Hansen's MagNET

I’ve decided to write a bunch of notes on the books I read, right here on my blog. It’s important to note that whatever these notes contain, it’s nothing but notes. It might be reflections, it might be quotes, it might be right, it might be wrong. So, if you happen to read any of this, please do not take it too seriously. Then plan is to use these notes later, as the starting point for a book of mine. Now, after this initial warning, let me begin with my first comment on Stewart Brand’s book “Whole Earth Discipline” – “T.W.E.D” for short.

Scale, scope, stakes, speed

Climate change, urbanization and biotechnology are the three themes Brand thinks will dominate this century. He might be right. Further, he says that there are plenty of illusions about them, but that their true nature is knowable. He might be wrong. Being a hyper-skeptic, I cannot help doubting such a claim. Brand says he have to get discard ideology entirely and let pragmatism (“a practical way of thinking concerned with results rather than with theories and principles”) take its place. I tend to agree, but I think we need to let a vision of the world we want to live in steer our pragmatic decisions. Brand states – correctly – that “saving the planet” isn’t the challenge, Earth will be fine, it’s us, humans, who are in trouble. I agree. Then he says “but since we got ourselves into this fix, we should be able to get ourselves out.” I disagree, or I have my doubts. It’s like saying that a little boy who jumps in a rushing river, should be able to get himself out of there, simply because he choose to jump.

There’s no reason to think he will, or that he will not. Whether or not he gets himself out depends of his ability to swim, nothing else. Thinking that we can save ourselves, simply because we got ourselves into this mess is optimistic, but – unfortunately – not necessarily true. Time will tell. Like the boy in the rushing stream, the best we can do is do our best, and hope it will bring us ashore. But there are no guarantees.

The nature of the game

Brand refers to a book by Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc, titled “Constant Battles (2003),” wherein the author tells how war is the norm, and peace is what – occasionally – breaks out. It has, according to LeBlanc, been like that ever since the times of hunter-gatherers, through agricultural times and until early complex civilizations. About a fourth of adult males routinely died during warfare. At least, that’s how to story, if we are to believe LeBlanc. The reason for the perpetual fights are a lack of resources, whenever our population size outstrips the carrying capacity of our natural environment.

From this perspective, one could say that everything that increase the carrying capacity is good (assuming we prefer peace over war), and that includes everything from agriculture, (some) technological breakthroughs and large-scale diebacks from plagues and other killer diseases. However, population quickly rises to the brim of the carrying capacity, and we’re back at business as usual: war.

This reminds me of my high school fling with chaos theory – just the name arouse me – chaos theory. Oh yeah. There is a term used in chaos theory; attractor. Certain recursive complex functions will, after a while, settle on the same number. This number is called an attractor. The results (x1, x2, x3… xn) might – more or less randomly – flicker up and down, all over the place, until suddenly it hits the attractor, where it will stay. If I remember correctly, the same kind of thing typically happens in a biological environment, like an aquarium.

If we add the same quantity of nutrients every day and measure the population size in the aquarium, sooner or later the population settles on a size in balance with the environment. The population might flicker up and down for a while until it settles. Let’s call the number it settles on the attractor value. Like the recursive complex functions mentioned above, it doesn’t matter what the initial value is, sooner or later we will arrive at the attractor value. Beginning with a handful of fish in the tank, or with a hundred, the system will settle on the attractor value. It’s simply the nature of the game, or the game of nature, if you like.

The game of nature

It seems like we, like goldfish, the long ago extinct dinosaurs, the not so long ago extinct jambato toad, and the poor numbers in the centrifuge of recursive equations, are inevitably playing the game of nature. It also seems like the game of nature  - like I (admittedly) – have a thing for chaos theory and attractors. When we talk about goldfish, dinosaurs, jambato toads, and human beings, the attractor is what is also called the carrying capacity, and whenever the population size – for one reason or another – differs from the carrying capacity, the game of nature will play out in a way that brings the system back in balance. And like a casino is rigged in favor of the casino, so is nature rigged in favor of nature. When the dinosaur or the jambato toad played the roulette of life, they didn’t even know it, they didn’t even know they were walking around in a casino. Nor did they know the casino was rigged. The goldfish doesn’t know either. But we do, and that’s where we differ. And unlike Jerry, the compulsive gambler goldfish, we have a choice. We can choose to leave the rigged casino, we can refuse to play the game. So, while this game is set up to stabilize the size of the human population just around the carrying capacity, and make all of us keep playing – hoping to win another year of life – we can, with a conscious decision, stop playing and live a life of abstinence. However, this is easier said than done. First, we need to escape our ludomanic nature (our oddly luck based way of living), second, we need to all agree to leave Las Vegas.

Only in the last three decades the overall body count from warfare has dropped, so now only 3 percent of the world population die in combat. This seems to be a step in the right direction. From 25 percent down to 3 percent. I wonder what the warfare body count is for other species on Earth. How many chimps or chipmunks die fighting among themselves? More or less than 3 percent? In other words: How advanced are we really?

If climate change reduces the carrying capacity so maybe less than half the world population will be able to eat, it will be a battle royale and a huge-scale wars seems likely, huge-scale wars with weapons of mass destruction at the fingertips of the people in power – whoever they are? Riots are not unimaginable, neither are fights among neighbors in the no longer convenient convenience store. LeBlanc is, like Brand, an optimist. He thinks that we, for the first time, have an opportunity to live in long-term balance with nature, “a chance to break a million-year-old cycle of conflict and crisis.” He might be right that we have a chance, however I don’t think it’s the first time we have such a chance, and I don’t think the solution is the invention of renewable energy sources, but rather the invention – or reinvention – of human beings. Not in a sci-fi sense of the word, far from it. The solution seems, to me, to lie in the renewal of the core values and belief system that steer everyone of us. If we do not renew, or at least re-adjust our core values and belief systems, we will steer – or be steered – into a world, maybe pleasant for some, unpleasant for most.

Microwave oven or freezer world?

Brand mentions a report he and others wrote on request from the U.S. Secretary of Defense in 2003. It was titled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security”. Their scenario was inspired by the sudden 2.7 Celsius drop in temperature that took place 8,200 years ago – in less than a decade. Brand mentions a common explanation for this sudden temperature drop, an explanation that is said to also explain why the temperature abruptly dropped 15 Celsius, 12,700 years ago, and staying like that for a thousand years, during the Younger Dryas. The explanation given is that the Gulf Stream was slowed (or stopped) by an excess of fresh water in the North Atlantic – caused by global warming, and melting ice. The report Brand and co. wrote examined what would happen if the Arctic ice melting at the time would lead to a similar situation, with a suddenly cooler and dryer climate, with droughts and storms as a consequence – and Europe’s climate suddenly resembling that of Siberia.

It’s a nice tale, but I have my doubts about our ability to predict the future. My dabble with chaos theory and fractals have left me with a strong conviction that small changes in the starting conditions can alter later outcomes tremendously, especially in complex systems. And the Earth climate is certainly complex. So, just because melting ice cooled the climate abruptly 8,200 years ago doesn’t necessarily mean melting ice today will cool the climate. One or more other factors might be different now, so maybe the melting ice – combined with other factors – will lead to a radically different scenario, than the one we experienced 8,200 years ago, or during the Young Dryas. Please note, I’m not saying we will experience a radically different scenario this time, I’m only saying we might. It other words, I’m not saying the prediction based on the previous events are wrong, only that they might be worthless, in the sense that they are no more likely than a guess based on no data at all.

On a side note, please notice how it is said that global warming 8,200 and 12,700 years ago lead to a cooling of the climate. If the same happens again, we might have Siberian conditions in Europe, and not African, as some predict. The measures we take in the hope to prevent our planned extinction will be very different, depending on which of these – maybe equally likely scenario – we (choose to) subscribe to. If we choose to take steps to prepare for an African Europe, and we turn out to be right – which we will not know until the die has been rolled – all is good. If we are wrong, not so good. And visa versa. So, it’s quite obvious – to me – that placing our faith in one or the other “scientifically based guess” is like playing Russian roulette with half of the chambers filled with bullets. It’s a game I wouldn’t want to play. The solution is obvious: we need to prepare ourselves for our future, without knowing how it will be. We have to take measures that will be advantageous no matter what happens. We need to realize our own ignorance, our own lack of abilities, and we need to admit and accept them. We need to prepare without knowing what we are preparing for.

By the way, no one was burning fossil fuels before the Young Dryas, and still – some say – there was a global warming, that caused melting of the ice. So is our release of CO2 into the atmosphere really what causes the ice to melt now?

The plague, the… and the ….

I think it’s on page 18, Brand is saying something about the earlier periods where the temperature dropped significantly. He seems to be referring to someone else, I don’t remember his name. Anyhow, if Brand (or his source) is right, I have a question. But first let me explain what he says. He says that three times in the last couple of thousands of years there was a drop in temperature. In each and every case as a consequence of a wipe out of a large portion of human beings on the planet. First, around 300 to 600, if I remember correctly, the Roman’s suffered from a plague or something, and died. Later, around 1300-1400 plenty of Europeans died, also from disease. And later, I think from 1500 to 1750, many of the Native Americans were wiped out when they were infected with – to them – unknown diseases from the European settlers. In each of these three cases, the population decreased drastically, and as a consequence large areas of agricultural land was naturally overgrown by wild forest. The increase in forest led to a decrease in CO2 in the atmosphere, and the temperature dropped. This seems to be an indication that CO2 and temperature is related, one being a consequence of the other, and to Brand an argument why we need to do something to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere. His solution is dense cities, nuclear power plants, transgenic crops, restored wildlands and geoengineering. And we might be able to decrease the atmospheric CO2 by his means, but why not do something that seems guaranteed to work: reduce the population – as happened before with good results. I’m not suggesting that we line people up and shot them, I’m simply suggesting we find a way to make sure people will get less than two children in average – and the problem might be solved, with little cost and little effort.

James Lovelock, a former alarmist, have done what every smart human should do, changed his position in accordance with new evidence and good arguments for a climate not quite as warm as he first predicted. The sea levels rise as expected, but the land temperatures doesn’t raise as fast as expected. Why? We don’t know yet. Lovelock’s message now is that it is unwise for governments to spend heavily on renewable energy and what he calls “other green dreams”. Instead, he propose, governments should focus on preparing for “sensible adaptation.” That, to me, sounds wicked. Just because there might be more time, why postpone? Is that a good idea?

And now a little off track. One thing that seems to get less attention is the unfortunate effect of pollution, especially in the cities. Even if global warming is a hoax – and it’s still hard to say for sure if it is – there seems to be evidence that particles from fumes are causing cancer and other diseases. So, even if global warming is a hot air balloon, there is still good reasons for reducing the burning of fossil fuels, at least in the cities and other crowded areas. So fabrics and vehicles should either be powered by non-polluting energy sources, and be closed and turned off. And even if you are one of the extreme skeptics who refuse to accept that particles from gasoline fumes might lead to various diseases it still makes sense to stop driving around the cities in tons of gasoline-hungry tin cans. There is really no need for scientific evidence, just walk down a trafficked street in a metropolitan area and tell me – honestly – that you wouldn’t prefer to breathe the pleasant, clean air you breathe in rural areas. That really should be enough.

On page 306 Brand quotes Kevin Kelly for saying: “Cities are technological artifacts, the largest technology we make. Humanity pours into cities by the millions for the simple reason that, like all technology, cities offers more options.” I don’t know why Kelly is saying this, since I don’t have the context, but I think he is right. However, I do not think it’s an argument for why it would necessarily be good for us to move into the cities. Only if more options by definition is something worth striving for, and I don’t think it is. More options – the fancier the better – is often a selling point, and we tend to fall for it, like when we buy a software upgrade thanks to it’s three hundred new, flashy features, only to discover after a week of playing with all these new options, that we revert to business as usual, not using most of the new, or even the old, features of the program we are using.

It’s a wicked human tendency to think that more options, more choices, are better. I think it’s related to our insane fascination with the concept of freedom. More options, more choices, seems to equal less restrains, and therefore more freedom. And it might. Yes, it might, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better. Only if we place freedom on a pedestal and worship it as something holy. But could it be that freedom in some cases is not something worth aspiring for? Could it be that more options, more choices, leads to more complexity and confusing, and that this confusion outweights the value freedom gives us? Could it be that Pinocchio was better off before his strings were cut?

Brand is pro-nuclear power. As he writes in his afterword, in relation to Obama’s request for a practical nuclear waste storage solution: “At any reactor site you can drill a hole three miles deep, a foot and a half wide. Down there in the basement rock the water is heavily saline and never mixes with surface fresh water. You can drop spent fuel rods down the borehole, stack them up a mile deep, pour in concrete, and forget about the whole thing.”

That sounds easy, but how can we be sure it will work? There are too many unknown factors. Maybe the saline water in the basement rock never mixed (past tense) with the surface fresh water. But how can we know for sure that it won’t mix (future tense) in a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand years? The answer is: we can’t. The mistake Brand makes is assuming business as usual, when it supports his case. At other times, when it doesn’t support his case, he is talking about positive and negative feedback that could lead to unpredictable and unforeseen changes. He is making a classical mistake, assuming that past data tells us anything about the future. In some cases it does, it others in doesn’t. It’s called the problem of induction, and as everyone who have read a textbook on deduction and induction knows, induction doesn’t offer any guarantees, it only offers a certain degree of probability. And even if the probability that Brand is right is high – in his assessment that we can just dump nuclear waste in the basement rock – we have to take into consideration the severe consequences if he is wrong. Maybe the basement water somehow mix with the freshwater we drink, or maybe the concrete cracks or dissolves, or maybe something entirely else happens. Then we might be facing a catastrophe magnitudes worse than anything we have ever dealt with. We would be like the turkey, glad to see the farmer, who usually feds him, unexpectedly getting his head cut off. It would be a so-called Black Swan event, and a dire one.

Brand used to be opposing clean coal, but in his afterword, he tells how David MacKay persuaded him that coal will keep being burned because it’s so cheap, especially by China and India. So now Brand is saying: “Therefore we have to figure out a way to burn it cleanly, capturing the carbon dioxide and burying, or bonding it into concrete, or whatever it takes.” It’s a good point, if coal keeps being burned, we better do something to make it “clean”. But again, there is another way, not a substitute, but something we should certainly try: to help make the Chinese and Indian people realize they don’t need to burn tons of coal to live a good life.

Capturing, burying and bonding the CO2 sounds risky in my ears. Let’s say we succeed, that we manage to bond and bury ten, twenty or a hundred years of CO2 in the ground, and then one day CRACK! In some few weeks, days or hours, years of bonded and buried CO2 is released into the atmosphere – and we might have another catastrophe on our hands. A catastrophe that could be way worse than what would have happened had the same quantities of CO2 been released into the atmosphere gradually over ten or a hundred years. It’s the difference between someone sneaking up on you and giving you a shock by suddenly yelling “HEY!”, and someone coming slowly towards you, getting eye contact, smiles, waves and yells “Heeeeeeey!” Except, it’s not just you who gets a shock, it’s the entire planet, and just like you might very well spill the glass of water in your hand, when surprised like that, the planet might just spill the oceans over land, and exhale so hardly that hurricane Katrina will look like a joke in comparison.

Brand is optimistic about fusion, as he says: “zero mining (the fuel is hydrogen), zero greenhouse gases, zero waste stream, zero meltdown capability, zero weaponization.” He mentions some early tests at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and says that successful ignition could occur this year (2011), and that a working prototype of a 1-gigawatt fusion power plant might see the light of day in a decade or so. [This I need to read more about]

He seems to be delighted about GE crops as well, and uses a story about Mahyco-Monsanto’s Bt cotton as an example of successful GE crops. The story he uses for illustration he borrows from Noel Kingsbury’s book “Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding,” and now I am borrowing it as well – only to show that it might be showing GE crops as being better than they are. It was 1998, somewhere in India, and Mahyco-Monsanto was running test plots of Bt cotton, cotton that would withstand bollworm, without the use of expensive and dangerous pesticides. Seeds of Bt cotton were used to breed “unofficial” Bt cotton varieties, and seven years later there were twice as many acres of “unofficial” Bt cotton than Bt cotton from Mahyco-Monsanto’s packets. In Brand’s words, the Indian farmers showed “they were not passive recipients of either technology or propaganda, but could take an active role in shaping their own lives,” despite the anti-Monsanto campaign going on. That’s what Brand wrote back in May 2010.

But two weeks ago, there was an article in SciDev.Net titled “Bt cotton yields come at hidden cost to farmers,” in which M. Sreelata tells the “counter-narrative” to the success story, about agricultural failure, rejection of Bt cotton and suicides, yes suicides, attributed to the same seeds as Brand is talking above. According to anthropologist Glenn Davis Stone, the use of pesticides did indeed decrease bollworm (with 55 percent), but predation by other pests increased. Further Stone argues that while Bt cotton seemingly solved a problem with bollworm, the problem was – to begin with – a consequence of a misuse of the previous technology, since the farmers lacked the necessary skills to rightly handle the previous hybrid seeds. Stone’s conclusion is that the GE seeds have made farmers more vulnerable to risks and losses. He calls Bt seeds a “short-term relief for problems with bollworm, but at the cost of exacerbating the de-skilling.”

Brand also talks about so-called “functional foods” and he quotes a survey from the Pew Research Center that mentions food enhancements that, among other things, could reduce the “anti-nutritional substances that diminish food quality and can be toxic.” I’m not saying this isn’t possible, I have no clue, but I do have a hunch, and this hunch tells me that it could be the balance between the various substances that makes it healthy or not. In other words, I think we have to be careful not to break things into isolated pieces – like science tends to do. It might be that some substances, by themselves, are showing a health benefit, and others, by themselves, are unhealthy – even toxic. Still, the right balance between the “healthy substances” and the “unhealthy substances” might be even healthier than a transgenic crop rid of the “unhealthy substances.” Let me repeat, I’m not saying that “functional foods” are, by default, something we shouldn’t consider, I’m simply warming that our typical analytical scientific approach might lead us in the wrong directing, if we are not careful.

Obama’s science advisor John Holdren has said that developing the ability to nudge asteroids “would demonstrate once and for all that we’re smarter than the dinosaurs and can therefore avoid what they didn’t.” Being pro-life, how can I not agree with this? It seems to be a worthwhile project.

When it comes to geoengineering, a report by the Royal Society says it comes in two major forms: solar radiation management (SRM) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR). At a conference Brand attended there seemed to be some consensus that CDR would, in most cases, be slow and benign, unlike efforts to manage sunlight with sulfur dust and brightened clouds. So, there seems to be agreement that SRM geoengineering shouldn’t be allowed without the permission of a public governance body. To me, at this point in time, geoengineering should rather be laid to rest. It should be the absolutely last resort, and if we really do an effort when it comes to teaching people to live a good life with a low power footprint, while reducing the world population, and gradually replacing coal and oil with sun and wind, we should be fine – or so I hope.

These days I’m trying to come to some consensus regarding what I should dedicate myself to. I cannot imagine a better life than my life as it is now, there is nothing more I could ask for – for wish to ask for. So it’s becoming obvious to me that I have a human responsibility of doing something to help others, now that I no longer need to help myself. The question is how. I’m not sure yet, since I prefer not to draw hasty conclusions. But – for now – I think I’ll concentrate on “reprogramming humans”. I know that “reprogramming” has some negative connotations, but – for now – it’s the best term I’ve come up with. But I’m not talking about brain washing. Not at all. Let me explain.

Helping people help themselves

I just came up with a better term – helping people help themselves. It sounds less like brain washing than “reprogramming humans.” And it’s basically what I would like to do. Here’s an example. Lately, I’ve become entangled in thoughts about global warming. Assuming we are facing a potential climate crisis, and that reducing the CO2 we pour into the atmosphere is the solution, there is more than one way we can solve the problem. If we are taken by surprise, geoengineering might be our only hope, if we are just a little late, adaptation – like building homes that will withstand wild storms – might be the best we can do. If we are on time, prevention would be preferable. One kind of prevention is to substitute the energy we produce from coal and oil with renewable energy, like solar, wind and so forth. That’s the only way we can prevent a crisis – again assuming our CO2 output is the cause – if we insist on running humanity on no less than the current 16 terawatts of power. But there is another way. It has nothing to do with new technologies, but everything to do with human beings and the way they live their life.

If we all cut our energy expenditure down to an African level we wouldn’t need to add renewable energy sources. Problem solved. But unfortunately this is not as easy as it sounds, and the hindrance isn’t a lack of technology, it’s a lack of self insight, it’s a lack of understanding what the good life is. Most people in the developed world would resist the idea fiercely. For one simple reason: they – mistakingly – think their good life is related to the energy expensive life they live. This is, in three words: a false belief. In five words: a very unfortunate, false belief.

If people would be enlightened – and I’m not using this word in a religious sense – they would realize they could live a life as good, while cutting there power footprint considerably. If not to an African level, then still to a fraction of their current level. If you don’t believe me, consider if Americans live a better life than Europeans (who run on half the American power). If the answer is no, obviously one should be able to cut ones energy footprint in about half [data]. It’s only a matter of changing ones habits and way of looking at things. And if Americans ain’t living a better life than Europeans, then it might also be possible for Europeans to cut their power footprint in half – without compromising the quality of their life. And if so, we might be able to continue dividing in half until we reach a number less than 10 percent of the current American power footprint of 10,000 watts. I know I can, I live a 1,002 watts life – and, as I said in the beginning, I cannot ask for more. It wasn’t always like that, I lived a more power hungry life, and I – mistakingly – though the quality of my life was more or less proportional with the power I was running on. Now I know better, and if I could learn this, so can you.

But even if Americans and Europeans became aware of their false – and unfortunate – beliefs in this matter, we might still face a problem, if not now, then sometime in the future. If we all cut our power rating down to an American level, we would – with 7 billion people on the planet – clock in at 3 terawatts. That’s the figure Saul Griffith suggest as the maximum power from coal and oil. But would that really solve the problem? Yes and no. Yes, if the population stay at 7 billion or below. No, if it doesn’t. And it will not, unless people in Africa are made aware of their humanitarian responsibility of not giving birth to more than two children per woman – preferably one. So, again, the solution is enlightenment, a change of perspective and the willingness and ability to act upon this new insight.

(to be continued…)

We might be the first species faced with the challenge of saving ourselves from our planned extinction. Plenty of species before us have lived and died, are now long gone and never did they realize they – as a species – were on the brim of extinction. Some species [which species?] currently inhabiting this (not our) planet have been around for a lot longer [how long?] than us, and most likely stand a better chance than us at surviving for the next thousands or million years to come – unless we deliberately do something to work around our “planned” extinction.

The difference between us, human beings, and other species, and the reason why we might be able to save ourselves, is our ability to imagine a future. We are able to predict the future consequences of our actions, or at least we are able to foul ourselves into believing we can predict our future. In any case, we are having a notion of a future, a future that some predict (or think they predict) to be bleak – unless we do something to save ourselves from our “planned” extinction.

According to Saul Griffith we better reduce our coal and energy expenditure, from it’s current level of 16 terawatts, down to 3 terawatts. That’s a reduction of more than 80 percent. His solution is to make up for this reduction of energy from coal and oil by producing the remaining energy be means of nuclear, geothermal, wind and solar power. In other words, his basic assumption seems to be that we need to burn 16 terawatts to run humanity. But do we really?

Another solution would be to reduce our coal and oil production to no more than 3 terawatts - as Saul Griffith suggests - and simple learn to live on those 3 terawatts. That might sound utopian, and it might be, but not because it isn’t humanly possible. It is. Running the world on 3 terawatts means that every human being needs to be responsible for burning 429 watts of coal and oil. Yes, that’s just one-fifth of the world average, and less than 5 percent of the average American. But it’s possible. Personally, I’m getting there, clocking in at 1,002 watts, according to WattzOn.

Knowing that we would all need to cut down to 429 watts, assuming a world population of 7 billion people, let’s now compare that with the 2,300 watts current world average and the approximately 10,000 watts American average, and see how many people such a cutback in energy production would be able to support, without any additional (renewable) energy sources. It’s shocking. Cutting energy production from coal and oil down to 3 terawatts and spending 2,300 watts each, we would only be able to support 1,3 billion people. So most people would have to die. If everyone ran on 10,000 watts – like the average American – the world population would have to be reduced to about 300 million. That’s, coincidentally, the number of people living in the United States. In other words: if Americans keep living as they do, if coal and oil production is cut back to a somewhat acceptable level, and no other energy sources are added, every non-American on this planet would have to give their life.

People strive for a better life. In China millions of people strive for what is wrongly termed a high living standard, in other words a kind of living resembling the life of Americans and Western Europeans. A life in a two hundred square meter heated brick, concrete or wooden house, with a car or two in the garage, at least one – preferably more – flatscreen TV(s), an oven, a stove, a micro oven, a fridge and a freezer, a selection of food processing tools, a lawnmower, a collection of electric tools, like rabbit prick saws and the like, a string of footwear for every possible occasion (including the twice in a lifetime marriage), a huge shelf filled with clothes – also for every occasion – a couple of computers, a stereo, a connection to the net, and of course the latest smartphone and a selection of more or less useful (mostly useless) gadgets. That’s what millions of Chinese people seemingly strive for. So does millions of Indians, Africans and people in South America. Why? Because they have misunderstood the term “high living standard.”

For some wicked reason a high living standard is now so closely associated with material wealth that people strive for one (material wealth) expecting to gain the other (a high living standard). But these two terms have little to do with each other. A high living standard is, essentially, another term for a good life, opposite a low living standard, an unfortunate life. But what is a good life really? Is it really related to material wealth as most people tend to believe? No, it’s not. There is nothing – except for one thing – that prevents people from living a good, even a great life, with hardly no material wealth.

A life of constant struggle for survival will make a good life impossible for most people. But that does not mean the solution is the opposite of poverty and the struggle for survival. As long as there is no real struggle for daily water and food, and as long as we are decently protected from cold winds and rains, and burning heat waves, there is little reasons for not living a good life. Except for one thing: our own pathological tendencies, like boredom, an out of proportions need for entertainment, thrill, new adventures, excessive indulgence and extreme comfort (or what we mistakingly perceive as comfort). And the list goes on.

When we cure ourselves of this web of pathological attributes we will be able to live a good life without the need for material wealth. We will be able to attain a life of a truly high living standard, without much need for what people mistakingly think the term means.

Once upon a time, as many good stories begin, crocodiles were swimming around in the Arctic ocean. Yes, it’s quite awhile ago, around 55 million years, and the Arctic water was a lot warmer, around 23 Celsius – a comfortable living room temperature. Good times, for crocodiles.

According to some, something similar might happen again, if we do not reduce our CO2-emissions. Currently we are sending about 8 gigaton CO2 into the atmosphere yearly, and unless we reduce this output to a quarter of a gigaton, we might soon see crocodiles in the Arctic ocean. If that doesn’t sound bleak enough, let me present the same numbers in a different manner: we have to reduce our CO2-output to 3 percent of it’s current level. That’s a reduction of 97 percent, and most likely impossible unless we do one thing: STOP!

This should come as no surprise. A ranking of 164 countries according to fiscal risk shows nine of the top ten most troublesome countries to be European. The reason: an increasingly ageing population and high public spending on social security. A clear indication that socialism will fail? No. A clear indication capitalism is the remedy? Not at all. The solution is different, and will be presented in a later article.

Here is the list of the ten countries in the extreme risk group:

1. Italy
2. Belgium
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Germany
6. Hungary
7. Denmark
8. Austria
9. Japan
10. United Kingdom

The countries with the lowest risk are: Paraguay, Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Yes, you read that right. You can read more about the study here: ‘Ageing’ Europe has least sustainable finances.

I live in a housing complex with about 350 apartments. Most of the people living here either work or study at the university 5 miles from here. Plenty of the apartments are shared, so I’m guessing more than 500 adults live here, and that at around half of them get in their cars every morning and drive to the university. That’s some 200-300 cars going back and forth between the two exact same locations every weekday. What a waste!

Most cars have room for 4-5 people, and if people were less isolated, and actually dared to talk to the fellow human beings, the number of cars commuting could be reduced from 200-300 down to somewhere between 50 and 150. This would reduce the CO2 and pollutants with 50 percent or more. Additionally, half the car owners could get rid of their cars, and share them with a neighbor, cutting their monthly expenses in half. It seems rather dumb not to do this, doesn’t it?

The only reason for not doing it, I can think of, is that people would feel it would be restricting their freedom. But that’s not necessarily true. It’s true that it would be a little more troublesome getting somewhere else, since it would have to be planned a bit. But when I look out the window in the daytime, roughly half the cars are just standing there. So, if everyone had keys for more than one car, it should be no problem. Just get out, and get in a car. Pick one. So, I really don’t think this would be much of a problem – maybe except for when holiday hits.

Further, if people look at the whole picture, they might realize that not having their own car, but sharing it as explained above, might increase their freedom. Sharing might slightly limit their freedom of movement (in the holiday seasons), but there is a price on having a car. Typically students, and other people who live in a housing complex like this, spend $50-100 weekly on their cars, when everything is included (the car itself, gas, insurance, repairs and so on). Most people have their own car, some share it with someone else, so the weekly price for each person is probably around $50 (assuming the more expensive cars are the ones shared). Anyway, even if these figures are not exact (and they are not), they are close enough to – hopefully – get the message across.

Let’s say people are paid an hourly salary of $7-8, when taxes are paid, and we see that people have to work 6-7 hours per week to pay for their car. That’s more than 300 hours – or two full months – a year, just to have a car they can call their own. If that is not a restriction on their freedom, I don’t know what it is. With the model of car pooling I propose, people would essentially free themselves from one full month of work every year. So, saying goodbye to their car, and sharing with the neighbors instead, would give them the equivalent of an months of extra vacation every year. So, why don’t they?

Commercials and propaganda seems to have coerced people into believing that cars equals personal freedom. But, as illustrated, they don’t. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, freedom (in this case) comes from entangling your life in the life of your neighbors. We have been fooled to value what is termed individualism, but what really isn’t individualism, but plain and simple human isolation. That’s unfortunate. The pursuit of individualism, when it leads to isolation, is not only robbing us from a full month of vacation, it also makes us unhappy. According to a German study on happiness, people who prioritized their careers higher than interactions with family and friends, and more altruistic activities (like car sharing), were markedly less happy then the ones who got it right.

To me it’s obviously not in our own interest to not share, and I feel rather convinced everyone who open their eyes, and escape the slavery of commercials and propaganda, will say the same. So, now the most pressing question is: how do we free the rest of the population? Any ideas?

I’m reading Stewart Brand’s book “Whole Earth Discipline” and I’m alarmed. It’s about the issues we are facing, one of them being climate change. I’m not a climate alarmist, I’m not even sure if I believe this is an issue, but what if it is? Anyway, what I want to talk about here is not whether or not we are facing a climate crisis, but about the energy we burn. According to Stewart Brand humanity runs on 16 trillion watts. That made me think: let’s calculate! Assuming 7 billion human beings on this planet, that’s 2.3 kilowatts per human being – in average. 2.3 kilowatts is the maximum load on a typical fuse in a fuse box in a Danish (European?) installation with 230 volts and 10 ampere. With 24 hours in a day (correct me if I’m wrong), that’s about 55 kilowatts per day for every man or woman on the planet – again, in average. A little conversion (multiplying with 3,600) and we arrive at about 200,000 kilojoules.

I’m converting to kilojoule to compare with the daily energy consumption of a human being. Being European, I have a thing for SI-units. Converting to calories would yield the same result. A human being burns around 10,000 kilojoules daily – sleeping, walking, running, climbing stairs, dancing, eating, drinking and so on. So, the daily energy expenditure of a human being is about 20 times what he or she burns metabolically. Or put in a different manner: 95 percent of the energy expenditure related to a human being is spend on something not needed to keep him alive and kicking.

“How do I choose which books to read?” This question has haunted me since I, at the age of seven, stepped into the library in my smalltown hometown. The library had a little more than one hundred thousand books. Now I live near UMass, and the twenty-something story library – in the W.E.B. Du Bois building – holds more than three million books, and the issue is even more pressing.

It takes time to read a book. About ten hours, just to read it – once. To really dive in, think about it and dive back out alive and kicking takes a lot longer – something like one hundred hours, or in some cases more, like in the case of a textbook on logic. Just to illustrate my dilemma, I’ll assume I can handle three books in one hundred hours on average. Now compare that with the 1,500-3,000 hours we have in a year allocated for reading, and we can get through something like 50-100 books in a year. That’s less than 10,000 books in a lifetime, even for a hardcore reader. For a lot of people the number might be closer to 1,000. But it doesn’t really matter if it’s 1,000 or 10,000. Compared to the three million books in the Du Bois library it’s like a drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean. Compared with the 129,864,880 books in the world, what we can read in a lifetime seems insignificant. And as a consequence the choices we make regarding what books to read – and not to read – becomes utterly important.

For some, just “going with the flow”, reading this, reading that, whatever is on sale, whatever is recommended by friends or foes, whatever comes your way, might be perfectly fine. To a certain degree I wish I could do just that. But I can’t. By the way: there is no value judgment here. I’m not saying that people who “go with the flow” are dumb or doing something wrong, I’m only saying I can’t. For me it matters. It matter a great deal. And so I find myself facing quite a challenge, summed up by the question: how the fuck do I choose?

To answer this question I guess I would have to narrow down the areas I want to read about. But that’s not as simple as it sounds, although easier now than when I was a smaller kid. When I was younger I was interested in basically everything. I’ve read books about philosophy, psychology, religion, history, social sciences, political sciences, law, education, music, fine arts, language and literature, medicine, technology, military science, navel science, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, zoology, human anatomy and on and on. Luckily I’m becoming slightly more “narrow-minded” with age. But while I become more focused, the world – and the libraries I encounter – is growing in size. So, I seem to be facing the same problem, still. At my hometown library they had just three-four books on logic, the Du Bois library has more than a thousand books on the same subject. So, again: how the fuck do I choose?

Yes, I narrow down my field of study, I focus. That’s already happening. But still there are so many books, and so little time. I’ve been pondering this question for a while now, and finally a solution – or at least the contours of a solution – seems to be (vaguely) appearing in the distance. I think the keyword is: aim. To solve my book problem, I first need to solve another problem. I have to define my aim – or maybe ambition is a better word.

Ambition. It’s such a strange little word. In a way it makes we feel like puking. It has so many connotations related to work – hard work – that I want to just run away at the sight of it. But I resist, I stay. I keep looking at that freaking word. Ambition. And slowly my vomit reflex ceases. Ambition doesn’t need to have anything to do with hard work, it doesn’t need to have anything to do with these images in my head of racing back and forth, trying to sell something, wearing a suit, being a slave of myself. No, it doesn’t. Ambition can be something else. Something more noble. But like there are too many books and too little time, there is also too much to be done in this world, and still too little time. So, I have to choose my ambition with care. When I have done so, choosing the books worth reading should be a piece of cake. So it seems I’ve written myself out of one problem, and into another. Wonderful!