Sounds absolutely horrendous.
If the earth can survive country sized meteors impacting it and find balance again it can survive anything the two legged parasites can do on it. Shame about the rest of the currently living lifeforms though.
While I am all for criticism of the documentary the fact that it is being censored in inexcusable. The truth can be painful, especially when it shows all your efforts have been for naught. But accepting it is the only way to truly move forward.
As pessimistic and probably realistic as you are being perhaps in the long run the U.S. not existing anymore will actually help the world considerably to combat climate collapse. After all it is the biggest polluter and the most resistant to change.
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Nothing scary here - unless you think that the extinction of most if not all life on this particular rock in the universe matters. This is just another indicator that we are rapidly approaching or have even passed the point of no return in this little experiment to see if this species of intelligent apes can change enough to care about all life on this planet. From all appearances the apes do not give a crap about anything other than their immediate wants and needs. Certainly the apes with the power to actually change things do not care.
And here in the Mojave Desert in California, admittedly at a kilometre or so up, we have yet to have a 100F day as of 6/22. And we do not appear to have one coming up over ten days.
The boat is rocking, it seems.
We are going to want shelter, water, and food. Each item there means that we need to put more roots in the ground. Perhaps not coincidentally, that is how carbon gets sequestered as well.
We will not have the luxury of waiting until the billionaires wander off or convincingly nerf themselves. We will not have the luxury of awaiting their permission. We need to cycle energies and resources away from them.
Amen. We may just 95-99% of the current living species with us. But as someone made reference to Gen Buck Turgeson in an earlier comment…
“I didn’t say we weren’t going to get our hair mussed…”
Why is it always a question of OUR children and grandchildren? From John Aspinall’s “The Best of Friends” (1976):
From our earliest childhood we are bombarded with the rights of man—the bill of rights—the declaration of rights—civil rights—ethnic rights—women’s rights—pupils’ rights. Who has ever heard mention of the rights of beasts? Or the rights of birds and plants? Have they no rights also? If not, let us incorporate them into a new constitution, into a new religion. After all as the poet, De Vigny, says, animals are the ‘rightful tenants of these woods and hills’. Have we no place for them—none to offer? Are we such strangers to justice that we cannot bring ourselves to give back to them a tithe of what was once their own? Are we such foreigners to pity that we cannot even mourn for them or drink from ‘pity’s long-unbroken urn’? The call goes forth from nature’s advocates ‘save them for our children’s heritage’, ‘save them for one day their gene pools may prove useful to us’, ‘save them to enrich our cultural options’. I find these exhortations reek of hubris. What about their own heritage, their own gene pools proving useful to themselves? What about their own cultural or behavioural options? To have survived every geological catastrophe, every climatic change, every biological invasion, every genetic shift, every seismic upheaval since life emerged from the Cambrian slimes. To have accomplished all this, and even to have outlived what Professor Kurten, in The Age of Mammals, calls man’s ‘peripatetic pyromania’, surely entitles them to be granted a stay of execution?
I am no climate change denier, but articles like this are not helpful when they don’t give better context - in fact, they give fuel to the fire of skeptics. In this article, we are told about a new, high temperature record for anywhere north of the Arctic Circle. A natural, follow up question would be “what was the old record? Where? When? How much?”. But we aren’t given that - instead, we’re given other facts about average daily temperature. The old record, by the way, was in Fort Yukon, Alaska, and it was 100 degrees farenheit. So, a 115 yr old record was broken. Also, when we think of the Arctic, we probably don’t think of a place like this Siberian town, which has for centuries had the largest temperature extremes in the world. That seems like further, needed context. The earth is warming at an alarming rate, but spinning the facts to fit the narrative doesn’t help.
also, this same town had previously recorded hundred degree temps. Sorry, again, it seems obvious that climate change is both real and a major threat to humanity and other species. AND we don’t do ourselves any good sensationalizing the evidence (this reminds me of the common articles saying that a block of ice the size of Manhattan or Delaware has broken off from Antarctica, only to find out that this is a yearly occurrence and has been for most likely centuries, and typically is a block that freezes back into place come winter. But it makes for a sensational, viral article in the meantime).
I have always found your contributions to be interesting and worthwhile, and I don’t mean to contradict you. However the Enlightenment was empirical, inductive and sought to unfold natural laws and apply them, as far as I am aware, to science and social phenomena, which is what you seem to be agreeing with when you reference Cartwright and ‘daily data related to climate science, co2, methane and more’.
Arising from the Enlightenment would be the 2nd law of thermodynamics, for example.
Empiricists predicted the effects of carbon burning and co2 in the 1800’s. Afterall, it’s not difficult to do, as you are, I am certain, well aware.
The Enlightenment, in my opinion, didn’t lead to ‘the industrial age’, but rather has given us the tools to measure and understand our climate breakdown.
That ‘sadly most people do not get that…or care to know the truth’ is another question.
Do you think the earth is responding more quickly to environmental threats? Trump has opened all the fossil fuel spigots and factories and plants are belching their best. That’s only been for 3 1/2 years. Or is this a vomit instead of a belch? Irritable bowl syndrome, maybe.
Is this a rhetorical post? Politicians, those with the power to initiate a response, are doing nothing, nothing, period. How have you read my post?
Thanks for your response to my post Bebek.
I may have come off a bit strong---- “anti-enlightenment” I realize can be linked to right wing, anti science wackos! And I am not anti science----far from it.
My strong concern regarding the Enlightenment is the impact it had on the very real and damaging disconnect between humans and the natural world.
I appreciate science and data but my biggest concern on this earth is human’s abuse and objectification of nonhuman life. If the Enlightenment had anything to do with a shift to human domination over nature----I believe that needs to be called out in spite of the positive things the Enlightenment brought forth.
If we continue to turn everything into a commodity I do not believe life will survive on this planet whether we have scientists, data or not.
There are others that feel the Enlightenment played a role in the dire predicament we are in. I do not believe science can save us. Or technology.
It is what we do with the science and how we live---- if our living is one of compassion for all of life—this is what I feel matters.
Quote from William Rees (h-ttp://williamrees.org/biography/): "the Enlightenment rooted as it is in Cartesian dualism has resulted in a techno-industrial society that sees itself as somehow separate from the biophysical world. This dualism and its expansionary worldview are the basis of many of the environmental problems facing humankind.”
And this:
"The Enlightenment brought with it feelings of domination over nature. Descartes advanced the philosophy that human minds and bodies were separate. Other forces in play made it a relatively short logical link to the idea that humans were separate from nature and dominant over it. With the increasing focus on a scientific and empirical approach to nature came developments in science and technology. Many of these discoveries further enhanced people’s abilities to control or transform nature into the pristine gardens present in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In a review of this notion, Merchant (1996, 137) wrote that “The controlling image of Enlightenment is the transformation from desert wilderness to cultivated garden.”
h-ttp://www.apjh.humanecologyreview.org/pastissues/her151/viningetal.pdf
I cannot give proper credit to this author as it is pulled form my journals and I neglected to write down their name (!) but I agree with these thoughts:
"We cannot hope to combat climate change without deeper and more fundamental changes in the way in which we view nature.
Nature must be seen not as something to be used up and discarded or as something which can be conquered by man but as a force that we must seek to live with within its means.
This requires a fundamental change in philosophical attitudes towards the environment which often seem counter-intuitive to our post-Enlightenment logic.
Whether this can be achieved in a culture in which enlightenment ideas of freedom have morphed into an individualist culture of consumption and vast economic growth remains doubtful but we cannot begin the process properly until we realise how deeply rooted into the philosophy of our society the problem is."
Lastly and very important to consider:
The Enlightenment’s Dark Side
How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it.
h-ttps://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/taking-the-enlightenment-seriously-requires-talking-about-race.html
Disaster capitalism exploits those suffering like a medical care system defined as Your money or your life, or like successful treatment comes after draining your savings account.
point taken. mine is simply that this planet will not abdicate its role as the generator of life in our absence. there will be more. maybe something spectacular she hasn’t yet whipped up in her lab.
whatever that life will be, it’s unlikely to be us. we have to be the most disappointing child the mother has ever produced. except for maybe the wasp.
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I’m going to go with that drone. Well said, thanks for getting back with me with something that I see as positive!
It really is incredibly difficult to grapple with being part of this species that as you say is:
I ventured into town today (for curbside of food) and it was absolutely packed with tourists, no masks of course. Streets, bars, restaurants filled with people. I dread the 4th of July and better stop now before I get started on a 4th of July rant about fireworks and general stupidity of humans.
p.s. my “curbside pickup of food” looks ridiculous here, I think I’m the only one still opting for that!
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Thank you for your response. I didn’t realise that ‘anti enlightenment thinking could be linked to right wing anti science wackos, so I apologise for any inference.
You raise a number of points which I hope reply with brevity:
I am unable to respond to the referenced texts. However you make reference to Descartes (17C) whereas I am thinking more of Scottish Enlightenment(18C): inductive and not deductive: Hume, Blair, Adam Smith etc.
The Sottish Enlightenment types were ‘systems’ thinkers based on applyiing the laws of the natural world to human behaviour. In my opinion racial discriminatin, or any discrimination and exploitation of one person or group of persons against another or others has an economic basis which results in, and supported by, an idealogical justification that is not rooted in the Enlightenment thinkers, who incidentally, would have been around at the time of the |French Revolution, and the writting of the American Constition , flawed as it is
You mention the ’ in spite of the positive things that the Enlightenment brought forth’ The Enlightenment was an historically specific analysis of that time. The analysis was not what ‘ought’ to be, but rather what ‘is’.
I note, and correct me if I am wrong, that Gair similarly view the world as a ‘system’ :tending towards equalibrium and so forth as Enlightenment thinking also does.
At the moment the world is in a virus pandemic. The State involvement in solving that may well inform us of how to do something about the 38C anomalies we see in Siberia., which is what this article is about.
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You are correct. The GNP of the US is heavily dependent on the arms industry.
Here is my solution which would at least get us working on a plan rather than just sitting on our hands while the fossil fuel industry and its rich owners continues to fleece us.
My Energy Ideas:
Here are some ideas I have re climate change and how we can start a plan to hopefully begin real action to save ‘ourselves’ from what is certainly going to be a bleak future for our children. Thanks, Skip
I would like to see a platform, win or lose, that includes closing at least half of all overseas military bases and out posts along with a credible reduction of the MIC budget and that money spent on repairing our long neglected infrastructure and, secondly, using any remaining funds on a public healthcare for all plan. Next, a significant tax on all incomes of over (you set the amount) of in the neighborhood of 70+%, money to be used for social programs. And, most importantly, the Nationalization of all fossil fuel and uranium resources, profits from the sale of which would go directly towards renewable energy R & D; and, an additional tax on the profits from all energy producing industries which would go towards subsidizing the installation of renewable engery distribution and installation on homes and businesses. In addition there would be a progressive tax placed on all end users of fossil fuel produced energy, including personal and commercial transportation. The resources I mention belong to the people of our country and should be used to try and overcome the fast approaching climate disaster which will affect the entire world instead of further enriching already rich people; rich beyond the imaginations of most. A part of “our” platform must also include a wholehearted message that we will do our very best to include all climate scientists in a coordinated effort and scientific program to work on yet to be discovered ways to produce non-polluting energy. Climate is the world’s number one problem and endless wars are stealing our ability to come together as one people in order to save ourselves and all other life on Earth!
I hope this can somehow make it’s way to those in positions of leadership to assist in using in their own ideas.
Skip Edwards
590 Chipeta Dr
Ridgway, CO 81432
970-708-7277
skipedw@aol.com
End note: We must also put in that list a ‘progressive’ tax on all fossil fuel use by individuals, ie, heating homes, etc, transportation, ie, cars, boats, yachts, etc (fuel coupons rationed as in WWII and with below certain incomes receiving coupons similar to food stamps), etc. There are ways to do this where everyone will chip in and be a part of the effort. But this will require laws and a unified leadership. We don’t have time to try and vote in this type of change. We lost that time years ago when the warnings first started. We must force that change on the people in the government we have. Europeans are in the streets, kids are striking and walking out of schools; meanwhile, where are the American adults?
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