A Response to Stephen Hawking

It won't in any comfortable sense of the word.

You, Dr. Hawking, have proposed that humans must seed the universe with themselves during the next century so that when, I assume, the inevitable collapse occurs, there will be the equivalent of self-sustaining seed banks from which to begin again.

I suggest that's squandering the time and energy we have left. We have a place to live now in which we evolved - we are peculiarly suited to it and it to us. The likelihood of finding another such place is vanishingly small. We should make the best of what we've got. Besides, we've not had a good record when it comes to maintenance. Perhaps if our lives depended on it, our attitude might change. But I foresee dedication to maintaining a complex machine at the expense of almost everything else until its ultimate collapse or exhaustion of the raw materials required.

The first task is find a way to reduce the population to a level that can be sustained indefinately. Of the steps we have to take to assure our survival, that's probably one of the toughest. As we approach the question of how, we also need to decide how small a sustainable population is. I suspect it will be much smaller than we imagine. For one thing, we've already used massive amounts of the energy sequestered over millions of years. We've already pumped enormous quantities of ground water from aquifers that will required thousands of years to fill. And we may already have triggered a massive climate change that will affect how population will have to distribute itself. We've also put too many species on which we depend, and may have to depend in the future without the help of advanced technology, on the brink of extinction. We must adopt the attitude that the deepest well of genetic variation in all species is to our advantage. Reducing our population will help with that because we can return large tracts to "nature." Once we stop competing with most species, they will recover - but only if they are there to breed again.

You yourself spent some time in a future in which it appeared that profit was not the driving motivation behind human accomplishment. I suspect that utiopian condition really is needed to perpetuate ourselves. But how to do that while maintaining an interest in advancing our science, arts, and commerce without being overcome by complaicency is yet another thorny problem. Can we function without greed?

Yet another problem is choosing which of our existing technical accomplishments to preserve. I suspect we should keep them all. How? And how do we assure ourselves that critical skills are perpetuated in the event we mis-calculate and run out of time before the collapse begins? We can't simply stop reproducing because we'd end up with a uniformly old last generation. That requires that we allow only enough reproduction to populate that sustainable number of people. Then we train them in a wide variety of skills. Solomon, where are you when we need you.

I suggest that the most practical way is do most of what has to be done, is to insist of ourselves that we become capable again of caring for ourselves. How many people can actually grow and harvest a crop? How many people can breed and husband livestock? How many people have the skill to house themselves? We must choose to become more self-sufficient and generally adept at survival. That's the way I live now, and I can tell you it's comfortable, challenging, and satisfying. It even leaves me time to do this kind of thing.

On the other hand, we don't need to give up everything. I'm quite satisfied to converse with you remotely. It is not necessary for me to be in the same room or on the same continent for us to have a meaningful exchange. We must choose the cheapest way of having commerce of all kinds.

But if we fail, earth will recover on her own. It will repopulate itself. It is even likely that a few homo sapiens will survive and contribute, in some way, to the next round of evolution. That may not be so bad, in the long run. In the past, I've lamented the probable loss of those things we (I) consider beautiful and meaningful. But those are things I've been familiar with and to which, in a small way, I've contributed. Even the loss of those things may not be such a tragedy. Each society should have the right and obligation to celebrate itself, amuse itself, in its own way.

And that brings me to my last point:

In the past, what we call "great civilizations" have had roughly 250 years, give or take, to organize themselves, reach maturity and then decline and be subsumed by neighbors. It may be that that formula no longer applies simply because we're no longer separated by geography. Our industrialized components have global reach. We may all decline at the same time. We have no experience at that.

Political Topics

Herein you'll find sometimes passionate opinion on a multitude of topics. The moderator will not remove a post on the basis of its author's point of view, but does reserve the right to remove posts which don't maintain a sense of decorum. Contrary opinions will be vigorously defended.

Farm Chronicles

I'm beginning to understand how this site works. "Farm Chronicles" will become a Klinkenborg style narrative about things that happen on the Shambles farm while "The Shambles" will be devoted to progress on the new buildings.

"The Cheese Nun" - a lesson in biodiversity

I stumbled on this PBS gem while trying to stay awake so I could feed this year'sbummer lamb (Mom stepped on it, possibly ruining its left rear leg, and then abandoned it as damaged goods. We've splinted the nerve damaged hock in hopes that one so young will regenerate the nerve. So far, it's thriving with a Popsicle stick taped so as to keep the toes on the ground instead of the unshod part.)

Sister Noella and her sisters make cheese on a small scale in CT. I picked up the story in the middle just before she went off to UCONN to study the fungi that give the cheese its distinctive flavor as it ripens. I gather that part of the reason she went was to protect the way they handle raw milk and the process, viewed by some as not sanitary, enough even though its served for centuries.

She has managed a doctorate now. Published the first treatise, apparently, on fungi in cheese in almost a century. She earned a Fulbright to extend her work in French cheese; parlayed that into two additional years working with the French ministry which was concentrating similar work on bacteria. She identified some 400 unique strains of the same fungus in various places in France. Each strain gave the cheese a slightly different flavor.

She's back in the US now and in demand among the flourishing micro cheese making community that has become almost as diverse and the French one, even though the tone of this documentary led one to believe small cheese-making operations are in danger of going extinct. It has a parallel in the micro-breweries and craft bread bakeries that provide us with relief from mass produced "product" that dominates our markets.

They showed her at a cheese-makers' convention in Louisville, I think. She had microscopes with her and folks brought her their failures. She's become an authority and handles it well.

Anyway, while her story and the story of cheese was interesting, the photography was worthy of the best travelogue. From summer pastures of rural CT to 1000 year old caves in France. From a Riverboat on the Mississippi to the alps, it was lovingly photographed, inside and out.

I felt at home, not because I have anywhere near the depth of knowledge about any of the things we do here - Susan comes much closer to that - but these people, the cheese-makers, from Alpine farmers to monks and nuns, to ex-patriate American soldiers (Viet Nam)to rural American entrepreneurs, all share the grit to hold on to something old, diverse, and wonderful. The heart of it all: diversity. It warms the heart to know there are so many people striving hard on a small scale.

Catch it if you can on PBS. If you miss a broadcast, try your library.

The impeachment rustle

The whisper of "impeachment" is wafting on the political wind. Bush has finally gone too far. Even Republicans admit he has comitted unpardonable sins, the latest possibly being his failure to uphold existing non-proliferation treaties by offering a deal to India.

But the timing is wrong. Don't the political realities intervene?

There's nothing I'd like more than to see the shrub impeached, convicted, disgraced, and run out of town on a rail.
But there's nothing that would disturb me more than to see an impeachment attempt fail, leading him and his handlers to believe that his actions, to date, have been vindicated - that he has a new mandate.

The political reality is that the GOP has a majority in both houses. The stark reality is that Shotgun Dick Cheney is next in line.

The first order of business for the Democrats is to win a majority in Congress and then evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of impeaching the shrub during the next session.

I tend to agree with Franken: impeach him between the 2008 election and the inauguration.

There is another danger of premature impeachment: giving the GOP a rallying cry as we approach the midterm elections - "Protect the republican president, right or wrong."

I think impeachment should wait but that the Congress should be exhorted to protect us from the President.

The Shambles

The Shambles is experiencing spring. Birds that shouldn't be in the area yet are already arriving, a disquieting harbinger of global warming that the president doesn't just ignore but actively disputes.

About the time the ground dries out enough to work, the rain will return to upset our plans. So it's off to make the lists that will guide our activities for the next three or four months. Hope always pushes its head out of the ground with the croccus and daffodils. I guess that's what Charlie Shulz was getting at when he first drew Lucy holding the football.

Inaugural

Just trying it out.

Having a "blog" seems a bit ego-centric.