On Time and Water QUOTES

2 " Molte persone hanno avuto negli ultimi mesi la sensazione di vivere un'apocalisse, ma occorre ricordare che il significato della parola greca apokálypsis è «rivelazione». In questo senso i fatti recenti sono stati un'apocalisse: hanno rivelato la nsotra vulnerabilità, lo smog, le nostre catene di distribuzione, la competenza o incompetenza dei governi, le disparità e i privilegi. Ci hanno mostrato che la salute non è una questione individuale, perché la salute di ogni individuo del pianeta è legata alla salute di ogni altro individuo del pianeta ― e che la salute di tutti dipende a sua volta dalla salute degli ecosistemi della Terra. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

4 " Per tutto il XX secolo abbiamo preteso che la terra ci fosse utile, abbiamo voluto aumentarne la resa [...]. Buonsenso, lo abbiamo chiamato. A che ci serve una palude? Perché avere tante mosche? Perché non liberarci della concorrenza di volpi e coccodrilli? Decidiamo di salvaguardare una zona solo quando ne vediamo l'utilità pratica: la sua trasformazione in un parco nazionale o in un'attrazione turistica; e l'utilità dev'essere quantificabile, almeno in termini di profitto: occupazione, merchandising attività collegate. Quando si parla della barriera corallina si citano sempre la pesca e il turismo. L'arte, la giustifichiamo con delle vendite e il volume d'affari. La cultura e la scienza devono sempre trovare la loro legittimazione nei beni di consumo e nell'occupazione che creano. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

6 " Those who define the world based on money, industry and production capacity have seemingly been spared from acquiring an understanding of biology, geology or ecology. They calculate statistics and feel optimistic. What’s fatal to the Earth and unsustainable for the future is hidden by the words ‘favorable economic outlook’. Increased oil production is positive for the economy; doubling aluminium production is positive. Economic growth doesn’t distinguish sustainability and unsustainability. Imagine making no distinction between strengthening or fattening, or between a child or a tumour growing in the womb. Growth is simply presented as an inherent good; there’s no distinction made between malignant and benign growth. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

8 " Ocean acidification is one of the largest unique geological events that the Earth has undergone in the last fifty million years. And it introduces another concept to which we connect poorly: time itself. Although time is properly called linear, imagining that the ocean will change more in the next hundred years than it has in the last fifty million years is a challenge. The time since Iceland’s settlement is very short, not more than twelve times my Grandma’s life: eleven hundred years. The history of Iceland is, in a sense, a continuous story of twelve women like my Grandma. Twelve girls who were born and lived lives that each felt like a flash. Twelve women in their nineties stretching out their hands as if they’re doing water aerobics, touching flat palms together. Their eyes gleam because time passes so fast that their eyes don’t realise they’re nearly a hundred years old. Time runs so fast that Jesus was born around twenty-one grandmas ago. They’d all fit in a single city bus, even if you added all their husbands. The earliest written records of humans date back five thousand years, events that happened practically yesterday. Humanity first emerged the day before that, in comparison to the ocean’s fifty-millionyear history. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

10 " Glaciers are frozen manuscripts that tell stories just like tree circles and sedimentary deposits; from them, you can gather information and create a picture of the past. Glaciers store histories of volcanic activity. They store pollen, rainwater and air that reveal the chemical make-up of the atmosphere tens of thousands of years back in time. They are important sources of details about vegetation and precipitation of the past. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

12 " The term ‘ocean acidification’ was only coined in 2003, by the atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira. According to the media registry Tímarit.is, this concept first appeared in print in Icelandic, súrnun sjávar , in the newspaper Morgunbladid on 12 September 2006. After that, it appeared once in 2007, never in 2008 and twice in 2009. By contrast, the word ‘profit’, hagnadur , came up 1,170 times in 2006 and 540 times in 2009, according to the same source. By 2011, the debate had developed only so far as to warrant five print occurrences of ‘ocean acidification’. ‘Kardashian’ appeared 180 times. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

14 " In order to achieve the goals of the Paris Treaty – that global warming should not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius – CO2 emissions must be reduced to zero by 2050. In order to succeed, we will also need to invent technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere in quantities that are equal to all today’s emissions. This is one of the biggest challenges humankind has ever faced. What is being proposed is an unprecedented turnaround in the world’s energy mechanisms. And 2050 is exactly as far into the future as 1990 is in the past. Since 1990, emissions have increased from twenty-two gigatons to thirty-six gigatons. That’s a 60 per cent increase. To get emissions down to zero in thirty years sounds like an unmanageable task. Like constructing a time machine, thwarting gravity or inventing a pill for bringing someone back to life. No one knows whether it’s technically possible to capture thirty gigatons per year. The technology is at an early stage and no one has figured out buildings or infrastructure that could enable us to achieve our goals. Even if we reduce emissions by 50 per cent, our problems will still have increased if we do nothing to remove the carbon dioxide already in the air. If we don’t succeed in that project, the Earth will continue to warm, the glaciers will continue to melt and the sea levels will continue to rise, submerging cities and coastal areas. The market value of a 100 million barrels of oil is about $6 billion, assuming a $60/barrel price for oil. We therefore burn approximately $600 billion a day. If anyone thinks changing our sources of energy will "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

16 " My favorite section is about usefulness: Thirty spokes coming together make up a wheel but it is the hole for the axle that makes the wheel useful. We throw clay to shape pots which work because they are hollow. Men cut out doors and windows and the house’s empty space inside makes it useful. For existence to bear fruit what does not exist is most useful.30 "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

18 " You had to be able to use nature, in some way, even if only as the backdrop for a car commercial. Nothing is allowed to have an undefined purpose; everything must be quantifiable, regardless of whether the metrics match the reality or not. The power to define reality and to discuss the value of nature belongs to economics. Politicians talked down the region, saying it was nothing special. The farmers who ‘owned’ the land went to the papers and sounded off about how the area really wasn’t particularly remarkable, how it was primarily city folk who were losing their minds over the situation: ‘To be honest, I’d be happy not to have to go all the way up there into the ravines to round up the sheep each year.’ I was part of the crowd arguing "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water

20 " La bella notizia è che gran parte del cambiamento strutturale [necessario] può avvenire entro i limiti della nostra teconologia. E che in questi mesi ci siamo forse resi conto di poter fare a meno di molte delle nostre abitudini peggiori. Per prevenire il disastro climatico non sarebbe necessario assumere comportamenti estremi comè stato nel caso della pandemia. Molte delle cose che abbiamo smesso di fare - abbracciare la nonna, goderci le vie affollate, stringere la mano ad uno sconosciuto, andare ai concerti, alle partite, in biblioteca, a scuola e ai caffè - non influiranno sulla salute del pianeta: non sono queste le abitudini da abbandonare per contrastare il riscaldamento globale. La speranza è che l'apocalisse, lo svelamento di tutto, ci abbia mostrato che cosa ci serve davvero e a che cosa possiamo rinunciare, e con che rapidità possiamo decidere di agire, se prendiamo sul serio i moniti lanciati dalla scienza. "

― Andri Snær Magnason , On Time and Water