When Larvatus Prodeo folded originally in 2012 the one option I ruled out was starting my own blog. The plain fact is that my computer skills are such that I’d never be able to create a place I’d like to live in. Then tigtog offered to help and help she did, putting up with my numbskullery and faltering comprehension.

So here we are. Welcome to Climate Plus. I’ve grown fond of the place and I hope you do too.

In Climate Plus we have a blog designed and customised by tigtog at VIVidWeb, powered by WordPress and hosted by DreamHost. It’s been in an advanced state of development since October 2012, when I put it aside to do some writing about family history. Then it was overtaken by the revival of LP.

It’s meant to be a friendly place, with simple but functional features.

As to what we might achieve here I’ll quote from Curt Stager’s book Deep Future: the next 100,000 years of life on earth:

In this new Age of Humans, our thoughts and desires have become powerful environmental forces in their own rights, and how we think and act can be as important to millions of other human (and other species) as to ourselves. The better we know and respect each other as people, the more we’re likely to learn from one another, the more likely we are to understand each other’s needs and goals, and the more likely we are to cooperate effectively for our mutual benefit. Greenhouse pollution problems will not be solved piecemeal, and there is also no way to avoid making a collective choice one way or the other. We’ll either decide to solve them as a self-aware global community or we’ll decide to suffer through them together as a disjointed mob of individuals. (Emphasis added)

We may be just talking about climate change here, but in our own sphere we are creating meaning. You never know when a sleeper may be planted that makes a real difference in the larger scene.

John Davidson joins as a foundation author who brings the practical perspective of a process engineer, not just any engineer, a process engineer experienced in setting up systems that work. You can read about him here.There may be others later.

I plan not to become victim to ‘feeding the beast’, so I’ll post as time and inclination permits. Soon my sister and her husband come from Canada to visit, when I’ll take a bit of time out. Later in July I’m joining my brother and my wife as part of a convoy driving out to Central Australia and back via Simpson’s Desert. We’ll have a satellite phone for emergencies, but that’s all.

You’ll notice that tigtog has brought across many of the posts I did at LP in recent years. In addition there’s Gillard on the world stage which I posted in February, in part as a trial. We have more in the bin which will be fed in over the coming days, so there will be plenty to chew on initially.

So welcome aboard, tell your friends and we’ll see how we go!

The image at the head of this post comes from Neal Elbaum’s collection.

As a concluding perspective I’ll post this shot of the earth from Voyager 1. In the Age of Anthropocene we have collectively become responsible for the future of our little space ship. But does the universe care? There are over 200 billion suns in the Milky Way and over 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe, some of which have over 100 trillion stars:

What matters is that we care and we have to learn to care collectively.