Surprised there's not been a thread on this yet, although apologies if I missed it.
Basically a group spawned in the UK taking to direct action to affect change in policy to mitigate climate change.
Website here:
https://rebellion.earth/Today they blocked all major bridges in London to draw attention to the threat climate change poses to earth and our species.
They genuinely believe we're headed for extinction unless we do something about climate change.
Clearly they think things like the Paris Accord are not enough. And frankly, I agree.
Climate scientists with the UN have warned us we have 12 years to stop climate change seriously fucking things up beyond repair. They say such a thing can only be avoided if we drastically rethink things.
Personally I think such change requires full scale revolution and that global capitalism, in particular with the fossil fuel industry, is the cause of this mess. But on the other hand it's not guaranteed capitalism will be smashed and consigned to history in the next 12 years so I bloody hope I'm wrong and somehow this can be solved whilst capitalism is still around.
For one thing I think if we want to seriously get our heads together and figure out 1) how to stop climate change and 2) come up with viable green alternatives for energy (such as maybe cracking fusion technology) then governments need to fund science with a war-like mentality. I.e. in times of war, science funding was vastly restricted to things that helped win the war. With ww2 such funding was concentrated mostly on the atomic bomb and building the computer.
Well, I think we need the same mentality now to tackle climate disaster and save ourselves. I know it goes against the ethos of scientific orthodoxy but honestly, I believe we don't have the time or luxury to be bothering with things like the hadron collider or sending probes to mars. We have bigger fish to fry.
There needs to be some sort of revolution at least in the way we think about science and what its place is in society.
Perhaps Extinction Rebellion is a nucleus for a new movement to change this. I dunno. All I know is we need climate action N O W. Otherwise we're all fucked beyond comprehension. Perhaps I dare say that Brexit or Trump are not important at all when you're literally talking about the extinction of the human race, or at least the deaths of untold numbers if the global ecology collapses.
We're already in the midst of the 6th mass extinction event, and we could go down with the rest of the other species.
Sorry to bum you out on a Saturday night. I'll make a fart joke maybe later on in the thread. Something to do with greenhouse gases and methane.
Thoughts?