It sounds like you and I also share a distaste for blaring televisions, headphones hooked to people’s heads, shopping, and busy, crowded cities. But we are able to shun these things because our material needs have already been met, and we have the privilege of time to spend thinking about higher-level needs like fulfillment and meaning.

I don’t think it does much good to turn this into a moral issue: “global warming is the result of our sins of excess, and now we must repent.” This is a simplification, of course, but I think it’s a good approximation of a core message coming from many environmentalists, and one of the biggest problems with it is that you can’t tell those in the developing world not to aspire to the same luxuries that we have.

sorry, i should have been more clear. my goal is a living ecology with humans playing a role (the role we played for thousands, tens-of-thousands, and millions of years prior to the advent of agriculture/cities… civilization). when i hear “aspirations of human civilization,” i envision large cities, flashing lights, televisions blaring, ipods buzzing, consumer and car culture… a McWorld. i have no desire for that, but of course it’s wrong for me to assume that’s what you meant either. so, for now, let’s just say that it’s an issue of semantics (since what “civilization” means to each of us probably differs), and that i just reacted to the word.

Evan

There is no group that has issued forth more attacks on other part of the environmental movement than Breakthrough’s founders in the past several years.

It is no secret that people — from the high up big wigs within the big greens to low income, grassroots organizers from the environmental justice movement — have felt their views, positions, work, and analysis have been grossly distorted by Breakthrough.

While the image of shaking hands and the title of this article speaks of civility and reconciliation, there is no use of those constructive “I” statements from Breakthrough here (except the borderline self-congratulatory “Breakthrough is the first to acknowledge that our way isn’t the one true way”).

Nowhere is there the recognition that this hasn’t come out of left field or that it has taken two to tango.

Objectively, this is just Breakthrough calling out Joe for being out of control, and then patting him on the head for apologizing. That’s doesn’t really say reconciliation / civility to me. Civil would be Breakthrough and Joe writing something together.

This post would mean a lot more to me if it began with an apology for the many times Breakthrough has been uncivil or unfair in its statements. As it is, it seems like you’re just playing King of the Moral High ground Hill! (Hope that made sense.)

btw, I am by no means some great fan of Joe’s work, I’ve just been watching the back and forth and find it to be, well, a bit of a pissing contest.

ps

Ironically (comically?) enough it’s worth noting that Joe, not surprisingly, found this “civility” essay above to be extremely patronizing and disingenuous.

He said so (http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/11/breakthrough-institute-decides-to-go-back-to-being-very-uncivil/) a day or more BEFORE it was re-posted here at IGHIH, which kinda begs the question why — if civility is really the goal — does Breakthrough continue posting it when it has objectively made things worse?

And I’ll bet folks didn’t think we old engineers thought about the environment…

let’s be careful with how we talk here. that’s not my goal, so i guess i’m not included in the “we” and not included in “the movement.”