Monthly Archive for March, 2008

If there was some­thing that you really believed and knew that if acted upon it could save human­ity, what would it look like to ded­i­cate your life to this cause? What if you were wrong? What if peo­ple crit­i­cized you for it? Would it still mat­ter? You would never know whether you were right until you knew. Over the past week I’ve been think­ing a lot about cli­mate change. What sparked this cur­rent thread was a news story I read about Dan Bloom and his plan for the cli­mate cri­sis. He has ded­i­cated him­self to this project in a vul­ner­a­ble and unin­hib­ited way. Dan Bloom’s idea is to pre­pare for the loom­ing cli­mate dis­as­ter by build­ing Polar Cities. I totally geeked out on the idea of Polar Cities and I was able to inter­view Dan Bloom about him­self and his plans.

Tell me a lit­tle about your­self. How did you become inter­ested in cli­mate change and polar cities?

I was inter­ested in cli­mate change and global warm­ing before 2007, in other words from 1971 to 2006, just as a nor­mal news­pa­per reader, aware of the sit­u­a­tion, but not deeply aware, nor very con­cerned, just nor­mal low-frequency aware­ness from news­pa­per and mag­a­zine arti­cles I had read from col­lege grad­u­a­tion in 1971 to life in the real world of the early 21st Cen­tury. THEN one day, I read two arti­cles in the news­pa­per here in Tai­wan: one was about the upcom­ing IPCC report on cli­mate change, released in Feb­ru­ary 2007, and then two was an inter­view with James Love­lock the UK sci­en­tist who said that in his view in the future, there might be only “breed­ing pairs in the Arc­tic” to con­tinue the human species after global warm­ing “events” cause mass migra­tion north and mass die offs of humans, from a pop­u­la­tion of 10 bil­lion to maybe just 200,000 left. When I read this, I had a eureka moment, I woke up at the moment. At first I was depressed. I wrote a long essay on my blog about how things are really screwed. But after re-reading what I wrote, which was basi­cally depress­ing and sad writ­ing, I woke up again and said to myself: Hey, you can’t go around mop­ing about and feel­ing sad for the world, try to do some­thing pos­i­tive, some­thing to give you and oth­ers hope. So I visu­al­ized humans liv­ing in polar cities in the north­ern areas in the year 2500 or so, and that is how I began this quixotic adven­ture. Via the blo­gos­phere. And 12 months later I found an artist, in Tai­wan, where I live, Deng Cheng-hong, who agreed to make some illus­tra­tions for me, on com­mis­sion. I paid him for his work and two months later he gave me these amaz­ing illus­tra­tions. He is genius. In fact, his visual images have made this project leap off the page and into people’s imag­i­na­tions, so all credit goes to him. James Love­lock has seen these images and said to me via email: “It may very well hap­pen and soon.”

Are polar cities your response to the cli­mate crisis?

Yes, this project is my per­sonal response to the cli­mate cri­sis, my small con­tri­bu­tion to the ongo­ing global dis­cus­sion. It’s my way of tak­ing part in what I think is a pos­i­tive way in the debate.

Are the aims of polar cities to accom­mo­date a lucky few or all of humanity?

The aim of the polar cities project is to accom­mo­date all of sur­viv­ing human­ity, in an open demo­c­ra­tic human­i­tar­ian way. These cities are not just for the lucky few or the rich or the pow­er­ful. My phi­los­o­phy and aim is to start plan­ning for these adap­ta­tion cities now, in 2008, so that by the time we need them, humankind has fig­ured out how to make them open and demo­c­ra­tic. But if things get really bad in the future, out of a world pop­u­la­tion of maybe 15 bil­lion peo­ple in 2500, there might be only 200,000 sur­vivors. In that case, these peo­ple will be the lucky few. Or unlucky few, some might say. But they will be the breed­ing pairs who keep the human species alive for many gen­er­a­tions inside these polar cities and then come out and repop­u­late the Earth again when the time is right. The polar city era might last 100 years or 1000 years or even 10,000 years. So these polar cities are lifeboats for humankind, for the human species, not just for the lucky few. I have no chil­dren, so there is no per­sonal intent here for me. I am doing this because I have com­pas­sion for the future. A deep com­pas­sion for the future, and this is now my life’s work. Unpaid. On my own time. On my own dime. My con­tri­bu­tion, in a small minor way, to the ongo­ing debate, pro and con, about cli­mate change.

In a recent Guardian arti­cle, James Love­lock is quoted as say­ing “Enjoy life while you can” in regards to the cli­mate cri­sis. Do you see ideas like recy­cling and car­bon off­set­ting as useless?

Love­lock is my men­tor in all this, and that recent Guardian inter­view was very insight­ful, I thought. I agree with him on many of the things he said. How­ever, he is 88 and I am 58, so being 30 years younger I still have more hope and opti­mism that we can solve this cli­mate cri­sis prob­lem with real solu­tions. So yes, recy­cling and car­bon off­set­ting are impor­tant ideas and I agree we should imple­ment them as best we can, and do all we can NOW to try to mit­i­gate global warm­ing in the here and now. I have not given up hope. I still think we can solve this Long Emer­gency, but there will have to be some sacrifices.

Is tech­nol­ogy part of the problem?

It is a part of the prob­lem and a pos­si­ble solu­tion to the prob­lem, too. My fin­gers are crossed. I hope some­one can come up with a tech­no­log­i­cal fix for the cli­mate cri­sis. That is where my hope lies. Yes, but in the case that worst come to worst, I feel that polar cities can be our lifeboats to get us through a long period of north­ern life, maybe for 30 gen­er­a­tions of humans.

The polar cities have been likened to fall­out shel­ters, how would you respond to this?

I never thought of polar cities as fall­out shel­ters. But we could call them global warm­ing shel­ters. Lifeboats. I see them more as lifeboats. The cold war men­tal­ity of fall­out shel­ters is not really appro­pri­ate for polar cities. But head­line writ­ers have wild imag­i­na­tions and I appre­ci­ate all head­line writ­ers attempts to grap­ple with these issues.

Do we need a sense of impend­ing dis­as­ter to give our­selves some­thing to work towards?

You are right. Yes, we need a real deep sense of impend­ing dis­as­ter to wake us up. Love­lock and Hansen and oth­ers are impor­tant in issu­ing wake up calls to human­ity. I am just a sol­dier in the trenches launch­ing my polar cities idea as a non-threatening thought exper­i­ment to wake peo­ple up in another way, visu­ally. I remain an eter­nal opti­mist and I wake up every day full of energy to fight this cli­mate cri­sis. This IS the fight of human­ity, all human­ity. We need all the ideas we can get.