The Shock Doctrine

A friend noticed this morning through e-mail the next presentation of the book by Naomi Klein “The Shock Doctrine”. I was wondering if this was another book trying to create feirce among the readers, but after watching the short film by Alfonso Cuaron, I learned that this book is about a study done by Namoi Klein on the doctrine of some fair “thinkers” who use shock for their private and single interests and not for social welfare.

It especially impressed me the last words of the video where the author states:

INFORMATION is resistance to SHOCK. ARM YOURSELF.

Naomi Klein talks about different shocks in our recent history like September 11th, or Irak invasion, but also about the Maldives war, or the coup in Chile on September 11 1973. In these shocks there have been obviously winners and loosers. Loosers were always the majority, the crowd.

Naomi Klein is touring over the world to talk about her book. You can chek when she’ll be in your city at: http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi/tour-dates.

Thanks to Anna Soliguer for this information.

Nobel Peace Price and “climate change”

The Nobel Peace Prize has been often controverted and this year it may also be discussed. Some critics may consider that the ” … efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” as the reason given by the Nobel Foundation, is not an argument. As you may suppose, I will not share this opinon.

I agree that Nobel Peace Prize is strongly mediatic, though it helps to impact on conscience of the people and this year I believe it may help to spread over the world the importance of the effort done by Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in regard of one of the most important threats, if not the biggest, we have at the moment.

That the candidate of the labour party in the next Australian elections is taking the compromise to sign the Kyoto Protocol if his party wins, means that many politicians are far behind their responsibilities, and that the present prime minister has been looking to the wrong side while the effects of climate change have been devastating many of the natural resorts in Australia in the near past years.

I’m strongly concerned on the passive behaviour of many leaders and I also regret the littel compromise of those who still accepting the need to fight man-made climate change don’t show enough courage to foster decisions that really prevent climate disasters.

As I already have written in this blog, I do believe that the hardest and most effective efforts wil have to be taken by single individuals and their families: that’s “us”. I would go further and say that we all will have to suffer the inconveniences and assume the high costs of this campaign, and it will probably take long time to see any results. This is probably the reason why leaders don’t want to take these unpopular decisions. It probably will mean unemployment, increase of prices of cheap commodities, it will mean lots of forced changes in people’s mobility, and standards of life will have to change a lot, affecting the confort we are having today.

To know that people and organizations like Al Gore through actions like his video and book “an inconvenient truth” and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are pushing conscience of single people and of governments too to prepare the world to these changes is, at least, an argument to be optimistic.

Thanks, than to the initiative to award for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize the actions of these organizations.

The World Without Us

Alan Weisman has written a new book “The World Without Us” that is having a big success in the US. It illustrates how the world would be in the future without us, especially after the consequences of climate change. I don’t think we have to be alarmistic, but it is worth to reflect and think about the risks we are facing if we do not change the way things are running now regarding primary resources and energy consumption, and regarding environment pollution.

I often think about how passive everyone is reacting to climate change threats. Most of us have just reduced a bit our energy consumption, or are more interested in recycling. But not much more. We still use the car as often as we can , and believe that some day we will decide to move less comfortable but more sustainably, by moving with public transport, or even by walking or on bycicle. We still use our heatings or air conditioning too often and unnecessarily. We are stil waiting the government to force us to use saving bulbs, before we install them at home. We are expecting subsidies to install grey water recicling equipments for the toilets, etc.

From their side, governments are having trouble in taking political decisions to reduce drastically the waste of energy and the huge amount of waste. Lobbies of all industries don’t want to be the firsts in having losses because of the conesquences of new environmental policies. Everyone is thinking: “I’m not gonna be the first. Let’s see what others do, and I’ll move to greening later when I already know the risks”.

In fact, it looks like everyone believes that climate change can only be fighted with a general agreement of all the world. But this will never happen spontatniously. Only by doing each one of us his part, things may change. I know that our work, that city life (if you live in a city, as most people in the world do) and that the stressing life, full of obligations and compromises don’t help. But I still believe things depend on single people, because the sum of many single souls makes the big conscience.

Just try the video at the book’s page and see how would your house look like if you wound’t be there.

Oriol