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Don't Panic!! Don't Panic!!
Like an episode of 'Dad's Army' with Corporal Jones running around like a headless chook, the climate action brigade is getting excited about tomorrow's #climatestrike events.
Well, let me tell you, it's all a complete waste of time and energy. Climate Change has escaped the circus and we don't have a net big enough to catch and harness it.
If that is all a bit too subtle in its opaqueness, let me spell it out clearly. This may be the very last time that I do so because, quite frankly, it is a complete waste of my time too - and I have been rather rudely told to shut up and stop spoiling the climate action charade in what has been ridiculously titled: "Choosing Extinction" by Paul Gilding - 'ridiculous' because it (the content) is not about 'choosing extinction' but about haw the world can, if it chooses, 'choose to stop it'. Total crap.
OK, first let me explain as simply as I can, what I mean by climate action is 'a complete waste of time' and any suggestion that it is not is 'total crap'.
Paul Gilding quite rightly says "...‘choosing extinction’ ...is the path we are on today," which he follows up with "...unless we choose to stop it". Now, tell me this, if we have chosen 'extinction' - which we have, mostly by default, being the easiest path to take - why would we suddenly turn around, even if we now could, and take a diametrically opposite path.
I say 'even if we could' because as Paul says, "The scale of change required — the transformation of the global economy". Hah! The global economy is spread over some 195 nations and at its base level over 7.75 billion individual people. You think that all of that energy of resistance and divergent opinion can be harnessed to turn completely around, and much of it sacrifice its privileged position for the sake of the rest? Come on, you've got to be joking. It will never happen.
And then there is the time frame to accomplish this. Gilding says "...largely within a decade". What? Where did he pull that from? We have known of the Climate issue since at least the early '70s. That is 50 years, give or take. And what have we done? Absolutely fucking nothing. We have seen milestones go by, such as the CO2 Parts Per Million, ever increasing carbon emissions (with nary a hiccup let alone a downturn). We've seen a population explosion - it has doubled in the past 50 years and adds another billion every 12 years - all those extra contributors to energy production. I could go on but what's the point. Humanity will never change course, even if we had the time. It is hopeless. Accept it.
Gilding then says "We know how to fix this", which is the biggest lie among all the other lies being perpetuated around climate change. We have no idea how to fix it. It is in fact now unfixable and will run its course, wherever that takes us over the next decades, centuries, millennia, no matter what we do. The only ideas we have, put forward, incidentally, as 'for profit' business propositions, are listed in the article Climate Emergency - Action linked to by Gilding's piece - all of which are designed to create more energy and emissions output than ever before. The suggestions are so stupid as to be virtually unbelievable as coming from serious minded people.
The last point I am going to make is to deny another lie put forward by Gilding and others that "we can afford to do (it)". See here, another link from his piece - Climate Emergency - Climate Economics - I'm not going to explain why we cannot afford any such thing as suggested there. Please work it out for yourself. This is too distressing. I just think of all the poverty in the world. All the people who are already being displaced from their normal familiar regions for one thing or another, the causes of which seem to be a more important investment of such funds the world has to spare. I just think of all the farmers being driven from their lands already as a result of drought. I just think of all who will die from malnutrition and thirst both now and increasingly as every year passes. I just think of all the diseases that will prevail as new climate conditions begin to favour them. And it is all just too much to dwell on for long. And then I think of all the idiots who come up with unworthy and unworkable ideas such as expressed in these articles, and the poor kids who believe that by striking they can somehow affect any of that.
If that is Treason, then I'm guilty.
Author
Bernard ("Bernie") Edwards blogs at notsomethingelse and lives "as simply as I can, working towards having as few dependencies on the industrial system as possible" in Australia. Bravo! We highly recommend Bernie's blog.
