Whatever they're doing, they're doing it everywhere else too... Along with PFAS and industrial soot, etc. The ubiquity of toxic "novel entities" and their largely unknown impacts is something that haunts me too. Thanks for the insight, Elisabeth.
Haunts is the perfect word for this. I worry about the impact on my son, who is twenty-five. And of course future generations. But mostly him. LOL. Between microplastics, AI and our warming world, his future looks a little frightening. Your piece is fascinating.
Indeed. I fought a lithium mine for years, and discovered that PFAS is used extensively in make lithium-ion batteries. The mine and the refineries are going to emit terrible industrial soot and many emissions in a remote area where the air was incredibly clean before the mine came. Now that lithium will be used for EV batteries and BESS systems for wind and solar. It's simply horrific what we are doing, and worse that we are doing some of it with the false label "green".
Hmm. I'd read a while back that PFAS was being used in batteries, and have it in my list of possible topics. This is a good reminder to move it up the list.
There is no "green" tech when used ubiquitously for 8 billion people, but there is "greener" tech. This is an age of toxic trade-offs at a civilizational scale. When I research and write that battery piece, I'm hoping to find that some of the new kinds of batteries coming online - without lithium - won't be dependent on PFAS. Otherwise, it's a horrifying weakness in the renewable energy system.
Beautiful post, Jason. And thank you for mentioning my recent piece. There is science and then there is the role it plays in society. One of those roles, as intermediary between us and the world, as explainer and investigator, is one I'm increasingly uncomfortable with. It leaves too many people, who may have neither the desire or wherewithal to learn "the science," outside the gates, more separate from the world than they might otherwise be. We do our best to bridge the gap, to translate science into meaning that everyday people can grab onto. But ultimately, some more substantive change in how we approach the world is needed, something the indigenous have learned well. I have no idea how we get there. But am happy in the meantime to know fog is so full of life. Not surprised.
Well said, Rob. Not sure how we get there either, but I think it has everything to do with a more rational value system rooted in serving life rather than subverting it. In that setting, science serves as advisor toward a shared goal.
Your point about science becoming a world apart from everyday society reminds me of my sense that science, with its revelatory process and inscrutable language, is often in the uncomfortable position of being a religion without a driving narrative or charismatic hierarchy. Not its intent, of course, but to the human mind...
“Knowledge should always, always move us closer to the mystery, rather than helping us pretend we have somehow surpassed it. Our flood of knowing is not itself a wisdom that teaches us how to live.” Yes, yes, yes. I love this essay. It’s such a powerful reminder that while science can open a door to awe and wonder, we need to move beyond the written word to glimpse the wisdom of the living world that will always remain beyond our understanding. Thank you.
I loved this post, Jason. It’s so beautifully written (and the author photos are gorgeous), as well as informative and thought-provoking. Fog, especially the late-summer kind that drapes over fields and lakes, is one of my absolute favourite types of weather. Next time I’m enjoying it, I’ll also be mindful of the myriad lives being lived inside each tiny droplet.
Reading your post brought to mind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau. As Gothic novels, they of course both make use of fog to build atmosphere, while also grappling with questions of science, ethics, and human hubris in the Enlightenment. Your reminder about the importance of empathy and the consequences of sidelining ethics really resonates with Moreau’s horrific experiments on living beings (which devastated me so much I had to remove the book from my bedside table), and with Frankenstein’s abandoned creation, left without love and unleashed on the world as a formidable destructive force.
Your memory of driving in heavy fog, where the headlights ultimately made it harder rather than easier to see, is such a succinct image for the Enlightenment. And I really like that you write not only about the visually obscuring qualities of fog (literal and informational) but also on the way it hushes the world. Both kinds of obscuring are such lovely ways to think about the potential of these quieter, less crowded spaces as sites where other ways of relating can flourish.
Thank you for a brilliant and thoughtful response, Suzanne. The Gothic use of fog, of course; I wish I'd mentioned it, though I don't think I would have conjured up a metaphor for the Enlightenment out of the Newfie fog. (It actually reminded me of a Scooby Doo scene where he cuts a window in the fog with a toenail...) But we're surrounded by Moreaus and Frankensteins (both doctors and creatures) now, which I think is inevitable in an era of ecological destruction and the anointing of the fog of information as more sacred than actual fog.
I'm glad you liked my photos. During the writing I remembered that I had those pics on slides somewhere. They're from an all night gathering after graduation from college. I think they provide a glimpse of the hush...
Oh, yes, Scooby Doo! The fog, the torches, the Mystery Machine. I don't remember the toenail scene, but I can picture it quite clearly from your description. Sounds like classic Scooby stuff.
I wonder what the micro- and nano-plastics that are in the atmosphere and thus in the fog are doing to the life in the fog.
Whatever they're doing, they're doing it everywhere else too... Along with PFAS and industrial soot, etc. The ubiquity of toxic "novel entities" and their largely unknown impacts is something that haunts me too. Thanks for the insight, Elisabeth.
Haunts is the perfect word for this. I worry about the impact on my son, who is twenty-five. And of course future generations. But mostly him. LOL. Between microplastics, AI and our warming world, his future looks a little frightening. Your piece is fascinating.
Indeed. I fought a lithium mine for years, and discovered that PFAS is used extensively in make lithium-ion batteries. The mine and the refineries are going to emit terrible industrial soot and many emissions in a remote area where the air was incredibly clean before the mine came. Now that lithium will be used for EV batteries and BESS systems for wind and solar. It's simply horrific what we are doing, and worse that we are doing some of it with the false label "green".
Hmm. I'd read a while back that PFAS was being used in batteries, and have it in my list of possible topics. This is a good reminder to move it up the list.
There is no "green" tech when used ubiquitously for 8 billion people, but there is "greener" tech. This is an age of toxic trade-offs at a civilizational scale. When I research and write that battery piece, I'm hoping to find that some of the new kinds of batteries coming online - without lithium - won't be dependent on PFAS. Otherwise, it's a horrifying weakness in the renewable energy system.
Beautiful post, Jason. And thank you for mentioning my recent piece. There is science and then there is the role it plays in society. One of those roles, as intermediary between us and the world, as explainer and investigator, is one I'm increasingly uncomfortable with. It leaves too many people, who may have neither the desire or wherewithal to learn "the science," outside the gates, more separate from the world than they might otherwise be. We do our best to bridge the gap, to translate science into meaning that everyday people can grab onto. But ultimately, some more substantive change in how we approach the world is needed, something the indigenous have learned well. I have no idea how we get there. But am happy in the meantime to know fog is so full of life. Not surprised.
Well said, Rob. Not sure how we get there either, but I think it has everything to do with a more rational value system rooted in serving life rather than subverting it. In that setting, science serves as advisor toward a shared goal.
Your point about science becoming a world apart from everyday society reminds me of my sense that science, with its revelatory process and inscrutable language, is often in the uncomfortable position of being a religion without a driving narrative or charismatic hierarchy. Not its intent, of course, but to the human mind...
“Knowledge should always, always move us closer to the mystery, rather than helping us pretend we have somehow surpassed it. Our flood of knowing is not itself a wisdom that teaches us how to live.” Yes, yes, yes. I love this essay. It’s such a powerful reminder that while science can open a door to awe and wonder, we need to move beyond the written word to glimpse the wisdom of the living world that will always remain beyond our understanding. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Leah. Yes, a meaningful life is a participation sport... But one whose trophies are all greater than we are.
I loved this post, Jason. It’s so beautifully written (and the author photos are gorgeous), as well as informative and thought-provoking. Fog, especially the late-summer kind that drapes over fields and lakes, is one of my absolute favourite types of weather. Next time I’m enjoying it, I’ll also be mindful of the myriad lives being lived inside each tiny droplet.
Reading your post brought to mind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau. As Gothic novels, they of course both make use of fog to build atmosphere, while also grappling with questions of science, ethics, and human hubris in the Enlightenment. Your reminder about the importance of empathy and the consequences of sidelining ethics really resonates with Moreau’s horrific experiments on living beings (which devastated me so much I had to remove the book from my bedside table), and with Frankenstein’s abandoned creation, left without love and unleashed on the world as a formidable destructive force.
Your memory of driving in heavy fog, where the headlights ultimately made it harder rather than easier to see, is such a succinct image for the Enlightenment. And I really like that you write not only about the visually obscuring qualities of fog (literal and informational) but also on the way it hushes the world. Both kinds of obscuring are such lovely ways to think about the potential of these quieter, less crowded spaces as sites where other ways of relating can flourish.
Bringing us closer to mystery, indeed.
Thank you for a brilliant and thoughtful response, Suzanne. The Gothic use of fog, of course; I wish I'd mentioned it, though I don't think I would have conjured up a metaphor for the Enlightenment out of the Newfie fog. (It actually reminded me of a Scooby Doo scene where he cuts a window in the fog with a toenail...) But we're surrounded by Moreaus and Frankensteins (both doctors and creatures) now, which I think is inevitable in an era of ecological destruction and the anointing of the fog of information as more sacred than actual fog.
I'm glad you liked my photos. During the writing I remembered that I had those pics on slides somewhere. They're from an all night gathering after graduation from college. I think they provide a glimpse of the hush...
Oh, yes, Scooby Doo! The fog, the torches, the Mystery Machine. I don't remember the toenail scene, but I can picture it quite clearly from your description. Sounds like classic Scooby stuff.