Because we have not yet grasped the enormity of what is happing.
Why?
Because there are so many dimensions to the climate problem – natural science, social science, policy etc.
It’s all jolly well to say that human-induced climate change is widely regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – moral challenges of the 21st century. Not merely does it raise numerous ethical issues, but many of these are profoundly difficult and take us to the limits of our moral imagination.
Moreover, the ethical dilemmas posed by climate change arise at multiple levels – for citizens, scientists, policymakers, organisations, companies, nation-states and the international community – and traverse many different areas of moral inquiry.
If we go on ignoring climate change there will be a social collapse not because the world is getting warmer but because we will be unable to feed ourselves.
There might well be a growing realisation by the public that the weather is changing but in the scientific community, there is a growing realisation that we are rapidly approaching if not already reaching tipping point.
The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased.
If existing feedbacks change because the climate changes, or if new feedbacks like permafrost or methane hydrates become relevant, 2C rise will not be the bottom of the range. Add in the extra warming arising from the loss of ice and you have temperatures rises away above.
You don’t have to be a climate scientist to agree that these anomalies are a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming is exceedingly small.
It is not possible to continue with unstainable capitalist profit which is destroying itself by ignoring science.
Here are the questions yet to be answered.
What is the nature and extent of our responsibilities to future generations?
What is the value of individual species and ecosystems, and how should we value the possible extinction of millions of species?
How should we make decisions in the face of uncertainty, including the possibility of catastrophic and irreversible damage to our planet?
What criteria should be used to determine the appropriate targets for the
stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?
Who should pay for the inevitable costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to what extent, if at all, should those who suffer the negative impacts of climate change be compensated?
How should the international community respond if certain sovereign states block effective global action or refuse to contribute fairly to the collective effort?
The above are also the reasons that we will be unable to act as one.
Capitalism unsustainable policies for profit ensure this. No one wants to bear the cost.
So there is only one solution to make a profit for profit sake pay.
A world aid commission of 0.05% on all profit. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicking and abuse chucked in the bin.
I acknowledge receipt of your email to the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar T.D.
Is mian liom a admháil go bhfuarthas do ríomhphost chuig an Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar T.D
While I appreciate that it is not possible to reply to everyone this is what is wrong with Politicians, hiding behind the unnamed relying on Algorithms.
So in the vain hope of attracting your attention, I am publishing the letter in my Flipboard Magazines. With a request that my reader past it on.
I have also sent this letter to the Irish Times in the hope they might publish it.
The letter:
16/07/2019
Dear Taoiseach,
I write as a man from the land of the Green.
In my life, I have had the great gift of travelling a great deal of the world both by land and sea.
We have recently celebrated the first man on the moon some fifty years ago.
Then as a much younger man, I watched Armstrong place his foot with the famous words.
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Never did I think that our world so full of life and beauty might become the dust that his boot stood on.
Every human being has a relationship with plastic but unfortunately not ever one has a relationship with nature that is now facing a crisis that requires once again International recognition of the Unity of the Globe that the moon landing did all those years ago.
This is where Ireland under your leadership has a moral duty to call on all nations of the world to attend a unity of the global conference, in the Emerald Isle the land of forty shades of green.
The Paris Climate change conference achieved shallow unbinding promises.
The clock is ticking until the next US election starting in November 2020 with the winner inaugurated on Wednesday, January 20, 2021.
Just think of the influence of such a world meeting would have on the election of new USA president and its policies re Climate Change.
If you want to leave a legacy to be remembered by other than the backstop/Brexit what better opportunity to promote the Green.
This gathering should have not just world leaders but leading Industrials, representatives from world organisations and the young that are going to inherit the earth.
Its sole purpose is to present the facts from all side and recognize the need for the world to act as one and achieve a just climate change program that is binding and fully financed – a moon landing moment.
The venue could be at Croke Park.
Ireland could lead by example such as banning combustion engines from its major city centre once a month, declaring clear skies once a month, granting long term repayable governments grants to green energy initiatives like solar panels.
For every participant in attendance.
Ireland could plant a tree to offset their travelling carbon footprint.
As warnings of global climate change grow ever direr, no one knows quite what the effect over time will be.
A slowing Gulf stream, or the melting of arctic sea ice.
Climate is already wreaking havoc in some very weird ways.
Just how bad is it really?
We should be terrified.
Yes, we all know that climate change is a concern, but if you are not currently losing sleep over it you are nowhere near having a proper appreciation of what is at stake.
Just how worried should you be that climate change might kill your children?
No one can foretell the future.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the climate change story is not that we know exactly what is causing the rise in average global temperature, but that we have known about it for so long.
Fantastic, you declare.
So if we know for sure it is the burning of fossil fuels that is the cause of global warming we can just switch over to renewable sources of energy (like solar and wind turbines) and the crisis will be over. Temperatures will stop rising. Right?
Unfortunately, no.
The magnitude of the climate change threat is immense.
With our predictions consistently underestimate the severity of the problem.
There’s just no way, it cannot all come to a swift end in less than 30 years from now.
If you wrap my head around some very extreme predictions of climate catastrophe within the decade basically your worse horror story comes true on the human race, culminating in it being wiped from the face of the planet.
Surely nonsense. Except… It is true.
Savage wildfires, 25-mile long icebergs, disappearing lakes, freak allergies, and the threat of long-gone diseases re-emerging should be enough to convince the most unconvinced.
Here are a few other facts unreported.
Speed up the melting of glaciers, and mountains will rebounding faster.
Slows down satellites, requiring engineers to periodically boost them back into their proper orbits.
Speed up the thawing of permanently frozen soil – lakes draining,(125 lakes in the Arctic have disappeared in the past few decades), mudslides. rock falls, sinkholes- long-dormant diseases like smallpox could re-emerge as the ancient dead, their corpses thawing along with the tundra, get discovered by modern man.
Temples, ancient settlements and other artefacts that stand as monuments to civilizations past will disappear.
Because the earth is warming the migration of birds is changing so is the genetic profile of their entire population changing.
Arctic Phytoplankton Blooms Earlier
Your grandchildren will inherit inexorably rising temperatures that render much of the Earth uninhabitable. Their problem? Yes, but yours, too.
Humans are the most common large animal to ever walk the planet, in the not so distant future we are likely to be besieged by climate “refugees” arriving.
A 4C temperature rise will result in a global economic meltdown, disastrous food shortages and conflicts over natural resources and water.
Cars, trains, roads, and buildings, flood barriers, drains, underground systems, reservoirs, power stations, ports and all are designed for existing temperatures, sea levels and rainfall.
Even worse, the warmer, wetter conditions will encourage the fungal, algal, tick-and-mosquito-borne diseases we usually only see in the tropics. with climate change will be a recipe for social disorder, ill–health and mass grumpiness.
If there are water and power cuts, as expected, then get ready for migrations out of urban areas to the cooler countryside.
4% is quite enough to kill off trees, wildlife, garden plants, insects, and river life.
The notion that human activity, or the activity of any organism, can affect Earth on a planetary scale is still a hard one for many people to swallow. And it is this kind of disbelief that fuels much of the public scepticism surrounding global warming.
However, our intelligence, technology and sheer numbers mean our species packs a punch that can shake the world in wild ways.
Climate scientists confidently expect temperatures to rise up to 4C by 2100.
ARE THEY DETACHED FROM REALITY.
I DONT THINK SO.
Economics is a fully owned subsidiary of the biosphere. The sooner we realize it the better.
Rising productivity is damaging us all.
The economy should serve us all rather than dominate us all and it must work within the planetary ecological boundaries.
We most let more of the real word into economical spending decisions.
If nations invested 2.5 per cent of their GDP, or about $2.4 trillion globally each year, in the restructuring OF OUR WORLD MARKETS they may be able to perform the required transition TO A SUSTAINABLE MARKET PLACE in 20 years.
IN THE MEANTIME;
No matter how high humans cause the mercury to rise and how much damage we do to the planet, Earth and life will survive. It just might no longer be in the form we prefer or the form that allows us to thrive.
Earth could care less.
We will be recorded as a minor perturbation in the Earth system. The Earth will go on.
The question is: Will we?”
We can have no climate justice without migrant justice.
(SEE PREVIOUS POST FOR POSITIVE SUGGESTIONS TO SOLVE CLIMATE CHANGE)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicking and abuse chucked in the bin.
With all our technology and communication tools one would think by now that the messages being sent by Earth in the form of climate change would be ringing alarm bells all around the world.
Unfortunately, our existential anxiety is still not fueled by a burning planet.
We have many world leaders, but no leadership.
Yes, the world is better off when leaders act in their nations’ best interests and it is hard to argue that we’re not in a time of crises. Civilisation is best served when leaders also act in the best interest of their region and that of the community of nations.
That requires leadership.
The reality of climate change is now staring us all in the face but we are unable to take collective action.
We all have different views on today’s reality, but when our world and civilization has been viewed as it truly is, nothing could be more disgusting than what pathetic human rule has done to our entire world population.
The UN remains an indispensable world forum to coordinate policies, voice grievances, and even take collective action. But the effectiveness of the world body is determined only by the efficacy of the leaders of its member states, notably those permanent residents of the UN Security Council – the world’s government.
Unfortunately, they preach that which they don’t practise, cause tensions, and create more problems than they solve.
Therefore seeing just how much civilization all around this world has been suffering so badly in many different ways through pollution, genocide, violence, GMO, pharmaceuticals, human trafficking, slavery, torture, and now natural worldwide disasters, you would be right to say the chances of global cooperation to tackle Climate change is impossible.
When all that any individual can really see is all the pain, suffering, and the many difficulties upon billions; all they really want most out of their own life is the way to help all on this earth by taking control but the chances of replacing greed with common sense are zero. As human beings in a messed up world, all that we can do is live day by day with hope for better tomorrows.
This is the reason why we just do not hear the truth that the world is at a pivotal point.
The Earth is a beautiful machine without consciousness hence it will react without any self-monitoring ability.
The old world order is no more, but there’s no new world order either. The confusion allows all to blame all, and in the process, everyone escapes accountability for their lack of international responsibility.
Climate change might sound unbelievable but it is not a false alarm.
It is never wise to underestimate the ingenuity of Mother Nature and I am sure that there is no one doubts that the future will still have unpleasant biological surprises in store.
It seems a sensible precaution, therefore, to start taking action before the climate is wreaking havoc on the human race.
We cannot be sure that anything our primitive species ever designed would be effective against Climate change.
History is full of nightmares, some natural some man-made.
We might have peace of mind before whatever inescapable doom awaits us ( in not the so distant future) Accepting that it is an impossibility to get humanity to act as one we need a country to lead by example.
As there is no good worldwide for the benefit of our entire population, but rather only misleading lies in every direction what better country than Ireland the land of forty shades of green.
WHY NOT CALL A WORLD CONFERENCE:
Every human being has a relationship with plastic but unfortunately not ever one has a relationship with nature that is now facing a crisis that requires once again International recognition of the Unity of the Globe.
This is where Ireland has a moral duty to call on all nations of the world to attend a Unity of the global conference, in the Emerald Isle.
For every participant in attendance, Ireland will plant a tree to offset their travelling carbon footprint.
The Paris Climate change conference achieved shallow unbinding promises.
The clock is ticking until the next US election starting in November 2020 with the winner inaugurated on Wednesday, January 20, 2021.
Just think of the influence of such a world meeting would have on the election of new USA president and its policies re Climate Change.
If you want to leave a legacy to be remembered by other than the backstop/Brexit what better opportunity to promote the Green.
This gathering should have not just world leaders but leading Industrials, representatives from world organisations and the young that are going to inherit the earth.
Its sole purpose is to present the facts from all side and recognize the need for the world to act as one and achieve a just climate change program that is binding and fully financed – a moon landing moment.
The venue could be at Croke Park.
We are now in need of universal laws of logic and we have to assemble them in such a way that at least one of them work.
There is no more room or time for the Blame game.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
THE BASIC SCIENCE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE IS ACTUALLY SIMPLE AS IS THE BASIC REALITY OF THE ONE CERTAINTIES IN CLIMATE SCIENCE. THE WORLD HAS GOT WARMER.
It’s no longer an academic question or a question to be arguing from a position of hope.
Dealing with the impact on the environment requires concerted action, not just by a few, but by everyone.
With increasing frequency, evidence of global warming and climate change are making headlines around the world. Politicians, while giving lip service to the dangers that lie ahead for the planet, lack a fundamental understanding of either the dangers or the solution to the problem.
They all promise a technological solution but fail to grasp the social context which makes the problem difficult to solve.
The urgency and complicated nature of a solution put humanity at a distinct disadvantage and many scientists involved in the study of our planet concur that if we act now, we would only be able to make a difference in what is happening by the end of the century.
The problem is that the situation is growing more desperate and yet those in power are not.
Why are these issues so difficult to address?
Because the crisis looms because of the power of money of the oil companies. They have a vested interest in not developing other forms of energy to compete with oil.
Because the present shifts we are experiencing are not global.
At present, there is no chain reaction around the world that pushes Earth into a terrifying new hothouse state from which there is no return.
Because of the diagnosis of climate change is still a scientific issue, the response to it is not.
Because the world, after 30 years of warnings, has barely got to grips with reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Leaving fossil fuels in the ground is, for example, a question of regulation, while investing in renewable energy is a policy choice, and modernising our housing stock to make it energy efficient is about overcoming the lobbying power of the building industry the energy industry.
Because while extracting new fossil fuels continuing, we are on course for another 2C or 3C to transform Earth this century. At best we are flatlining, with investments in Green energy.
Because none of this climate change will be smooth, gradual and linear changes. It may be fast, abrupt, and dangerous surprises may happen.
Because climate migration is already happening.
Europe is not coping well with even modest numbers of migrants, and future flows look likely to increase substantially as migration itself is an adaptation to rapid climate change.
How will the cooler, richer parts of the world react to tens of millions of people escaping the hotter, poorer parts?
Because if we throw into the mix long-term stagnating incomes for most people across the west and climate-induced crop failures causing massive food price spikes and we have a recipe for widespread unrest that could overload political institutions.
Because we now have inward-looking nationalists that will move us further away from the internationalism needed to ensure the continuation of stable global food supplies and to manage migration humanely. And without cooperative internationalism serious carbon dioxide mitigation will not happen, meaning the underlying drivers of the problems will exacerbate, leading to a lock-in of a deteriorating, isolationist, fascist future.
We are facing the same three choices in response to climate change as we did before this scorching summer:
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation), make changes to reduce the adverse impacts of the new conditions we create (adaptation), or suffer the consequences of what we fail to mitigate or adapt to.
So what can be done?
In order to alter the direction of climate change, an effective strategy, based on a consensus between developing and industrialized nations, is essential.
This agreement must address the social factors inherent in the system- inequality.
Politicians will need to understand the real issues involved in technology and its social aspects and adopt plans which will have long term goals.
Can the damage done be reversed? Only time can tell, but climate change is certainly becoming increasingly apparent, and immediate action is necessary if irreparable damage is to be averted.
Given the colossal wealth and the scientific knowledge available today, we can solve many of the world’s pressing problems and all live well.
Given that our environmental impacts are so long-lasting, the future is the politics we make today. The future is up to us if we act collectively and engage in politics.
As I have suggested in previous posts all activities that are profit for profit sake should be made to contribute to a world aid fund. ( See previous posts) Market forces are really important — and that they could be harnessed to fight climate change.
No governments,no countries, no companies, no forms of taxation, no non-binding promises, no tree planting, no electric cars, no world organisations , no one person, no protests, no declaration of an emergency, no extensions, no amount of warming, no amounts of warnings, no natural disasters will make any financial contributions to the trillion that are going to be needed.
We all know our world is in a state of crisis but we have seen nothing yet that is going to accompany climate change.
I am sure that there is no need to draw the picture.
We do know some incontrovertible facts, however. CO2 concentrations, temperatures and sea levels are all rising.
Why are we being such idiots about climate change?
Climate change deniers say nothing is certain. True, we don’t know if the planet will be two degrees or ten degrees warmer in 2100. Yes, humans may be causing climate change, but trying to do anything meaningful would collapse the economy and send us back to the Dark Ages.
The sobering truth is that the planet has already been responding faster than expected. It’s crushingly obvious that fighting climate change should be one of the world’s top priorities.
What gives?
It’s not that they are stupid or blind. Instead, they seem to firmly believe that climate solutions inevitably mean more government, higher taxes and less freedom — and thus are threats to their core values and identity. Dire warnings of the looming climate disaster may just make people throw up their hands in despair, sink into denial, or dig their heels in deeper against government action.
So here’s where we now stand.
We have a pretty clear understanding of the threat climate change poses to us, our children and our grandchildren. We are already being forced to cope with more droughts, more floods, more extreme storms. At the same time, we have in our arsenal effective policies that are difficult for rational people to demagogue as crippling to the economy or as a subversion of our cherished way of life.
We thus face a stark choice. Do we let future historians excoriate us for our failure to act in time? Or do we step up to meet the challenge?
So it’s really up to you.
Insist that climate change be a key issue in elections and all future elections.
Combat the lies and deceit from the Koch brothers/ Donald Dump Presidents and other deep-pocketed climate deniers. Push for a reasonable fee on carbon and for incentives for renewable energy (and energy efficiency steps) at all levels of government.
Make Greed Pay:
To day we celebrate man landing on the moon. In not the so distant future we could be celberating the last man on earth.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Democracy is in the process of being hollowed out.
A lethal combination of a backlash against hard-won rights for women and minorities, and worsening economic and social insecurities are being exploited by rightwing demagogues.
The lights are going out – and if an alternative politics of hope fails, then darkness will consume us all.
Rather than insulting the voters Putin’s recent remarks at the G20 emphasize the emblematic of our broken politics.
We have a politics that’s is all breaking points and no bending, that may ultimately be headed where Putin says.
Look at Britain where the House of Lords is a broken, morally corrupt, anti-democratic institution. Where Parlement because of first past the post voting system does not represent the people as a whole. Where lies and farcical financial promises are driving it to isolation. Foreigner-bashing is all the current rage the kernel of Farage nationalism. Conservatives are a dying breed.
Look at Poland, whose authoritarian rightwing government has also seized the judiciary, attacked media freedom, attempted to undermine the right to protest and indulged in rampant migrant-bashing.
Look at Hungary where rampant corruption has led to Hungary being widely labelled a kleptocracy, and it has indulged in wanton antisemitism.
Look at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini – whose Northern League has soared in polls – has every chance of becoming the country’s leader in the near future.
Look at France yellow jackets right wing populous Marie La Penn a country where a strong left-wing element and a strong right-wing element always take any opportunity they can to contest virtually any changes proposed by any government that is not of their own persuasion. As a consequence, moderate political movements in France regularly find themselves obliged to pay lip service to more extreme groupings on their own side of the political spectrum, to avoid being accused of weakness. It’s true on the left, and it’s true on the right. A country where revolution is seen as an exercise of democratic rights, protesters usually draw public sympathy, and temporary chaos is seen as part of the price to pay.
Look at Turkey, once described as an emerging democracy, but whose de facto dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who rules through a never-ending state of emergency, has locked up and persecuted journalists and opponents, and concentrated power in his hands.
Look at the EU which is in need of fundamental reforms. Confronted by the spectre of its former self, Europe seems paralyzed. A two speed Europe that takes decisions from on high, and then, if they don’t work, they use every economic excuse possible to justify them as necessary to maintain the unity and progress. I do not agree with the economic homogeneity that binds the EU together what is needed is for citizens to feel like Europe is closer, notwithstanding the sharing of pseudo-values and the currency. Unitary economics, so far, has penalised us. Unitary politics, for me, does not represent us, the citizens. The euro has us trapped. If its goal is to dismantle nation-states, that will be the end of European democracy.
The EU is one of the motors of capitalist globalisation, the rule that all decisions should be made on the basis of profitability alone.
The people who really affect what happens must be democratically elected.
Join DiEM25.
Look at China with a population of around 1.404 billion one of the safest countries, with a low capital crime rate in the world. A concentration of never-married men, with little prospect of ever marrying, raises the potential for social instability.
Look at Russia acting as a traditional predatory nation-state. It’s trying to increase its wealth, expand its influence and maximize its power. It is a mess. It’s utterly corrupt. It represses any vigorous opposition and kills inconvenient journalists. Some, including US diplomats, have referred to the country as a mafia state.
Putin doesn’t care. He’s an autocrat and a nationalist it means holding the line against Putin’s expanding influence and waiting him out to see if his successor is more amenable to our interests and our values.
Look at the USA. Founded on the bedrock of freedom of expression, only about 1% of the actual population that lives in the US ever explores outside the USA. With 16 trillion dollars of debt, capitalism is slavery. Donald Trump represents everything the rest of the world hates about America. It has created more wars that never solved anything.
It is now on a downward trajectory which could doom it to second-class status as a world power and will result in more autocrats such as Donal Dumps being elected.
Look at China the myriad problems within Chinese society comes from the behaviour, values and the beliefs of its people. The Chinese government is an embodiment of deliberative democracy, it stops short of allowing full freedom of expression and transparency. If the Chinese people spent as much time and energy learning about the world and publicly deliberating the problems that plague their society as they do playing video games, text messaging, watching vapid American sitcoms and shopping for trendy brands, China would already be a completely advanced country and moreover a genuinely democratic one.
Look at the World. We’re digging our own grave.
Algorithms for profit are plundering the world unregulated while we gladly hand over for free our every waking minute of life to be analyzed by a few world corporations that are disconnecting us from reality.
If our worldview resonates with the natural order and the laws that govern the Universe, then we are able to find harmony in life. Perception of the world and our state of vitality depends on how accurately we can interpret the information we receive from our senses.
About saving the planet should do more than sitting back and watch it happen. This is indeed a world issue! Not just a human one!
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
AND NOW HAVE TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS WITH STONE AGE RULES.
WE CAN CALCULATE WHEN WE NEED TO BE DONE AND IT’S FRIGHTING WHATEVER WAY YOU LOOK AT IT.
IT’S ONLY US THAT CAN DESTROY THE CLIMATE OR CHANGE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR ENOUGH TO STOP IT.
We must now face the inevitable that long before Voyager Two sents back its last message it is most likely that there will be on here to hear it.
It’s happening everywhere, you can see it and you can feel it but for the most part, it is the invisible that will change first. Environmental change, Human factors, Economic effects and Political effects.
But, wait! There are people who are convinced that such a thing will never happen. Our ingenuity, they say, it is more than able to take care of that situation.
Without a habitable planet, we’re not destroying the world, we’re destroying ourselves.
There are six factors that make earth the habitable planet that it is now: water, temperature, atmosphere, energy, biogenic compounds and distance from the sun.
THERE IS NO POINT talking about it, writing, protesting, crying, the price has to paid now not in the distant future.
The change that is to come when we are the past will not suffice.
THERE IS NO POINT WAITING TO SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN.
THERE IS NO POINT IN PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENTS WHICH CANNOT BE INFORCED OR PAID FOR.
THERE IS NO POINT DECLARING AN EMERGENCY ON DEAF USA /CHINA/ RUSSIAN/ INDIA, EARS.
THERE IS NO POINT ASKING THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM TO CHANGE OR PAY FOR THE DAMAGE DONE.
These ecosystem services are taken for granted and their willful obliteration proceeds at an ever-accelerating pace, despite ample evidence that we are committing suicide.
THERE IS NO POINT RELYING ON TECHNOLOGY TO RECTIFY THE PROBLEMS.
THERE IS NO POINT IN PRAYING TO WHATEVER GOD OR GODS YOU BELIEVE IN.
THERE IS NO POINT RECYCLING PLASTIC BY BURNING FOSSIL FUELS.
We now pretend that returning to plant carbon that is produced in annual cycles will somehow replace the geological carbon sources produced over eons.
THERE IS NO POINT planting trees, virtue will not be rewarded.
THERE IS EVERY POINT TO TACKLE INEQUALITY.
Scarcity of resources that can be alleviated only by market-based solutions.
Unfortunately for all Earthlings of whatever religious persuasion, the pristine lakes, rivers and streams, clean beaches, thriving forests, living oceans and seas, and fertile unspoiled land, cannot be “produced” by more regulations or by less.
Despite recycling efforts, almost 9 million tons of plastic end up in our oceans.
To deliver biofuels that would displace all fossil fuels, as well as food, we would have to manufacture and colonize six extra Earth-like planets.
I submit to you that this is the grandest of the many delusions that have ripped through human cultures over the millennia.
So here is a blog to read that tell the truth.
( “In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities. Truth must be at all costs avoided.
When we do allow self-evident truths to percolate past our defences and into our consciousness, they are treated like so many hand grenades rolling across the dance floor of an improbably macabre dance party. We try to stay out of harm’s way, afraid that they will go off, shatter our delusions, and leave us exposed to what we have done to ourselves and to the world, expose us as the hollow people we have become.
And so we avoid these truths, these self-evident truths, and continue the dance of world destruction.” Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, Context Books, New York, 2000, Silencing, page 2.
People all across the world are scared, angry and disoriented, and their governments routinely fail to explain the very basics of what is going on. Why is that?
Perhaps for the first time in modern western democracy, our leaders and leading intellectuals are relying in an essential way on keeping people confused. This puts us on the opposite side of the moon from the attitudes of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and so on, who did their best to explain their thinking clearly to all. When these great men lived, the Earth surely seemed infinite, but she is very small today.
Here is the kicker: To pretend nowadays that the Earth is infinite, as most of us effectively do, and is capable of feeding our runaway economy ad infinitum requires some serious self-delusion.
In fairness to our leaders, they lie and we eagerly consume their lies, because otherwise, we would have to change from within, and for most people change is genetically impossible. Generally, we leave change to political campaign slogans which so obviously lies that we do not have to do anything.
So, this is how it goes. Someone lies about an economic recovery which is just around the corner; someone else lies about the banks that must be saved at any cost with our money because they are too big to fail; and yet somebody else professes that converting over half of our fossil-fuel driven food to a fossil-driven biofuel is good for all. And we all listen to these empty lies and eagerly try to believe them, for what else we can do. That is a good question, isn’t it: What else can we do? Can you think about a thing or two you could change on your own?
How far do we need to step outside of the current system of lies that are fact to most?
Not that far, it turns out. All we need to do is to admit that the Earth is finite, her resources are finite, and the current global economic system cannot grow. In Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the respective economic systems have already reached the maximum attainable complexity and must undergo deep simplifications.
My Conclusions
“ “Maturity,” Bokonon tells us, is “bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.” ”Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, Chapter 88, page 198.
More of the tropical forest has been burned alive and a new oil palm or soybean plantation is born. This plantation will produce biodiesel or feed for Chinese livestock. The good environmentalists will observe that the carbon footprint of the clean biodiesel produced on this plantation is negligible. The good marketers will say that a free-market solution is used to develop an idle resource in a third-world country. I say that everybody lies to cover this self-evident crime, but the living Earth is diminished further, in exchange for 10 – 20 years of someone’s illegal cash profits, most likely financed with a World Bank loan. After that, the polluted, depleted, and eroded-away land will be abandoned, and the plantation will take over another area of the forest. And so on, until we run out of the forest.
I am mature alright, and I laugh a lot, but this is what I must say through tears: The Earth is not in a state of “environmental crisis” that would imply a temporary condition amenable to remediation. Because of too many people, who consume too much and produce too many things using messy technologies, the Earth is in the state of chronic environmental degradation which shows signs of acceleration, not abating. There are no global solutions, but there are ever more deleterious designs on what is left of the environmental services of the planet. One such big design involves the production of biofuels in the tropics, and Europe and the United States of America are deeply implicated.
We want to avoid the outcome of Cat’s Cradle: All life on Earth being exterminated by superior science. Thus, we need to step out of the bounds of our current systems thinking and look from the outside on the false security of our complex societies. Perhaps then we will be able to see more clearly where this continuing environmental degradation leads us and do something.
It is safe to say that my difficult and unpleasant suggestions will not be heard by mainstream journalists and politicians on the left or the right. But what is bound to happen then? My natural laughter freezes when I think about the consequences of stumbling along, while also knowing that exactly nothing will happen until it is way-way too late“.)
Most people don’t realize What happens to our heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions after we release them, … will continue to expand even though Earth’s atmosphere has begun to recover.
A human can live for only 5 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 30 days without food.
If you want to live now is the time for Profit Capitalism to be made to pay. ( See previous posts on a World Aid
With Climate change now becoming a by-product of consumerism we will unfortunately all end up as products of our cultures.
There is no second world that any of us are going to to visit.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Our current direction of travel is not good. We need to stop talking about climate change this is a global emergency.
The threats from climate changes are more immediate than most of us know or care to consider.
In fact, if the truth were known most of us are in denial of the pending disasters that are waiting in the wings.
Why are we all so complacent?
Because we are unable to separate the environmental well-being of our planet from our economies.
What we have is a roller coaster of human ignorance with most of us believing it will not affect us but those in the future.
It’s happening to you.
It’s a right-here and right-now the biggest problem facing the world we all live on.
Its cost will not be in billions of GDP but in an accountable number of lives lost which is only a partial glimpse at the potential price tag.
We have already a huge amount of warming stored in order to see within most of our lifetimes the Arctic ice-free. Right in front of our eyes, its melting is speeding up and no one knows the amount of Methane it will release.
We have to approach our efforts to halt climate change in a much more revolutionary peaceful manner.
When one looks at the Donal Dumps of this world – America First – we know that humanity cannot act for the greater good of all so adaptation is now the only course and it will require fast action, not words.
What you read in the news is that we have about twenty years to change our acts before something irreversible happens.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) needs to start telling us all that even if we managed to curtail global emissions it is too late to prevent, 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming.
The impacts will be felt across ecosystems and human communities and economies.
Global warming is like being in a minefield that is getting progressively more dangerous.
If we as a species are to do anything about it.
This means no home, business, or industry heated by gas or oil; no vehicles powered by diesel or gasoline; all coal and gas power plants shuttered; the petrochemical industry converted wholesale to green chemistry, stop building dam and heavy industry like steel and aluminium production either using carbon-free energy sources or employing technology to capture CO2 emissions and permanently store it.
This also means that the whole of our farming systems, our financial systems, our consumption driven by the advertising industry must change.
Developing countries must have free access to information, technology and financial resources.
Technology must become available to all free of private interests.
Land may have to be converted to growing bioenergy crops.
Empowering producers and consumers to promote sustainable supply chains.
It means a widespread dietary shift to eating less meat and reduced material consumption.
And still, that won’t be enough.
The world’s forests contain more carbon than exploitable oil, gas, and coal deposits.
Without the full involvement and alignment of our technical, social, and political dimensions, 1.5 C and even 2C won’t be possible.
Our media companies must give us knowledge, so we will be empowered.
Change must bring good things to everybody, with nobody left behind.
The biggest challenge to any climate reversal will be marshalling the resources.
Can it be done? Yes, it can. If we all engage now not tomorrow.
(Read Previous posts, harnessing profit for profit sake and the introduction of citizens bonds.)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We live in a world where consumerism is more important than needs.
It overshadows all of our human activities moving desires to the forefront of any aspirations of democracy.
One can ask how has this happened?
The answer is staring us in the face there is no need to look further than free-market capitalism which has married itself to democracy.
Edward Bernay’s its creator (with the help of President Roosevelt, and his uncle Fraud applied the propaganda of war to the propaganda of peace) at the World Fair in 1893 consecrated the marriage of passive consumerism with the market by Public relations, thus engineering the consent of the masses.
As a result of to this day, we are unable to make decisions on a rational base.
So what!
Just look at the state of the world today. The fourth Industrial revolution.
It makes for dismal reading.
There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II.
There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated
20 million people held in bonded labour1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labour force, is unemployed or underemployed. At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery.) About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labour.
Worldwide, a quarter of all women are raped during their lifetime.
Torture occurred in 125 countries.
There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.
800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.
800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition.
2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation.
Over 100 million people live in slums.
275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.
Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.
Between 10 and 20 per cent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.
60% of the world’s coral reefs will be gone.
Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe. Over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification, and one billion people are at risk.
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years, without reaching a tipping point – resulting in multiple adverse effects on the environment and human society, including widespread species loss, ecosystem damage, flooding of populated human settlements, and increased natural disasters.
All of this is only the tip of the iceberg.
The scale and nature of the world’s problems demand a full response; and the need for more unification and intensification of efforts to solve the world’s most serious and pervasive problems.
What are we doing about it since 1893?
Poured trillions in to aid to created debt.
Manufactured a financial crash.
In each country, the tendency is to blame “our” history, “our” populists, “our” media, “our” institutions, “our” lousy politicians.
When we discuss “politics”, we refer to what goes on inside sovereign states; everything else is “foreign affairs” or “international relations” – even in this era of global financial and technological integration.
its inability to withstand countervailing 21st-century forces, and its calamitous loss of influence over human circumstance.
Turning products into environmental false benefits with the loss of control over money flows.
Watching on as democracy being digitised. After decades of globalisation, our political system has become obsolete by introducing anxious volatility into the bastion of European stability.
Allowing unregulated algorithms to plunder the world for profit.
Turn a blind eye 65 million refugees – a “new normal”
Even if we wanted to restore what we once had, that moment is gone.
But to acknowledge this is to acknowledge not just the end of politics itself the end of life. Global capital and technology will rule us without any kind of democratic consultation, as naturally and indubitably as the rising oceans.
If we wish to rediscover a sense of political purpose in our era of global finance, big data, mass migration and ecological upheaval, we have to imagine political forms capable of operating at that same scale.
There is every reason to believe that the next stage of the techno-financial revolution will be even more disastrous for national political authority.
Big data companies (Google, Facebook etc) have already assumed many functions previously associated with the state, from cartography to surveillance.
With them taking over the management of all life and resources – this is a more likely vision for the future than any fantasy of a return to social democracy.
The assault on political authority is not a merely “economic” or “technological” event. It is an epochal upheaval.
What if anything can be done.
It is clear to me and by now should be clear to all of us that Capitalism is going underground. Today’s great engines of wealth creation are distributed in such a way as to elude national taxation systems (94% of Apple’s cash reserves are held offshore; this $250bn is greater than the combined foreign reserves of the British government and the Bank of England), which is diminishing all nation-states, materially and symbolically.
It is clear to me that the nation state’s rigid monopoly on political life is becoming increasingly unviable.
It is clear to me that oppressed national minorities must be given a legal mechanism to appeal over the heads of their own governments.
It is clear to me that the United Nations is effectively a gossip shope with vetos and is in needs of reform.
It is clear to me we need to find new conceptions of citizenship. Why, because the essential horizons of life on this planet are already determined at birth.(see previous posts)
It is clear to me that if democracy is supposed to give voters some control over their own conditions, for instance, should a US election not involve most people on earth?
It is clear to me that we are spending trillion trying to get off the earth when we should be spending trillions to try to stay on what is left of the earth.
It is clear to me that everything is linked.
It is time to think about how that capacity might be built.
It is time to wake up, to be conscious and take the needed steps to make a change. Stop pretending like you don’t know. Stop thinking its not going to happen in your lifetime. It will affect you and most of all your children and grandchildren. Do you still want to remain passive or pretend it’s not your problem?
What is clear to you?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I leave you with this video.
On viewing it.
It is beyone clear that our future generations will not thank us for their inheritance.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We are rapidly approaching the era of ubiquitous surveillance, a time when virtually every aspect of our lives will be monitored. Leaving us vulnerable to all manner of manipulation and persuasion.
The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance
capitalism.
Google, Facebook Amazon, U Tube, Supermarket Loyalty Card,
Credit card spending, you name it and it is creating the
surveillance data and we continue to ignore the most vital data
that we are alive and can do something about climate change.
It’s impossible to take a long view of what’s happening.
SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?
While most of us think that we are dealing merely with algorithmic inscrutability, in fact what confronts us is the latest phase in capitalism’s long evolution – from the making of products, to mass production, to managerial capitalism, to services, to financial capitalism, and now to the exploitation of behavioural predictions covertly derived from the surveillance of users.
During all this surveillance some elements of our world will change beyond recognition while others will stay reassuringly (or disappointingly) familiar.
Some innovations we might not notice, while others will knock us sideways, changing our lives forever.
For example The use of biometric recognition devices to ensure the identity of a person.
Three things, however, are certain: technology will get smaller, smarter and cheaper while Climate change will cost TRILLIONS by the end of the century.
Perhaps there’s a technological barrier that can’t be surmounted, such as artificial superintelligence or weaponized nanotechnology but Global warming will no doubt disproportionately hurt the poor, broadly undermine human health, damage infrastructure, limit the availability of water, alter coastlines, and boost costs in industries from farming, to fisheries and energy production.
How different might life be 20 years from now?
I would bet you that it probably will be much like it is today.
Unfortunately, GDP is still viewed as a prerequisite to achieving global goals, even though it can’t stand for everything.
Food, clean water, good education and infrastructure, all these things need money to support so it’s inevitable and sad that climate change will become a product for profit.
However, the effects of Surveillance and Climate Change are going to be felt for hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years to come.
“A large fraction of climate change is largely irreversible on human time scales.”
Climate change and variability (e.g. increasing water scarcity), mounting / unresolved conflicts and refugee crises, increasing global inequalities which seem irreversible, and the questionable performance of the global economy (which is still very linked to increasing resource use) will still rule the roost.
Many people do not know what it really amounts to, either due to unreliable sources or deliberate misinformation, which has led to a series of myths about climate change.
First, it is important to be clear that climate change cannot now be avoided.
Climate change presents perhaps the most profound challenge ever to have confronted human social, political, and economic systems.
One of the central social, political, and economic questions of the century is: how then do we act?
It will present one of the most profound challenges to the way we understand human responses.
National governments are embedded in market economies that constrain what they can do.
We first have to get past controversies over cost estimates and distributions. (See previous posts: World Aid Commission Of 0.050% )
Activists think that the key here is simply getting the public to understand the facts by providing information.
The public should not, however, be understood as simply mass publics, which are problematic when it comes to mastering complex issues simply by virtue of their mass nature.
Increasingly, justice frameworks are being used in the development of climate policy strategies and as such, national governments can deploy this discourse when it suits their interests to do so. So developing countries can point to the history of fossil fuel use on which developed countries built their economies, such that fairness demands that it is the developing countries that should shoulder the burden of mitigation.
The response on the part of the wealthy countries is that for most of this history, their governments had no awareness that what they were doing could change the climate, and so ought not to be held uniquely responsible for future mitigation.
Dealing with major climate change issues has however never been a part of the core priorities of any government.
Governments acted swiftly and with the expenditure of vast sums of money in response to the global financial crisis in 2008–9. They have never shown anything like this urgency or willingness to spend on any environmental issue.
To date, very few national governments look at all like decarbonizing their economy or redesigning energy systems to reverse the growth in energy consumption.
This is why it is necessary to reframe the effects of climate change to where the government might involve recognition of the security dimension of climate change. Climate change can threaten the security of populations and vital systems, even in some cases threaten the sovereign integrity of states.
BUT: Neither coordinated collective action nor discursive reframings can stop at the national level.
Even if this was achieved Climate change involves a complex global set of both causal practices and felt impacts, and as such requires coherent global action—or, at a minimum, coordination across some critical mass of global players.
Like the heading to this post state:
Perhaps we need to think in very different terms about the coordination of a global response.
The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has already gone into an unstoppable decline.
Currents that transport heat within the oceans will be disrupted.
Ocean acidification will continue to rise, with unknown effects on marine life.
Thawing permafrost and sea beds will release methane, a greenhouse gas.
Droughts predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years will trigger vegetation changes and wildfires, releasing carbon.
Species unable to adapt quickly to a changing climate will go extinct.
Coastal communities will be submerged, creating a humanitarian crisis.
Thankfully, we’re not completely out of options yet.
There is little point if we as the data is implying that the world is warming planting trees or hoping that some future technology is going to solve the effects of climate change.
We are all riding on the one big blue ball together, and no matter what happens we will be finally all be confronted (Thanks to climate change with our societal problems.)
Millions of voters will no longer cast their ballots based on emotional cues, defying their own clear self-interest or reason that has created a society that is consumed with looking out for yourself first.
So here are a few things that you can do now.
Reduce the emissions that are warming the world the fastest.
Vote Diem 25 in the forthcoming European Elections.
Lobby your Television Stations to include a least once a week a weather report on Climate change.
Use your buying power to stop purchasing products with Palm Oil or products wrapped in plastic or are transported from on side of the world to the other.
Support local products.
Demand from your government free education.
Protect our privacy at all costs (It won’t be easy to fix because it requires us to tackle the essence of the problem – the logic of accumulation implicit in surveillance capitalism. That means that self-regulation is a nonstarter.
Digital technology is separating the citizens in all societies into two groups: the watchers and the watched and it will become increasingly disruptive throughout this century and beyond with profound consequences for democracy because the asymmetry of knowledge translates into asymmetries of power.
Governments know this.
Whereas most democratic societies have at least some degree of oversight of state surveillance, we currently have almost no regulatory oversight of its privatised counterpart. This is intolerable now while climate change will be intolerable in the near future.
The fourth Industrial revolution will be the last. In effect, we are forcing future generations to retroactively subsidize our decision not to increase energy efficiency and move to cleaner fuels.
The warmer it gets, the less productive a country’s economy will likely be. Perhaps more concerning, however, is what could happen in a world where climate change is allowed to continue unmitigated.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
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