Dot Earth Blog: My TEDx Talk: We Are Perfect, With a Hefty Asterisk

I just gave a talk at TEDx Portland — a daylong event focused on various interpretations of the word "perfect."

I was hardly perfect, but hopefully conveyed my core conclusion: that in our variegation and imperfection, we humans — with motivation and sustained work — are perfectly suited for surviving, and perhaps thriving, in a consequential, complicated century and changing climate.

The talk was shaped around the post I recent built on a string of Twitter haikus in which I listed eight traits that, if nurtured, can help sustain human progress on a finite planet:

"Bend, Stretch, Reach, Teach, Reveal, Reflect, Rejoice, Repeat."

I started by referring to a sobering conversation I had on a grassy slope by a beautiful fountain at the lunch break. I was sitting with Yumei Wang, the director of Oregon's geohazards team (and Edward Wolf, a Portland campaigner for earthquake safety).

As regular readers will have guessed, we were talking about the highly imperfect human reaction to the profound seismic threat the Northwest faces from the Cascadia fault off the coast. Wang described the impact of the next inevitable great quake on a host of schools in the state that were built of unreinforced masonry before the danger was recognized: "They'll snap like candy canes instead of bending like licorice sticks."

Of course I also focused on another threat that is largely unaddressed — the buildup of human-generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But, given the failure of decades of pledges and agreements aimed at curbing emissions, I suggested it was time to move away from a longstanding focus on numerical goals — such as 350 (parts per million of CO2), 80 percent (in emissions cuts) by 2050, a 2-degree limit on warming — and toward the goal of maximizing the suite of traits I described in those eight words.

I hope you'll listen and weigh in.

All of the other presentations — by programmers, graphic designers, chefs, wireless-electricity innovators, the rapper Maclamore and more — are archived here.

Addendum, 10:28 p.m. Pacific time | There's a nice post summarizing some highlights on the blog of KOIN, the CBS affiliate in Portland: "Six things to take from TEDx Portland."

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Dot Earth Blog: My TEDx Talk: We Are Perfect, With a Hefty Asterisk

Dengan url

https://scienceteko.blogspot.com/2014/04/dot-earth-blog-my-tedx-talk-we-are.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Dot Earth Blog: My TEDx Talk: We Are Perfect, With a Hefty Asterisk

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Dot Earth Blog: My TEDx Talk: We Are Perfect, With a Hefty Asterisk

sebagai sumbernya