Climate emergency

.

Governments tell us

we need time to make changes

‘people aren’t ready’

meanwhile we see Rome burning

I sense a revolution

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by Scooj

  • I am sickened by governments around the world asserting that making rapid changes to our fossil fuel habits will not be accepted by businesses or people. Surely the point here is that they must lead us through this difficult time, making those difficult choices, and selling the long-term benefits to their citizens. Sadly they are still in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and other big players for whom change is costly and inconvenient. History will remember them for the pathetic cowards they are. They are failing in their duty to protect citizens and our beautiful home, Planet Earth. Time to change this ‘old order’.

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scooj

I am Stephen. I live in Bristol, UK. I decided to shorten my profile...to this: Wildlife, haiku, travel, streetart, psychogeography and my family. Not necessarily in that order.

26 thoughts on “Climate emergency”

      3. Collectively, we need environmentally conscious and active young people, especially those approaching or reaching voting age. In contrast, the dinosaur electorate who have been voting into high office consecutive mass-pollution promoting or complicit/complacent governments for many decades are gradually dying off thus making way for voters who fully support a healthy Earth thus populace.

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  2. The thing that gets me about the psychopaths that seem to be in charge of most of the countries and corporations is that whilst they seem to be excessively good at lying to get their own way, and obviously making themselves ridiculously wealthy in the process, none of them seem able or willing to look at the longer term effects of their actions.
    For all their money and power they will die just as surely as the beggar in the street who has nothing.
    They will be leaving their own children a planet that isn’t fit for purpose.
    True psychopaths . . .

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    2. With the unprecedented man-made global-warming-related extreme weather events, wildfires and off-the-chart poor-air-quality advisories (etcetera), I wonder how many fossil-fuel industry CEOs and/or their beloved family members may also be caught in global-warming-related harm’s way? Assuming the CEOs are not sufficiently foolish to believe their descendants will somehow always evade the health repercussions related to their industry’s environmentally reckless decisions, I wonder whether the unlimited-profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible to those business people, including the willingness to simultaneously allow an already squeezed consumer base to continue so — or be squeezed even further? (It somewhat brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.)

      In regards to economics and big business morals/ethics, I can see corporate CEOs shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying that their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. The shareholders, meanwhile, shrug their shoulders while defensively stating that they just collect the dividends and that the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and/or ethical decisions.

      Still, there must be a point at which the status quo — where already large corporate profits are maintained or increased while many people are denied even basic shelter/income — can/will end up hurting big business’s own $$$ interests. I can imagine that a healthy, strong and large consumer base — and not just very wealthy consumers — are needed.

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      2. I’ve noticed this morning that the climate denying fossil fuel industry has been helped out hugely by our chancellor in yesterday’s budget whilst the very poorest in our society, those who are out of work and on Universal Credit, have not only recently had £20 a week taken from them but have had no rise given to them in the budget and will have to deal with the 4 or 5% increase in inflation which will hit absolutely everyone but obviously the poorest the hardest.
        When you can give huge swathes of tax payers money to those that are making this planet far worse for every living thing whilst denying the very poorest and most vulnerable anything at all I guess you really do have to be some kind of psychopath . . .

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      3. They must be called out at every opportunity. It was pointed out on Question Time this evening that the Chancellor’s budget speech didn’t mention climate change once! And we are hosting COP26 next week.

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      4. And such people probably sleep well at night. …

        Western governances, like those of Canada and the U.S., are essentially steered by corporate interests, sometimes through economic intimidation. Accordingly, major political decisions will normally foremost reflect what is in big business’s best interests (but don’t expect to hear this fact readily reported by the corporate mainstream news-media).

        Anyone who doubts the potent persuasion of huge business interests here need to consider how high-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ are not accommodated. It’s a crippling that’s made even worse by a blaring news-media that’s permitted to be naturally critical of incumbent governments, especially in regards to job and capital transfers and economic weakening.

        Furthermore, Western corporate lobbyists actually write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that those who are aware of it (that likely includes mainstream news-media political writers) don’t bother publicly discussing it.

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  4. Here is Australia we are seeing Corporations and Banks making climate changes, and our Federal Govt doing nothing. Then the Govt is getting upset that these private businesses are mandating the very change that they should be legislating for. In the meantime the Murdoch dominated media are now trying to undermine climate change from the inside with mining good (provide jobs and ad revenue), wind turbines bad (they kill birds that are stupid enough to fly into them)

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    1. I don’t use the term lightly, but Murdoch is an evil man. His support of the Conservatives in the UK has contributed to the ruination of our country for decades to come. The damage they are doing is incalculable.

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      2. Ultimately I genuinely believe that mass civil disobedience will emerge as people’s lives are threatened by climate change. In some places it might lead to civil unrest, but as you say, governments seem to be in a state of growth-fixated paralysis.

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    2. Canada’s mainstream print news-media conglomerate Postmedia — which, except for The Toronto Star, owns Canada’s major print publications — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy”, but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest of crudes — bitumen. [“Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry”, Nov.14 2017, TheTyee.ca]
      https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/11/14/mair-media-unholiest-alliances
      During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and CAPP [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”

      Also, a then-publisher of Postmedia’s National Post said: “From its inception, the National Post has been one of the country’s leading voices on the importance of energy to Canada’s business competitiveness internationally and our economic well-being in general. We will work with [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] to amplify our energy mandate and to be a part of the solution to keep Canada competitive in the global marketplace. The National Post will undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”

      A few years ago, Postmedia also had acquired a lobbying firm with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the interests of the fossil fuel industry in Canada. Furthermore, in late May, Postmedia refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that expose the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of fossil fuel extraction in Canada.

      Really, should the promotion of massive fossil fuel extraction, even Canada’s own, be a partisan position for any newspaper giant to take, especially considering its immense role in global warming thus climate change? And, at least in this case, whatever happened to the honorable journalistic role of ‘afflicting the comfortable’ (which went along with ‘comforting the afflicted’), especially one of such environmental monstrosity?

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      1. That makes uncomfortable reading. Interesting that there is a presumption for growth in the use and demand for energy rather than a presumption for greater energy efficiency and reduced demand. A global phenomenon.

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      2. Here in the West, if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives would come at the expense of the traditional energy production companies, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the concept altogether, perhaps solely on the notion that if it was possible it would have been patented already and made a few people very wealthy.

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  5. “Sadly they are still in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and other big players for whom change is costly and inconvenient. History will remember them for the pathetic cowards they are.” …
    ____

    I believe there’s a potentially serious problem that, for whatever reason, goes basically unmentioned by the mainstream news-media: theologically inclined people who get into high office with their dangerous disregard — or even contempt — for the natural environment.
    A good example is Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, an Evangelical Christian, who theocratically declared two summers ago, in the midst of unprecedented Amazonian rainforest wildfire (home to a third of all known terrestrial plant, animal and insect species), that his presidency (and, I presume, all of the environmental damage he inflicts while in high office) was “fulfilling a mission from God”. What matters most to Bolsonaro is the creation of jobs, however limited or temporary, and economic stimulation, however intangible the concept when compared to the grand-scale, consequential environmental destruction.

    There’s a general belief held by Bible-following Christianity, that to defend the natural environment, even from the world’s greatest polluters, is to go against God’s will and therefore is inherently evil. Some among them may even credit the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning, along with global warming, to some divine wrath upon collective humankind’s sinfulness.

    Closer to home, many of Canada’s leading conservative politicians, not to mention our previous prime minister (i.e. Stephen Harper, close friend to Postmedia’s then-CEO Paul Godfrey), are/were ideologically aligned with the pro-fossil-fuel mainstream American Evangelical community and Republican Party. They generally share the belief that to defend the natural environment from the planet’s greatest polluters, notably big fossil fuel, is to go against God’s will and therefore is inherently evil. (Might this in particular include Greta?) Some among them may even credit the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning, along with global warming, to some divine wrath upon collective humankind’s ‘sinfulness’.

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    1. Plenty to think about and much to agree with in your comments. I suspect that not all Christians behave in this way, or believe these things, and there are many other countries with other faith groups whose disregard for the planet are equally appalling, such as many oil producing countries.

      Rather than, necessarily, faith driven disregard, I believe it to be more basic than that. There are selfish people and there are selfless people. How they dress themselves up varies.

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  6. No, it’s not Christ-ianity that’s at fault, here, not in the least. I cannot at all see Jesus condoning or being silent about the big fossil fuel business nor the immense environmental and human-health damage it causes. Rather, it’s the money-minded theocrats who misinterpret or plainly misrepresent themselves as being Christian that are the problem. Jesus must be spinning in heaven knowing what atrocities have been connected to Christ-ianity.

    For me, the bitter irony remains, however, that some of the best humanitarians I’ve met or heard about were/are atheists or agnostics who’d make better examples of many of Christ’s teachings than too many institutional Christians, i.e. those most resistant to Christ’s fundamental teachings of compassion and non-wealth. Conversely, some of the worst human(e) beings I’ve met or heard about are the most devout practitioners of institutional Christian theology.

    Meanwhile, it seems that when a public person openly fantasizes about world peace, a guaranteed minimum income and/or a clean global environment, many ‘Christians’ reactively presume he/she must therefore be Godless thus evil or, far worse, a socialist.

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