Recently, I gave in Polish an opening lecture, “Can we salvage our global civilization?”, at a one-day conference of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU). The conference took place in the Isabela Lanckoronska Auditorium at the historic PAU building on Slawkowska 17 Street in Kraków. This conference, “Civic organizations and local communities faced with climate change disasters,” was organized by the Committee on Threats to Civilization of PAU. The last lecture was given by a young activist from a well-known non-profit, who manifestly misled the audience with his proposed implementation of the Green New Deal that would immediately shut down all coal-fired electric power plants in Poland, and replace them with wind turbines, PV arrays and geothermal wells. I pointed out to the nice young man that his radical solution would cause immediate power blackouts in Poland, and asked if he shouldn't have mentioned some of the problems with the transition? His answer was that the or
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.