I dont want to get too off topic on this blog but since this is a somewhat big platform I want to talk about whats going on as we are facing the climate crisis head on.
Thousands of scientists all over the world are currently on protest in tears. No media is bringing this up. We should be seeing news about NASA scientists being arrested for asking to be heard but instead it is silent. Scientists say we have 3 years left to stop everything, we have the answers, but our governments arent listening. That we need to stop all new projects. Over 110,000+ new fossil fuel projects have been signed off in 2022. That should be concerning. Oil, gas and coal need to be stopped if we want a chance at survival and it needs to be talked about. We have 3 years, we have answers, we have alternatives and we need to government to act now. Theres a man on hunger strike just so the government will read the latest IPCC report. Just to look at a scientific document. They cant even do that.
And so so so so much more from flooding, new oil sign offs, etc.
If you are in a country thats just about to start elections, please look into parties that will do their part for the climate crisis. If you are not signed to vote, enrol asap. If youre in Australia, like me, you can enrol here by TODAY. (And maybe look into our third party system and what the greens have to offer? But i didnt tell you that..)
Look into protest groups like the Extinction Rebellion and see what protests are hapening nearby and what you can do to help. This is quite literally life or death for humanity and we cant risk ignoring it and letting it be ignored. We have to educate ourselves on whats going on, get mad and fight it. Because media is refusing to let us know of the doom were facing if our government continues to support oil, gas and coal the way they are. This isnt to make you feel doom, but encourage you to act to prevent doom.
He is not the first climate martyr and he won’t be the last. People are only going to become more and more desperate and examples like this will become more and more common.
“We hear daily about the impacts of our activities on ‘the environment’ (like 'nature’, this is an expression which distances us from the reality of our situation). Daily we hear too, of the many 'solutions’ to these problems: solutions which usually involved the necessity of urgent political agreement and a judicious application of human technological genius. Things may be changing, runs the narrative, but there is nothing we cannot deal with here, folks. We perhaps need to move faster, more urgently. Certainly we need to accelerate the pace of research and development. We accept that we must become more 'sustainable’. But everything will be fine. There will still be growth, there will still be progress: these things will continue, because they have to continue, so they cannot do anything but continue. There is nothing to see here. Everything will be fine. We do not believe that everything will be fine.”
-from the manifesto of the Dark Mountain Collective, a UK-based group of artists and writers dedicated to “uncivilization”
How can a 16-year-old girl in plaits, dedicated to trying to save the planet, inspire such incandescent rage?
Sat, Sep 7, 2019, 06:02
Millions of young people flooded the streets of cities around the world to demand political leaders take urgent steps to stop climate change, uniting in a worldwide protest inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? How can a 16-year-old girl in plaits, who has dedicated herself to the not-exactly sinister, authoritarian plot of trying to save the planet from extinction, inspire such incandescent rage?
Last week, she tweeted that she had arrived into New York after her two week transatlantic voyage: “Finally here. Thank you everyone who came to see me off in Plymouth, and everyone who welcomed me in New York! Now I’m going to rest for a few days, and on Friday I’m going to participate in the strike outside the UN”, before promptly giving a press conference in English. Yes, her second language.
Her remarks were immediately greeted with a barrage of jibes about virtue signalling, and snide remarks about the three crew members who will have to fly out to take the yacht home.
This shouldn’t need to be spelled out, but as some people don’t seem to have grasped it yet, we’ll give it a lash: Thunberg’s trip was an act of protest, not a sacred commandment or an instruction manual for the rest of us. Like all acts of protest, it was designed to be symbolic and provocative. For those who missed the point – and oh, how they missed the point – she retweeted someone else’s “friendly reminder” that: “You don’t need to spend two weeks on a boat to do your part to avert our climate emergency. You just need to do everything you can, with everyone you can, to change everything you can.”
It is the most vicious and the most fatuous kind of playground bullying
Part of the reason she inspires such rage, of course, is blindingly obvious. Climate change is terrifying. The Amazon is burning. So too is the Savannah. Parts of the Arctic are on fire. Sea levels are rising. There are more vicious storms and wildfires and droughts and floods. Denial is easier than confronting the terrifying truth.
Then there’s the fact that we don’t like being made to feel bad about our life choices. That’s human nature. It’s why we sneer at vegans. It’s why we’re suspicious of sober people at parties. And if anything is likely to make you feel bad about your life choices – as you jet back home after your third Ryanair European minibreak this season – it’ll be the sight of small-boned child subjecting herself to a fortnight being tossed about on the Atlantic, with only a bucket bearing a “Poo Only Please” sign by way of luxury, in order to make a point about climate change.
But that’s not virtue signalling, which anyone can indulge in. As Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, and their-four-private-jets-in-11-days found recently, virtue practising is a lot harder.
Even for someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter, some of the criticism levelled at Thunberg is astonishing. It is, simultaneously, the most vicious and the most fatuous kind of playground bullying. The Australian conservative climate change denier Andrew Bolt called her “deeply disturbed” and “freakishly influential” (the use of “freakish”, we can assume, was not incidental.) The former UKIP funder, Arron Banks, tweeted “Freaking yacht accidents do happen in August” (as above.) Brendan O’Neill of Spiked called her a “millenarian weirdo” (nope, still not incidental) in a piece that referred nastily to her “monotone voice” and “the look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes”.
But who’s the real freak – the activist whose determination has single-handedly started a powerful global movement for change, or the middle-aged man taunting a child with Asperger syndrome from behind the safety of their computer screens?
And that, of course, is the real reason why Greta Thunberg is so triggering. They can’t admit it even to themselves, so they ridicule her instead. But the truth is that they’re afraid of her. The poor dears are terrified of her as an individual, and of what she stands for – youth, determination, change.
She is part of a generation who won’t be cowed. She isn’t about to be shamed into submission by trolls. That’s not actually a look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes. It’s a look that says “you’re not relevant”.
The reason they taunt her with childish insults is because that’s all they’ve got. They’re out of ideas. They can’t dismantle her arguments, because she has science – and David Attenborough – on her side. They can’t win the debate with the persuasive force of their arguments, because these bargain bin cranks trade in jaded cynicism, not youthful passion. They can harangue her with snide tweets and hot take blogposts, but they won’t get a reaction because, frankly, she has bigger worries on her mind.
In an age when democracy is under assault, she hints at the emergency of new kind of power
That’s not to say that we should accept everything Thunberg says without question. She is an idealist who is young enough to see the world in black and white. We need voices like hers. We should listen to what she has to say, without tuning the more moderate voices of dissent out.
Why is Greta Thunberg so triggering? Because of what she represents. In an age when democracy is under assault, she hints at the emergency of new kind of power, a convergence of youth, popular protest and irrefutable science. And for her loudest detractors, she also represents something else: the sight of their impending obsolescence hurtling towards them.
Three oil companies have canceled their leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Drilling in the refuge has long been a controversial issue, as the 19.5-million-acre wilderness area is home to 45 species of mammals including polar bears, bowhead whales and caribou and considered sacred by the Indigenous Gwich’in people, according to the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
“These exits clearly demonstrate that international companies recognize what we have known all along: drilling in the Arctic Refuge is not worth the economic risk and liability that results from development on sacred lands without the consent of Indigenous Peoples,” the Gwich’in Steering Committee said in a statement.
The Anchorage Daily News first reported Thursday that the oil company Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of 88 Energy, had canceled its lease on the refuge’s coastal plain, as confirmed by the Bureau of Land Management.
“The Bureau of Land Management has a well-established procedure to do this, and last month rescinded and canceled the lease, as requested,” the Interior Department said in a statement reported by the Anchorage Daily News. “The Office of Natural Resources Revenue refunded (the) full bonus bid and first year rentals.”
At the same time, the paper also reported that Hilcorp and Chevron had spent $10 million to exit older leases to land owned by an Alaskan Native coorporation within the refuge.
“Chevron’s decision to formally relinquish its legacy lease position was driven by the goal of prioritizing and focusing our exploration capital in a disciplined manner in the context of our entire portfolio of opportunities,” company spokesperson Deena McMullen told The Hill.
The move follows a game of political football over oil and gas exploration along the refuge’s 1.5 million acre coastal plain. In 2017, Congress passed a law mandating two lease sales in the refuge by 2024, according to The Washington Post. However, when the Trump administration held its first lease sale in the coastal plain in January 2021, Regenerate Alaska was the only oil company to buy a lease, according to the Anchoridge Daily News.
The company’s decision to pull out follows political uncertaintly over the lease, as the Biden administration put a halt to exploration in the refuge and suspended the leases for more study. Indigenous and enviornmental groups also led a campaign against drilling in the refuge, and 29 banks and 14 international insurers have now said they won’t fund drilling in the refuge, according to the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
Some have criticized the Biden administration for delaying the leases, blaming its actions for the companies’ departure.
“The Biden administration continues to tell the American people that they are doing all they can to bring down energy prices,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said, as The Washington Post reported. “Then they take actions that do the exact opposite, especially in Alaska.”
However, environmental groups responded favorably to the news, arguing that drilling in the refuge would be dangerous both to the local ecosystem and the global fight against the climate crisis.
“This is positive news for the climate and the human rights of Indigenous people whose survival depends on a healthy, thriving calving ground for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, and further proves that the oil industry recognizes drilling on sacred lands is bad business,” Wilderness Society Alaska state director Karlin Itchoak said in a statement reported by The Washington Post.
There are two entities that retain leases following the 2021 sale – the state-owned Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and an Anchorage real estate investor (AIDEA). However, experts say that it’s unlikely they will be able to develop the land independently, making fossil fuel exploration in the refuge now unlikely. Still, Indigenous activists said they would keep pressure on the remaining lease holders.
“AIDEA must show respect to the Indigenous communities they have been overlooking in Alaska projects,” executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee Bernadette Demientieff said in a statement. “We are spiritually and culturally connected to the land, water and animals. The Gwich’in people and our allies will never stop fighting to protect Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit.”
Climate Thoughts of the Day: No, This Is Not “The End”
Hi everyone, I hope you’re all well.
Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of asks from people who are concerned about various climate and environmental disasters around the world.
Let me just say: you are absolutely right to be concerned and scared. I’m concerned and scared - that’s why I engage in climate activism, and that’s why I run this blog. There are a lot of terrible things happening around the world, and a lot of people are dying unnecessarily because of these disasters.
Because of this, a lot of people - perhaps understandably - look at what is happening around the world in terms of the climate emergency, and tell themselves that these disasters spell “the end” for the world, or for humanity or human society. A lot of people think that these disasters are only the beginning of a global crisis which will one day inevitably end the world.
This crisis that we are in is extremely serious. It is deadly for many people, and we are still not at the stage where the action we need to see is being taken. And some degree of climate change is already, unfortunately, locked in.
But, with all of this in mind, “the end” is not here.
Since the beginning of human society, and even before, we have always had to experience environmental disasters. Climate change is now making those disasters more frequent and more severe. That is the truth.
But these disasters, however serious and deadly they are, are not “the end”. Singular events, or events in one or a few countries, do not mean that the end of the world is here. And they certainly do not mean that we have to give up on climate and environmental action - if anything, to save more lives and protect more people, they mean that we must fight harder for climate and environmental justice, and think and act with the future in mind.
I always like to think of this crisis as a house on fire. If your house is on fire, would you just sit and watch it all burn? Or would you try your absolute best to save everything you possibly can? Even if it’s too late to save *everything* in your house, you still have to give it everything you’ve got, otherwise you’ll be left with nothing.
Instead of seeing these disasters as “the end”, we need to treat this crisis like a house on fire - that is, we have to look at ways to both mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. In the future, we may have to build our societies with the climate crisis in mind - that means building houses, buildings and infrastructure with increased flood defences, or on higher ground, for example. We will also have to continue to work towards decarbonisation and move away from fossil fuels worldwide - this is something that must be done, and soon.
Please, if you’re reading this, do not give up on the future or assume that the end of the world is already here. The planet is not going to be fixed or saved, nor are potentially millions of lives going to be saved, by fatalism or a “let’s all just party until the apocalypse” mentality - the future needs the skills and the empathy and the hope and, indeed, the well-directed fear of climate-concerned and climate-aware people.
This isn’t the end. Not yet. Not for the planet, or for humans, or for you. Keep your head up, stay strong, and think about ways in which you can one day use your skills, whatever they may be, to help to create a better future or to raise awareness of the climate crisis.
