James Cameron on “Avatar 2″ and the Impending Environmental Crisis | Hacker News Reader

James Cameron on “Avatar 2″ and the Impending Environmental Crisis

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19 pointsskbohra12331 comments

Let's try to take apart this muck, which I seem to have read a hundred times before:

> we’re becoming disconnected from nature and that we are on a precipice.

Why is it bad to be disconnected from nature? What's wrong with going in the opposite direction towards increased artificiality, given that our very artificial infrastructure keeps us alive?

> take control over our stewardship of our planet / the planet [...] will be in significant danger

What the heck does that actually mean? Can we just admit that these statements are religious, but wrapped in non-religious language?

> 70% of species will be extinct by the end of this century if we do nothing due to the rise of world temperatures

I wish it were as fashionable to care about runaway AIs, nuclear attacks, geologic events, etc.

You're not worried the world seems to be shifting under our feet because of us simply doing what it takes to live?

If you were a programmer adding an extra feature to an existing system, and after a few days work you realize that 90% of the system has been modified by you in some way or another, won't you be alarmed?

In 200 years, many species have been driven to extinction by our activities, entire forests were chopped away, and countries are now sinking due to rising ocean levels "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maldives, and you're still not worried?

It's fine to be "disconnected from nature", as long as everything can keep going the same way, but I don't think they can. Our own artificial infrastructure is like a ponzi scheme, requiring ever increasing amounts of resources to support it. Until you can find a way that it'll support itself without killing everything around it (I'm not exaggerating, your roof is a desert.), it is not sustainable.

I didn't say I'm not worried, I just think it's counterproductive to promote environmentalism in emotional ways. If people think of nearly everything we do as bad, they'll make decisions based on good intentions instead of rational analysis.

I don't understand your analogy. Programs are human constructs. The Earth is a chaotic system, with or without us.

Do you have any evidence for our infrastructure being a ponzi scheme? (I think it would be hard to find, given that this same infrastructure will probably soon give us fusion power).

FYI: deserts are defined by the amount of rainfall they receive, not by whether they have plants or not.

Sorry but the Maldives is not sinking. They mustn't be too concerned, having just built a new runway. There are several trees that exist just inches above the high tide mark which are at least 50-100 years old.

There has been erosion in the Maldives due to changes in use, but erosion != sea level rise.

I also challenge anyone to nominate 1 single species made extinct in the past 50 years as a result of climate change. Note that you must be able to attribute the sole or overwhelming cause of extinction to a change in the average temperature, and not through habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

edit:typo seal->sea

I for one would be happy to see more seals in the Maldives ;-)

yes, those pesky seal level rises. Fixed now:)

  habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other 
  myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

Why not? I was challenging your statement:

  Why is it bad to be disconnected from nature? What's wrong 
  with going in the opposite direction towards increased 
  artificiality, given that our very artificial 
  infrastructure keeps us alive?

Bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_threats_to_the_Gr... is an example of destruction of environment around us as we keep doing what we're doing.

I don't feel the need to count the species that became extinct due to habitat loss, local pollution, overhunting or any other myriad of ways that humans wipe out species.

Keep doing what we're doing and we will screw ourselves, global warming or not.

What the heck does that actually mean? Can we just admit that these statements are religious, but wrapped in non-religious language?

It's actually the reverse. The religious view is God gave us the Earth as a kind of fruit to be plucked. Since we go on to live in Heaven for eternity the stewardship of the Earth is sorta in the hands of the Aethists and non-believers...

That's an extremely narrow, Judaeo-Christian view of religion.

You're right. But I wanted to reply on the same level as the OP.

I thought the OP's point was that phrases like "taking control over our stewardship of the planet" was a religious statement in that the only reason the concepts in it have any grounding is through the faith of the person saying them. That's not religion-specific.

I don't follow you on the jump from unfounded to religious. Not every statement which does not include a scientific footnote is religious in nature.

We're drifting into semantics here, but it boils down to whether you have to take something on faith or not. Taking anything without a "scientific footnote" as true relies on belief, because it cannot rely on proof. That makes it an article of faith, which is a synonym for religion in the sense I believe the OP used it.

I loved Avatar, but I've noticed a strong theme from Hollywood for over a decade now of environmentalism. It's either the subtext, subplot in the 90's movies, and now it's become the main context and plot of major movies in the 00's and I'm getting the strong feeling I'm going to be beaten to death with it in the 10's.

I think one of the reasons I've gone from liking the Harry Potter film series to outright loving it is because environmentalism isn't even a sub-subtext in the story. The plot is that humans are doing incredible damage to humans, not that humanities inactions are inevitably going to hurt us by some bullshit catastrophe like 2012 or the day after tomorrow.

This bullshit enviro-paganism has driven me to the point of not giving the slightest damn anymore. If you tell me we've got a program error from monday to friday, but you offer no solution to fix it except to spell check the code (recycling) then I'll tell you to fuck off by the next monday. If you offered a major rewrite I'd buy in. Double-down on Fusion research, go all nuclear with new power plants (it's the only practical and realistic way, if you deny it you're ignorant of the massive wastes inherent in solar and wind systems and the fact that many of these systems rely on the existing coal and gas infrastructure to support it in low-wind or cloudy periods).

We're being told we've changed the world disastrously through our inactions, then we should be showing the world we can change it through our actions. Sequester carbon, go nucelar, build a frigging IR reflector in space, build cloud machines.

I find it more disturbing that environmentalists are flat out ignoring the disastrous effects caused by wind turbines, killing bird and especially bat populations and promoting demineralization of farm land (note this is the preliminary step in desertification). Not to mention that there's already been noticeable wind-speed decreases in areas of heavy wind turbine usage. I think interfering with the wind patterns is going to fuck up the planet far more than a little CO2 as you'll actually be creating high and low pressure regions permanently.

Lots of factual errors here.

Solar and wind can make very large impacts on electricity generation - see the Desertec website for lots more information: http://www.desertec.org/

Research has shown that geographically distributed renewable generation can be used as reliable base-load, although I can't find the reference at the moment.

The CO2 payback times for various technologies are shown here: http://www.envirowiki.info/CO2_payback , although this does miss out other payback times that are relevant.

Winds and pressure regions around the world are primarily caused by temperature contrasts between the poles and the equator, and between land and sea (due to water having a much larger thermal inertia than land). Huge numbers of wind turbines will not effect this in any way.

Modern wind turbines kill very few birds, orders of magnitude less than cars and window collisions (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/common_misconce.php). Older wind tubines have faster rotational speeds which kill more birds than modern turbines.

Bats, again, are not effected too much by modern wind turbines as the blades are are sufficiently high above the ground that bats will never come into contact with them, as bats rarely fly at high altitudes (see PDF linked from http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/T...).

Please, don't rant unless you know the facts.

Do windmills kill “huge numbers” of birds? Wind farms recently got adverse publicity from Norway, where the wind turbines on Smola, a set of islands off the north-west coast, killed 9 white-tailed eagles in 10 months. I share the concern of BirdLife International for the welfare of rare birds. But I think, as always, it’s important to do the numbers. It’s been estimated that 30 000 birds per year are killed by wind turbines in Denmark, where windmills generate 9% of the electricity. Horror! Ban windmills! We also learn, moreover, that traffic kills one million birds per year in Denmark. Thirty-times-greater horror! Thirty-times-greater incentive to ban cars! And in Britain, 55 million birds per year are killed by cats.

--David MacKay, "Sustainable Energy -- without the hot air".

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c10/page_63...

So what you're saying is that it's OK to kill birds as long as you're 'saving the planet'? Because that's how it reads to me. I'm shocked that environmentalists support wind power with the large ecological footprint it has. Plus you have to build baseload power to back it up, so it's not like you are stopping the construction of fossil fuel plants.

It just seems like a gigantic waste of resources to me.

That's a rather provocative interpretation of what I posted. I was merely pointing out that the birds thing is a relatively small issue, and if you really care that much about them you'll have to sacrifice much of the modern lifestyle.

For what it's worth, the book I quoted from (link in my previous comment) is (in my interpretation) fairly skeptical of wind power. I highly recommend it: It looks at the issues in a balanced manner, with extensive figures and calculations, and without resorting to sensationalist language like "it's OK to kill birds", or putting sarcastic quotes around "saving the planet" to imply naïvety of anyone who dares to disagree.

No, he's saying that, on a cost-benefit basis, killing a few extra birds to generate electricity is probably no worse a tradeoff than killing tons of extra birds in exchange for the privilege of owning housecats.

What is it about hollywood that makes people who work there think they are qualified to speak about technical matters?

70% of species? Seriously? That's just pure nonsense.

Are you an ecologist or other relevant professional?

Are you?

The point of my comment was that the parent is no more qualified to make this statement than James Cameron was to make the original. It's like doing statistics by eyeball: you possibly say something's "pure nonsense" except for effect without understanding what you're talking about, and I'm sure James Cameron has some context for making these statements.

The IPCC 4th assessment report states that greater than 40% of species are likely to be extinct given a temperature increase of ~3.8C, with 30% of species at increasing risk of extinction given a temperature increase of only ~1.5C.

A rise of 1.5C is certain to happen by 2100, even in the best case scenario where emissions peak soon; and a rise of 4.0C is depressingly likely given the current continuous rise in emissions.

See pages 22, 23 and 29 of the synthesis report: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

I would recommend everyone reads this report; it's not too long, and I found it very readable and succinct.

Given that we're all going to be affected, isn't it worth knowing the facts about this stuff?

Also readable online at http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/main.htm...

I would assume this is where the 70% came from: "[...] As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40 to 70% of species assessed) around the globe." http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains3-4...

> 40 to 70%

That's one heck of a margin of error.

I'm a movie junkie and a Cameron fan -- at least until Avatar. Plus I love startups and business issues.

James is part of this interesting movement by performers to insult and preach to audiences. At some level, we all want to be challenged by art -- art should take us places and make us look at ourselves in ways we haven't before.

But, in my opinion, what's happened is that art has ran out of ways to easily challenge us. This has led to the development of sort of a religion -- people are selfish and harmful, the planet is in danger, we must wake them up in order to save our children.

Not getting into whether that's a good worldview to have -- there are many pros and cons -- the problem here is that this particular religion, like all religions before it, has become rigid and predictable. That hurts the art, and it hurts the business.

Avatar was a wonderfully visual film -- and an example of a movie I don't want to see again. It was preachy and trite. The plot was about as dumb as possible. But damn, it was gorgeous. I bought the first disc I could when it came out. And it's still sitting unwatched on the shelf.

When you cross the line from art to preaching, from sharing experiences to moralizing, the art suffers.

I am also fascinated by this propensity for famous entertainers -- basically our version of a high-paid circus clown -- to insult the people that are buying tickets to their attractions. James isn't as direct about it, but underneath all of this the message is clear: you are a mindless consumer and your lack of concern and selfishness is destroying the planet. You're a selfish asshole. Give me some more money and I will say it in a different way. That's got to be the weirdest business model I've ever seen.

The most odious part of Cameron's carry on is the way he travels to remote villages in South America and parades them around like sideshow curiosities in tribal outfits. He implores us to leave them be, leave the noble savage alone (this is also the underlying message from Avatar, as I understand it) He never asks them if they'd like a refrigerator for food and medicine, an air conditioner or some roads built to increase their access to civilisation. Instead, they are just assumed to be more pure, a better way of living than the rest of us, and morally superior as a result. But nobody ever asks the villagers what they think. They're just told to stand there in war paint and look at one with the forest.

I haven't seen Avatar because once I saw the plotline I couldn't bear to sit through it. It's bad enough trying to watch a decent U2 concert these days without all the preaching being folded in.

Then there was the highly publicised event where Cameron was going to call 'high noon' on some bunch of climate change skeptics at a public debate. I think it was at an environment conference or film festival or something. But as the date approached he asked to have the rules changed many times before pulling out altogether. I'm sure the reason is not to give the skeptical point of view any airtime, but it just makes him look foolish and clumsy.

He never asks them if they'd like a refrigerator for food and medicine, an air conditioner or some roads built to increase their access to civilisation.

Um.. most of the natives in South America are losing out to clear-cut logging. I'm not sure how a refrigerator is going to help that.

I don't go to the movies to get preached to and I don't go to concerts to hear the performers political opinions. Wrong venues.

I bought the first disc I could when it came out. And it's still sitting unwatched on the shelf.

Your pointless consumerism is part of the problem.

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