Yesterday's Post, Open Thread

If I post something new today, giving everybody their daily dose of depressing realism, it will be as if I had never written yesterday's essay Authentic Versus False Hope. That effort will simply disappear into blogger oblivion.

That's unacceptable to me. That essay is a highly condensed summary of my conclusions following 25 years of observation and study of the Human Condition. I used that PBS atrocity Saving The Ocean as my example yesterday, but one could enumerate such examples ad nauseam.

In a comment, Richard Pauli called them the Petroleum Broadcasting Company. I agree with that.

Oliver said, regarding my writing this blog, that "there is a certain sense of camaraderie on death row." I agree with that too. I probably won't throw in the towel because of that camraderie. Discouraged people need a place to go where the truth gets told. There's a bogus Latin phrase illegitimi non carborundum—don't let the bastards grind you down.

That's a pretty good reason to keep going right there.

Speaking of bastards, there was some stuff I didn't have time to get into yesterday. Check this out, from Carl Safina's bio on the Guggenheim website, and make sure you have a bucket handy—

The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World (Henry Holt, 2011), the writing of which was supported by his Guggenheim Fellowship, is just the latest in an impressive line of books on marine conservation that have earned Carl Safina a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, a Pew Scholar’s Award in Conservation, the Rabb Medal from Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo, and, perhaps most important, a loyal readership.

In its starred review, Kirkus voiced the critical and popular consensus that The View from Lazy Point “combines solid science and excellent storytelling,” praising it as a “superb work of environmental reportage and reflection.”

Compared by more than one critic to Henry David Thoreau, Mr. Safina is known for his accessible approach to conservation topics, and, unlike many writers in this field, his work is suffused with an optimism and joy in nature that, while not denying looming threats, adds a perspective too often missing from the more common “gloom and doom” accounts.

But unlike Thoreau, who spent a year alone at Walden Pond to write his masterpiece, Mr. Safina is as conversant with the abounding life in the arctic, Pacific, and Caribbean as he is with that right outside his door, in the Long Island Sound.

I'm sure you get the picture. No "gloom And doom" for Carl Safina! He is the "accessible" environmentalist, critically acclaimed by clueless humans everywhere. Carl tells people what they want to hear. He gets all kinds of awards, grants, medals and other accolades for doing that. Carl The Obsequious makes a living by not rocking the boat.

That's a common occupation here on Planet Earth. If you're good at it, like Carl is, you can be very successful here.

Needless to say, DOTE is not supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, I have never been nominated for and awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, and all the rest of it. All of which means I must be doing something right. But it bothers me that I live among a species which rewards mediocrity and punishes or ignores truth-telling. It grates on me. Perhaps it shouldn't, but it does.

Consider this open thread an interlude between yesterday and whatever I decide to do tomorrow.

Bonus Video — Why not? It never fails to cheer me up.

 

Comments

[rumor]

Honestly, I don't know where you get the grit to keep kicking at the darkness day after day but god damn if I'm not endlessly glad you do, Dave.

Incidentally, I can't tell you how relieved I am that there's someone out there to provide an optimistic perspective on all the "gloom and doom" pervading the public discussion on conservation. We were almost close to that doom and gloom actually convincing a majority of people in developed nations to reassess economic and energy growth and collectively commit towards paring back... wait, no, none of that was happening. Just kidding!