Leigh,
You wrote,
"much of the world as we know it is headed for ecological disaster.
On a 5 year time scale,
locally, that means I get more respiratory diseases, but my life hasn't yet
changed dramatically....on a hundred year time scale, it could mean
widescale tragedy and huge changes for everyone. At the same time, it
doesn't mean that I/we can't act with dignity and compassion within the
frame at hand, even if things look grim on the wider and longer scale. So
progress is not only relative, but nested."
At first this seemed to me a perfect example of localized negative entropy
(a prototypical case). But I don't totally agree with you about the
inevitability of a global ecological disaster, Maybe that's just because it
comes slowly, amphibians become extinct, more respiratory diseases become
normal, etc, etc. If the market controls the inputs and outputs between
humans and the environment it becomes hard to see how the evaluation of the
economic value of a present action could include consideration of possible
outcomes 150 years from now. But there is a positive side: I don't think
the full effect of the internet has been felt yet--especially the
communication and coordination that it affords non-hegemonic voices--or the
simple effect of its globalization of culture.
Paul H. Dillon
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