Sun 21 Feb 2010
Scale and the Will to Risk Catastrophe
Posted by Kathryn della Bitta under action, catastrophe, civilization, contingency, discontinuity, life, modernity, Orr, scale, time, time-space compression, unities, valueNo Comments
… as individuals they lived by an entirely different calculus. They have household, auto, and health insurance for protection against vastly smaller risks at an infinitesimally smaller scale, and most did not dismiss health warnings from their doctors as a liberal plot. When it is merely the future of the Earth, however, they have been willing to risk irrevocable and irreversible changes.
– David W. Orr. Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 4-5.