Me and my Tesla

Still partially on European time, I woke up at 3 am this morning, went down to the hotel gym in anticipation of what I feared would be a rather difficult day. After all, going into these panels, knowing that most of the people will be vehemently opposed to what you are going to say, is never easy. As such, I thought it was best to top up the treadmill running with some triple bypass pancakes and lots of black coffee.

To my surprise, the panel organized by Damian White at the Rhode Island School of Design, turned out to be exceptionally collegial, like the anti-twitter of environmental discourse, with genuine respect for the different viewpoints. Walking away for yet more coffee afterwards, I realized that there had been exactly zero alienation, quite the difference from WPSA 2019.

At the panel, I also the privilege of meeting Manuel and his PhD student Daniel. Having picked up my rental Tesla Model 3 at SFO (full review here), I asked Daniel if he wanted to come along for an improvised visit to the new headquarters of the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, an offer that he was most happy to accept as he is writing his PhD on the history and values of ecomodernism. Unintentionally, just driving across the Bay, in this black spaceship of sorts, somehow in itself turned out to perfectly illustrate the ambiguities of the Anthropocene and the vexed choices that we are faced with going forward.