Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Against the Fred Singer picture: a poem for Cancún

 The Hollies knew: All we need is the air that we breathe (and to love you). But the air we live in is not given or "just there" anymore. That's the strange lesson of anthropogenic climate change. For more than hundred years, engineers are already experts in cooling / heating closed spaces. In shopping malls we even have artificial air with different scents. In the future, living will be more than ever a problem of air conditioning.
Meteorology has turned weather events successfully into a spectacle for the TV news. And now the atmosphere. We are in it, whether we want to or not. The air we live in is as much a technological problem as it is a philosophical one. Where are we when we are "in the atmosphere", when we live "in air"? Maybe this lady knows. We should find out what she is thinking of, what she is seeing and what she is dreaming of.

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