As environmental ideas have entered the zeigeist, mostly thanks to global warming–and still mostly focused on that issue–plenty of technology companies are lining up to tell us how they’re helping green/save/clean the environment. Advertising agencies and PR firms are delighted to sell us any number of “green” gizmos and they’re throwing in some nice self-esteem blowjobs for all of us, using their persuasive talents to assure us that we’re enlightened and forward thinking because we just stuffed a green X into our Prius.

But green blowjobs aren’t really my gig…

There’s more in that line, so if you’re interested, check it out. But the other interesting thing to check out is that the interview got reposted over at io9, where it seems to have generated a roaring discussion.

I’m interested in the rage that the interview inspires in a lot of the readers. Big emotions around the ideas of population control, technology, and consumption. My personal favorite quote from a reader so far:

“Hey Paolo, Fuck you!”

Normally I have to write something like “Yellow Card Man” to get that response.

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year.

‘You could never have a Chernobyl-type event – there are no moving parts,’ said Deal. ‘You would need nation-state resources in order to enrich our uranium. Temperature-wise it’s too hot to handle. It would be like stealing a barbecue with your bare hands.’

l’Hydroptere has broken through the 50-knot barrier with a hydrofoil-packing trimaran. Cool stuff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/technology/24solar.html

In a really scarce energy society, I wonder how far you’d have to go to keep your solar panels for yourself?

As an example, here’s the latest on the global warming front. (note: the link is changed to point directly to the Washington Post article as the MSNBC version expired) No big news, but here’s the money quote:

Steve Gardiner, a philosophy professor at the University of Washington who studies climate change, said the studies highlight that the argument over global warming “is a classic inter-generational debate, where the short-term benefits of emitting carbon accrue mainly to us and where the dangers of them are largely put off until future generations.”

When it comes to deciding how drastically to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, O’Neill said, “in the end, this is a value judgment, it’s not a scientific question.” The idea of shifting to a carbon-free society, he added, “appears to be technically feasible. The question is whether it’s politically feasible or economically feasible.”

A lot of sci-fi focuses on the technical aspects of a problem. And completely ignores or soft-peddles the human aspects. If you’re going to write realistic optimistic science fiction story about global warming (for example), you have to jump past the bullshit test of human greed and short-sightedness.

It’s not impossible, but first you have to explain how all the yogacizing organic carrot munching Baby Bjorn wearing liberal types who drive four blocks to the video store to get another DVD rental (real person, btw) are going to wake up and smell the coffee. I mean, if a supposedly supportive person (She buys local organic, yay!!!) is still clueless and destructive, how are you going to get the coal miner with the “Piss on Hippies” bumper sticker on his 4×4 (another neighbor of mine) to think sustainably?

Sci-fi’s urge seems to mostly go after the consumer/tech solution, ie we’ll design a better product (we love you Prius) so that we can keep doing our same old destructive things… but now, automagically, it won’t be bad. Makes me think of artificial sweeteners. Sometimes it’s not a magic bullet, no matter how much we wish it was.

So I see the central problem of realistic optimistic sci-fi as being at least two-fold:

1. We’re all so self-serving.
2. We seem to be biologically wired not to deal with any problem that’s not an obvious and immediate threat.

These two things seem to apply across the board, the difference between a liberal greenie in a Prius and Redneck cowboy in pickup is basically zero. If you’re driving, it’s a problem. And the last time I checked… all of America is driving, regardless of our political leanings. I’ve met a few fringe people who really do make a pretty good stab at living sustainably, but even they get on airplanes. Myself, I’ve got four cross-country flights scheduled this year. How’s that for hypocrisy?

In order to surmount this, fictionally, it seems that one would either have to pretend that the majority of people are not in fact lazy, self-serving, and most importantly short-sighted (which seems difficult given that these aspects are precisely what has driven us to the edge of the cliff), or you have to come up with a plausible set of reasons for people to change. Kim Stanley Robinson does this by making global warming a crisis. But what if it’s actually a death of a thousand cuts?

I’d love to see good meaty sf that goes after the big questions about where we’re headed and how we’re going to sort it all out, but I have a hard time believing that it’s going to be done by techno-fix alone. And I have a very hard time believing that we’ll do anything before the damage is already enormous. After all, I’m writing this on a coal-burning computer, which will then be posted to a coal-burning web server, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’re reading it on a coal burning computer at your end, too.

At this point, writing realistic optimistic sf feels like another genre entirely– it feels like fantasy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7201887.stm

When I think about where we’re headed in terms of being energy constrained, I often think of us moving toward supercharged versions of historical technologies, the ones where we were still using a lot of muscle power and a lot of wind, and hadn’t gotten deep into coal and oil, yet. Now with things like computer-aided design and a better understanding of physics we can do things with wind power that we never could have done before. It’s enough to almost make someone feel optimistic.