Wednesday, January 9, 2008





La Marguerite blog, in early January 2008 -- or 12,008 -- or 4,ooo,000,008 is more like it! -- notes:

"Relating to M. Oppenheimer’s point about the need for local and personal relevance, I am pushing for hyper-realistic visualizations to help us ‘experience’ what our neighborhoods might look like as a result of global warming. Imagine 3-D Google Maps of the future. Nature can help also, and although the scientific evidence linking recent natural disasters to global warming is still subject to much debate, like M. Oppenheimer, I see the occurrence of such disasters as opportunities to shock people’s brains into taking climate threats more seriously........Lastly, unless the majority of people understand the pernicious nature of global warming, and why it is fooling them into non-action, very little will change at the individual level. So far, Al Gore’s boiling frog analogy has failed to capture the world’s imagination. It is a powerful image, but one that has not been supported by any substantial ad or PR campaign."

[Blog note: Thus: the power of the POLAR CITIES images online and elsewhere, to shock people's brains into taking global warming more seriously. Exactly. We need more hyper-realistic visualizations, yes. Ms. Rao is on to something here. Bravo!]

Link:

http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/psychological-challenges-and-opportunities-of-global-warming-part-two/#comments

1 comment:

DANIELBLOOM said...

I wrote to Ms. Rao at LaMargurite blog: "Yes, I quite agree: “This is why it’s good to have people encouraging us to look at these issues in a new way,” as Kiashu above says.

That is why I started my “polar cities” project, to encourage people to look at the issues of global warming and the survival (or possible extinction!) of the human species in a new way. Doing this polar cities PR work on blogs, comment sections and newspaper interviews (IPS just did a good one, by Stephen Leahy, a balanced report, and the first news media report on polar cities ever) … makes me HAPPY. I get happiness doing this, because it fulfills me to take part in the worldwide discussions this way. For me, global warming, and by extension, a possible future of polar cities in the year 2500, has a very human face, not to shout FIRE when I plainly see a FIRE violates my morals, the threat as I see IS present and immediate, and, I perceive the threat to humankind happening right now, NOW, all at once. So I am getting immense personal satisfaction working on this non-threatening thought experiment of polar cities for future survivors of global warming in the year 2500 or so….because I care about the future, I have compassion for the future. I don’t know why. I just do. I care. You care. A lot of us care. Happiness is not just quick rewards, money in the bank, a trip to the French Alps for a skiing holiday, scuba diving in the Maldives. Happiness is also working the Internet to raise awareness about the very real repercussions of global warming. You don’t need a PHD to understand this. It’s not rocket science. It’s common sense.

Good post, above, LaM. Good article by the Harvard prof, too."

SHE REPLIED ON HER BLOG: "Thanks Dan. I appreciate your creative contribution."