Category Archives: Life

Our Choice, By Al Gore

Books, Climate, Life, World, ,

We are on the cusp of addressing climate change, and it is about time with the droughts, wildfires, heat waves, enormous snow and rain storms (including hurricanes) and record floods.  So recently I reviewed a book from my shelf by Al Gore.

DSC08455  If we open out the flap on the front  cover, we see the earth as it was in 2009,    with green earth and a lot of polar ice.

DSC08467 This is the title page.

DSC08468 Here is the table of contents.  This book has main sections on:

  • The Crisis
  • Our Sources of Energy
  • Living Systems
  • How We Use Energy
  • The Obstacles We Need to Overcome
  • Going Far Quickly

It is an attractive book with many illustrative color pictures.

DSC08450

DSC08463  This graph shows that California moderated its per capita energy consumption starting as early as 1976.  California got an early start on the rest of us in addressing climate change, and California demonstrates that public policy is effective in reducing energy consumption, and thus in helping to address climate change.

DSC08456 If we open up the flap and turn the page, we see a desertified North America, no polar ice over the water, and diminished polar ice over the land, and more tropical storms.  We cannot see the temperature change.  This book is a treasure trove of information and help at our fingertips.

Context, An Ever-changing Aspect of Experience

Brain, Experience, Life, Philosophy, Thought,

DSC06736 Here is a house in the sun, with clouds in the background sky.   There are palm and other tree in front of, and around, it.  There are also curbs and a sidewalk in front of it.  This is part of the context of this house.  Another part of the context of the house might be who lives in it.

For the person who lives in it, the house and everything outside it, is part of his context, and another part of that person’s context is his past in that house, and indeed the entirety of his past,  and everything he or she ever experienced, whether remembered or not.  They say that the brain bears traces of everything, even that which is seemingly forgotten.  These things in the past ,  and everything which we experience  in the present, are part of each individual’s context, and everybody on earth has a different one.

Not only do we have different sets of eyes, ears, taste buds, nose sensory organs, and skin sensations, we each have absolutely unique combinations of genes with which our bodies respond to our  environment, physically, and mentally, continually adding to our contexts, and our experience of it.  On top of that, our physical a and emotional experiences change over time from birth, through growth, maturity, decline, and death.

I have my unique, immediate, mental context, and you have yours

Our contexts are never the same as they were even an instant before.  This is why we “shall never pass this way again.”