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<p><font size="+2"><i><b>November 2, 2021</b></i></font></p>
<i>[ United Nations news ]</i><br>
<i> </i><b>United Nations Climate Change </b><br>
Latest information<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://unfccc.int/news">https://unfccc.int/news</a><br>
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<i>[ Greta's activism ]</i><br>
<b>SIGN THE EMERGENCY APPEAL FOR CLIMATE ACTION!</b><br>
As citizens across the planet, we urge you to face up to the climate
emergency. Not next year. Not next month. Now:<br>
<blockquote>-- Keep the precious goal of 1.5°C alive with immediate,
drastic, annual emission reductions unlike anything the world has
ever seen. <br>
-- End all fossil fuel investments, subsidies, and new projects
immediately, and stop new exploration and extraction.<br>
-- End creative carbon accounting by publishing total emissions
for all consumption indices, supply chains, international aviation
and shipping, and the burning of biomass.<br>
-- Deliver the $100bn promised to the most vulnerable countries,
with additional funds for climate disasters.<br>
-- Enact climate policies that protect workers and the most
vulnerable, and reduce all forms of inequality.<br>
</blockquote>
We can still do this. There is still time to avoid the worst
consequences if we are prepared to change. It will take determined,
visionary leadership. And it will take immense courage -- but know
that when you rise, billions will be right behind you.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/climate_action_now_loc/?cACRrpb">https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/climate_action_now_loc/?cACRrpb</a><br>
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<i>[ doubtful and difficult ]</i><br>
<b>Can carbon capture facilities reverse climate change?</b><br>
The world’s biggest such complex will capture 4,000 tonnes of
greenhouse gas per year in boxes the size of shipping containers...<br>
- -<br>
As world leaders meet in Glasgow for COP26, the United Nations’
climate summit, scientists are touting this cutting-edge yet costly
technology as a key solution to the climate crisis.<br>
<br>
Others warn its high price and voracious appetite for energy are
obstacles to neutralising emissions on a global scale. Its fiercest
critics brand it a naive and unproven tactic that offers the worst
polluters a smokescreen...<br>
- - <br>
“We have to have technological solutions to get ourselves out of
this problem that technology has created. I’m all in favour of
planting trees and rewilding, but none of those in themselves is
enough. Direct air capture, together with using much less fossil
fuel, is part of the remedy.”...<br>
- -<br>
Conversely, experts say it is not enough simply to reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases. Substantial and sustained capture is crucial
too — particularly as a recent UN paper found that governments plan
to extract more than double the amount of fossil fuels needed to
keep global temperatures to safe levels.<br>
<br>
“There is no historical precedent for the scale of the necessary
transitions,” said a landmark 2018 report by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. “Conceptually, it is possible that
techniques to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere could contribute to
limiting warming to 1.5°C.”...<br>
- -<br>
The clock is ticking and some environmental groups remain deeply
sceptical of the technology. In a report this year, Friends of the
Earth dismissed Direct Air Capture as “futuristic, unproven and
dangerous”, adding the technique is “unlikely to ever work at scale”
and warning investment in it “could even lead to greater fossil fuel
extraction”...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/1/cop">https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/1/cop</a>
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<i>[ Thoughtful innovation video presentation ]</i><br>
<b>Solar PV film roll. Revolutionary new production technology.</b><br>
Oct 31, 2021<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Solar PV panels are now a common site around the world and they do a
great job. But they only work on flat surfaces. What about the
millions of other surfaces that are not so conveniently shaped?
That's where flexible solar film comes in. The concept is not new
but now a UK company has developed a unique Solar PV film that could
make the technology accessible to millions more people in remote off
grid areas in developing nations.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGQAOeSnErs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGQAOeSnErs</a> <br>
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<i>[ Contrasting conversations -- young- old - beautiful - aged -
and mutual admiration ]</i><br>
<b>AOC & Noam Chomsky: The Way Forward</b><br>
Oct 31, 2021<br>
The Laura Flanders Show<br>
In this historic, inter-generational meeting of minds, Laura
Flanders brings together New York Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky—for the first
time ever—to discuss the way forward for people, politics, and the
planet. From labor strikes to racial uprisings to climate action to
the Great Resignation, they reflect on the renewed power of
collective organizing and the changing tide in economic thinking and
electoral politics. Their insights demand that we think differently
about everything from our nation’s history and its place in the
world, to who can run for office in America and win. In their first
face-to-face conversation, the mutual admiration is palpable. Laura
closes with some thoughts on thinking the unthinkable. <br>
<br>
“We’re now having one of the major strikes in American history when
workers are simply saying, ‘We're not gonna go back to the rotten,
oppressive jobs, or precarious circumstances, with no health[care].’
The one-sided class war of the last 40 years is becoming two-sided…”
—Noam Chomsky<br>
<br>
“There are already communities actively experimenting and developing
solutions… What I work on is not how we find solutions but how we
scale [them] to transform our society.” —AOC<br>
<br>
GUESTS<br>
Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology <br>
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Representative, NY-14th District<br>
<br>
CONTENT<br>
Introduction 0:00<br>
Changing Tide & Alternatives to Capitalist System 2:11<br>
Addressing White Supremacy 9:00<br>
Prospects for a Green New Deal 12:06 <br>
Popular Activism & Politics 15:27<br>
The Progressive Agenda & The Way Forward 17:12<br>
Laura's Closing Commentary 24:19<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6M9VxHLqV8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6M9VxHLqV8</a><br>
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<i>[ Yes, hear these two brilliant climate philosophers in
conversation - book discussion. video ]</i><br>
<b>Saul Griffith with David Roberts: A realistic, optimistic plan
for our clean energy future</b><br>
on Oct 25, 2021<br>
Town Hall Seattle<br>
We know we have to do something about climate change, and we know we
need to move immediately. The mere thought of it tends to make
people freeze in their tracks from sheer overwhelm. Thousands of
ideas exist, but there's no clear, collective plan. Try as some
people might, jumping on a rocket to the next planet isn’t the
answer. But what if we don't need groundbreaking new inventions to
move the needle on climate change? What if most of the innovations
already exist? Could we build a better, cleaner future (and maybe
even generate millions of new jobs while we’re at it)? <br>
<br>
Engineer and inventor Saul Griffith shares a detailed plan of action
in his new book, Electrify: The Optimist’s Playbook for our Clean
Energy Future. Take note of two important words in the book’s title,
electrify and optimist. Griffith’s strategy circles around the
transformation of our infrastructure to electrify everything, update
our grid, and adapt homes to make it possible. And then there’s
optimism: if we’re to build the future we dream of, a realistic yet
optimistic outlook is necessary. After all, desperation and doom
haven’t successfully elicited the unified global response needed to
shift our trajectory; but we can change. Griffith shares the
blueprints for exactly how.<br>
<br>
Saul Griffith is an inventor, entrepreneur, and engineer. He is the
founder of Rewiring America, a nonprofit dedicated to decarbonizing
America by electrifying everything, and founder and chief scientist
at Otherlab. He was a recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant” in
2007.<br>
<br>
David Roberts writes for his newsletter, Volts, and previously wrote
for Vox and Grist. Over the past 15+ years, he’s written for several
other publications and appeared on a variety of TV shows, radio
programs, and podcasts.<br>
Presented by Town Hall Seattle.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGq-NYGs5uM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGq-NYGs5uM</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ electrification site by Saul Griffith - revising the grid ]</i><br>
<b><u>Rewiring America</u> is a growing nonprofit, working to launch
a movement that electrifies everything, starting with our 121
million households.</b><br>
Through accurate, accessible, and actionable data and storytelling
tools that power smart, inclusive advocacy and market-transforming
partnerships, Rewiring America aims to achieve national emissions
goals, improve our health, lower monthly bills, and create millions
of clean energy jobs.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.rewiringamerica.org/">https://www.rewiringamerica.org/</a><br>
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<p><i>[ chill sounds - 42 min video ] </i><br>
<b>The sound of dying ice | DW Documentary</b><br>
Oct 31, 2021<br>
DW Documentary<br>
Ice is melting around the world, with drastic consequences for
humanity. One way scientists can work out just how fast it’s
melting is by listening. The disappearing ice has its own sound.<br>
<br>
Geophysicist Ludovic Moreau wants to get to the bottom of a
mystery: Why is the pack ice in the Arctic melting faster than
predicted? He and five other scientists travel to Svalbard in
Norway, not far from the North Pole. On a frozen lake, they drill
holes in the ice and place seismic sensors inside. The melting ice
creates a sound like singing. It’s music that could help solve the
mystery of the retreating pack ice.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KUyyQluY1A">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KUyyQluY1A</a><br>
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<i>[ Prediction video conjectures ]</i><br>
<i> </i><b>What will the world look like in 2050 if we reach carbon
neutrality? | DW News</b><br>
Oct 31, 2021<br>
DW News<br>
Many countries are aiming to reach carbon neutrality in 2050. The
2050s will be completely different from the 2020s. Let's say we meet
our climate goals and manage to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees
Celsius, which is what many nations agreed to in the Paris Climate
Agreement. But that means the planet will still be 1.5 degrees
warmer than in pre-industrial times. So what will our future look
like?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJB2WAKqQ34">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJB2WAKqQ34</a><br>
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<i>[ Easy to agree. Long essay ]</i><br>
<i> </i><b>Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop
buying into our own destruction</b><br>
Instead of focusing on ‘micro consumerist bollocks’ like ditching
our plastic coffee cups, we must challenge the pursuit of wealth and
level down, not up<br>
by George Monbiot - Sat 30 Oct 2021 <br>
<br>
There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence.
It’s that we always put our survival first. This is true of other
species. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter,
they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it:
migrating or hibernating, for example. Humans are a different
matter.<br>
<br>
When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or
ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise our
survival. We convince ourselves that it’s not so serious, or even
that it isn’t happening. We double down on destruction, swapping our
ordinary cars for SUVs, jetting to Oblivia on a long-haul flight,
burning it all up in a final frenzy. In the back of our minds,
there’s a voice whispering, “If it were really so serious, someone
would stop us.” If we attend to these issues at all, we do so in
ways that are petty, tokenistic, comically ill-matched to the scale
of our predicament. It is impossible to discern, in our response to
what we know, the primacy of our survival instinct.<br>
<br>
Here is what we know. We know that our lives are entirely dependent
on complex natural systems: the atmosphere, ocean currents, the
soil, the planet’s webs of life. People who study complex systems
have discovered that they behave in consistent ways. It doesn’t
matter whether the system is a banking network, a nation state, a
rainforest or an Antarctic ice shelf; its behaviour follows certain
mathematical rules. In normal conditions, the system regulates
itself, maintaining a state of equilibrium. It can absorb stress up
to a certain point. But then it suddenly flips. It passes a tipping
point, then falls into a new state of equilibrium, which is often
impossible to reverse.<br>
<br>
Human civilisation relies on current equilibrium states. But, all
over the world, crucial systems appear to be approaching their
tipping points. If one system crashes, it is likely to drag others
down, triggering a cascade of chaos known as systemic environmental
collapse. This is what happened during previous mass extinctions.<br>
<br>
Here’s one of the many ways in which it could occur. A belt of
savannah, known as the Cerrado, covers central Brazil. Its
vegetation depends on dew forming, which depends in turn on
deep-rooted trees drawing up groundwater, then releasing it into the
air through their leaves. But over the past few years, vast tracts
of the Cerrado have been cleared to plant crops – mostly soya to
feed the world’s chickens and pigs. As the trees are felled, the air
becomes drier. This means smaller plants die, ensuring that even
less water is circulated. In combination with global heating, some
scientists warn, this vicious cycle could – soon and suddenly – flip
the entire system into desert.<br>
The Cerrado is the source of some of South America’s great rivers,
including those flowing north into the Amazon basin. As less water
feeds the rivers, this could exacerbate the stress afflicting the
rainforests. They are being hammered by a deadly combination of
clearing, burning and heating, and are already threatened with
possible systemic collapse. The Cerrado and the rainforest both
create “rivers in the sky” – streams of wet air – that distribute
rainfall around the world and help to drive global circulation: the
movement of air and ocean currents.<br>
<br>
The ocean current that brings heat from the tropics is weakening.
Without it, the UK would have a climate like Siberia’s<br>
Global circulation is already looking vulnerable. For example, the
Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which delivers
heat from the tropics towards the poles, is being disrupted by the
melting of Arctic ice, and has begun to weaken. Without it, the UK
would have a climate similar to Siberia’s.<br>
<br>
AMOC has two equilibrium states: on and off. It has been on for
almost 12,000 years, following a devastating, thousand-year off
state called the Younger Dryas (12,900 to 11,700 years ago), which
caused a global spiral of environmental change. Everything we know
and love depends on AMOC remaining in the on state.<br>
- -<br>
Regardless of which complex system is being studied, there’s a way
of telling whether it is approaching a tipping point. Its outputs
begin to flicker. The closer to its critical threshold it comes, the
wilder the fluctuations. What we’ve seen this year is a great global
flickering, as Earth systems begin to break down. The heat domes
over the western seaboard of North America; the massive fires there,
in Siberia and around the Mediterranean; the lethal floods in
Germany, Belgium, China, Sierra Leone – these are the signals that,
in climatic morse code, spell “mayday”.<br>
<br>
You might expect an intelligent species to respond to these signals
swiftly and conclusively, by radically altering its relationship
with the living world. But this is not how we function. Our great
intelligence, our highly evolved consciousness that once took us so
far, now works against us.<br>
<br>
An analysis by the media sustainability group Albert found that
“cake” was mentioned 10 times as often as “climate change” on UK TV
programmes in 2020. “Scotch egg” received double the mentions of
“biodiversity”. “Banana bread” beat “wind power” and “solar power”
put together.<br>
<br>
I recognise that the media are not society, and that television
stations have an interest in promoting banana bread and circuses. We
could argue about the extent to which the media are either
reflecting or generating an appetite for cake over climate. But I
suspect that, of all the ways in which we might measure our progress
on preventing systemic environmental collapse, the cake-to-climate
ratio is the decisive index.<br>
The current ratio reflects a determined commitment to irrelevance in
the face of global catastrophe. Tune in to almost any radio station,
at any time, and you can hear the frenetic distraction at work.
While around the world wildfires rage, floods sweep cars from the
streets and crops shrivel, you will hear a debate about whether to
sit down or stand up while pulling on your socks, or a discussion
about charcuterie boards for dogs. I’m not making up these examples:
I stumbled across them while flicking between channels on days of
climate disaster. If an asteroid were heading towards Earth, and we
turned on the radio, we’d probably hear: “So the hot topic today is
– what’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you while eating
a kebab?” This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with
banter.<br>
<br>
Most political news is gossip: who’s in, who’s out, who said what.
It avoids what lies beneath: the dark money, the corruption …<br>
<br>
Faced with crises on an unprecedented scale, our heads are filled
with insistent babble. The trivialisation of public life creates a
loop: it becomes socially impossible to talk about anything else.
I’m not suggesting that we should discuss only the impending
catastrophe. I’m not against bants. What I’m against is nothing but
bants.<br>
<br>
It’s not just on the music and entertainment channels that this
deadly flippancy prevails. Most political news is nothing but court
gossip: who’s in, who’s out, who said what to whom. It studiously
avoids what lies beneath: the dark money, the corruption, the shift
of power away from the democratic sphere, the gathering
environmental collapse that makes a nonsense of its obsessions.<br>
<br>
I’m sure it’s not deliberate. I don’t think anyone, faced with the
prospect of systemic environmental collapse, is telling themselves:
“Quick, let’s change the subject to charcuterie boards for dogs.” It
works at a deeper level than this. It’s a subconscious reflex that
tells us more about ourselves than our conscious actions do. The
chatter on the radio sounds like the distant signals from a dying
star.<br>
There are some species of caddisfly whose survival depends on
breaking the surface film of the water in a river. The female pushes
through it – no mean feat for such a small and delicate creature –
then swims down the water column to lay her eggs on the riverbed. If
she cannot puncture the surface, she cannot close the circle of
life, and her progeny die with her.<br>
<br>
This is also the human story. If we cannot pierce the glassy surface
of distraction, and engage with what lies beneath, we will not
secure the survival of our children or, perhaps, our species. But we
seem unable or unwilling to break the surface film. I think of this
strange state as our “surface tension”. It’s the tension between
what we know about the crisis we face, and the frivolity with which
we distance ourselves from it.<br>
<br>
Surface tension dominates even when we claim to be addressing the
destruction of our life-support systems. We focus on what I call
micro-consumerist bollocks (MCB): tiny issues such as plastic straws
and coffee cups, rather than the huge structural forces driving us
towards catastrophe. We are obsessed with plastic bags. We believe
we’re doing the world a favour by buying tote bags instead, though,
on one estimate, the environmental impact of producing an organic
cotton tote bag is equivalent to that of 20,000 plastic ones.<br>
<br>
Rich people can persuade themselves they’ve gone green because they
recycle, while forgetting they have a second home<br>
<br>
We are rightly horrified by the image of a seahorse with its tail
wrapped around a cotton bud, but apparently unconcerned about the
elimination of entire marine ecosystems by the fishing industry. We
tut and shake our heads, and keep eating our way through the life of
the sea.<br>
<br>
A company called Soletair Power receives wide media coverage for its
claim to be “fighting climate change” by catching the carbon dioxide
exhaled by office workers. But its carbon-sucking unit – an
environmentally costly tower of steel and electronics – extracts
just 1kg of carbon dioxide every eight hours. Humanity produces,
mostly by burning fossil fuels, roughly 32bn kg of CO2 in the same
period.<br>
<br>
I don’t believe our focus on microscopic solutions is accidental,
even if it is unconscious. All of us are expert at using the good
things we do to blot out the bad things. Rich people can persuade
themselves they’ve gone green because they recycle, while forgetting
that they have a second home (arguably the most extravagant of all
their assaults on the living world, as another house has to be built
to accommodate the family they’ve displaced). And I suspect that, in
some deep, unlit recess of the mind, we assure ourselves that if our
solutions are so small, the problem can’t be so big.<br>
I’m not saying the small things don’t matter. I’m saying they should
not matter to the exclusion of things that matter more. Every little
counts. But not for very much.<br>
<br>
Our focus on MCB aligns with the corporate agenda. The deliberate
effort to stop us seeing the bigger picture began in 1953 with a
campaign called Keep America Beautiful. It was founded by packaging
manufacturers, motivated by the profits they could make by replacing
reusable containers with disposable plastic. Above all, they wanted
to sink state laws insisting that glass bottles were returned and
reused. Keep America Beautiful shifted the blame for the tsunami of
plastic trash the manufacturers caused on to “litter bugs”, a term
it invented.<br>
<br>
The “Love Where You Live” campaign, launched in the UK in 2011 by
Keep Britain Tidy, Imperial Tobacco, McDonald’s and the sweet
manufacturer Wrigley, seemed to me to play a similar role. It had
the added bonus – as it featured strongly in classrooms – of
granting Imperial Tobacco exposure to schoolchildren.<br>
<br>
The corporate focus on litter, amplified by the media, distorts our
view of all environmental issues. For example, a recent survey of
public beliefs about river pollution found that “litter and plastic”
was by far the biggest cause people named. In reality, the biggest
source of water pollution is farming, followed by sewage. Litter is
way down the list. It’s not that plastic is unimportant. The problem
is that it’s almost the only story we know.<br>
- -<br>
In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for
the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by
inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation,
but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the
producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t
stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by
the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He
instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly
berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in
January.<br>
<br>
The great political transition of the past 50 years, driven by
corporate marketing, has been a shift from addressing our problems
collectively to addressing them individually. In other words, it has
turned us from citizens into consumers. It’s not hard to see why we
have been herded down this path. As citizens, joining together to
demand political change, we are powerful. As consumers, we are
almost powerless.<br>
<br>
In his book Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman notes that, when Stalin
and Hitler were in power, “one of the most astonishing human traits
that came to light at this time was obedience”. The instinct to
obey, he observed, was stronger than the instinct to survive. Acting
alone, seeing ourselves as consumers, fixating on MCB and
mind-numbing trivia, even as systemic environmental collapse looms:
these are forms of obedience. We would rather face civilisational
death than the social embarrassment caused by raising awkward
subjects, and the political trouble involved in resisting powerful
forces. The obedience reflex is our greatest flaw, the kink in the
human brain that threatens our lives.<br>
<br>
What do we see if we break the surface tension? The first thing we
encounter, looming out of the depths, should scare us almost out of
our wits. It’s called growth. Economic growth is universally hailed
as a good thing. Governments measure their success on their ability
to deliver it. But think for a moment about what it means. Say we
achieve the modest aim, promoted by bodies like the IMF and the
World Bank, of 3% global growth a year. This means that all the
economic activity you see today – and most of the environmental
impacts it causes – doubles in 24 years; in other words, by 2045.
Then it doubles again by 2069. Then again by 2093. It’s like the
Gemino curse in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which
multiplies the treasure in the Lestrange vault until it threatens to
crush Harry and his friends to death. All the crises we seek to
avert today become twice as hard to address as global economic
activity doubles, then twice again, then twice again.<br>
<br>
Have we reached the bottom yet? By no means. The Gemino curse is
just one outcome of a thing we scarcely dare mention. Just as it was
once blasphemous to use the name of God, even the word appears, in
polite society, to be taboo: capitalism.<br>
<br>
The main cause of your environmental impact is your money. You
persuade yourself you’re a green mega-consumer, but you’re just a
mega-consumer<br>
<br>
Most people struggle to define the system that dominates our lives.
But if you press them, they’re likely to mumble something about hard
work and enterprise, buying and selling. This is how the
beneficiaries of the system want it to be understood. In reality,
the great fortunes amassed under capitalism are not obtained this
way, but through looting, monopoly and rent grabbing, followed by
inheritance.<br>
<br>
One estimate suggests that, over the course of 200 years, the
British extracted from India, at current prices, $45tn. They used
this money to fund industrialisation at home and the colonisation of
other nations, whose wealth was then looted in turn.<br>
<br>
The looting takes place not just across geography, but also across
time. The apparent health of our economies today depends on seizing
natural wealth from future generations. This is what the oil
companies, seeking to distract us with MCB and carbon footprints,
are doing. Such theft from the future is the motor of economic
growth. Capitalism, which sounds so reasonable when explained by a
mainstream economist, is in ecological terms nothing but a pyramid
scheme.<br>
<br>
Is this the riverbed? No. Capitalism is just a means by which
something even bigger is pursued. Wealth.<br>
<br>
It scarcely matters how green you think you are. The main cause of
your environmental impact isn’t your attitude. It isn’t your mode of
consumption. It isn’t the choices you make. It’s your money. If you
have surplus money, you spend it. While you might persuade yourself
that you are a green mega-consumer, in reality you are just a
mega-consumer. This is why the environmental impacts of the very
rich, however right-on they may be, are massively greater than those
of everyone else.<br>
<br>
Preventing more than 1.5C of global heating means that our average
emissions should be no greater than two tonnes of carbon dioxide per
person per year. But the richest 1% of the world’s people produce an
average of more than 70 tonnes. Bill Gates, according to one
estimate, emits almost 7,500 tonnes of CO2, mostly from flying in
his private jets. Roman Abramovich, the same figures suggest,
produces almost 34,000 tonnes, largely by running his gigantic
yacht.<br>
<br>
The multiple homes that ultra-rich people own might be fitted with
solar panels, their supercars might be electric, their private
planes might run on biokerosene, but these tweaks make little
difference to the overall impact of their consumption. In some
cases, they increase it. The switch to biofuels favoured by Bill
Gates is now among the greatest causes of habitat destruction, as
forests are felled to produce wood pellets and liquid fuels, and
soils are trashed to make biomethane.<br>
<br>
There is a poverty line below which no one should fall, and a wealth
line above which no one should rise. We need wealth taxes, not
carbon taxes<br>
<br>
But more important than the direct impacts of the ultra-wealthy is
the political and cultural power with which they block effective
change. Their cultural power relies on a hypnotising fairytale.
Capitalism persuades us that we are all temporarily embarrassed
millionaires. This is why we tolerate it. In reality, some people
are extremely rich because others are extremely poor: massive wealth
depends on exploitation. And if we did all become millionaires, we
would cook the planet in no time at all. But the fairytale of
universal wealth, one day, secures our obedience.<br>
<br>
The difficult truth is that, to prevent climate and ecological
catastrophe, we need to level down. We need to pursue what the
Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns calls limitarianism. Just as
there is a poverty line below which no one should fall, there is a
wealth line above which no one should rise. What we need are not
carbon taxes, but wealth taxes. It shouldn’t surprise us that
ExxonMobil favours a carbon tax. It’s a form of MCB. It addresses
only one aspect of the many-headed environmental crisis, while
transferring responsibility from the major culprits to everyone. It
can be highly regressive, which means that the poor pay more than
the rich.<br>
<br>
But wealth taxes strike at the heart of the issue. They should be
high enough to break the spiral of accumulation and redistribute the
riches accumulated by a few. They could be used to put us on an
entirely different track, one that I call “private sufficiency,
public luxury”. While there is not enough ecological or even
physical space on Earth for everyone to enjoy private luxury, there
is enough to provide everyone with public luxury: magnificent parks,
hospitals, swimming pools, art galleries, tennis courts and
transport systems, playgrounds and community centres. We should each
have our own small domains – private sufficiency – but when we want
to spread our wings, we could do so without seizing resources from
other people.<br>
<br>
In consenting to the continued destruction of our life-support
systems, we accommodate the desires of the ultra-rich and the
powerful corporations they control. By remaining trapped in the
surface film, absorbed in frivolity and MCB, we grant them a social
licence to operate.<br>
<br>
We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century
democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi
knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters
who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth.
In Fridays for Future, Green New Deal Rising, Extinction Rebellion
and the other global uprisings against systemic environmental
collapse, we see people, mostly young people, refusing to consent.
What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our
survival depends on disobedience.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction</a><br>
<br>
<p> <br>
</p>
<i>[The news archive - looking back]</i><br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming
November 2, 2010</b></font><br>
November 2, 2010: Republicans win control of the US House of
Representatives in the midterm elections, putting some of the
nation's most vehement climate-change deniers in control of that
body. Also, California voters reject a ballot initiative intended to
kill landmark climate-change legislation in that state.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/11/03/128002/gop-frosh-class/">http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/11/03/128002/gop-frosh-class/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/19/174837/climate-zombie-caucus/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2010/11/19/174837/climate-zombie-caucus/</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/11/voters-reject-prop-23-keeping-californias-global-warming-law-intact.html">http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/11/voters-reject-prop-23-keeping-californias-global-warming-law-intact.html</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/greenfront/2010/11/becky-bond-of-credo-action-group-how-prop-23-was-defeated.html">http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/greenfront/2010/11/becky-bond-of-credo-action-group-how-prop-23-was-defeated.html</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/greenfront/2010/11/adi-nochur-1sky-about-the-elections.html">http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/greenfront/2010/11/adi-nochur-1sky-about-the-elections.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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