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

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I saw the other day an add on CNN for a company striving to turn sea water into drinkable water, which I presume would be used not only for humans but for agriculture too. I think that's where one of the main problems is going to lie - people fighting for resources and spilling into countries that have less problems than their own. It's hard to guess though - chicken flu could come back in some new unstoppable way and cut the population down... who knows.

For all it's worth, you are all invited to hole up here in my brasilian farm and start a commune with me!