In the mean time, the Maldives have vowed to become carbon neutral within a decade, by totally eliminating their dependency on fossil fuels, and switching completely to solar and wind energy. Even though the total cost of this plan will be worth more than their entire annual GDP, it will save them a lot of money in the long run: it should pay for itself in ten years, then after that their energy costs will be cut dramatically from what they are now (as they are currently dependent on oil imports to supply their energy needs). Hopefully they won’t be the only country who does such a calculation.

So why is a country of such modest means (and carbon footprint) as the Maldives leading the way in climate change initiatives? Basically because they—like other low-lying island nations—will be the first countries to be seriously effected by global warming, as predicted sea level rises will mean they are threatened with being under water in the not too distant future. They want to set an example that other nations will follow, in the hope that they will be able to avert this threat to their very existence. As we are such selfish and shortsighted creatures, nothing motivates us like our own self-interest.

Thing is though, dealing with climate change isn’t just in the self-interest of the Maldives and other island nations; it is in all of our self-interest. The fact of the matter is, to say that environmentalism is “saving the planet” isn’t really correct, as the planet will survive no matter what we do, and life will adapt and survive. Of course, many of the species that exist today will go extinct, so you could say environmentalism is saving the planet as we know it. But more than anything else, environmentalism is about saving ourselves. Perhaps no other species in the history of our planet is more dependent on a stable, unchanging environment than we are, yet ironically, we have also done more to alter the natural environment than any other species in history. Of course, we have only set out to modify the environment to suit our own selfish needs, but when one species is so out of balance with everything else, there will inevitably be consequences. I will discuss the likely extent of this in a future article.

However much of global warming is caused by human activities though, it is very clear that we are ill-equipped to deal with dramatic climate change. In the mean time however, in order to get people to act most effectively on this issue, I think we need to put it in the terms that matter the most to us: it is about our survival, not the planet’s. If we do that, I think people will be more likely to act.

Now Google was supposed to be interested in Twitter because of their search capabilities, which apparently was the main reason they bought YouTube—Google just wants to control all the different ways people can search for things on the internet, even if they don’t make money in themselves. I guess there’s a logic to that. But in the case of Facebook, we have a massively popular web 2.0 darling that still can’t make money, wanting to buy another massively popular web 2.0 darling that doesn’t have any source of revenue at all, to the tune of $500 million! Yet even though they have no revenue (or even an actual business model), Twitter not only rejected Facebook’s offer, they also managed to raise another $35 million in venture capital!

Surely I can’t be the only person who looks at this and wonders what the hell is going on here? Isn’t the massive investment in these web 2.0 companies that haven’t found a way to make money yet just like the dot.com bubble all over again? And all this at a time when it is so hard for people to get capital for longstanding, legitimate businesses? Something just doesn’t add up here. Is there some rule of doing business on the internet that I’m missing here? If so, I’d really like to know what it is!

Perhaps Twitter’s strategy—and perhaps the strategy of all these web 2.0 companies in fact—is simply to generate a lot of buzz, so they can get bought out at the best possible price. If so, Twitter obviously thinks it can get more than half a billion. But how many times will people keep buying out these companies that don’t make any money, before they realise it just isn’t a good deal any more?

The other alternative of course is that Twitter thinks it eventually will be able to find a way to make money. The only obvious way to do this would be through advertising and/or paid subscriptions. I can’t see any reason why the first will have any more success than other social networking sites—indeed, given the nature of Twitter, it would almost certainly be less successful. And if people have to pay to use it, you can watch its popularity fall through the floor, and get taken over by another, free alternative with yet more venture capital to burn behind it. They’ll likely adopt a “pay for no ads” model, and still not make any money. And who knows: it might just make people think about whether Twitter actually really is useful at all. I remain mystified as to what possible use it could be myself.

Perhaps what they’re hoping to do is sell information—e.g. we can tell you what people are thinking and saying right now. Now that does sound compelling for a political party or an advertising firm, but apart from the obvious potential privacy issues, is it really very useful information? After all, it can only tell them what Twitter users are thinking and saying—and I’m not sure I’d want to know that.

Well I think it’s high time we had a little comic relief, so as I’ve just seen Ghost Town—and I enjoyed The Office and Extras—I thought it would be appropriate to post this video of Ricky Gervais talking about the Bible. The Bible is a very easy target for comedians, as it is just so patently absurd—it is totally unbelievable that any educated adult could accept what it says literally, yet so many do! It’s utterly incredible how people can switch off their normal critical faculties when it comes to religion.