unfortunately, in the context of a two-minute news piece,
that choice doesn't matter. It only matters when you lift your head,
look around, and think.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
''THERE IS NO RETURN FROM VENUS!'' -- Mike Roddy and Dan Bloom discuss climate change, global warming, polar cities and media coverage of vital climate issues
odiogo_logo_195x44.gif
Dan Bloom is an American climate activist based in Taiwan. Mike Roddy is a screenwriter in California. This back and forth chat [audio link] took place online in the middle of September of the year 2011, for those readers looking back in time from the future of say the year 2099 or 3055 AD.
Mike Roddy: The science has advanced in sync with disastrous weather events in the last two years. MIT came out with
predictions exceeding IPCC worst case by 2100, or in the 10 F range. That means catastrophe. Polar cities
will be under construction before the end of the 21st century.
Mike Roddy: The two words "afraid of" is the operative phrase. Media outlets are somewhat afraid of fanning
panic, but are far more afraid of losing advertisers, which include auto, fuel, and utility companies.
Media income is in decline, especially in print. TV doesn't lend itself to hard scientific analysis,
and events even a few decades away are too abstract for most of their audience.
Your polar cities idea absolutely deserves a wide audience, not only because it's a good predictor, but
due to its clarification of what life will actually be like. I did a little research here myself- buildings
can already be taken out by an infantryman, with hand held ordnance. Underground living, with either rock or
reinforced concrete for strength, will become common.
Mike Roddy: Sure they will, and I like your idea of telling simple human stories in that environment.
Mammals don't evolve very fast, so we'll be telling the same jokes etc inside our shells, too. The timeframe
for polar cities looks to me to be about 100 years away, if not sooner.>>
Mike Roddy: You've got a great idea for a novel or movie. A screenwriter friend in Hollywood is
running with something similar. My own screenplay was a bit too political, but a better one would
be effective and important.
Mike Roddy: Your ghostwriter's novel will find an audience if it's written well, no question. Let me know if I can help.
hundred thousand up to maybe a few hundred million people are left in 2100, including melting permafrost, runaway fires, and ocean clathrate
releases. The tropics and most of the temperate latitudes will be uninhabitable. That leaves the poles.
not well-known authors. They are insecure themselves, since so many reporters have been laid off in
the last decades. They reason that if they are going to lose their job, it will be to someone with a
sales track record. Breaking into writing is like becoming a movie actor- expect to be ignored, keep
working, and hope for luck or the right chain of events- which might be personal.
Humans might deserve to go extinct, but we'll take a lot of creatures down with us, making biological
regeneration tough for every species. Hansen believes that if we burn all of the coal and the tar sands
oil- a course we are already on- we will become Venus. That's much worse than Lovelock's prediction.
There is no return from Venus. Nothing will be absorbing carbon, and life will never happen here again.
In that scenario, polar cities are a transition period, on the way to something much worse.
LISTEN HERE:
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/northward-ho-polar-cities-will-serve-as-climate-re/podcasts-xml.php
Dan Bloom is an American climate activist based in Taiwan. Mike Roddy is a screenwriter in California. This back and forth chat [audio link] took place online in the middle of September of the year 2011, for those readers looking back in time from the future of say the year 2099 or 3055 AD.
Dan Bloom: Human-made global warming
is at the top of our radar screens now, with James Lovelock and Mark
Lynas and George Monbiot and James
Hansen, not to mention, Al Gore, making sure we don't ignore the
issues. What is your take, Mike, on global warming
and what can we do now to try to stop it from causing devastating
climate chaos in some distant future, say 500 years from now?
Or do you think things will happen sooner than that, sooner than 30
generations from now?
Mike Roddy: The science has advanced in sync with disastrous weather events in the last two years. MIT came out with
predictions exceeding IPCC worst case by 2100, or in the 10 F range. That means catastrophe. Polar cities
will be under construction before the end of the 21st century.
Dan Bloom: For the past 5 years, I have been exploring the concept of
polar cities" as climate refuges for climate refugees in
some distant future, perhaps around the year 2500 AD. But for some
reason, I cannot get the mainstream media in the USA or the UK to report
on my admittedly eccentric and also admittedly "self-appointed visionary"
ideas on this. Why do you think the media is afraid to even
engage with me? Except for one small report in a blog on the New York
Times "Dot Earth" site a few years ago, which was mostly
presented in a humorous, "cute" way --which was fine with me -- not
one newspaper or magazine or website in North America
or Europe or Australia will talk with me. Nobody will interview me or
present my ideas for polar cities, pro or con? Why do you think this
is, this silence about "polar cities"? Of course, I am not famous, and
I have no PHD and am not connected with any university or group,
so I basically do not exist for the mainstream media's criteria since
I am not an "expert." I accept all that. But why can't even one
newspaper
or magazine or website engage with me about polar cities, as a mere
idea? What are they so afraid of?
Mike Roddy: The two words "afraid of" is the operative phrase. Media outlets are somewhat afraid of fanning
panic, but are far more afraid of losing advertisers, which include auto, fuel, and utility companies.
Media income is in decline, especially in print. TV doesn't lend itself to hard scientific analysis,
and events even a few decades away are too abstract for most of their audience.
Your polar cities idea absolutely deserves a wide audience, not only because it's a good predictor, but
due to its clarification of what life will actually be like. I did a little research here myself- buildings
can already be taken out by an infantryman, with hand held ordnance. Underground living, with either rock or
reinforced concrete for strength, will become common.
Dan Bloom: I envision polar cities serving as climate refuges for
climate refugess in the northern regions of the world around 500 years
from now.
James Lovelock is my teacher here, and I got the idea indirectly from
him, and he knows of my work on polar cities and has even seen my
illustrations and proposals by email. He wrote back to me by email two
years ago: "Thanks for sharing your polar cities ideas and images with
me. It may very well happen.... and soon!"
But I cannot get the mainstream media or any serious reporter anywhere
in the world to interview me on this topic. So I decided to ask a published author in Texas -- with ten sci fi novels already to his credit -- to write a
novel about
polar cities, a trilogy perhaps, but first just one novel, about 250 pages, with a working title now of "Polar
City Story: Arrival" -- to be maybe followed by ''Polar City Story 2: Awakening" and
finally "Polar City Story 3: Going Home." I am
working with a published novelist in Texas on the books, and we intend
the stories to be both entertainment and instruction. I want the books
to be first of all, a very good yarn,
wonderful storytelling and pure entertainment. My ghostwriter -- really the main writer, it is his book, his story, and only his name will appear on the cover -- is working on it now. The stories are set in
the near future, in 2080 AD, when the world population has been
reduced from 9 billion to just
200,000 men and women and children living desperate lives in a few
scattered "polar cities" in the north, from Alaska to Canada to
Russia. And in New Zealand and Tasmania, too.
But the story we want to tell will take place in North America. We don't
want to scare people. We want to first, entertain readers, and then
have the books also serve as an alarm bell,
a warning, about global warming, about how if we do not take action
now to stop climate change, then polar cities might become a reality.
I don't want polar cities to ever become
a reality. Do you think readers -- and reviewers -- will go for this
kind of storytelling, Mike?
Mike Roddy: Sure they will, and I like your idea of telling simple human stories in that environment.
Mammals don't evolve very fast, so we'll be telling the same jokes etc inside our shells, too. The timeframe
for polar cities looks to me to be about 100 years away, if not sooner.>>
Dan Bloom: Readers often respond to dystopian novels with the thought
of "Oh no, it can't happen here." For example, people
find it hard to believe that anyone could even imagine a novel where a
corporation send a virus through the world via sex pills. They
simply don't want to believe it. Do you think people could be drawn
into a well-told story about polar cities serving as lifeboats, as
saviors of humankind?
Or is all that nonsense to people today?
Mike Roddy: You've got a great idea for a novel or movie. A screenwriter friend in Hollywood is
running with something similar. My own screenplay was a bit too political, but a better one would
be effective and important.
Dan Bloom: I have envisioned polar cities for use 500 years from now,
30 human generations from now, not now. But in our book now in progess, in the novel we are calling a "polar western" -- ''the world's first polar western'', as Scotland-based novelist Hamish MacDonald said to me the other day -- life will be desperate and dystopian. But of course, now life is wonderful. No
need to worry.
Yet, I worry about the distant future. I feel that a novel about polar
cities just might help the media to get used to the idea and maybe
start
broaching the subject with newspaper and magazine readers. Not science
fiction, but a kind of dytopia fiction, a bit of Mad Max mixed in with
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." Do you think there are readers out there
who would go for such a book, even as mere entertainment and fiction?
Mike Roddy: Your ghostwriter's novel will find an audience if it's written well, no question. Let me know if I can help.
Dan Bloom: I sometimes call myself "James Lovelock's Accidental
Student." Because it was a remark he made in an interview in 2006 that
gave rise to
my thinking about polar cities. He said that in the future there might
be "breeding pairs in the Arctic" after global warming had caused
billions of people to die off
in unimagiable disasters caused by climate chaos. He said there might
be just 200,000 people left on Earth, mostly in the north, and they
would serve
as breeding pairs to keep the human species going in the far north. I
said to myself: so where will these breeding pairs live, in what kind
of homes or villages?
And the image of polar cities came into my mind, back in 2006, and I
began furiously blogging about them. But nobody has ever taken me
seriously. Only
Dr Lovelock has replied to me. Everyone else in the field of climate
research and climate studiea ignores me. They think I am nuts. Five
hundreds years from now?
They don't want to think that far ahead. What's holding people back,
do you think?
Most people only care about their present lives, theirMike Roddy: The timeline needs to be advanced, so your new decision to set the polar cities novel in 2080 or so is a good one. There are lots of scenarios where only a few
families and loved ones and friends now, and their children and
grandchildren of course. But
every few people, and especially politicians who set policy, care
about what happens beyond three generations from now -- or the next
election cycle. This is
what I am up against with my polar cities ideas. Very few people want
to go that far ahead, to my original polar city timeframe of around 2500 AD. Why do you think that is? What holds
people back?
hundred thousand up to maybe a few hundred million people are left in 2100, including melting permafrost, runaway fires, and ocean clathrate
releases. The tropics and most of the temperate latitudes will be uninhabitable. That leaves the poles.
Dan Bloom: Someone asked me once why I care so much about human lifeMike Roddy concludes the discussion this way: The media doesn't respond much to people who are
500 years from now. It was actually a newspaper reporter who was
interviewing
for me for a big story about polar cities three years ago -- until his
editor killed the piece before publication, without any explanation
other than that I was
a nobody and my ideas were pure nonsense -- and he asked me why I was
so concerned about life in the year 2500. I told him that I cared
because
I am worried that the great human experiment on Earth, our long story
on Earth, might face extinction 30 generatiosn from now if we don't
take action now
to stop global warming in its tracks. That means dialing back in a big
way on our current lifestyles and changing our
manufacture/consume/waste lifestyle
into something that's better for the planet as a whole. Yet, very few
people want to go down that road. I do. I already started walking on
it. I no longer fly
in airplanes, haven't flown since 1983, really. I haven't driven a car
for 20 years. I own a bicycle, that's all. And I care deeply about a
future that I am not going
to be here to see. I had a heart attack two years ago and my days are
numbered now. I could go anytime. Certainly before 2030. So my polar
cities ideas and books
are intended as a cri de couer. i think you understand what I am
saying here, but
why do you think it is so hard to get the mass media to pay attention to
future
scenarios that may not be rosy but are at the same time anchored in a
climate reality?
not well-known authors. They are insecure themselves, since so many reporters have been laid off in
the last decades. They reason that if they are going to lose their job, it will be to someone with a
sales track record. Breaking into writing is like becoming a movie actor- expect to be ignored, keep
working, and hope for luck or the right chain of events- which might be personal.
Humans might deserve to go extinct, but we'll take a lot of creatures down with us, making biological
regeneration tough for every species. Hansen believes that if we burn all of the coal and the tar sands
oil- a course we are already on- we will become Venus. That's much worse than Lovelock's prediction.
There is no return from Venus. Nothing will be absorbing carbon, and life will never happen here again.
In that scenario, polar cities are a transition period, on the way to something much worse.
LISTEN HERE:
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/northward-ho-polar-cities-will-serve-as-climate-re/podcasts-xml.php
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Someday, your descendants might seek refuge in POLAR CITIES, says DARPA chief
by the Web Post Modern, August 31, 2011
The awarding of that grant is planned as the culmination of a
yearlong Darpa effort called the 100-Year Polar Cities Study, which
will include a three-day public symposium in Juneau, Alaska, starting
on September 30 on the whys and hows of polar city life. The Darpa
plan has generated buzz as well as befuddlement in the labs, pubs,
diners and Web sites that ring DARPA centers both physically and
virtually, since global warming is on everyone's mind these days.
"Polar ciites might save humankind from extinction," said Ellen
Sandersky , who teaches at the University of Alaska and directs
Project Polar Cities, a worldwide volunteer effort to design a polar
city that could house 5000 to 10,000 people if and when climate change
causes millions to migrate north in search of food, fuel and power
sources.
People like Dr. Sandersky say the technology already exists or will
soon exist to build such polar cities, and that DARPA can help. The
half-million dollars Darpa will award is not enough to build a real
polar city, either above ground or undeground or even to buy a modest
office in which to imagine one - but it is enough to start serious
fund-raising and, perhaps, to invite ridicule from critics of
government spending.
An actual construction of mankind's first polar city for survivors of
global warming is at least a couple of centuries away andcould take
additional centuries to complete.
Danny Outland, Darpa's director of practical technology, points out
that the goal of his project is not to build a real polar city, only a
business plan for designing one. The search, he said, is for an
organization that can develop the polar city vision without government
help, carrying the load for 100 years, developing technological
offshoots the way investing in computer protocols enabled the
Internet. After the award is handed out, whoever it is will be on
their own. "We don't intend to carry it forward," Mr. Outland added.
"Darpa hands the keys over to this entity, and we wish them well."
Last January, Mr. Outland and Sarah Muslando, director of NASA's Ames
Research Laboratory in Mountain View, California, invited about 30
scientists, entrepreneurs and science fiction writers to a two-day
brainstorming session. Ms. Muslando described the first meeting as an
attempt to get past "the giggle factor" associated with the subject.
Participants were to include scientists like J. Craig Venter of the J.
Craig Venter Institute, who was one of the first to sequence the human
genome, and the science fiction writer Joe Haldeman. James Lovelock
was invited, too.
One participant said, "There really were a few people on the other
side of reality."
A call for ideas for the Orlando meeting drew hundreds of responses,
and now Muslando will coordinate talks on where to go. She has
received 50 or 60 proposals, some of which read like sci fi scenarios.
"Maybe," she said, "you have to be a little bit crazy to think about
this seriously."
Hamish Allen, a physics graduate student at MIT , and a member of
Project Polar Cities, said he had already thought about the floor
plans, an organization chart and even a Japanese garden in the
backyard for a pyramidal Polar City Institute, where the research for
all this could be centered.
"A lot of us are quite young. We grew up hearing about global warming
and climate change and James Lovelock's predicitons," he said. "We want to be part of a significant step forward to save
humankind from possible extinction. We personally think we may be
doing something important, putting humanity into safe climate refuges
in the future when billions might die and only 200,000 might survive
in these northern shelters."
The United States government agency that helped invent the internet.
now wants to do the same for survivors of global warming in the future
by creating climate refuges in the far north as human lifeboats in case of a dire emergency in the future.
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, plans to award
some organization roughly $500,000 in seed money to begin studying
what it would take - organizationally, technically, sociologically and
ethically - to set up polar cities for survivors of climate chaos
disasters in the future, a challenge of such magnitude that the study
alone could take a hundred years
The awarding of that grant is planned as the culmination of a
yearlong Darpa effort called the 100-Year Polar Cities Study, which
will include a three-day public symposium in Juneau, Alaska, starting
on September 30 on the whys and hows of polar city life. The Darpa
plan has generated buzz as well as befuddlement in the labs, pubs,
diners and Web sites that ring DARPA centers both physically and
virtually, since global warming is on everyone's mind these days.
"Polar ciites might save humankind from extinction," said Ellen
Sandersky , who teaches at the University of Alaska and directs
Project Polar Cities, a worldwide volunteer effort to design a polar
city that could house 5000 to 10,000 people if and when climate change
causes millions to migrate north in search of food, fuel and power
sources.
People like Dr. Sandersky say the technology already exists or will
soon exist to build such polar cities, and that DARPA can help. The
half-million dollars Darpa will award is not enough to build a real
polar city, either above ground or undeground or even to buy a modest
office in which to imagine one - but it is enough to start serious
fund-raising and, perhaps, to invite ridicule from critics of
government spending.
An actual construction of mankind's first polar city for survivors of
global warming is at least a couple of centuries away andcould take
additional centuries to complete.
Danny Outland, Darpa's director of practical technology, points out
that the goal of his project is not to build a real polar city, only a
business plan for designing one. The search, he said, is for an
organization that can develop the polar city vision without government
help, carrying the load for 100 years, developing technological
offshoots the way investing in computer protocols enabled the
Internet. After the award is handed out, whoever it is will be on
their own. "We don't intend to carry it forward," Mr. Outland added.
"Darpa hands the keys over to this entity, and we wish them well."
Last January, Mr. Outland and Sarah Muslando, director of NASA's Ames
Research Laboratory in Mountain View, California, invited about 30
scientists, entrepreneurs and science fiction writers to a two-day
brainstorming session. Ms. Muslando described the first meeting as an
attempt to get past "the giggle factor" associated with the subject.
Participants were to include scientists like J. Craig Venter of the J.
Craig Venter Institute, who was one of the first to sequence the human
genome, and the science fiction writer Joe Haldeman. James Lovelock
was invited, too.
One participant said, "There really were a few people on the other
side of reality."
A call for ideas for the Orlando meeting drew hundreds of responses,
and now Muslando will coordinate talks on where to go. She has
received 50 or 60 proposals, some of which read like sci fi scenarios.
"Maybe," she said, "you have to be a little bit crazy to think about
this seriously."
Hamish Allen, a physics graduate student at MIT , and a member of
Project Polar Cities, said he had already thought about the floor
plans, an organization chart and even a Japanese garden in the
backyard for a pyramidal Polar City Institute, where the research for
all this could be centered.
"A lot of us are quite young. We grew up hearing about global warming
and climate change and James Lovelock's predicitons," he said. "We want to be part of a significant step forward to save
humankind from possible extinction. We personally think we may be
doing something important, putting humanity into safe climate refuges
in the future when billions might die and only 200,000 might survive
in these northern shelters."
Sunday, April 3, 2011
How the Salvation Army and World Vision use disasters and tragedies to recuit displaced people in the name of Christ and increase their fundraising capital. Shame on these phonies! In the name of Christ, my eye!
“Ame ni Mo Makezu,” is one of non-Christian Japan’s most famous poems. Roughly translated, the title means “don’t be defeated by the rain.” Its inspirational Buddhist message encourages people to have hope and fight the world’s heartache by standing up for those in need.
Communist-China loving Jackie Chan and dozens of fake and empty Hong Kong singers and actors have adapted this Buddhist poem into a new song, “Succumb Not to Sorrow,” was the theme of their Japan relief concert on April 1 in Hong Kong with proceeds from the event going to The Salvation Army’s relief efforts to recruit more people for Jesus and use the Japanese disaster to raise funds for their global recruiting for Jesus efforts. Kinda sad, doncha think?
But Jackie Chan isn’t the only celebrity using his star power to help Japan. We reported last week that Britney Spears donated 2 VIP tickets to her free Sunday performance taping for Good Morning America. California radio station Wild 94.9 decided to auction them off and donate the proceeds to The Salvation Army’s ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' disaster efforts. We heard the winning bidder put up $1,136 for the tickets, which will go straight to supporting the Army's ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' crusade in disaster hit Japan!
For our latest Japan relief update and more on our ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' thing, google us.
SEE?
RE: ”With its Christian heritage and motivation, The Salvation Army continues its unique service to all people in the name of Christ.”
SEE? you do all this not because you care about the Japanese people or are concerned about them post qauke …..this is all about recuriting people for CHRIST…shame on you all, you unAmerican missionaries!
and you then fool the gullibbe Chinese and Jacke Chan and the 170 stars in HK into thinking they are helping Japan when in fact this is all a huge massive recruiting effort for Jesus the unson of the ungod…..you are all fakes and ungodly people, you Salvation army hippocrites. When the world wakes up to how you Christians use trageduise like this to increase your funding raise and capital and catch more people for the fake Christ you worship, you will be exposed,. you and World Vision are the same fake unAmerican and unBritish fakes…shame on you. Kuso!
You care not one wit about the Japanese survivors. you just want more soulds for Jesus. You are the slime of religion.
Communist-China loving Jackie Chan and dozens of fake and empty Hong Kong singers and actors have adapted this Buddhist poem into a new song, “Succumb Not to Sorrow,” was the theme of their Japan relief concert on April 1 in Hong Kong with proceeds from the event going to The Salvation Army’s relief efforts to recruit more people for Jesus and use the Japanese disaster to raise funds for their global recruiting for Jesus efforts. Kinda sad, doncha think?
But Jackie Chan isn’t the only celebrity using his star power to help Japan. We reported last week that Britney Spears donated 2 VIP tickets to her free Sunday performance taping for Good Morning America. California radio station Wild 94.9 decided to auction them off and donate the proceeds to The Salvation Army’s ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' disaster efforts. We heard the winning bidder put up $1,136 for the tickets, which will go straight to supporting the Army's ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' crusade in disaster hit Japan!
For our latest Japan relief update and more on our ''SAVE A JAPANESE SOUL FOR CHRIST'' thing, google us.
SEE?
RE: ”With its Christian heritage and motivation, The Salvation Army continues its unique service to all people in the name of Christ.”
SEE? you do all this not because you care about the Japanese people or are concerned about them post qauke …..this is all about recuriting people for CHRIST…shame on you all, you unAmerican missionaries!
and you then fool the gullibbe Chinese and Jacke Chan and the 170 stars in HK into thinking they are helping Japan when in fact this is all a huge massive recruiting effort for Jesus the unson of the ungod…..you are all fakes and ungodly people, you Salvation army hippocrites. When the world wakes up to how you Christians use trageduise like this to increase your funding raise and capital and catch more people for the fake Christ you worship, you will be exposed,. you and World Vision are the same fake unAmerican and unBritish fakes…shame on you. Kuso!
You care not one wit about the Japanese survivors. you just want more soulds for Jesus. You are the slime of religion.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
ló - lat [Taiwanese language research item]
A friend's khan-tshiú (牽手 / 太太) indicates that "ló lat" has disappeared from use among younger Taiwanese because of the Mandarin education system reducing the opportunities for the younger generation to speak Taiwanese with their older family members. BTW, the first response she gave him when he asked her to tell him about the word (he gave her no contextual clues about why he was asking) was that it was like "辛苦."
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