Slashdot Mirror

I skimmed many a screenful of incoherent ranting before it even dawned on me that the people here might not have heard of Thomas Friedman... don't you guys ever read anything but slashdot discussions? Everyone loves to complain about Thomas Friedman (his latest work pro-globalization cheer-leading being "The World is Flat"). In the circles I hand out in, the fact that he regularly has op-ed articles in the New York Times is one of the things people point to show the paper's pro-corporate bias (if Paul Krugman hadn't waited until after he was hired before he veered left, there's no way they would've ever published him...).

Any way, Sterling's a great writer, but this is a fairly lame article, as is typical for slashdot (no wonder I, etc.): they front page pointers to some of his worst work. I must admit that I don't know that Sterling has been in very good form of late... you might take a look at some of his Viridian Notes, though the last one is a pretty crazed, over the top rant about the board of Exxon being put on trial when people realize how much bullshit they've been spewing.

I gather that he wants out of the column business to get back to fiction writing. And the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction has a pretty decent story from him: "Kiosk".

I've been a member of Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement since before it started, which featured the Long Now's "Long Clock" project when it kicked off. I've even been to international design conferences where Sterling and Long Now people have presented, talking about the Clock. But they've obviously learned nothing from their own intriguing proposition.

How can they possibly be sure that anything they make will be readable as a "clock" 10,000 years from now? That's the biggest problem: if humans even remain on Earth after 3x our current civilization's lifetime has passed, how will they read the clocks? The Egyptian Pyramids are increasingly clearly "clocks", like Stonehenge, for telling "what time it is" in the sky, among the constellations. That revelation only appeared to one guy, about 10 years ago, and is still known only to a few interested people. We still don't know how to tell when the "alarm" goes off, beyond some basics (which could be wrong). Even Stonehenge, recognized as a clock for longer and by more people, isn't really readable. And those clocks are only maybe 5-7,000 years old, mostly millennia where humans didn't change nearly as much as we have in the past millennium, or (likely) as much as we'll change in the next century or so.

We've already built "long now" clocks, that haven't quite worked. They probably did achieve the same goals of the Long Now Foundation: giving society a way to learn to think about long periods of time with the same immediacy and importance as we think about the present moment. We should learn from the long experience in that project by solving the fundamental problem: communicating with our descendents 10,000 years from now. We can probably rely, like our ancestors, on celestial mechanics remaining readable by humans in such an (astronomically) brief time. A real Long Now Clock would merely promote human synchronization with those movements. Maybe a new stone megalith that points at decade/century/millennium markers in the sky. No moving parts, just pictures of humans reading the skies (showing the actual celestial mechanics and how the person decodes them).

Baby Boomers, like the Long Now Foundation people, always think they're the first to invent or do anything, especially if it's fun. And they're great at reinventing the mistakes of history as they ignore it. They do get people motivated to do something as if it were new and exciting, though. So the best thing that this new toy clock they're building could do would be to perish, and pronto. Then we'd get a "second chance" (puns intended) to use the clocks we've already got, and change ourselves to use them. That change would also make us better people, with a longer view of "now", the future, and our place in it.

Do you know about the Viridian Design Movement, a geek art movement to design our survival of manmade climate change?

That project was started by Bruce Sterling, the futurist. Unfortunately, his latest project, the Viridian Design movement, looks to be just as uncannily insightful. And that spells extinction for more than just some media, though it might just spell survival for some of us.

I've never even heard of half of these "prominent science fiction writers." Guess I've been living under a rock!

Yup. You might want to grab a copy of the Encylopedia of Science Fiction and catch up with the rest of us. My guess is that you're a hard SF / space opera fan, and you haven't heard of the authors listed because they write new wave / cyberpunk SF rather than the stuff you're into.

Cory Doctorow is a new author who has had success giving away his books under the creative commons licence. You might know him better as a blogger.

Pat Murphy has been around for a while. She mostly writes science-fantasy stuff... kind of like a midway between LeGuin and Cherryh, if you've heard of them.

Kim Stanley Robinson writes hugely popular airport newsstand bestsellers. Y'know, those big thumping books with gold leaf on the front. You've probably read his Mars books.

Norman Spinrad is one of my all time favourite writers. He is often compared to Norman Mailer (also a favourite), a comparison I find apt. You'd probably hate him, as he presents a strong criticism of psychology space opera fans in his novel The Iron Dream.

Bruce Sterling is probably best known to Slashdotters as the author of The Hacker Crackdown (full text here) and my sig. He's also a blogger for Wired and the Pope Emperor of the Virdian movement.

Ken Wharton is a relatively new writer, but a long time physicist. He's probably the most convention hard SF type writer of the lot.

The only reason to conflate nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as is done repeatedly here, is because you want to use the fallacy of equivocation to trick your audience into viewing even the safest reactor designs as weapons of mass destruction.

"Design For Evil"

Any innocent product which becomes suddenly genocidal in the hands of a tyrant has been designed by a dangerous naif. Every design process is incomplete unless it takes into careful consideration what could be done with the product by a dictatorial megalomaniac in command of a national economy, a secret police, and a large army.

Also note that intended audience for this commentary is Viridian movement members so they will understand what Sterling means and the apparent attempt to "trick his audience into viewing even the safest reactor designs as weapons of mass destruction" is infact not a trick at all - it's a belief the audience already shares.

The HIV virus is reworking the environment, clearing the planet of its filthy homo sapiens infestation. Within a few centuries, the worst polluter and ecology upsetter will be eradicated by its top predator. Lakes will clear, skies will return to a sunny, UV-shielded balance, grassy byways will positively glow with a healthy, litter-free sheen.

"There are none so green as the dead." - Viridian Design

Terraforming other planets is fun, but first we really need to terraform Earth. Between desertification, global warming, overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, slash&burn traditional farming, chemically-enhanced modern farming, genetic engineering of plants, moving species between ecological niches, sooting up the polar regions in ways that reduce the planet's albedo, and a lot of other things those pesky primates have been up to, this planet is becoming significantly less Earth-like. It's time to look at changing that. There have been a range of proposals to do things about it, from the Kyoto politics to Giant solar reflector shields in space to Bruce Sterling's Viridian Manifesto.

Terraforming other planets is fun, but first we really need to terraform Earth. Between desertification, global warming, overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, slash&burn traditional farming, chemically-enhanced modern farming, genetic engineering of plants, moving species between ecological niches, sooting up the polar regions in ways that reduce the planet's albedo, and a lot of other things those pesky primates have been up to, this planet is becoming significantly less Earth-like. It's time to look at changing that. There have been a range of proposals to do things about it, from the Kyoto politics to Giant solar reflector shields in space to Bruce Sterling's Viridian Manifesto.

Now if he had insisted that be go back to an agrarian society, or more accurately, a Stone-age society, then he would be a Green.

May I suggest you read up on Bruce Sterling's "Veridian Green" movement? May I suggest you consider the existence of Green technophiles? (Do you think the people who put up Green Party websites want to return to the neolithic?)

The key values of the Green party are: grassroots democracy, social justice and equal opportunity, ecological wisdom, non-violence, decentralization, community-based economics and economic justice, feminism and gender equity, respect for diversity, personal and global responsibility, and future focus and sustainability. None of which require returning to the Stone Age.

I keep reading Sterling hoping to see what all the rest of you are apparently seeing, but all I get it someone deeply, deeply in love with hearing his own clever ideas, usually couched in some nebulously sardonic comment that makes it oh-so-hip.

Sterling is really good at this kind of thing, compared to much of the other people out there, e.g. Howard Reingold who appears to be making a living with a throwaway idea from Sterling's novel "Distraction".

I'm a big fan of the novel "Holy Fire", myself, which just might have something important to say about human identity and the best achieveable human society, though I would predict that you won't like it for cultural reasons. To enjoy this book you need to feel that there's something significant about young hipster artists spazzing around trying to get a grip on life, and you appear to be coming from what you might call a more culturally conservative position.

Anyway, things that are good about Sterling: he ranges pretty widely in what he pays attention to in technical and social trends, and unlike many an American thinks about things that go on outside the US. Things that are maybe not so good: part of his self-image is that he's good at cultural manipulation, e.g. he was the man who managed to put "cyberpunk" over. Note that he often uses huckster/diplomat figures as main characters in his novels.

My impression is that he's turned his sights on using these skills for a more Important Purpose of late: getting the word out on Global Warming, which he's attempting to do with his Viridian Design Movement. On the plus side, it really probably would not be such a bad idea to ease off on the carbon-emissions, irrespective of you're opinion about anthropogenic global warming... but in a way I've always found the Viridian movement to be a bit disappointingly conventional for someone like Sterling to get involved with. All of a sudden, he's being Responsible.

The turbines' birds:year numbers came from the article, in combination with some followup research on the Web. Didn't *you* RTFA? Where the biologist points out that all energy industries kill? The question, of course, is alternatives. Which energy source is the least destructive, least expensive in unaccounted costs? How about some numbers from you? I would like to know the kill ratios of our casual infotech activities. For more info, you might visit Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design movement. Then you might have something constructive to add.

Palast's piece was invigorating and/or infuriating, regardless of the reader's own politics. I give him a hearty cheer for intent and a solid +5 Flamebait for phrasing his argument in such a way as to polarize everyone reading it. I wanted to say both "Bravo!" and "Can't we all just get along?"

Bruce Sterling reprinted Palast's ZNet piece in his latest Vridian Note. A typically inflammatory extract:

"Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system.

"And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages -- producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million.

"Is tonight's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, 'Rio Dark.'

"So too the free-market British buckaroos controlling Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.

"Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: recall the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of 'pirates' -- and now he'll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders.

"So where's the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there's no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California.

"Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I don't know if the truth about deregulation will ever see the light -- until we change the dim bulb in the White House."

Original email
MetaFilter thread
The reporter's reaction (harshly condemming internet users!)
Bruce Sterling's notes

Bruce Sterling:
I find it useful to think of Bruce Sterling as a contemporary Mark Twain. His keynotes at various tech and design conferences are always hysterically funny and inspiring. His short stories are also top drawer. I agree that his novels are hard work, though, with perhaps only 'Holy Fire' rating as truly excellent. I'd recommend all Slashdotters with any design/environmental interest at all join his Viridian mailing list.

Gibson:
I always find the weakest part of Gibson's work to be the OTT violence and happy-face Hollywood endings. The writing is so beautiful I can forgive the guy anything, though. All three of the 'Sprawl' trilogy are truly great books. The 'Bridge' trilogy is maybe more exciting to think about (nanotech, virtual pop stars made flesh etc) than to actually read. It's pretty patchy stuff and you often feel like you're being strung along. Wish he still wrote short stories but I haven't heard tell of a new one in a long time.

Sterling/Gibson/Cyberpunk in 2003:
These guys are aging pretty gracefully considering how badly they could have been smeared when cyberpunk flamed out. I think they also set the bar pretty high for the next generation of writers and I'm not sure someone like Neal Stephenson has advanced the state of the art very much.

I'm basically happy these two brilliant, thoughtful, talented guys are still working and trying to help us come to grips with it all.

Glin,
Closet Cyberpunk 4ever

I'm a bit surprised that some more thought wasn't given to how different our energy consumption patterns and transportation modes will be by then.

What a coincidence. I sent an entry on this very topic into the last Viridian design contest, but it vanished into a black hole in Bruce Sterling's email box. He later said:

"Sorry Simon, but your interesting Civil Society entry never showed up in my mailbox."

Oh well.

My proposal is to create a PIBank (Personal Information Bank) that's going to store all of your personal information and dole it to local systems at your command.

I secured it using one-time-password, two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID cards. The cool thing is that you can also have the PIBank generate one-time credit card numbers and so on to prevent fraud.

Someone mentioned profit? Well, it's just like a regular bank. Their number-one product is trust. Of course they'll charge a monthly fee and use your data in aggregate form ;-)

Go on, check it out.

Sterling's speech is posted on the Viridian Design web site, specifically here.

Sterling's speech is posted on the Viridian Design web site, specifically here.

Well, he is a novelist. He's a professional talker. I guess that it isn't his fault that there isn't all that much doing. Although he does do a better job at inspiring action on the Viridian Design mailing list.

I understand what you are feeling. You've learned some cool stuff and now you want to do something with it. Think of it as a "hello world" program in hardware.

I remember going to a local college's "Engineering Fair" when I was in highschool. Lots of cool stuff:
A tic-tac-toe computer made out of discrete parts
A program which printed random poetry.
Various "Op-art displays on a monitor (This was in the early '70s)
...

A couple of suggestions:
Implement a simple two player game in hardware. Like the little poker calculators.
Check out sites like Viridian which have thingamajiggy design contests from time to time.

Just last night, I finished re-reading The Difference Engine, that Sterling co-wrote with Bill Gibson.

Earlier yesterday, I had a minor social-political epiphany, which manifested itself as a (horribly spelled) slashdot post

And now, I find this speech by M. Stirling which ties the two together.

Mostly.

Innit funny how the world works?

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.

From the manifesto:

Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.

[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.

However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.

[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.

And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:

A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.

So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.

Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.

"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.

From the manifesto:

Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.

[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.

However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.

[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.

And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:

A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.

So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.

Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.

"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.

From the manifesto:

Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.

[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.

However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.

[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.

And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:

A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.

So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.

Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.

"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.

From the manifesto:

Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.

[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.

However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.

[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.

And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:

A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.

So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.

Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.

"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.

From the manifesto:

Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.

[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.

However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.

[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.

And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:

A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.

So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.

Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.

"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney

Sorry.. a more updated version of the Viridian site, as well as a totally-up-to-date-save-the-last-message list archive, can be found here. Much apologies!