UNEP sees emergence of green economy

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://africasciencenews.org/asns/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=175&Itemid=1

UNEP sees emergence of green economy

Written by Raymond Gichuki in Monaco
Wednesday, 20 February 2008

The UNEP Year Book 2008 says the emerging green economy is also driving invention, innovation and the imagination of engineers on a scale perhaps not witnessed since the industrial revolution of more than two centuries ago.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Year Book, a growing numbers of companies embrace environmental policies and investors pump hundreds of billions of dollars into cleaner and renewable energies.

It includes the growing interest in novel ‘geo-engineering’ projects such as giant carbon dioxide (C02) collectors that absorb greenhouse gases from the air rather like trees do during photosynthesis.

The UNEP Year Book, an annual report requested by ministers, underlines some of the elements of a Green Economy which are already falling into place.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “Hundreds of billions of dollars are now flowing into renewable and clean energy technologies and trillions more dollars are waiting in the wings looking to governments for a new and decisive climate regime post 2012 alongside the creative market mechanisms necessary to achieve this.”

...

[GliderGuider]

1. The battle is joined!

Which will win? Human ingenuity, that gave us such exciting advances as monoculture agriculture, the internal combustion engine and the drift-net, or Mother Nature, whose genius has brought the world ice ages, the greenhouse effect, Canfield oceans and the Permian Extinction? Step right up and place your bets, it's a steel-cage match for the ages! Only one of these combatants will leave the arena alive - who will it be?

"Green economy", eh? What's the growth rate of a good green economy? I do hope (and even expect) that these tinkerers will come up with some good impact-reducing ideas, but the fact that their last-ditch efforts are being cast in terms of an "economy" with all that implies for continued growth causes my spirits to droop just a little.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. We have one great advantage over Mother Nature

We act (at least partly) through conscious thought; while Mother Nature tends only to react. To the best of our knowledge, “she” does not think at all.


Now, is it necessary for us to “kill” Mother Nature in order to survive? I don't believe so, for we are ourselves part of Mother Nature.

What is necessary, is for us to learn to better live in harmony with (the rest of) Mother Nature. In the meantime, we've got some damage to undo.


To follow your "steel-cage match" analogy for a moment... In “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” our hero finds himself in just the sort of match you describe. Fighting for his life against a stronger opponent (“The Blaster”) he wins, not by killing his opponent (who he discovers is all brawn, with little brain) but by not killing him, and eventually striking an alliance.

[diane in sf]

3. We will learn to live in harmony with Mother Nature using her principles to

design our technology as we are part of nature--maybe Mother Nature looking at herself.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. Very much so

It's all very Taoist (if you ask me.)

It's easiest if we work with "Mother Nature" especially since when we work against "her" we're working against ourselves.

[phantom power]

8. You're going to really hate this:

Cunningham's stats about self-recognition in primates: those too
are real. Chimpanzees have a higher brain-to-body ratio than
orangutans(122), yet orangs consistently recognise themselves in
mirrors while chimps do so only half the time(123). Similarly, those
nonhuman species with the most sophisticated language skills are a
variety of birds and monkeys—not the presumably "more sentient"
great apes who are our closest relatives(81, 124). If you squint, facts
like these suggest that sentience might almost be a phase,
something that orangutans haven't yet grown out of but which their
more-advanced chimpanzee cousins are beginning to. (Gorillas
don't self-recognise in mirrors. Perhaps they've already grown out
of sentience, or perhaps they never grew into it.)
Of course, Humans don't fit this pattern. If it even is a pattern.
We're outliers: that's one of the points I'm making.

(...)

Finally, some very timely experimental support for this
unpleasant premise came out just as Blindsight was being copy
edited: it turns out that the unconscious mind is better at making
complex decisions than is the conscious mind(125). The conscious
mind just can't handle as many variables, apparently. Quoth one of
the researchers: “At some point in our evolution, we started to
make decisions consciously, and we're not very good at it.”

http://www.rifters.com/index.htm

http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Blindsight_Endnotes.pdf

(125) Dijksterhuis, A., et al. 2006. Science 311:1005-1007.

(126) Vince, G 2006. “'Sleeping on it' best for complex decisions.”
Newscientist.com, http://www.newscientist.com/channel/beinghuman/dn8732.html.

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. To quote myself...

"We act (at least partly) through conscious thought; ..."

—OKIsItJustMe

"I have more to do than stand here and listen to you quote yourself."

—John Adams to Benjamin Franklin (in the musical 1776)

[phantom power]

13. Are the conscious bits helping or hurting?

I don't know, and the research mentioned in those end-notes is far from conclusive of anything. But it's fair to say that what little science we have on the subject isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of human consciousness as a big win for problem solving.

As a sentient being with at least a 75% Turing rating, I'm eagerly awaiting any evidence to the contrary, of course.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Okay, let's try a little experiment

Try living through the day without conscious thought. (You know, cook your breakfast, cross the street, drive your car...) See how much better off you are at the end of the day.

I know people who advocate turning off conscious thought for a time (meditation) however, they tend to do this in controlled environments.


I'm thinking that (on the whole) conscious thought is a good thing. What's gotten us into trouble is a lack of sufficient thought.

(Do you have a point? Or are you just being argumentative?)

[phantom power]

15. We are accustomed to being conscious of our activities, but...

whether or not awareness is required, or whether we might perform better without it, is an open question.

You've probably had the experience of driving through a familiar route (say, to work), and afterwords not really being able to recall the trip. Were you concious?

When we learn a new skill, we are acutely aware of all of our movements. It's only after we push our learning down into muscle-memory that we actually get "skilled" at new activities.

That timeless experience of being "in the zone" while we do our work, or play games, etc, is characterized by a lack of self-consciousness. Awareness, but not self-awareness.

I'm not just being argumentative. Intelligence and problem solving are not the same thing as self-awareness.

[OKIsItJustMe]

16. The unconscious mind is an amazing thing

I highly recommend Mind Hacks.

However, the unconscious the subconscious even the autonomic nervous system tend to take care of "mundane tasks" allowing our conscious minds to work on more esoteric things. (Compare them to the "nervous network" used by Mark Tilden's creations.)


You can drive the same old way to work every day, largely using your unconscious. However, if you'd like to chart a course to a new destination (or take a different way home) this requires conscious thought. (I like to change my habits to force myself to think.)

To me, a key test of intelligence is the ability to willfully alter your own behavior.


To get out of the predicament that we're in, conscious thought will be required. We've never attempted to affect the entire ecosystem before. (We've succeeded, without thinking, and just look where that got us!)

[The2ndWheel]

9. Which is it?

Advantage over, or part of?

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. GG established the duality

(I was merely following his lead.)

[speedbird]

4. ;green economy' --> codespeak for carbon offset projects

follow the money

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Oh good God!

Please read the article and explain what it has to do with carbon offsets...

[The2ndWheel]

7. Well we can clear all the trees then

No need to worry about that. Actual trees take too long to do what they do anyway. We need it done now, and faster. Once we create technology that acts as the tree, we don't actually need the tree, economically speaking. People wouldn't be needed if we didn't consume everything, economically speaking.

"on a scale perhaps not witnessed since the industrial revolution of more than two centuries ago."

So our impact will increase.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. They're not suggesting we clear all the trees...

I certainly wouldn't.

However... how long would you like to wait for atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to lower; and to what level?

With no help from us, it appears to take about 100,000 years for the ecosystem to bring concentrations down from ~300ppm to ~200ppm.

(Let's call it 1,000 years for 1ppm.)

How long do you suppose it would take "Mother Nature" to bring concentrations down from say... 400ppm to... I don't know... let's say 250ppm?