Thanks, as usual, Jason, for your research and forceful writing. I'm just finishing "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives" by Siddharth Kara, about how virtually all rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are blood batteries. Our phones and computers and electric vehicles run on child labor, rape, death, corruption and greed — misery across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is a sobering, disheartening, difficult book.
Oof. I'd read about Cobalt Red (and elsewhere about the issues it raises), but haven't picked it up. Even for me and my enthusiasm for looking under the stones of human impacts, that's a tough one. I'm glad you've reminded readers of it here, though. Thank you. It's a reminder, too, that the premise of the pieces I'm writing now - problems posing as solutions - is actually much larger than the short list of topics I've chosen. At the scale of consumption and population we're working with, pretty much any solution will pose some existential problems.
Thank you for this excellent analysis of why both carbon capture and carbon offsets are dreamy ways to offset not only corporations' responsibility to make deep changes, but our own as individuals. I love your comparison of carbon offsets to "throwing alms in a church plate to pay for your sins." These ideas are what the psychologists call magical thinking: ways of coping with difficulties that deny reality and leave the problem and the person with the problem in a state of unreality. Your essays always bring us back to reality, a reality that grows more frightening every day.
Hi Kathleen: Thanks for the reminder of that excellent phrase, "magical thinking." I wish I'd remembered to apply it here. (Though, thinking off the cuff here, I wonder if for some people it doesn't sound that bad, since we're trained to think of "magical" as lovely and awe-inspiring.) And yes, the large-scale environmental news has been darkening quickly lately, hasn't it? Though good work is being done everywhere, like in Freeport!
Thank you for this insightful and accurate article on carbon capture and storage. I convene a national coalition on CCS and you elegantly describe the moral and technical pitfalls with CCS. Kudos.
Wonderful to hear this, Carolyn. I left so much out of the CCS story (as often happens with these brief pieces) that the value of the writing felt tenuous. Good to have your support.
Thanks, as usual, Jason, for your research and forceful writing. I'm just finishing "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives" by Siddharth Kara, about how virtually all rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are blood batteries. Our phones and computers and electric vehicles run on child labor, rape, death, corruption and greed — misery across the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is a sobering, disheartening, difficult book.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250284297/cobaltred
Oof. I'd read about Cobalt Red (and elsewhere about the issues it raises), but haven't picked it up. Even for me and my enthusiasm for looking under the stones of human impacts, that's a tough one. I'm glad you've reminded readers of it here, though. Thank you. It's a reminder, too, that the premise of the pieces I'm writing now - problems posing as solutions - is actually much larger than the short list of topics I've chosen. At the scale of consumption and population we're working with, pretty much any solution will pose some existential problems.
Thank you for this excellent analysis of why both carbon capture and carbon offsets are dreamy ways to offset not only corporations' responsibility to make deep changes, but our own as individuals. I love your comparison of carbon offsets to "throwing alms in a church plate to pay for your sins." These ideas are what the psychologists call magical thinking: ways of coping with difficulties that deny reality and leave the problem and the person with the problem in a state of unreality. Your essays always bring us back to reality, a reality that grows more frightening every day.
Hi Kathleen: Thanks for the reminder of that excellent phrase, "magical thinking." I wish I'd remembered to apply it here. (Though, thinking off the cuff here, I wonder if for some people it doesn't sound that bad, since we're trained to think of "magical" as lovely and awe-inspiring.) And yes, the large-scale environmental news has been darkening quickly lately, hasn't it? Though good work is being done everywhere, like in Freeport!
Thank you for this insightful and accurate article on carbon capture and storage. I convene a national coalition on CCS and you elegantly describe the moral and technical pitfalls with CCS. Kudos.
Wonderful to hear this, Carolyn. I left so much out of the CCS story (as often happens with these brief pieces) that the value of the writing felt tenuous. Good to have your support.