Hello, Thanks to both parties. My belief, is something has to be said for accountability. Members of government need to be held accountable. It;s not enough for a person to have the soft skills to be elected, it's important to elect government servants that have the discretion to weigh the interests of sociey, corporate endeavors, and a municipality's citizens.
Activism can work when agenda is in interest of majority of people or large fraction of population. However, degrowth and limiting consumption/ lower living standard are supported by very few people. There is no way activism can push through degrowth and drastic lower consumerism necessary to save humanity from coming collapse.
yes the economy has to be designed better- we cannot just let cowboy capitalism continue- the pioneering period of our country and world is over- we must use the tool of taxes (on pollution of any kind) to make these activities unaffordable!!!! thus we need to vote for those that support this plan.
I agree with your sentiment but... THE PROBLEM. There is too much money already in the hands of the Capitalist Wealth Class, so they can afford any amount of pollution they like. Money is the problem.
This is a great lecture. To build local resistance and resilience. Yet her example of "Gandhi..overthrowing.. colonial" is not correct. It's a well known fact, that the british decolonised India, because it was no longer worth colonising and post WW2 England was but a ruined state. As for climate activism of the sorts she speaks of, less than 10% of the world's people are aware of it.
I've believed that since 1978. Whether one is a pacifist or advocate of violence, intellectual honesty compels no less than recognition of the extreme improbability of degrowth absent application of force. Sabotage will return to, and surpass, its modern peak level of the late 70s-early 80s, e.g. in the efforts of the "Bolt Weavils" of the Northern Tier of MT and ND, aka "Night Riders" (the latter term, unfortunately, also once referred to Klansmen who kidnapped and lynched black men from their family homes). The MT Bolt Weavils were one anonymous cell of middle-aged, white (with indigenous allies' support), male, black bandana-masked, mostly more or less right-of-center ranchers, who made horseback raids on moonless nights and using lasoos and thermite, brought down numerous gigantic towers erected to suspend 500KV high-tension powerlines that were to cross the state and transport multiphase AC from the coal-fired Colstrip plants to BPA interface with the Columbia River hydroelectric system. In one legendary night ride, the Bolt Weavils were confronted red-handed by dozens of state police. The BWs shattered the "gumball machine" lights atop the cop cas and pummelled the cars with steelies launched by 'wrist rocket" high-powerwed slingshots. The state police did not fire and retreated. That battle was ultimately lost politically and the powerlines were completed, as was the other target of sabotage, the Northern Tier pipeline. If "violence" includes sabotage not intended to produce human casualties, then it's unfathomable that the radical changes required immediately simply to survive as a species in some organized manner, could come about via liberal democratic majoritarian legislative processes. Moreover, Big Capital, multinational alliances, multinational corporations, banks, etc. will utilize legislation, imprisonment, and deadly force in order to suppress the movement. 'Domestic Terrorism' will be the controlling narrative. Saboteurs will have to be armed and able to defend themselves and allies. These aren't radically aberrent notions, they're candid recognition of the dynamic forces (both biospheric and sociopolitical) beyond control of the individual absent radical amplification of the truth via both demonstrative and strategic sabotage. The irony is that the ecological Pandora's Box opened by massive sabotage and terminal political instability might greatly accelerate our demise. If it were a large asteroid on trajectory to collide with Earth in September of 2025, or September of 2052, the response would, I submit, be much different. Of necessity, that existential threat necessitates reliance on technology, experts, and governments. There's no mileage in impeding that response, whether or not employing sabotage as a tool. Culpability, responsibility and causation re the climate emergency is atomized and diffused throughout civilization. In the cliche but still relevant words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."
Yes activism for drastic lower consumption and lower living standard is supported by almost nobody. And it will fail unfortunately. Humanity is headed for collapse but there is no way to stop the freight train of consumerism/capitalism.
This thinking is overdue. It has always been odd to me, that scientists don't tend to be activists. If not scientists then who? The fear of the public space of politics, social backlash for being impartial seems to have created a caution, that plays into the hands of the uninformed. I have to say even the courts are not impartial, so why don't scientists run for office or step forward in other useful ways? Who else has received funding to do the background research? Like I said, I have always found the timidness of scientists to be activists odd. Who else if not you?
After World War 3 we will be able to get busy working on Paradise Earth. Don't expect much to happen until then. I'll eat my hat and underwear if I'm wrong.
Climate activism is a laudable abstraction but only PERSONAL reduction of our carbon footprints and population can save humanity and the biosphere. All the rest is just more cognitive territory, the fatal leap our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors made with sedentary agriculture. The brilliant book by Denise Schmandt-Beserrat, "Before Writing" lays it all out, the jump from the first agricultural surpluses to capital and Capitalism. All the rest is just more hot air. Stress R Us
We need people with ultra smart degrees and cognitive function to figure out how to make mining equipment for batteries and transport vehicles carbon neutral. Or find a way to convince everyone to just grow food and find water as their entire days jobs. stop all product use and food chain promotion. Stop all the big trucks, ships and construction equipment, then watch Climate Justice just occur.
One big issue is those that see eminent demise and want trillions of dollars… are not funding their amazing ideas… they point at ‘the others’ to work and go into debt for a century to pay for it…. The system genius’s are never on the hook for money or actually inventing the technologies that will make this new global system work. All techies are working on batteries and other reliable energy products and at the same time not producing harmful waste… …. but there are a limited number of entrepreneurs capable of this endeavor and only a small group of capitalist systems… and the same genius climate guys…. are smashing these capitalist entrepreneurs to smithereens!…. The geniuses need to get off the throats of capitalists. The world needs MORE of them not less….
How about this: Everything that has evolved and emerged- dirty, horrific or however, brought something comfortable, secure, mind expanding, fantastic, awesome and significant to a teeny tiny itty bitty minority of humans. Most of which, with having a phone and time apparently, are on this comment section. That is, humans born in the right place at the right time to the right parents (of course the humans who are not stupid to throw it away or whatever). To fly in the sky, have chariots of steel, all varieties of foods, disciplines, experiences, security, comfort- the perks a global industrial civilization can provide _to some_ even now. An aside Seriously, though, how does one _travel_ and commerce without the system that emerged? Do you think a different system, non FF, would work to this point? It wouldn't of. This was the only path. Anyway How about this- each one of us could eat a bald eagle for breakfast, drive an XM-1 tank to work on the two or three days we'd have to work and not be surrounded by thousands of ravaging fellow humans spewing 250,000 babies a day* if only we could control our numbers. Everything that has emerged is derived from _too many people to be sustained_ trying to survive, compete or "get their share". Not all the other asides and adjacent issues brought up here are relevant- they are simply pitiful attempts at mitigation that absolutely will fail, only one cause: population overshoot. If more had not breeded (like the more responsible unselfish among us) this would not be. * Also with entitlement and a pro natal social order that condemns non breeders; discourages and fears free agency.
