Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

chapter 4
The Carbon Connection
Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we
create . . . From the earliest times, human civilization has been no
more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour,
of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will
fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night,
and the fi res still spread.
—W. G. Sebald
Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human
career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress
traps . . . The most compelling reason for reforming our system is that
the system is in no one’s interest. It is a suicide machine.
—Ronald Wright
Having seen pictures of the devastation did
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not prepare me for the reality of New Orleans.
Mile after mile of wrecked houses, demolished cars, piles of debris,
twisted and downed trees, and dried mud everywhere. We stopped
every so often to look into abandoned houses in the 9th Ward and
along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain to see things close up: mud
lines on the walls, overturned furniture, moldy clothes still hanging
in closets, broken toys, a lens from a pair of glasses . . . once
cherished and useful objects rendered into junk. Each house had a
red circle painted on the front to indicate the results of the search
for bodies. Some houses showed the signs of desperation, such as