New Atwood

[commonpeople1]

margaret atwood, a photo by Anne Smyth (bebbers.ca) on Flickr.

Reasons to be happy: Margaret Atwood has a new book out and it's a collection of essays, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

Reasons to be sad: this last bit from an interview with Jascha Hoffman:

I’m past the age when things scare me. But if I were younger, I would be looking down the line with some apprehension. A world with more than 9 billion people is not going to be very habitable. We’ve already used 90% of the fish in the sea. Global warming will make it worse: more droughts, more extreme weather and limited harvests. People think they will fix the problem with technology, but famine may fix it for us. Either way it will be a pretty miserable life. The infinite inventiveness of humans sometimes makes me feel hopeful, but we’re just as capable of inventing horrible things as good things.

Comments

[leicesterstreet.livejournal.com]

I think it is a mistake to just assume we will just invent our way out of this problem.

Civilizations have risen and fallen before, it would be unwise to assume that same wouldn't happen again.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

It will definitely happen again. We can't go on like this.