The plain truth can often be so obvious as to be invisible.
There are so many obstacles to change on the scale we so desperately need.
We are fast reaching a point that no humans can or will be able to understand the world we live in.
We pass this way just once.
Artificial algorithms are taking over.
Yuval Noah Harari in his latest book ( 21 lessons for the 21st Century) puts his finger on the problem.
” In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might brake down.
Surely its time we stop being the free fodder that feds big data. It’s much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.
What will be the point to education if algorithms make us redundant?
It is difficult to discern world-wise whether there is any sincere conversation on AI Ethics.
Is it being addressed by any of the big tech companies or are they just giving token nods to what is right or wrong, while taking advantage of all human beings out there?
Are there just pushback from the outside organisations.
What we are witnessing is their profit growth with economic disparity worldwide increases at a starting rate. This certainly rings true if one looks at the state of the world with people judged by their wealth.
So what is the ethics of creating a sentient life form on a planet that is burning?
Perhaps it will be for the best if we continue not to understand the planet we all live on and leave it to AI to sort us out.
Or can we now start contributing to better governance solutions?
If we don’t grasp the nettle soon there will be no coming back.
To have any relevance now and in the future, we need billions to take to the streets to demand the sustainability of our planet (Human vote with their feet, not Social media) before profit-making goes underground.
When it comes to making the world a better place, corporations are often accused of apathy (the flip-side of blind self-interest). But if consumers are truly committed to social change, they must answer the same challenge.
If we can get consumers to make mindful shopping choices, to support brands that act responsibly and to purchase goods from those that dedicate a portion of the sale proceeds to causes, we are well on our way to re-purposing everyday purchases.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We are the first generation to know we’re destroying the world, and we could be the last that can do anything about it.
SO AS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE HERE IS YOUR CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
We need to recognize that everything we do, every step we take, every sentence we write, every word we speak—or don’t speak—counts. Nothing is trivial.
Take personal responsibility.
We need to use social media – this is one of the most effective ways to get brands to listen to you, so tell them that you want a change.
Why?
Because, unfortunately, the politicians who dominate the world stage are, depressingly, mostly cut from the old cloth, and the leadership challenges they face, are particularly complex and will require different skills — notably a clearer vision among leaders of organisation’s shared purpose.
Because the digital revolution is far from over the pace of change only seems to be quickening when in fact it is causing isolation.
Because, we are allowing non-regulated large technology platforms to become too powerful, using their size to dominate markets and we are not paying enough attention to how the tools they create can be used for ill – like device addictions, as we drown in notifications and false news feed posts.
Because there is an increasing imperative for all of us to respond to climate change. Which will and is challenging our lives developing on a daily bases right in front of our eyes into our biggest need to act as one.
How can any of this be achieved?
How will the changing political, economic and environmental landscapes shape the world?
Don’t get caught up in the how of things. Don’t wait for things to be right in order to begin.
Because in our age of tectonic geopolitical shifts, “alternative facts,” and conflicting narratives, our routine everyday life is losing sight of our true goals and aspirations.
Because with the rise of short-sighted populism we will solve nothing, other than feeding the great unwashed with short term gratification.
We need to write a piece of software that eliminated malware, viruses and all of that crap.
We need to show our political leaders that they want to change, to understand our common humanity.
We need to try to put yourself into another person’s headspace and accept people for who they are and what their beliefs are.
We need to collaborate and push for policies that complement both sides of the political spectrum.
We need to make wasting our resources unacceptable in all aspects of our life. Every product we buy has an environmental footprint and could end up in a landfill. The impact of plastic pollution on our oceans is becoming increasingly clear, having drastic impacts on marine life.
We need to be more conscious about what we buy, and where we buy it from. Living a less consumerist lifestyle can benefit you and our planet.
We need to use our purchasing power and make sure our money is going towards positive change.
We need to realize that what we eat contributes around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and is responsible for almost 60% of global biodiversity loss.
We need to be supporting eco-friendly products.
We need to try to waste as little food as possible, and compost the organic waste we can’t eat.
We need to make education free for all. Start educating not for profit but for a better understanding of what is the common values of life.
We need to stop asking the world’s smartest scientists to find us more time and to reverse gravity’s effect on our lives.
We need to stop killing each other. Countries start wars and people die and more people are in poverty.
We need to create out of profit for profit sake a World Aid fund with perpetual funding. (See previous posts) A new nonprofit called Carbon Offsets to alleviate address Climate change and Poverty.
We need to realize that all significant change throughout history has occurred not because of nations, armies, governments and certainly not committees. They happened as a result of the courage and commitment of individuals. Believe that you can and will make a difference.
The genesis for change is awareness so I need to stop.
This year will not only be another opportunity for the leading minds in media in all its forms to highlight consumption for consumption sake.
However, if they wanted to spread a message that helps us all they would ban advertising that promotes consumption for consumption sake/profit.
Feel free to add your priorities. With rapid innovations in technology and open access to data its no longer “wait and see.” We need to stop the huge feeling of apathy.
The coming year, let alone the next decade looks unpredictable.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Climate change is accelerating and we know that it is the world’s greatest collective action problem.
The global climate is probably the most complex of all complex systems to which humans belong.
It’s more than a quarter of a century since the leaders of the world, gathered in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, committed their countries to avoiding “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system” by signing the UN convention on climate change.
We know we have to tackle climate change –as do the politicians.
We know that it’s rational for an individual country not to drastically reduce greenhouse gases, given most economies are heavily based on energy resources that emit them.
Yet, if all nations act that way — indeed, that’s what’s happening — most countries will eventually be worse off due to the cumulative impacts of all our emissions.
Put another way, what’s better for each individual country in isolation is actually worse for the planet as a whole. Conversely, what is worse for each individual country, overtime would be better for the planet.
Unlike other policies, climate change is cumulative.
We know that climate summits highlight the science, but achieve little or nothing-
The First World Climate Conference was held on 12–23 February 1979 in Geneva as was the second the third.
Here is the list
Contents
1995: Berlin, Germany
1996: Geneva, Switzerland
1997: Kyoto, Japan
1998: Buenos Aires, Argentina
1999: Bonn, Germany
2000: The Hague, Netherlands
2001: Bonn, Germany
2001: Marrakech, Morocco
2002: New Delhi, India
2003: Milan, Italy
2004: Buenos Aires, Argentina
2005: Montreal, Canada
2006: Nairobi, Kenya
2007: Bali, Indonesia
2008: Poznań, Poland
2009: Copenhagen, Denmark
2010: Cancún, Mexico
2011: Durban, South Africa
2012: Doha, Qatar
2013: Warsaw, Poland
2014: Lima, Peru
2015: Paris, France
2016: Marrakech, Morocco
2017: Bonn, Germany
2018: Katowice, Poland
2019: Bonn, Germany
2019: Madrid, Spain
A lot of talking while the ice melts, our lands burn, and our oceans rise and our Co2 emissions are traded on an Ecosystem Marketplace’s – Carbon offsetting- Cardon Cap and trade systems.
The longer we wait to address it, the bigger the problem it becomes and the harder it gets to solve, fueling a feedback loop that makes solutions ever more difficult.
Imagine getting taxed before you put that money into your fund and then not living long enough to reap the payoffs of your fund.
That’s happening with climate change, on a global scale.
However, we must realize that climate is a much broader, systemic problem that can not be tackled solely by making how important our everyday choices are.
We know that behind the energy and climate change hypocrisy is in all of us.
You’re a hypocrite for advocating on climate change while using fossil fuels.
Such arguments are shallow because virtually everyone depends on these fuels somehow.
Trying to make people feel guilty for their carbon-intensive activities doesn’t actually get them to change their behaviour.
Nobody wants to change unless they really, really have to.
We know that transforming endemic corporate behaviours that are devastating the planet requires whole industries to move together, and fast.
We need bold, industry-wide coalitions for change.
We need to bring industry leaders together to agree on reforms to the parts of the business that are irrelevant to customers but of grave importance for our environment.
However business cannot tackle climate change on its own and we don’t have time to wait for individual companies to each go on their own sustainability journeys.
We know that enacting policies today to cut greenhouse gas emissions won’t have a discernible impact on global warming for decades, if not centuries.
We know that investors are in effect expecting returns on assets in companies that eventually must be written off for the planet to be safe.
The private sector can either destroy the planet or replenish it.
We know what needs to be done.
This means that sustainable savings are the number one solution to climate change and the effects are larger than rooftop solar, solar farms, afforestation and electric vehicles combined.
To do this is laying down a clear challenge.
But unfortunately, not all carbon footprints are created equally.
This makes it a tough sell and begs the question to what degree people are willingly taking concrete steps to lower their lifestyle’s impact on climate change, or why people are not.
The why not, is because for most people it’s still intangible and not well understood even considered a Hoax because of Fake news’ or ‘inconvenient truth that there is no problem and hope that it disappears by itself.
The willingness is rhetoric like flight shaming which is near the top of the list of hypocrisy charges.
No press release can obscure the fact that time is not on our side.
We need to cap our carbon emissions now not in ten years.
Increasingly missing from this picture above is the support of governments that operate on 2- to 6-year election cycles.
Technology is bringing down the price of switching to green alternatives, not least renewable energy. So what is stopping governments from making these technologies available with affordable Green Grants to one and all Now?
With most countries more engrossed by their internal domestic political squabbles the reasons are political or financial, not scientific.
The science isn’t that difficult to explain but instead of explanations we are presented with statements of facts with an only simple explanation and no real substance, CO2 is like a blanket.
Yet there is a troubling gap between the serious reality depicted by climate change science and the level of concern among all of us.
Worry and action are two different things.
Climate change is a direct consequence of the widespread, now globalized, mass production and consumption of goods, and of the material construction of our habitat that has accompanied it. Yet, despite this reality, production and construction continue unabated.
If we believed that a systemic response to climate change was an equally shared responsibility, was our responsibility, we would be responding to it.
Until we do that, we’re all climate change deniers.
( See Post – suggestion a World Aid commission of 0.05% )
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
There are no right or wrong answers, just your insights.
The most recent UN Climate Change summit in New York saw a succession of national leaders standing on the podium saying they understood the gravity of the situation but then failing to announce concrete plans.
China made no new promises. The United States said nothing at all, with Germany promoting a new plan worth $60 billion over 10 years to speed a transition to clean power the European Union did not signal its intention to cut emissions faster.
In fact, a host of countries made only incremental promises. Most of the major economies fell “woefully short” of expectations.
Their lack of ambition stands in sharp contrast with the growing demand for action around the world.
Indeed the summit highlighted that the United Nations (which is our best effort to humans to come together for the good of all) is for all intensive purposes a gossip shop with no powers.
This is not the fault of the organisation because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.
Climate Change, however, represents a unique problem in as much that for the first time in human history, the human race is confronted with a problem that is not about human rights but our very existence as a species.
It is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it.
Fortunately or unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.
But we do however have scientific models with the best data available predicting the need for humans to act like one if we want future generations of our species to prevail.
Rowland said, ” What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if in the end were willing to do is to stand around and wait for them to come true.”
Thanks to technology we are now constantly aware of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space
It is what is causingthis constant feelingof a chaotic and insecure world that doesn’t actually exist.
It’s this feeling of insecurity and chaos that is igniting the platforms of divisive strong-men like Trump, Erdogan, and Putin.
It’sthis feeling that has consumed the consciousness of millions of people and caused them to look at their country through the lens of popularism a fun-house of the mirror: exaggerating all that is wrong and minimizing all that is right.
We judge groups of people by their weakest and most deprived members. And to protect ourselves from the overreaching judgments of others, we consolidate into our own clans and tribes, we take refuge in our own precious identity politics and we buy more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts.
Because of this, we demonize each other.
The plain truth lies in our past historical model of our development to the present day which confirms that because of greed we are incapable of acting in the common good of all.
This is not just a world of shortages, but also of over-consumption. A great paradox is that 1,300 million tons of food is wasted every year, while almost 2000 million people suffer from hunger or malnutrition.
We all know that we need Fresh Air/Fresh Water/ Clean Energy/ and Food.
In order to keep ourselves tethered to reality as it is, not to reality how it feels the sooner we come to term that Climate Change has all the components to affect each and every one of them the better.
One only has to look to see that we are failing to match reality, rather than peaking, the level of emissions being released into the atmosphere are at an all-time high, triggering global weather hazards from heat waves to intense hurricanes and raging wildfires.
You might not think that humans were and are capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet but you can’t make this shit up we are all related: us, plants, animals, soil.
Extinction Rebellion a do-it-together movement has its core reasons for protests correct :
That government and other institutions must tell the truth and declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025 and must create and be led by the decisions of Citizens’ Assemblies on climate and ecological justice.
Their protests worldwide are causing a flood of negativity because Capitalism is not ready to burn down the very structures on which the most successful civilizations in human history have been built.
They are promoting internet generated platform where apocalyptic beliefs are celebrated and spread, and moderation and reason is something that becomes too arduous and boring to stand.
There is no doubt that with our ever-increasing population, our human needs for various resources to sustain, maintain and increase our living standards have put a great strain on our planet and it’s ability to provide.
But the world isn’t worse. It’s just that we’re more aware of all of the bad things than ever before. By every objective measurement, it’s arguably the sanest and safest it’s been in recorded history.
What is new is smartphone the internet, and most importantly, social media. This is what’s new. This is what’s different. How we’re getting information, what information is reaching us, and most importantly, what information and views we are most rewarded for sharing.
Perhaps if Extinction Rebellion were to shift their focus to the attention economy, (outrageous news and information spread faster and further than any other form of information, dominating our daily attention) where people are rewarded for extremism they might have a greater effect.
There is only one way to tackle climate change and that is by making Profit for profit sake provide the financial assistance that is required to do so. ( see the previous post on – A world aid commission)
By applying a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all activities that generate profit for profit sake we would create a perpetual fund of billions that could seriously address the underlying reasons for climate change.
We could also through this fund give people the opportunity to get involved by issuing World Aid non-trading Bonds.
All everyone needed to do to succeed in life is work very hard, it is what we’ve all been sold and it is true but no it is not if you just take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture and the smallest of details.
Most of us are lucky to live in a world where wars are far less frequent than they were in the past, the trade-off does not make for good celebratory achievement, however.
I’m exhausted from all the stories of shootings and attacks and bombs and the constant stream of awful stuff that is happening out there. I, too, feel desensitized and dejected from the seemingly constant carnage raging across the planet.
Most of us wouldn’t be happy with living our lives on water rations, for the poor and developing world that is already the case.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The world has been so depleted and is being so depleted even at this moment, that the future sustenance and stability for humanity is now imperilled.
Your future and your destiny will not be determined within the next decades. It will be determined now.
It will be determined by humanity’s wisdom or by its ignorance.
The future and fate of humanity will be decided in the years to come, and it will be determined by how humanity responds to the great change that is coming over the horizon in the form of climate change to the world.
No religion nor religious institution as it stands today can prepare humanity for the complexities of life in the universe or what humanity must know to preserve human freedom and sovereignty within this world.
It is what humanity must do to prepare both collectively and individually for climate change and our collective inability to regulate AI.
But because humanity as a whole is dull and ignorant, self-absorbed and unresponsive to a changing world we are still writing ourselves out of the script.
Our universities for years have taught classical/neoclassic/neoliberal economics; like these theories are unmovable divine pillars of reality.
Therefore, while most people see we need a more reasonable and democratic version of our current extreme capitalism, the dominant discourse insists the story not be changed at all. The dominant political narrative of our times is that we must live as individuals crushed between market and state. The relationship between the individual and the state boils down to a zero-sum game where everyone one eventually looses. The state is a pure and simple force.
With the effects of climate change (to come) people are waking up to the deception, let’s hope we can do right, because on all fronts of civilization as we know it time is running out.
We have political failure everywhere leading to the malfunctioning of our altruistic nature.
There is a disconnect between mass (commercial) media, even political science and common sense or popular wisdom.
Sounds to cynical?
Let me oil up my bow.
Present-day political failures are at heart of our problems.
Why?
Because there is a failure of imagination when it comes to the societal structure we evolved to live in and that our brains are still programmed for.
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc.
These new organizations are actually not creating a dream environment of maximum social cooperation.
They are instead removing people’s needs to fulfilling each other’s needs!
Gnawing away our collective and individual identity our senses of belonging to a community for the sake of profit.
We need politics of belonging, but the trouble is, it requires a moral, ethical and educated populations which we don’t have and are now with AI are more than likely than ever never going to have.
As we rely on more and more Algorithms to make decisions without a discussion of facts and morals, against a background of pure data narrative can lead society to dark places.
We are unaware of what I call honest pricing that shows the cost of profit for profit sake to the environment.
If we were to charge fees proportional to harmful impacts on the environment, we would create a monetary representation of the value of natural resources.
So overcoming the material world would be the first step to a sustainable world-shifting us into a new reality.
We are left with the ever-present questions.
Do we give a toss and if so what can be done about it?
What roles do religion and our deepest beliefs play in contemporary life?
What lifestyles are we adopting in an increasingly technological world?
What is the balance of power–and the balance of trade?
What is the pattern of war and peace?
What are the issues facing local and regional communities, and what issues must we confront on a global scale?
What do we remember about our collective past, and how do we see the future?
Have the great issues that preoccupied people since the beginning of time taken new, distinctive forms after more than a hundred years of the fastest technological and cultural change in the history of the planet?
What challenges remain intractable?
What emerging solutions seem to offer the greatest promise?
Social media is full of video on the state of the world.
The need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems.
Despite that long record of success, agricultural production is stressed by floods, deforestation, drought, urbanization (land-devouring cities), and a growing appetite for resource-intensive meat.
More than 150 million people worldwide are at risk from rising sea levels and extreme storms that cause coastal flooding.
In the past 50 years, thanks to education and technology, more than 2 billion people joined the middle class, swelling the human footprint of nearly 50 per cent. At the same time, millions of acres of cropland have been devoured by population growth.
Today more than 6 billion people live in cities—about 70 per cent of the world’s population, roughly double the proportion of a half-century ago.
The Arctic may hold 22 per cent of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil and natural gas resources. Melting ice is liberating immense oil and natural gas reserves.
Although mounting worldwide energy demand continues to stress the environment, it has powered large-scale development of renewable energy.
Artificial intelligence will soon dominate the Earth—it could take decades, it could take millennia. At that point, AI will also take control of the Earths process. Refashioning the planet in ways that are optimal for synthetic life but quite possibly deadly for us.
You can’t help but wonder where it will lead. It’s a very dodgy future.
It may be true that the cosmos started with the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago, but it took an awfully long time for the consequences of the Big Bang to settle down.
To have an optimistic view is the only one worth having.
So may you recognize that you as an individual must make these decisions and not simply rely upon others to make them for you.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In one sense, as no one knows the future, no one or any organisation is able, to tell the truth about climate change.
There is not a politician on earth who wants to tell his or her constituents the truth when it comes to Climate Change so we’ve probably already blown our chance to avoid substantial suffering, but we can somewhat reduce the even worse suffering that awaits our grandchildren.
However, the truth is that the evidence for rapid climate change is now more than compelling:
Unfortunately, are we not able as a species to confront the facts?
Humans are subject to intense status quo bias.
Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay, that the system is working like it’s supposed to, that the current state of affairs is the best available, or close enough.
No matter how we look at it the truth is, that on our current trajectory, in the absence of substantial new climate policy, current warming is heading for up to 4°C and may be higher by the end of the century.
On any clear reading of the available evidence, no one or any country wants to financially foot the economic cost of reducing emissions.
We are headed for disaster — slowly, yes, but surely with the outcome determined not by us but by earth itself.
We are now facing a situation in which limiting temperature even to either 2/ 3°C requires heroic policy and technology changes, not to mention trillions and trillions in investment.
Capitalism might be “decoupling ” carbon emissions but whether we like it or not the worrying implication is that emissions will be much higher than expected even if climate action continues and is ramped up.
It is true to say that over the course of the Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. This is true. But the rapid warming we’re seeing now can’t be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. This much faster warming corresponds with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which have been increasing since the industrial revolution.
Let’s be clear, CO2 itself does not cause problems. It’s part of the natural global ecosystem.
We’re already seeing the devastating effects of climate change on global food supplies, increasing migration, conflict, disease and global instability, and this will only get worse if we don’t act now.
It threatens the future of the planet that we depend on for our survival and we’re the last generation that can do something about it.
The fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence will once again be displayed at the forthcoming UN conference.
But that’s where we’re headed.
It will take enormous effort just to avoid that fate and we’re running out of time; we’ve only got five or 10 years to turn things around, but we can do it, if we just not only put our minds to agreeing a 0.05% world aid commission on all activities that produce profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)
The problem is, while carbon capture is getting less, as more and more forests are either cut down or burned across the world, largely to produce our food or palm oil or cosmetics etc, Governments are still backing dirty fossil fuels.
The technology and systems we need to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045 and use our planet’s resources sustainably are already available.
What’s now needed is for political and business leaders to take bold and urgent action towards using these solutions to address the climate crisis and restore nature.
Given what we know about human beings, path dependence, and political dysfunction we will not be able to suck thousands of megatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, so humanity can go net negative by 2100.
Capitalism is already turning climate change into a product.
Before its too late – there is no way that the world will come to any agreement unless there is an equitable distribution of the costs.
Capitalism profit contributed to it so let it do it again but in reverse.
This is the brutal logic of climate change.
Even if we emit a bunch more carbon in the short term. “deployment of large-scale bioenergy faces biophysical, technical and social challenges will cause massive social unrest.
No branch of science, certainly not climatology, can tell us what the humans of 2050 are capable of. We are all, on that score, making educated guesses, and a knowledge of history, politics, and economics will be just as important to that judgment as any knowledge of the physical sciences.
We can watch footage of Trump calling climate change “a hoax … a money-making industry” and not be left winded by such staggering ignorance or astonishing deceit, though it is, more likely, more bleakly, a catastrophic combination of the two.
The evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now, is overwhelming on its own. There is no need to overstate the evidence, particularly when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.
No one wants to pays but we will all pay in one way or the other.
The British Empire was the largest in history existing from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century.
Unfortunately, it squandered all that it acquired on a victorian class system.
It killed with famine, sword and fire more people than Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler or Stalin.
In the defence of its imperial interests, it precipitated in two World Wars.
Now it is presiding with “Mad cow disease” it’s very own self-destruction.
At stake are fundamental ideas about British sovereignty and whether in a
a progressively globalized world in which some claimed that the individual
the nation-state was becoming unviable with the can sovereignty in its
existing forms remain intact.
Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, referred to the year as the royal family’s “annus horribilis.”
SHE WAS WRONG.
Why?
Because along came a five-year austerity plan aimed at reducing the country’s massive deficit, which had been fueled by bank bailouts and stimulus spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resultant recession which resulted in 52 per cent of voters opting to leave the EU, (making the United Kingdom the first country to ever do so)
Manufactured by Magie Thatcher who turned the market into replacing society as the model of state governance.
Not surprising as worldwide political culture has in fact transformed from one based on class to a new sort of populist, demotic politics, shaped at least as much by the mass media, especially the popular press, as by the politicians.
A sort of firestorm has broken out not just in Brazil but all over the world.
Why?
Because the relationship between public culture and consumer capitalism, while the very Earth itself is struggling with climate change has been close, in many ways the one constantly trying to outguess the other.
This game of one-upmanship, marked by ironic knowingness, has been labelled “postmodern, Brexit or Donal Trump trade wars”.
It points to the growing understanding of the relative nature of truth, itself a reaction against the prevailing supposedly “modern” certainties of the 20th century (reason, freedom, humanity, and truth itself), which indeed have often had and are having appalling outcomes.
However, it is a sign of the times that these antifundamentalist currents, themselves critical of much of Western culture, emerged at much the same time as new fundamentalisms emerged in the forms of American neoconservatism and certain strains of radical Islam. The ferment of intellectual and cultural changes involved are inextricable from the massive changes underway in the transition to the novel forms of society made possible by new information technologies.
What the Smartphone and Social Media have and are doing since the 1960s onward for Africa are also unravelling England and the EU with the perception of poor economic performance and calls for the modernization of not just for British society and the British economy but the EU and the world at large.
Both England and the European Union need to reform.
Optimism only carries you so far.
History rhymes rather than repeats are what is required.
A society where elites are widely loathed, where the political parties are polarized by demographic echoes is on the brink of collapse.
Why?
Now as then — much more now than then, in fact — there is a pervasive mistrust of institutions, a sense that governments are rotting from the head down.
The abject failure of rulers in improving human values has resulted in a downgrading of human to sub-human levels with a race to expect dishonest money is the net result of the ultimate degradation of society.
How do you trick someone into giving you something they have?
First, you offer them something worthless, while convincing them that actually much better than what they have. Second, you convince them that what they do have is worthless.
This is a typical approach used by both con artists and governments.
These huge scams are just diversions from the ultimate crime Climate change.
Our survival instinct has to quickly override our conditioned naiveté and passivity that has been bred into us. We are not just threatened as countries but as species at the same time.
A twitter/ facebook driven world will be a world of shallow values- unravelling our societies.
The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is disappearing at a staggering pace and its not just the melting of ice.
The question now is.
Do we follow the trodden path where we only find all the grass eaten?
Creativity and imagination are what is needed as we are not getting across the problems of probability.
How we discuss and what we discuss is vital.
We must know the facts. We need a world brain bus.
Who is more likely to embrace the marginalized, to work for the disenfranchised?
Who will work for those of all backgrounds, all races and ethnicities, all religions, sexual preferences, gender identities?
Who will work to promote respect and equality for all people in the World?
Who sends a message that I want our children to believe in?
The rich and the poor, the entitled and the marginalized—they all make up the threads that a country needs to weave a unified society. When not include we weaken the material that fabricates our entire fabric of the world.
There has never been such a thing as an empire only a company called East India Company merchants. The British Empire did not exist in the Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, England was part of other empires:
The British Empire was a commercial, not a military or political one.
Originally, holding an empire was about power. Throughout history, kings and queens have invaded territories in order to gain strength and power. With colonies, a country gains space, a larger army, more trade markets and the chance to make money out of whatever resources are on offer in them.
The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based on piecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.
An ‘Empire’ is a group of countries ruled over by a single monarch or ruling power. An empire doesn’t need an ’emperor’. The British Empire comprised of Britain, the ‘mother country’, and the colonies, countries ruled to some degree by and from Britain.
(British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government.)
To this day Britain’s ‘cultural imperialism’, suggesting that it was based on nationalism and racist scorn for other people.
With a handshake and the commitment “On the word of an Englishman,” Captain James Cook claimed it for the British crown.In the century 1815–1914, 10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people were added to the British Empire. By the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, Britain was the ‘Mother Country’ of a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world, and Britannia ‘ruled the waves’.
Sorry but Empires have benefited no one nor will any future trade deals that are not attached to sustainability do anything to resolve Climate change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
IF ADAM AND EVE EVER EXISTED THEY WERE AS THICK AS THE WALL.
The consequences of which were passed from generation to generation making our brains the single biggest threat to the planet.
There is a multitude of reasons why people are so stupid.
If human and chimp DNA is 98.8 per cent the same we as a species with 1.2% differences are our own benchmark for how intelligent we can be which is restrained by our relative inability to perceive the natural world.
The sciences of genetics and archaeology are not able to show how our ancestors transitioned from animal self-interest to human as there are no skeletons to probe for DNA. If evolution’s real, how come no one has ever found any transitional forms between bananas and monkeys.
In the absence of evidence, our images of Adam and Eve are left to the imagination of artists. While western imagery is dominant in depicting Adam and Eve in other parts of the world they could like God be Black, Arab, or Hispanic.
We were stupid a long time ago, we are still stupid, and yet we continue to reproduce enormously successfully. Stupidity may, in fact, help our ability to reproduce quite a bit.
None of us would put up with each other for a moment if it weren’t for the saving graces of stupidity and bonding. Perhaps it is this lack of intelligence that has led us to the most idiotic example of our stupidity – Self-inflicted extinction with climate change.
I’ve spent my whole life assuming we were getting smarter and we’d become a rational species before we made ourselves extinct.
Up until a century ago, the world was safe because there wasn’t enough of us, and the Earth’s carrying capacity could absorb our endless acts of stupidity.
The once-mighty homo sapiens might well end up back in the cave where he once resided. After all, the human mind is perfectly flawed we don’t even know if our logic is even logical.
I hope I am proven wrong. We should be much better than our collective self.
By now the majority of us should know that the byproducts of billions of human lives are overwhelming the ecosystem.
Rising CO2 levels is just one of many indicators that we are self-destructing.
The environment is falling apart right before our very eyes, but we can not add 2 + 2 together to see that our lifestyles have to change drastically — yesterday. Not just yesterday, more like 20 years ago.
We might have some grasp of the environmental catastrophe now in progress, but we really like lovely looking perfect grass, so we fertilize and poison our plot of land, and it looks great.
Unfortunately, 100 million other people do the same thing and the results are a catastrophe for the water table and for insect populations.
But hey, our lawn looks great. It’s just this one lawn after all…
Many among us can’t get over their tribal instincts. It’s pretty obvious that’s there is an unresolvable conflict between democracy and theocracy. As long as billions are oppressed by political and social injustice then we haven’t developed a practical political system to support humans on Earth.
Technology is increasing equality sharply.
Drug-resistant diseases are on the rise, and the global spread of dangerous diseases because of transportation and warming climates indicate the revenge of mother nature is near.
More recently, we thought we could save ourselves, especially with science and technology. However, most people live with their heads in the sand, cramming their minds with useless knowledge while ignoring all the dying canaries falling from the sky.
I firmly believe we know enough to solve our problems, I just doubt we have the collective will to work together to get the job done.
We have to figure out how the fuck to get along with each other, so we invent laws, and philosophy, and literature, and justice, and commerce and a whole bunch of other stuff.
We do all this smart shit to survive, not because God loves smart shit.
We think we rule the earth because we are smart.
We do not rule the earth, and evolution does not select for smartness, it selects for survival. Cockroaches rule the earth and they are smart enough not to think it’s because they have big brains.
Your social brain, on the other hand, relies on other people instead of reality, which inclines your Social Brain to dramatic outbursts of complete fucking idiocy.
We expect better from ourselves – but that’s only because we’re stupid.
Furthermore, your brain will know the one thing it’s been longing to know all the time, which is what it’s supposed to do about this insanity, this stupidity.
Which is acknowledge it, name it, identify it, and oppose it – no wonder why the fuck it’s there. But at the end of the day, because we only have ourselves to compare to as of yet, we don’t really have an answer.
One can only hope that we have only just begun to crack the depths of knowledge and that there is an endless trove waiting for future generations.
We can now create worlds within our own to interact with and to manage and design intelligently.
So what!
We’ve been creating simulations in our minds since the dawn of man. Thought operates by breaking reality up into conceptual objects, and our creativity operates by rearranging the conceptual objects in our minds.
These mental simulations form the essence of human brilliance. However, the very same process of conceptual division which makes us brilliant also makes us insane.
We ignore the threat of climate change because we are living in a wishful thinking dream world that seems best described as a form of mental illness.
We have lost our common sense and replaced it with stupidity. Knowing the truth, seeing the truth but believing in lies.
Is stupid only a result or a player?
Genes inherited from Adam and Eve are perhaps a virus which is now being spread by the Smartphone, Google, Artifical Intelligence, Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Donal Trump. The virus may cause changes in the way genes to manifest in portions of the brain in charge of memory and some of the other higher functions of the brain.
The Idiot Box makes sure its a player.
Adam and Eve might have started out ignorant, as thick as the wall, not stupid, they were made stupid by education.
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.
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.
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