CAN NEW TECHNOLOGY SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT?

5 Talks by

Paul H. Carr, Ph. Dwww.MirrorOfNature.org.

Sunset over Portsmouth, NH from Star Island Conference Center

Paul H. Carr, Ph. D.AF Research Laboratory Emeritus

IEEE Fellow in 1979

1. The Beauty of Nature versus Its Utility:

The EnvironmentalChallenge

1. Nature’s beauty versus its utility. I will show photos of nature’s beauty with Thoreau quotes. The forces of spiritual values coupled with knowledge of the earth sciences can hopefully lead to a new global ethic to conserve nature’s beauty for future generations. 2.Can new technology save us in time? The MIT-authored book, Limits to Growth, projects an economic and food-per-capita collapse. Written in 1972, predictions for the population explosion, water shortages, non-renewable resource depletion, and climate change have been accurate to date.

3. Why be concerned about Global Warming? 4. Data supporting anthropogenic global warming.

5. Technology and policies are available to save us.

CAN NEW TECHNOLOGY SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT?

The Beauty of Nature versus its Utility

•What is Beauty?

•Landscape Photos

•Environmental Ethics: From Thoreau to Rachel Carlson & Al Gore

•Re-Envisioniong Nature to Save our Planet

Swallowtail Butterfly with Divine Proportion 1.618

BEAUTY in SCIENCE &

SPIRIT

.

“The Beauty of Nature vs Its Utility: The

Environmental Challenge

Chapter 9

Jay Peak, Northern, VT

•Beautiful flowers have vibrant colors and harmonious symmetries.

•This subjective aesthetic beautiful form contrasts with the objective, functional beauty that attracts insects to pollinate

• Similarly, beauty itself is a delicate dance between: -mystical subjective forms and -the mathematical, objective functions that maintain life.

BEAUTY'S BALANCE

Form & Function

Heaven & Human

Myth & Math

Quality & Quantity

Spirit & Science

This is salvation

When we marvel

At the beauty

Of created things

And praise

The beautiful providence

Of their Creator

- Meister Eckart

•“ If everyone were cast in the same mold, there would be no such thing as beauty.”

Charles Darwin, 1881

• “Beauty is the harmony of contrasts” A. N. Whitehead 1933

• “Scientific beauty is more than a personal experience of aesthetic beauty.” Physicist Steven Weinberg

• Objective beauty is much closer to a horse trainer’s enthusiasm for a beautiful race horse. This sort of beauty can be measured.

• Can the horse win a race?

• Beauty resides in the interplay between the structure of its body (form ) and its capability to run (function):

• Beauty is the interplay of FORM & FUNCTION

From theologian Philip Hefner’S FOREWORD to BEAUTY IN SCIENCE & SPIRIT

“Whether there is universal consensus on the criteria of beauty may well be argued, without reaching resolution, but the fact that every individual and every culture hold to that which they consider beautiful--is not contested."

“Beauty’s self and beauty’s giver” by Gerald Manley Hopkins, S. J.

"The Adventure of the Universe starts with a dream and reaps Tragic Beauty” (A. N. Whitehead )

Carr Family in 1985, the year before Karin died of leukemia.

Paul’s late wife, Karin (1940 - 1986)

TRAGIC BEAUTY:

PIETA

by

Michelangelo

THE SCIENCE OF BEAUTY

• Nancy Etcoff is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School & a psychologist at Mass. General Hospital.

• Nancy Etcoff skewers one of our cultures most enduring myths that the pursuit of beauty is a learned behavior.

Windmills in the Netherlands

Balancing Ecology with Economics

“Valuing beauty is an essential and ineradicable part of human nature that is revered and ferociously pursued at enormous cost.”

Survival of The Prettiest: The Science of Beauty

Modern Windmills in the Netherlands

1935 Auburn Sports Roadster at the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s Exhibit “Art Deco.”

Tesla Model S

All Electric 260 mile

range.

2012 Chevy Volt: 90 miles/gal running quietly on 40 mile battery

TRADEGY OF THE COMMONS Individual desire to go everywhere gets you nowhere, while polluting.

SOLUTIONs1.Ethics2. Economic Regulation, Laws

BEAUTY as an ETERNAL OBJECT*

The Auburn was as beautiful to our ancestors as the Volt

is to us today.* Sherburne, Donald. 1961. A Whiteheadean Aesthetic,

Yale University Press, New Haven.

Our beautiful earth from space.The electricity that illuminates our developed countries comes mainly from coal burning.

The use of coal to generate electricity has raised our standard of living.Coal burning is a major source of the C02 that is warming our planet.

“The streets of the village are much more interesting to me at this hour of a summer evening than by day. Neighbors, and also farmers, come a-shopping after their day’s haying, are chatting in the streets, and I hear the sounds of many musical instruments, and the singing from various houses. For a short hour or two, the inhabitants are sensibly employed. The evening is devoted to poetry, such as the villagers can appreciate.”

HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)

Journal Account of a Summer Evening in Concord, July 21, 1851 at 8:30 P.M:

Chap 9, “The Beauty of Nature versus Its Utility, The Environmental Challenge”

Ice Melting on Walden Pond near the site of Thoreau’s Cabin

“Water Indeed Reflects Heaven” Thoreau

Geese Flying Over Melting Ice, 29 January 2002         "I look into the placid reflecting water for the signs and promise of the morrow.”

"Color stands for all ripeness and success." Thoreau

"Water indeed reflects heaven because my mind does - such is its serenity- its transparency-stillness... Standing on distant hills you see the heavens reflected, the evening sky in some low lake or river in the valley- as perfectly as in any mirror they could be- Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with earth?" Thoreau, 31 August 1851, Journal

Walden Pond, January 29, 2002

"Water, by reason of its transparency and limpidness, is the mirror of bodies - of physical etres, so also is truth equally the mirror of ideas." (Thoreau)

Upper Baker Pond, NH

IN WILDNESS IS THE PRESERVATION OF THE WORLD (THOREAU) "The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been

preparing to say is, that in wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it.

From the forest and the wilderness comes the tonics and barks which brace mankind." (Thoreau's "Walking.")

Audubon Sanctuary, South Natick, MA

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It It is earth's eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." (Thoreau)    Fawn Lake, Bedford, MA

"A man's life should be as fresh as a river. It should be the same channel, but new water every instant." (Thoreau)

Connecticut River, Orford, NH

Geese Flying Over Melting Ice, 29 January 2002         "I look into the placid reflecting water for the signs and promise of the morrow.”

SPONTANEOUS GENERATION?

"I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.“ Scientist Thoreau

CONSECRATION & CONSERVATION: WALDEN POND AS A SACRED SITE

Article by Torvis Page, Harvard Univ., Journal of the Faith & Science Exchange, Vol V 2001

• Thoreau’s WALDEN: imbues natural features such as the pond & trees with symbolic meaning and sacred power & renders natural life-processes & mundane practices religiously significant by ritualizing them.

THOREAU DEMARCATED WALDEN AS A SACRED PLACE:

SCIENTIFICALLY: surveying, sounding & charting, recording natural features.

NARRATIVELY: trees that stand “like temples” and serve as “shrines.”

PHYSICALLY: marking the site through construction of his hut & his bean field.

RITUALLY: commemorating physical features &

consecrating mundane objects through mythic and ritual performances.

•THE WALDEN WOODS PROJECT, Don Henley Founder

- Emphasized the ecological CONSERVATION and STEWARDSHIP of Walden Pond rather than its PERSERVATION.

- 600,000 visitors to Walden Pond each year

AN EVIRONMENTAL SUCCESS STORY

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.”

Naturalist John Muir (1838 – 1914)

AMERICAN SCIENTIST, July-August 2011

ALONE IN THE UNIVERSEDespite the growing catalog of extrasolar planets, data so far do not alter estimates that we are effectively on our own Howard A. Smith

This artist’s impression shows the planet HD 189733b, about 63 light-years from Earth, which is known to have water and methane in its atmosphere, although at temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius. However, data from extrasolar planets so far do not alter estimates that we are probably alone in the universe, for all practical purposes.

“…Life on earth is precious and deserves supreme respect. Even if we are not unique in the universe-though we may not know one way of another for eons-we are fortunate. We have a responsibility to act with compassion toward people and our fragile environment.” Howard Smith

CLIMATE SHOCK

• “If an asteroid hurling toward Earth with strong probability strike within 40 years, rise sea levels 3 feet, render coasts uninhabitable, intensify hurricanes and tornadoes, cause frequent floods and landslides…every government would work furiously to discover how that asteroid could be diverted and destroyed.”

from “Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology” by G. Adelson, J, Engell et al. 2008. Yale U Press.Pg 17

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962).

The book is widely credited with helping launch the contemporary American environmental movement.

The book was widely read—especially after its selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the New York Times best-seller list—and inspired widespread public concerns with pesticides and pollution of the environment.

Silent Spring facilitated the ban of the pesticide DDT for agricultural use in 1972 in the United States.

The book documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment, particularly on birds. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically.

If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reality…then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate….

Its must be a global project. I am convinced that the project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that (1) we exist at all, (2) share a reverence for how life works, and (3) acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue. A global ethic must be anchored both in an understanding of human nature and in an understanding of the rest of Nature.

Ursula Goodenough , Prof of Biology at Washington U & former President of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, in her best selling The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998) states:

Albert Schweitzer (1875 – 1965) Nobel Peace Prize 1952 Reverence for Life

•Theologian, “Quest of the Historical Jesus”

•Organist, Bach Interpreter

•Medical missionary to Africa

REVERENCE FOR LIFE

Having experienced two World Wars, Albert Schweitzer developed his ethic of "the reverence for life,” which shows to all with the will-to-live the same reverence as he did to his own." His hope was that this "reverence for life" would prevent further world wars and bloodshed. I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live. If I am a thinking being, I must regard life other than my own with equal reverence. Therefore, I see evil is what annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life, the enabling of life so it can to attain its highest development.

Once man begins to think about the mystery of his life and the links connecting him with the life that fills the world, he cannot but accept, for his own life and all other life that surrounds him, the principle of Reverence for Life. He will act according to this principle of the ethical affirmation of life in everything he does.

Gore—who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his environmental activism and penned the bestselling book “An Inconvenient Truth”—said the tools needed to deal with global warming are already available. He noted that technological advancements in solar, wind and geothermal energy provide alternatives to a fossil fuel-based economy.

But ultimately, what is needed to correct climate change is the political will to make harmful environmental practices—like carbon-dioxide emissions—economically unattractive in the marketplace, Gore said. He emphasized that reversing the effects of climate change is a moral imperative and that ignoring the problem will only imperil future generations.

“Make no mistake, this is not just a political issue, not just a market issue, not just a national security issue, not just a jobs issue,” Gore said. “It is a moral issue.”

April 9, 2010

Al Gore:Climate change a ‘moral issue’

Holmes Roltson III , the father of environmental ethics and winner of the 2003 Templeton Prize for Progress toward Spiritual Realities, rejects anthropocentrism in the ethical and philosophical analysis of natural history. Rolston’s article “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” was rejected by several journals before it was finally published in Ethics in 1975. It was the first article in a major philosophical journal to challenge the idea that nature is value-free and that all values stem from human perspectives; it also helped to launch environmental ethics as a branch of philosophical inquiry. Four years later Rolston cofounded the journal Environmental Ethics.

• In his book Science and Religion (1987), he wrote that “science is here to stay, and the religion that is divorced from science today will leave no offspring tomorrow.”

• His Genes, Genesis and God (1999); was based on his Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which he delivered at the University of Edinburgh during the 1997–98 academic year.

• He believes that respect for nature's intrinsic value should lead to reverence . Life is generated and regenerated in the birth of the new from the death of the old. Life is also a gift, which suggests a giver. The origin of life is also a mystery and a source of scientific discovery. Rolston believes that nature is the vast miracle that moves us from respect to reverence.

“We have to figure out how to live without fossil fuels someday. Why not now, before we have destroyed the creation?”

Dr. Jim Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Space Science Institute and Professor at Columbia University, speaking at the NH State House, 2 Apr 2009.

By eliminating coal burning, the largest source of CO2 emissions, in the next 20 years, CO2 concentrations will decrease.

In May 2013, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used a little white lobster boat, the Henry David T, to block a shipment of 40,000 tons of coal to the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, MA, the largest coal plant in New England.

They did this because climate change is a threat to their making a living.

They were charged with conspiracy, disturbing the peace, and motor vessel violations and faced up to several years in jail.

The Bristol County District Attorney, Sam Sutter, dropped the conspiracy charges and reduced the other charges to civil infractions, civil disobedience, this morning, saying that he saw the need to take leadership on climate change. He called climate change “one of the gravest crises our planet has ever faced” and told a cheering crowd that he would join them at the People’s Climate March in New York City in two weeks.

In exchange for having the state drop their charges, Ken Ward & Jay O’Hara agreed to pay a fine of $2000 each in restitution to the Town of Somerset and the State Police.

Outside the Fall River Courthouse, Sept 8, 2014

9/8/2015. District Attorney Sam Sutter holding up Bill McKibben’s, www.350.org , article in Rolling Stone two years ago.

STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN:The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (2010)By James Hansen

ECONOMICS- “The way we use energy strengthens our adversaries & threatens our planet.” President Barak Obama's Inauguration Speech, Jan 2009- The burning of fossil fuels gives developed countries a higher standard of living.

ECOLOGY:- The increasing threat of global climate change is driven largely by the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation.

BALANCED by - The rapid deployment of FREE ENERGY FOREVER - Wind and solar are FREE after the up-front cost has been paid off. - Will last until the sun burns out. (Forever = 5 billion years) - Electric cars charged with energy from wind, solar, & nuclear. - Stewardship, conservation, & efficiency.SOLUTIONS to ENERGY INDEPENDENCE & CLIMATE CHANGE ARE THE SAME. THEY CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEW TECHNOLOGY

BALANCING ECONOMICS & ECOLOGY

Conservation, efficiency, & a more vegetarian diet can reduce our use of fossil fuels. Nature is the capital on which capitalism is based. In the long-term, our world’s economy will be constrained by ecology. There are indeed Limits to Growth.

RE-ENVISIONING BEAUTY

Is beauty “in the eye of the beholder” and a Spiritual experience?

Without divinely created beauty, nature becomes an object that may be ravaged.

For example, the Canadian tar sands can be beautiful in the eyes of its owners because it is a source of black gold.

Canadian Tar Sands: “Scraping Bottom” National Geographic, 3/2009

RE-ENVISIONING BEAUTY

Let us re-envision beauty to transform our relationship with life on earth.

Science is based on respect for nature’s laws.

Spirituality engenders reverence for and the consecration of nature, created, sustained, and redeemed by a Divine power.

Conservation, efficiency, & a more vegetarian diet can reduce our use of fossil fuels. Nature is the capital on which capitalism is based. In the long-term, our world’s economy will be constrained by ecology. There are indeed Limits to Growth.

What are you doing to conserve?

What car would Jesus Drive?

The Beauty of Nature versus its Utility: The Environmental Challenge.

Chapter 9

•Nature’s beauty.

•The challenge of global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

•What we still can do before it’s too late.

1. Nature’s beauty versus its utility. I will show photos of nature’s beauty with Thoreau quotes. The forces of spiritual values coupled with knowledge of the earth sciences can hopefully lead to a new global ethic to conserve nature’s beauty for future generations. 2.Can new technology save us in time? The MIT-authored book, Limits to Growth, projects an economic and food-per-capita collapse. Written in 1972, predictions for the population explosion, water shortages, non-renewable resource depletion, and climate change have been accurate to date.

3. Why be concerned about Global Warming? 4. Data supporting anthropogenic global warming.

5. Technology and policies are available to save us.

CAN NEW TECHNOLOGY SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT?

"And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light. And then the damask curtains glow along the western window,

And now the first star is lit, and I go home."  (Thoreau, Jan 7, 1852) Walden Pond, January 29, 2002

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